A People Undefeated

Ten years of struggle inthe North of lreland. An analysis by John Me Anulty. A Peoples Democracy Pamphlet

Introduction i rr ee ee This booklet grew from a series of articles in the Peoples Democracy paper ‘Socialist Republic’ in late 1978 and early I979. Because of their length it was decided to discontinue the series in the paper and publish the articles indeperdently as a full-size pamphlet, Supplements and comments on the beginnings and development of the struggle abound, but in this pamphlet I attempt to go a bit further and provide a basic political analysis of the past ten years from the standpoint of revolutionary marxism, Not all of the major events of the past decade are adequately covered and there is no attempt to develop an economic analysis for the period, I hope that further pamphlets by P.D,. will fill in the gaps and that by debate in the socialist and anti-imperialist movements we will arrive at a clarity about our history essential in the formulation of a strategy for victory, John McAnulty, Belfast, August 1979, John McAnulty is a fourder member of Peoples Democracy and is currently a member of the National Committee,

Page 1

1 HOW IT ALL

BEGAN

As we commemosate the tenth arniversary of the first civil rights marches in the North, it's easy to be depressive abou‘ the results of the struggle, Both North ana South democratic rights have been eroded, In the North many have died or been seriously injured and mary more langu'sh in prison and in the squalor of H-block, The injustices of impertalism remain and repression is on th2 Increase, But there have been positive gains from ‘the struggle. An enormous mass of people haye become ogolitically conscious and active in the course of the struggle. Many are no longer active but aljl the signs are that large zroups are becoming reinvolved in politics and are determined to end the repression.

The struggle has been the most intense and serious challenge that imperialism has ever faced in Ireland, culminating in 'no-go' areas that set up alternative self government and effectively seceded from British control, Above all the struggle brought about the destruction of the corrupt Stormont regime, The imperialists are still reeling from that blow and the effects will be felt for some time to come, But if we want to see permanent gains coming from the struggle we have to look critically at it's history and learn the lessons, Economic factors Perhaps the simplest and most basic lesson of the past ten years is that mass upsurges are dependant to a large ext@ht on political changes in society, which are themselves caused by major economic changes both locally and in the world economy.

These sorts of economic changes did occur in Ireland in the late '5Cs and early 60s, In the North local industries like engineering, shipbuilding and linen, all major sources of Unionist patronage, went into decline, Stormont adopted a policy of lavish grants and tax-free perks to attract foreign capital, In order to accomodate this new finance capital the unionists had to tone down sectarianism and rationalise the economic relationships with the South, This necessity was the base for O'WNeillism., In the South the government gave up all attempts to establish an independent Irish economy. They mounted a compaign to encourage foreign investment and in late 1965 agreed arn Anglo-Irish free-trade area with London, The main results ofthis were a major upsurge of working class militancy as large scale industry began to replace agricultural work and a deep ideological crisis as the state tried to abandon nationalism and replace it with a more readily proimperialist ideology. ‘s The unionists Lenin once wrote that revolution became possible when the rulirg class found it impossible to rule in the old way and the oppressed classes were no longer willing to accept their condition of servitude, In the '60s the unionids found themselves unable to rule in the old way. For 50 years they had dealt with opposition by massive repression by the use of naked sectarianism and using the B-Specials and RUC as a private army, During this whole period they had the unconditional support of the British. Now they were being pressured to refurbish their image and there was an element of uncertainty in their policy that their opponents were quick to seize upon, The opposition Parlier we noted that objective factors play a large role in the creation of mass upsurges, But it is also true that political groups must actively organise to take advantage of these opportunities, The economic boom of the Sixties created employmert opportunities for catholic workers, especially in the construction industry and created a new mood of militancy and selfconfidence, A new middle-class grew up deeply opposed to discrimination and lack of opportunity, And political groups organised to take advantage of this, By far the most important development was the alliance between the Communist Party and republicans, The defeat of military activity in 1956-62 had meant a major rethink for republicans and they,had moved towards political action and building

a base in the workin, class. Together they decided to attack the unionist denia! of democracy ir the North. Another group active in producing information publicising discrimination was the Campaie for Social Justice in Dungannon and small socialist groups that had split away from the pro-partition Northern Ireland Labour Party were also active, All worked for years before the first demonstration, laying the political basis of the mass explosion that was to come, . Civil rights A major political weakness of the Communist party and the republicans was that their activity was aimed at publicity and parliamentary pressure rather than mass demonstrations, ‘They worked hard to establish the Civil Rights Association, but it was meant aS a complaints body rather like the NCCL in England and contained several businessmen and liberal unionists, But the local bodies that were growing up around the North were considerably more radical and they were to be the base of the future Civil Rights Movement, The break came in June 1967, Austin Currie, the Campaign for Social Justice and the local Republican Clubs had campaigued against housing discrimination in Dungannon, After being evicted from houses they were squattingin they decided to hold a march from Coalisland to Dungannon, The CRA rather hesitatingly agreed co sponsor it, ‘The march attracted 2,500 people and was banned from the centre of Dungannon, The march brought together the elemerts of tte CRM, This had many divisions and contradictions within it but had the power to mobilise huge numbers, ‘The unionists had allowed the march but had barred it from 9. Fe Page 2 . oc prnen celeste ia at ated The 'moderate' O'Neill dressed in his Orange regalia. the centre of a ‘catholic town' under pressure from Paisleyites, The stage was set for the explosion of the masses onto the streets.

MASS

EMENT

After the success of the Coalisland demontration the obvious centre for another demonstration was in Derry, The main reason was symbolic, As a Catholic town permanently controlled by a gerrymandered unionist council it represented all the worst aspects of unionist discrimination, The second practical reason was that a great deal of political activity was taking place there. For some time Derry socialists and Republicans had been co-operating in agitation around a hous+ ing action committee, The committee soon ran up against the facts of a brutal discrimination against Catholics in housing, They were attacked by both Unionists and Nation~ alist politicians as 'Godless commun'sts!' but won a wide local support, It was the housing action committee which decided on the march and invited NICRA to sponsor it,

Page 3 Ban In the meantime the Unionists were getting worried about the growing strength of the movement and had decided to nip it in the bud before it developed further, They were given their excuse for action when the Apprentice Boys announced a 'traditional]' march along the same route as the civil rights march, Craig immediately banned all marches for a month and began drafting RUC men into the city. The reformists who controlled NICRA had never considered it as an agitational body, — They had only reluctantly agreed to support the march and when the ban was announced they held a hurried meeting and were about to call the march off, The Derry action committee was outraged, They said they would go ahead regardless and NIC RA decided to continue support.

October 5th On the day of the demonstration two wousand marchers set off from the Waterside station and got about 200 yards.

Nationalist leader Eddie McAteer had opposed the march but attended on the day, Gerry Fitt also attended and was batoned along with other marchers as they reached the RUC, The organisers tried to hold a meeting but the RUC began a series of baton charges from both sides and brought in water-cannons.

Scattered fighting broke out throughout the city as the RUC charged groups of marchers and it developed into a major attack on the Bogside, The Bogsiders came out to defend themselves and that night barricades were thrown up and petrol bombs used, Seventyseven civilians were ‘injured’, After October 5th events moved with amazing.

speed, But the attitudes which the various anti-unionist groups took around the march gave a clear indication of the roles they were to play in the years ahead. The socialist groups and the individual republicans were the initiators of the demonstrations and carried out agitation and organisation, The Communist party, the then leadership of the Republican movement and other reformists in NICRA tried desperately to retain a 'respectable' image and avoid activity on the streets, The Catholic workers, their confidence improved by a — economic boom, moved to organise emselves and defend their areas wh th came under attack, er ‘in the future struggle. ‘official opposition at Stormont, ' November 16th. The attitude of the Catholic business class deserves an even closer look, Shortly after the march a meeting of ‘concerned citizens’ was held in a Derry hotel. They set up a 'Citizens Action Committee' and moved to oust the socialists from leadership and to hold back the general struggle. A local businessman who hadn't even attended the march, John Hume, became leader of the committee, This role of diffusing and holding back struggles was to be the hallmark of the Catholic business class throughout the struggle. Mass mobilisation After the Derry march a wave of anger swept through the Northern minority and they mobilised against the unionists. On October 9.

‘students marched through Belfast and at a ‘meeting afterwards the Peoples Democracy It was to play a decisive role On October 15th the Nationialists withdrew from their position as The next day PD held another march to the City Hall in Belfast, It was the last anti-repression march to get into the city centre until a TUCAR demonstration in 1978. On the 24th October PD took over the Stormont buildings and staged a sit-in, In the South Lynch was forced to complain to the British and they in turn began to pressure the unionists, was set up. Another march was planned for Derry on Craig banned all marches for a month, 15,000 people marched but were stopped by a massive force of RUC.

The Derry CAC diffused the situation by staging a token march of members of the committee but the situation generally was outside their control, Derry workers kept on the march and broke Craig's ban two and three times a day. The whole city was in revolt, At the same time meetings were taking place all over the North and local committees set up. Support was gathering in the 26 counties, Reform On October 22nd O'Neill announced a4 package of reforms, Derry corporation was to be abolished and replaced by a nominated commission, there would be an ombudsman, local authorities would be encouraged to adopt a points system for housing, the company vote would be abolished for local elections.

It was a case of too little, too late, It was ' enough to outrage the loyalists without satisfying the civil rights movement, The campaign began to centre around the ‘one man, one vote' and control of the gerrymandered councils. NICRA decided to continue with a march planned for Armagh on the 30th November. On the morning of the march Paisley took over the centre of Armagh with an armed mob, The RUC made no effort to remove the Paisleyites but stopped the march at the edge of the ghetto. Any support that O'Neill had won for his reform package was lost by his. capitulation at Armagh, It was clear that the demonstrations would continue,

Page 4 3. THe BURN TOLLE |

ATTACK

By December 1968 the O'Neill regime was tottering, ‘The Unionists had tried repression at Derry and then reform - too little and too late, Paisley's takeover of Armagh showed they were unable and unwilling to control their own right-wing. In a desperate attempt to consolidate his position O'Neill made a mawkish television appeal, "Ulster is at the crossroads" he bleated -- but he still didn't offer fone man one vote’, Incredibly this had some effect, Many Catholics were flattered that a Unionist Prime Minister should appeal to them, More importantly both the Protestant and Catholic middle class were appalled at the spectacle of mass upsurge which confronted them, ‘The — Belfast Telegraph, recently taken over by the British Thompson publishing group, printed | 'I back O'Neill! coupons, In a wave of emotion thousands of coupons were returned, The Derry Citizen's Action Comrnittee, the voice of 'moderate' elements in Derry, called off all protests for a month. Other sections of the Civil rights movement around the North began to observe the unofficial ‘'truce!, Only the PD whole-heartedly opposed O'Neill trickery and we decided to go ahead with a Belfast-Derry march scheduled for January. We knew in advance that the loyalists would oppose the march and that in a crunch O'Neill would support them, We meant to expose him and revitalise the resistance, - The march opposed by the entire establishment and by Eddie McAteer whose comment — was ‘half a loaf was better than no bread’, NICRA was divided, But on the Ist January 1969 about 80 marchers set off from Belfast City Hall. The march was harassed by loyalists along the entire route, with the open collaboration of the RUC, This harassment reached its height at Burntollet bridge. An ambush was organised by Derry unionists and Orangemen and platoons of 'B'- Specials, The RUC led the marchers into the ambush and “hen either stood by or joined in the attack , There were further attacks on the way into Derry and that night the RUC attacked the Bogside, The following day O'Neill launched a venomous attack on the marchers and blamed them for the violence, The facade of 'liberal unionism' was swept aside, The wave of anger in the minority led to mass support for Civil Rights and a determation that there would be no more political "truces' or deals with unionism , The nationalist leaders who had condemned the march had to change their minds quickly to avoid being swept away -by their followers, Election On 15th January O'Neill announced the Cameron Commission as a sop to the minority, But it was too late and by now the extreme right wing were deserting himhe'd had to sack Craig and Faulkner resigned, In a desperate attempt to reassert his authority he called an election.

Again he tried to woo the minority without granting reforms and again he failed, a P.D. stood in the elections to prevent support for O'Neill, to win support for a militant Civil Rights programme, and to oust the old right wing nationalists, We gained 23,653 votes and major new areas of contact and support both North and South, The old nationalisis were beaten by new 'Civil Rights' candidates, For O'Neill the election was a formal draw which in fact meant a defeat, He limped on distrusted by the minority and by his own party, The struggle began to deepen and extend itself, A new leadership of NICRA held demonstrations in towns across the North and in April Bernadette Devlin won the mid-Ulster seat in the Westminster election with the biggest vote ever- a clear indication that the entire Northern minority had swung behind the civil rights programme, Devenny death A few days later the RUC attacked the Bogside, They entered the Devenny‘house and beat up the family. The father , Sam Devenny, later died, The RUC then occupied

Page 5 the area and the situation verged on open won would be worthless, The unionists war until they withdrew. But in the meantime NICRA and P.D. had organised protests all over the North and in Belfast post offices were petrol-bombed in an attempt to draw the RUC from Derry.

Rioting continued on a massive scale for several days and on April 22nd O'Neill accepted the principle of ' one man one vote ', That was the end for O'Neill, The unionists rose up against him, helped on by a series of ' IRA bombs ' set off by the UVF. He resigned before he could be kicked out in a manoeuvre designed to allow his cousin, Chichester-Clarke, to take over the leadership. The Road To August. It seemed- that formally the Civil Rights struggle was over with the concession of equal voting rights, In fact NICRA called a brief pause and Chichester-Clarke had a brief 'thoneymoon', But the logic of events had taken over, and the intensity of the struggle began to escalate.

The Catholic workers wanted a lot more than the vote, They wanted equal rights all across the board, especially in jobs and houses, They were determined to fight against new repressive laws and they understood clearly that if they did not continue to organise then all the guarantees they had understood that if they did not smash the mass movement then the very existence of themselves and their sectarian state was at stake, They had already brought in new laws, They moved to confine the Civil Rights movement to the ghettos and to build their own support and intimidate their opporents by pushing sectarian orange marches through Catholic areas, In an even more sinister development loyalist gangs were encouraged and began to lead attacks on Catholic areas.

The test of strength was to come in August, It was clear that the Government would try to push the orangemen through Derry and that when the Bogside reacted the RUC would attack. However the understanding of the anti-unionisits had increased greatly since Burntollet, They had seen through the facade of ' liberal unionism ', They had organised not only on the streets but used the Stormont and Westminster electiors as weapors against the enemy. They had moved beyond ' one man one vote ' to demand social and economic equality and thus had begun to challenge the very foundations of the state, At the beginning non-violence had been tactically necessary to show where the real violence came from, Now they had begun to organise to defend their areas, At the beginning of August the stage was set for a new and deadly challenge to the mass movement,

Page 6

A THE LESSONS OF

AUGUST 69

FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE

CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE UNTIL

AUGUST '69 EVENTS MOVED AT

BREAKNECK SPEED, FROM SMALL

BEGINNINGS A MASS RESISTANCE

TO UNIONISM GREW, DEVELOPED

AND GAINED CONFIDENCE, EVERY

CHALLENGE WAS MET AND OVER-

COME AND BECAME A VICTORY IN

THE STRUGGLE, THE VICOUS

POGROMS OF AUGUST '69 MARKED

A FINAL THROW BY THE UNIONISTS.

THEY BROUGHT THE GUN BACK

INTO IRISH POLITICS IN AN

ATTEMPT TO SMASH THE RESIST-

ANCE. THEY FAILED, BUT THE

ATTEMPT MARKED A DEEP SEA

CHANGE IN THE FORM AND

DIRECTION OF THE STRUGGLE

AND RAISED QUESTIONS WHICH

HAVE DOGGED THE ANTI-IMPER-

IALIST MOVEMENT UNTIL THE

PRESENT DAY,

The Unionists. It's worth remembering today the leading role that the Unionist Party played in the pogroms, It was they who ordered the RUC assault on the Bogside and they who mobilised the sectarian thugs of the B Specials, It was local unionists and orange associations who organised and armed the sectarian mobs, It was the RUC , now trying to establish itself in the ghettos, which led the mobs with a wall of armoured cars and heavy machine guns.

The pogroms were meant to utterly crush the morale of the minority in the North, ‘They failed miserably. The whole minority population rose up to defend themselves, The ferment in the South and the direct entry of British troops onto the scene left the Irish question wide open for the first time in 50 years, The pogroms also showed clearly that the North could not be reformed and opened the way to the final fall of Stormont.

The British The pogrom weapon was not new to the unionists - it was the fundamental method by which the state had been founded and maintained. And time after time the British had turned a blind eye to their activities but this time it didn't work, The confidence and experience of mass organisation led the Northern minority to react with anger rather than with terror, Even more importantly a larger and more aggressive working class in the 26 counties in sympathy with the Civil Rights struggle made it very likely that to continue the pogroms would be to risk the whole existance of the Northern state and destabilise British control of Ireland as a whole, The British moved in slowly and hesitatingly to halt the orange mobs and dversee the internal workings of the state, Many Catholics , probably the majority, welcomed the British troops, They had been largely defenceless in the face of the orange attacks and felt that the British were protecting them. They were exhilerated by the no go areas and the absence of the RUC, And the support increased when Wilson announced inquiries into discrimination, the abolition of the B Specials and the reform of the RUC, In fact the troops had been sent in ' in aid of civil power '- in other words to save Stormont from collapse, Ewen the reforms were designed to increase the stability and credibility of Stormont, But this wasn't clear to the mass of Catholic workers and warnings by PD and the Republicans were largely ignored, This state of affairs couldn't last very long. The British found that any reform was fiercely resented by the loyalists and they were soon locked in conflict with orange mobs in the streets. A series of skirmishes convinced the British that any major confrontation with their unionist allies would endanger their main power base in Ireland. Generally they began to bow to loyalist pressure, At the same time they found that Catholic trust in them had definite limits and would not stretch to the return of the RUC, The result was an increasing number of punitive raids on the ghettos. A new Tory government added speed to the process and it reached its culmination in July I970 with the ' Battle of the Falls '. This massive attack on a ghetto area marked a new stage, The mass movement was now directly in conflict with the forces of imperialism,

Page 7 The South Since the Lemass period the Southern Govt. had pursued a policy of full scale collaboration with foreign capital culminating in the Anglo-Irish free trade area. It could not afford to clash with its British overlords by opposition to their policy in the North, Also they were as frightened as the unionists of the civil rights upsurge and wanted it stopped before it spread South, Lynch couldn't afford to admit his dependence on the British. In the absence of real independence he went in for bluster and sham republicanism, His response to the August pogroms was to announce: ' that he would not stand idely by ' and to send the Irish army to the border, This enraged the unionists without doing anything to defend the minority but it gave ' Honest Jack !

the republican image he needed, Partly as a result of rivalry in the cabinet, partly to keep the Northern struggle off their own backs, the Dublin Govt.

provided some money for arms, But when the British blew the whistle Lynch cracked down and sacked his main rivals. By the time of the Falls curfew he was firmly in control and was able to back Br putting the Southern Govt, in evil taba ground as the ' second guarantor ' , The Resistance _ Despite the violence of the pogroms the Northern minority had not been defeated, In fact it was the British and unionists who were thrown off balance, The fact that Lynch was able to defuse mass support in the South was the first major setback for the movement and the beginning of an isolation that was to prove critical, In part this was due to different circumstances North and South, The economic boom that brought crisis to the North had a much less dramatic effect in the South, The national question had receded into the background and in a whole series struggles workers had won real gains in their standard of living which made them more willing to accept the status quo, But NICRA had never really attempted to link up with these struggles in the South and the mass movement's real weakness lay in the lack of a 32 county perspective, There were other weaknesses as well, NICRA had set out to be a pressure group like the NCCL in Britain, .but the pressure of events had forced a rather ramshackle united front structure, For much of its period of leadership it had a good democratic structure, This is very important for the development of a movement, It is by a process of action and debate that the movement advances, The mass of the people gain confidence and begin to establish their independence and throw off the traditional leadership of the bourgeoisie. Unfortunately the Republicans and the Communist Party had no stomach for forcing the discipline of the mass movement on the nationalists and the fumre SDLP, Right-wingers like John Hume were able to set up a completely undemocratic structure = the Derry Citizens Action committee - and claim for it the authority of the Civil Rights movement, Also they consistently opposed any broadening of the demands for fear this might frighten away the Nationalists, They tried to freeze the movement into a pattern of reform and the result was that it eventually split into fragments, Armed Struggle. In any struggle where the working class is in the leadership the question of force first poses itself as one of the defence of the movement, The response usually leads to a fair degree of democratic control over . the use of force at various points in the struggle, In NICRA the question was posed the first time that the RUC drew their batons, but it was not seriously discussed for fear that it would frighten the bourgeois leadership. The reformists felt that the state would defend them - some argued that to defend yourself was sectarian, No-one was experienced enough to forsee just how savage the state would be when it struck, After August '69 the minority wanted above all to defend itself, Because NICRA had failed to deal with this question it was ignored and local defence committees were setup. Thus a fundamental division occurred in the struggle - a division between political action and the use of force, This division was to bedevil the movement until the present day,

Page 8

5. FROM REFORM

TO REVOLUTION

August '69 was meant to smash the mass movement in the North. Instead the movement was strengthened and transformed.

British troops intervened to save Stormont from collapse and with the battle of the Falls went on the offensive against the mass movement, As reforms were again put on the long finger and repression grew there was a massive explosion of anger from the minority... But the problems posed by direct confrontation with imperialism put massive strains on the Civil Rights Movement and began a bitter debate within the anti-imperialist movement, Republicans Split The failure of NICRA to develop and meet the new problems and the formation of the local défence groups met it's clearest expression when the Republicans split into 'Provisional' and 'Official' wings Initially the Officials appeared to offer a new and more radical fusion of marxism and republicanism, But for all their radicalism and use of the terms of the class struggle, the main methods of the Officials centred around parliamentarianism and alliances with the bourgeoisie and they actively discouraged independent mobilisations by the working class. More importantly they stuck rigidly to a ' stages ' theory and continued to work for the reform of the Northern state when the time had come to overthrow it. The Provos The Provos military campaign is now seen by many people as the main factor separating them from the Officials, It is true that resentment at the lack of preparation for defence was an immediate factor in the split, but it should be remembered that all the anti-imperialist groups, including the Catholic Church were arming themselves, The Officials learnt the lesson and rebuilt their military apparatus and also carried iat Jom Veron trrtitik ta : on with the British Pape Lane soir ea ieee eee presence, They expressed the immediate . accepted the demand ' Smash Stormont '! a of the struggle whereas the put forward by P.D. and aecepted the need ficials tended to ignore them.

Ya s - - ox Re 38 Kevin Mallon supported the 'more politics’ line or the Officials but became disgusted with their reformism and joined the Provos.

Page 9 But if the Officials failed to adapt to changing circumstances the Provos could not claim any overall clarity, They were made up of several groups with conflicting views, The best of these were young Northern veterans of the Civil Rights struggle who saw the need for armed defence, But also there were those who opposed the Officials because of a fervent anti-communism and traditional republicans with little interest in political action.

P. DD,

P.D,. had taken a leading role in pushing the Civil Rights Movement to the limits of it's demands. We were the first group after the pogroms to draw the conclusion that the Northern State was irreformable, It would have to be smashed, We took part in the building of local defence committees and played a leading role in the political organisation of the defence, with 'Radio Free Belfast' and the 'Barricades Bulletin ', But for all this it was republicanism and not marxism that remained the leading force in the Northern struggle. This was partly because the traditional consciousness of the anti-unionists was republican, Partly it was because the republicans retained a traditional national organisation that could be easily activated. However the main factor was our own lack of development - a problem of youth, We had a series of policies rather than a clear programme and lacked the experience of work within the working class that would have given us a solid base, Socialist: Labour Alliance But even with these handicaps we achieved a great deal. We raised the slogan ' Smash Stormont ' and developed the masses action and level of organisation, In late '69 and early '70's we launched a series of mass meetings'in all the major population centres in the South, In each area local socialists organised the meetings and followed up contacts afterwards, establishing a network of activists across the 26 counties, In the spring we held a meeting aimed at Labour Party défegates at the conference in Limerick, ‘The Labour Party was debating whether or not to agree to a coalition pact and we advised delegates -to leave and set up a real socialist organisation, The party voted for coalition and a number of members joined with P.D.

and independent socialists to form the Socialist Labour Alliance, .

The SLA faced many difficulties , Officials and C,P. were not willing to raise the issue of the North and their activity was concentrated on campaigns on ground rents and fishing rights. They remained outside the SLA, The best of the working class radicals in the South had gone with the Officials and Southern Provos tended to be less interested in political action than those of the North, <A spokesman appeared at the first SLA conference and told the delegates to join the Provos, He had no other suggestions and the Provos did not join the SLA structure, The Lynch Tnis weakness was to have fatal results as Lynch re-established control, In August he had said that he ' would not stand idly by'. A week later he was able to back British policy and define his role as that of a second guarantor ! In October I970 he was able to fully endorse British policy at the U.N. without any qualification, But the great betrayal came in December I970, Lynch announced news of a plot to kidnap diplomats and said he was thinking of introducing internment. The hostile reaction made him drop the idea, but he had left the way open for the British, Internment As the struggle intensified Chichester Clarke, the Unionist Prime Minister, was pressurised by the Unionist Party to bring in internment, The British refused on tactical grounds, They feared that this might unleash full scale war and that the South might be drawn in. Clarke was eventually forced to resign in March I97I and was replaced by Faulkner. The British could not afford to alienate their allies any further.

Almost immediately after Faulkner's election they began drawing up plans for internment, Mass arrests occured on the 23rd July in a ' dummy run ',to gather intelligence.

The real thing came at 4-30 am on the 9th of August, By the end of the day 342 men had been arrested, Despite a high level of Loyalist violence only anti-unionists were arrested, The internees were treated with maximum brutality and many subjected to horrific torture, Grimly the British waited to see if their gamble had paid off and if the back of the resistance had been broken,

Page 10

6. THE SDLP AND

THE RESISTANCE

The British internment swoops were meant to deal a massive body-blow to the resistance, Instead they provoked a massive struggle in ' internment week '!

when the North was effectively in a state of open war. The Bogside and Creggan areas effectively seceeded from the six counties and remained as no-go areas for over a year. But this level of struggle could not be maintained and after a week of fighting there was a comparative lull.

British hopes for the eventual success of their policy were dashed when the first news of the tortures provoked the spontaneous rent and rates strike and then when the ghettoes began to re-organise politically, initally through an organisation of wives of internees and then through members of political parties beginning to work in each area and establishing area committees, The political structures of the Provisionals, Officials and P,D. were hard hit by internment , but the strength of popular reaction and international pressure forced the release of leading -militants, United Front At this point P.D. began to call urgently for the formation of a new united front organisation to replace NICRA, There were a number of reasons for this: The many militant local resistance committees needed an umbrella structure that would enable political parties and individual militants to work together and co-ordinate activities, The new situation, where a massive section of the population had moved beyond a mere reform of the six counties, called for new demands including the central demand ' Smash Stormont '. Kjinally the middle class and Catholic business layer in the North, left behind by events, were organising to take ' leadership ' and defuse the struggle and only if the antiimperialist movement was united could it challenge this process, NICRA, the united front which led the earlier Civil Rights Struggle, might have seemed an obvious vehicle; but by this stage NICRA was tightly controlled by the Official Republicans and the CFI. It couldn't lead the resistance campaign for several reasons: ( A )...Because of the Officials virnlent hatred of the Provos, NICRA refused to co-operate with them in any way or share a platform with them, ( B )...I1t vehemently opposed all militant protest activity at a time when area committees were calling out for a militant lead. ( C )...NICRA refused catagorically to demand the smashing of Stormont and tried to restrict the campaign to a Bill of Rights under the Stormont regime, ( D ),..Al this was closely linked towards attitudes to the middle class and business sections,especially those organised in the SDLP, Where P.D. wanted to confront them and insist that leadership remain with the popular organisation NICRA wanted to.

retain their support at all costs and carefully tailored its activities and demands to maintain their support, The SDLP Any understanding of the Irish struggle over the past ten years must include an analysis of the Northern Catholic bourgoisie and the roots of that analysis lie in history.

The Irish bourgois class as a whole were always weak and dependent on Britain, Before independence their main political expression was Redmondism, a movement based on parliamentry negociation with imperialism, The Redmondites were swept away by the Sinn Fein electoral victory in I9I8 but survived in the North as the Nationalist Party, This survival was a measure of the extreme weakness of a catholic business class inthe North. Handcuffed to the clergy and based in a small service sector they were unable to put up much of a fight, but managed to maintain support because the sheer bigotry of unionism confirmed that they were part of an oppressed minority. The mass revolt of 1968 found the Nationalist Party already dead. The famous: reaction of their leader, Eddie McAteer being: ' half a loaf is better than no bread!

Only the most agile of political acrobats like Austin Currie could twist quickly enough to tail behind the new mass sentiment and only he and those outside the Nationalist Partv survived the I969 elections, But as individuals the new MPs found themselves relatively powerless, Ina breath-taking piece of political opportunism Currie ( Nationalist ) joined Fitt ( Republican Labour ), Devlin ( N.I.Labour ),

Page 11 and three independents (Hume, Cooper and O'Hanlon) to form the SDLP on 2Ist August 1970, The new organisation had no real programme or party structure but for the six MPs political survival came first, Internment “Ss part of his preparation for internment F’aulkner decided to buy off these new revresentatives of the Catholic middle class, On the 23rd of June 197I he announced the formation of all-party committees, These would deal with relatively uncontroversial issues and have built in unionist majorities but the SDLP would be offered the chairmanship of two, The SDLP joyfully accepted this deal, ' Faulkrers finest hour ', burbled Paddy Devlin. On the 7th of July they attended the all party discussions at Stormont, but that nieht avd the next day saw Seamus Cusack ad Internees in Long Kesh.

is en ws Desmond Beattie shot dead by the Army in Derry. In the wave of anger which followed,support began to slip away from the SDLP, In desperation the SDLP demanded a public enquiry and when Maudling refused on the first of July, only a few weeks after ' Faulkners finest hour’ they withdrew from Stormont, There is some evidence that the SDLP collaboration continued after this, Faulkner and Fitt developed a strong personal animosity after internment and Faulkners parliamentry colleagues believed that Fitt had vromised to support internment and then backed down when he saw the strength of resistance, In any case the SDLP were again left far béhind and agair they tried to clamber back into control, On 26th of Cetober they and the almost Page 12 defunct Nationalist Party held an ' Alternative Assembly in Dugivin. The attendance was limited to opposition MP's, senators and local councillors, The new resistance committees were not invited and no plans for ary sort of activity were discussed, With this sort of political cowardice it's not surprising that the assembly collapsed after one further meeting, The next year was to be a nightmare for the SDLP, The struggle had moved decisively to the streets and to the resistance committees, They were unable and unwilling to work within these structures, Desperately they waited for the mass struggle to flag in order to begin new negotiations with the British and the Unionists, ele

NORTHERN RESISTANCE

MOVEMENT

In the weeks following internment P,.D, re-iterated it's call for a new united front structure, In the forerunner to the ' Socialist Republic ' - the 'Unfree Citizen' of Sept. 24th I97I we said, commenting on the SDLPs Dungivin Parliament; ' What is urgently needed now is not a miniparliament of professional Parliamentary politicians but a parliament of the streets made up of representatives of the street comnfftttees and estate committees all over the North who are actually waging the struggle;: This peoples parliament could both co-ordinate the Civil Resistance campaign and draw up its own proposals for the inevitable political solution to the Northern problem, ' Partly as a result of our own political arguement and partly as a spontaneous product of the struggle, the Northern Resistance Movement was born, After six weeks of fruitless attempts to get NICRA to broaden its base and adopt militant demands the Tyrone and Fermanagh Civil Resistance Councils corvened a conference of all resistance groups, political groups and individual militants in Omagh which hammered out a common platform of demands and elected a co-ordinating committee, Demands The °*.RM platform was that the resistance movement should continue until: ( I )...All internees were released unconditionally and the Special Powers Act abolished, ( 2 )...All political prisoners jailed since 1968 are released, ( 3 )...Stormont is smashed and the Uniorist government sacked, ( 4 ),..British troops are withdrawn from Northern Ireland, It also adopted the position that there should be no talks with the representatives of the Stormont or Westminister governments until internment was.ended and it was successful in getting that adopted by almost all the anti-unionist groups,

Page 13 Action The NRM had a wide base of support: local resistance committees, Provisional Sinn Fein, Peoples Democracy and individial militants from the rank and file of the Officials and the SDLP as well as non-party activists, All marches were banned at the time and there had been few street protests since the end of August because of massive Army harassment, The NRM began immediately to organise local protests and road filling operations on border roads blown up by the British army. Together with a local trade unionists action group in Coalisland it began to organise a march along the MI towards Long Kesh on Christmas day. The march was a’ breakthrough, over 2,000 people turned out on Christmas day, defied the ban and automatic six months jail sentence, outwitted the Army and got half-way -to Long Kesh along the motorway.

After that marches proliferated and even the Civil Rights Association was forced by local pressure to call a few demonstrations although they still refused to go beyond a call for a Bill of Rights, Bloody Sunday The upsurge in mass activity convinced the British that their internment strategy had not been successful, They decided on a show of force and when it came it was sharp and brutal, A Civil Rights march in Derry on 30th of Janua~y 1972 was stopped by the Paratroopers, They opened fire repeatedly killing I3 people, ( another victim died later of his wounds, ) Inevitably the British claimed that the dead were all IRA gunmen, but there was plenty of evidence that the massacre had been planned beforehand and even a government whitewash enquiry failed to clear them, Wilford, commander of the Paras, later got an OBE for his days work, Nationalist Ireland Exploded” after Bloody Sunday. Tens of thousands of workers downed tools and marched in protest in Cork Dundalk , Galway, Limerick and Dublin, Lynch declared a day of national mourning to avoid a general strike, A 30,000 strong crowd burnt the British Embassy, In the North there were protest strikes across the six counties and on the 6th of February NICRA held’another march in Newry with well over 50,000 people taking part. But NICRA attempted to defuse the situation by telling Southern workers to stay at home, It refused to call any further marches, It was left to the NRM to return to the streets with a march in Enniskillen on February I3th and a return to Derry on February 26thboth condemned by NICRA, Dual power The period that followed probably marked a high point in the struggle. The British had temporarily run out of solutions and were trying desperately to retain control of the Situation, The NRM continued demonstrating and its members collected multiple jail — sentences until the government declared an amnesty, However its most important work was probably within the area and street area resistance committees, The ' no-go ' areas controlled by them had effectively seceeded from the Northern state, P.D. and the NRM tried to push the process further and establish organs of dual power by encouraging the committees to take over the administration of local services and establishing ' Peoples Courts '., This work had an enormous impact on the consciousness of the mass of the population and posed a direct political challenge to the British. However the economic weakness and lack of class consciousness of nationalist workers prevented the movement going further and establishing ' Soviets ' or workers councils which would challenge the economic power of imperialism in the factories, P.D. saw clearly that the ' no-go ' areas represented a new high point in the struggle. We did not see so clearly that they also represented a limit imposed by the largely Northern base of the struggle and by the lack of a class conscious working class base, Right from the start we had worked to broaden the struggle into the 26 counties, but imperceptably events were moving against us, The NRM was established in the border areas of the South and joint P.D. and NRM demonstrations at the Curragh had won broad support for our opposition to © collaboration, but this followed the collapse of the unity represented by the Socialist Labour Alliance, ( SLA). Its collapse was due to a number of factors. The left of the Labour Party never keen on street demonstrations, distanced itself from the revolutionary left, Some leftists were influenced by the ' two - nations theory and began to actively oppose the resistance, After internment most of the left, with the exception of the Movement for a Socialist Republic, moved back from the intensity of the struggle in the North, It became more economist and fell under the influence of the Officials, who were expanding their base in the South, All this was based on deeper changes in the working class which encouraged concentration on more immediate and easily won economic struggles, P.,D,. and NRM activity depended on those closely bound up in the Northern struggle, The possibility of building the base for a broader and more durable movement was becoming more remote,

Page 14

8. STORMONT

FALLS

After Bloody Sunday it became clear to the British that any further offensive by them would provoke a mass uprising all over Treland and lead to their own defeat, In March 1972 Faulkner was called to London and told that all security powers were taken away from Stormont, ‘The entire Unionist government resigned and London suspended Stormont and sent in Whitelaw as Secretary of State. .He moved to consolidate the impression of reform by closing Magilligan camp and releasing in batches 550 internees The fall of Stormont, for 50 years the main bastion of British rule in Ireland, was the createst victory to come from the present struggle. It was however a conditional victory - the suspension was at first only temporary,and internment was not ended, Above all the British administration and army y,remained and were as determined as ever to -enforce imperialist control in Ireland, Confusion This important victory was however to bring to the surface divisions within the nationalist population . The SDLP, the Catholic Church and the Dublin government lost no tome in calling for a.ceasefire, In May protests following the shooting of Ranger .

Best led to a ceasefire by the Officials, In fact the Officials campaign had increasingly clashed with their policy of gradualist reform of the North and they quickly moved further to the right, denouncing the Provos as ' green fascists ', At the same time political pressure on the Provos and a certain

Page 15 amount of war-weariness in the ghettoes was combined with an assult against them by the Dublin government and increased use of the Special Criminal Courts, The British put out feelers through the SDLP and the Provos announced they would cease fire at midnight on the 26th of June 1972 if the British also halted activity, All this was to have its effect on the NRM It had been set up rather hurriedly without time to do mcre than agree on simple agitional demands and a loose rather haphazard structure, That was alright as long as © the mass upsurge continued and the issues were fairly simple but when Stormont was suspended issues become more complex and many activists lost interest, That was when the lack of a tight structure and a detailed political discussion made itself felt, This was largely the fault of the P.D., as the most politically conscious group in the NRM, We were,then, less clear in our politics than we are today, We tended to see the passing of a resolution at conference as equivalent to winning support for it and didn't realise the amount ofslow patient work necessary, before a resolution would mean anything in practice, The result was that the NRMs thinking at central level ran too far ahead of local branches, Truce The truce was another factor in the decline of the NRM, Sinn Fein was the biggest group committed to the NRM, but when the IRA called the truce they didn't consult the NRM or even inform it, They had contacted the British through the SDLP in spite of a bitter political battle between the NRM and the SDLP. Moreover an IRA delegation met Whitelaw in July despite the NRMs pledge of ' no talks until internment ends ', ‘The details of the truce arrangements have never been revealed.

We didn't query the IRAs right to call a truce but the episode showed a lack of understanding by the Provos of what committ -ment to a united front involved, while the ignoring of the 'no talks ' pledge and the secret negociations indicated an elitist attitude to the mass movement ; a belief that ff was there to serve the military organisations rather than the other way round,. A longer term result was that it let the SDLP off the hook and they” were able to start talks with the British in the Autumn, This bypassing of the NRM under- mined it as the main voice of the anti-imperialist mass movement, It held a major rally on the anniversary of internment but by the beginning of uate it had effectively ceased to exist, Meanwhile the Provos were finding out about another shortcoming of secret negociations - that the British could not be trusted to keep their promises. The Loyalists had reacted to the trice by setting up their own no-go areas and stepping up an assassination campaign. British troops stood by when they took on a Catholic street in the Springfield road area of Belfast and then moved to prevent Catholic refugees from moving into houses allociated to them by the housing authority after threats by the UDA. | this blatent collaboration between army and UDA was too much for the Provos and after two days of rioting the Provos opened fire again on the 9th of July, Programme ‘The fragmentation of the resistance was however largely a matter of its programme and of the necessary methods for success.

The bulk of the Northern population had united behind a largely anti-unionist struggle with the aim of smashing Stormont, Only a relatively small vanguard layer understood clearly the need for the more complex struggle against imperialism, The next step was to demand a British withdrawal and self-determination for the Irish people, but this was a task for a thirty two county mass movement opposing both the Dublin and Belfast administrations. The confusion in the North and the decline of support in the South made this unlikely, but the mainly Northern movement was forced by the logic of events and by British repression to carry on the struggle,

Page 16

9 THE IMPERIALIST

REACTION

One of the commonist arguments against the anti-imperialist movement in the North is that by being too violent and extreme in its demands it ‘frightened off' unionist workers and eventually provoked a loyalist backlash. The facts do not support this, Unionism has always been an extreme right-wing ideology with continuing support from the majority of Protestants in the North, The re-birth of para-military violence preceeded the Civil rights movement with a bombing and assassination campaign by the U.V.F. in 1966, ‘The steady growth of para-military activity which followed this represented an offensive alliance - attacks of Civil Rights marches, Burntollet and the attacks in August '69 ard following internment, But the fall of Stormont, the aftermath which was to confuse and divide the minority, led to a new 'backlash', with a mass mobilisation around the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Vanguerd movement led by Right-winger William Craig, It also marked the beginning of a massive and indiscriminate campaign of assassination and terror against the Catholic community, In part this was a response to the divisions within the minority. As long as they were united and advancing unionism was being driven back and fragmenting into many parts.

When they began to falter the Loyalists saw their chance to revenge themselves, The fall of Stormont, the central symbol of Protestant ascendency, created an explosion of rage, The main factor however was the British policy of encouragement and collaboration with the paramilitary gangs. In some cases plainclothes soldiers, organised in a ‘Military Reaction Force’ carried out assassingtions, Later an army officer wrote in the Conservative "Monday Club! journal, ',.. the Army chose, quite deliberately, to give the UDA tacit support, The UDA virtually ran Past and North Belfast... ' Operation Motorman A clear pattern was now emerging in British policy, Through talks with the SDLP and the Dublin government it hoped to neutralise a section of the minority and of Southern public opinion, Collaboration with the UDA would demoralise the Catholics and make this easier, It was at this period that a propagandist coined the innane phrase 'motiveless murder' as a cover for the terror campaign against Catholic civilians, But before this strategy could be put into effect the British had to strike a How at the remaining major expression of the resistance - the 'no-go' areas, 'Bloaody Friday' - a multiple bombing operation hy the Provos that went disasterously wrong and killed 9 civilians - gave them their excuse, After a short: propagmda compaign, on the 3lst July 1972, British troops moved in, They siezed schools, halls and blocks of flats and set up forts; The Catholic areas were under military occupation, "Operation Motorman! involved massive numbers of troops and the use of tanks But above all the British calculated that the mass of the population would not fight and thus bring about an all-Ireland conflagration, The physical accupation merely symbolised the decay from within of a mass movement confused and demoralised, Regrou Oment The fact that the resistance had fragmented did not mean that it was defeated, Mass political activity continued and there was one further attempt to unify the struggle, The British had been forced to grant political status to prisoners in 1972 but refused to grant it to short term prisoners , P,.D,

Page 17 . ’ members Mike Farrell and Tony Canavan were jailed after protest marches against the sectarian murders and went on.a hunger strike to win political status, After a 34 day hunger strike the Government gave way and released them and one hundred other short term prisoners, The unity generated by the mass struggle around the hunger strike and the confidence that the victory gave the masses encouraged P.D. with the help of internees' relatives to call unity meetings to organise the 1973 August demonstrations, The nettings were attended by Sinn Fein, Republican Clubs, Communist Party, P.D. Revolutionary Marxist Group (now fused with P.D.) the League of ex-servicemen, the Felons Clubs and the Internees Relatives Committee. The groups agreed to form a new organisation to be called the Political Hostages Release Committee, This new-found unity was not to last very long. The differences between NICRA and the Officials on the one hand and the Provos and revolutionary left on the other were too great, It quickly became obvious that NICRA felt that they had been forced into a unity they did not want and were looking for a way out, They demanded that the August 9th demonstrations be held under a NICRA banner and that they control the platform, In order to preserve unity the other members of the PHRC agreed, with the proviso that a spokesperson for the PHRC be allowed to make a statement from the platform.united march was held but when Maire Drumm tried to speak from the platform there were scuffles and official republican stewards cut off the P.A, system, The meeting and the PHRC broke up in disorder, But the PHRC retained mass support, The following Sunday 10,000 people marched behind its banner on a Long Kesh march, Both NICRA and the Officials had uncritically supported the SDLP and viciously attacked the Provos and the Revolutionary left, Now they were abandoned by the SDLP and were unable or unwilling to go back to the streets, NICRA became more and more irrelevent and the Officials continued to move to the right, However, P.D. made a mistake in not continuing the debate about unity, The later splits in the Officials and the formation of the Irish Republican Socialist Party showed that there © In the event a massive was an audience for such a debate and also a greater clarity in the PHRC might have prevented the withdrawal of the Provisiorals later on. Sunningdale Agreement The details of British policy Now began to emerge, in November 1972 the SDLP had voted to begin negotiations about the future of the North regardiess of internment, In December, amid hysteria caused by bombs in Dublin, (probably planted by British agents) the Lynch government passed a draconian amendment to the Offences Against the State Act enabling republicans to be jailed as IRA members on the word of a Garda superintendent, Loyalist terror began to be an embarrassment and at the beginning of 1973, after a series of clashes with Loyalists, the British interned some of the most active of the killer squads, In March the British published a White paper outlining their plans. The North was ti be governed by a single-chamber ‘Assembly which would appoint a 'power sharing! Executive and a 'Council of Ireland' that would ratify partition and set up an all- Ireland apparattus for combating republicanism.

The Unionists were to sll it to their supporters as a confirmation of partition and the SDLP and Dublin government were to sell it as a step towards a united Ireland. The Assembly elections were held in June 1973. The SDLP got 19 seats and won a position as the official voice of the minority. The unionists got 49 seats, 22 going to Faulkner and 27 to an ultra-right coalition, The 'centre' parties of the N.I. Labour Party and Alliance got 1 and 8& seats respectively, It looked as if 'power sharing' would collapse before it began. The British govenrmert, in collaboration with the right-wing Coalition government , elected in Dublin in Febuary 1973 , stepped up the pressure, In November the SDLP, Alliance and the Unionists agreed to form an executive met with London and Dublin ministers at Sunningdale to hammer out details of the Council of Ireland and on Ist January 1974 the new executive, headed by Faulkner and with Fitt as Deputy, took office,

Page 18

O. LOYALIST

BACKLASH

The SDLF's appearance in office marked a final crossing of the barricades, ‘Three | days before they 'called off' a rent and rates strike that they had never in reality controlled No mass resistance to their betrayal developed in the Nationalist community, but there was little support either, That apathy was to be put to the test when the reality of ‘power sharing' began to bite, Gerry Fitt was seen presiding over internment and the operation of the hated RUC, Austin Currie began to move against the rent and rates strikers he had so recently supported and Paddy Devlin operated the infamous 'Payment for Debt Act! to deduct arrears from social security payments and push families below the poverty line into absolute penury, But the pressures this exerted had no time to come to fruition, The forces that toppled the executive came not from the left but from the extreme right, Faulkner's supporters were in a minority even before the executive was formed amd steadily disintegrated afterwards, The Unionist party rejected Sunningdale within 3 days and Faulkner moved out of Unionist H,Q, to effectively set up a new party. But the collapse really got under way with the Westminster elections in February. The Faulknerites suffered humiliating defeat and their opponents in the United Ulster Unionist Council won Il of the l2 seats. {Fitt of the SDLP holding the other), The result was a phyrric victory for the SDLP, In their eagerness to defeat all opposition they had opposed Bernadette Devlin in mid-Ulster and Frank McManus in Fermanagh/South Tyrone and the UUUC took these seats as well, Faulkner then began to back-pedal on the Council of Ireland, Cosgrave gave new assurances about the position of the north, The SDLP threw itself heart and soul into supporting repression in the ghettoes, It was all to no avail. - the Loyalists were out for blood, On May lth a UUUC motion in the Assembly opposing Sunningdale was defeated and that evening the 'Ulster Workers Council!’

and an umbrella organisation of paramilitaries called the Ulster Army Council announced an indefinite ‘constitutional. stoppage’, For e weeks the North was at a standstill with Loyalist gangs controlling the streets and on 28th May the Fiaulknerites resigned and the ‘power-sharing’ executive fell with them.

Strike or Lockout? Just as the fall of Stormont marked the height of the anti-imperialist movement so '74 marked the high point of loyalist reaction, It's important to analyse the mechanism of the reaction and its effect on Irish politics since then. The stoppage is presented by .

some as a peaceful protest by a working-class movement, It was nothing of the sort, The Ulster Workers Council and the Loyalist Association of Workers had spent years in intimididating Catholics and Leftewingers in the Trade Union movement, The stoppage was not organised from within the working class movement but imposed on it from outside by the paramilitaries - only in a few key areas like the electricity service had the loyalists any control at the shopfloor, The 'stoppage' had more of the elements of a coup or uprising than a strike, Armed loyalists patrolled the streets preventing anyone from reaching their work, Loyalist bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan killing 33 people, Loyalist gangs roamed the country= side attacking Catholics and smashing up pubs and shops during business hours, A 'For Ulster' group in the UDR and RUC were preparing to join forces with the paramilitaries, However it was not force that won the day for loyalism - the force was threatened rather than actually mobilised, Public support in the South had sunk to such a low level that the bombs became reasons for capitulating to loyal ism rather than fighting it, Paddy Devlin tried to appease Protestant opinion by posting out Social Security benefits to the strikers, The minority stood on the sidelines, Above all the British army and the RUC capitulated to and collaborated with the loyalists, This collaboration reached its height when the army attacked Catholics workers in Derry while marching to their work, At the beginning the stoppage had little support but as it became obvious in the first few days that there was no opposition to the UWC , support became more solid, Three months afrer the collapse of the executive an army officer boasted that the British government had tried to use troops but that the officer corps had refused to obey, At the end of the day the British were not prepared to risk the support of the strongest allies of Imperialism in Ireland by a risky reform of the North, Anti-Imperialists The main organistaion of anti-imperialist unity throughout this period remained the Political Hostages Release Committee (PHRC), It played a very important role in orgahising and co-ordinating the activities of a still very extensive and active mass movement, However

Page 19 - British army collaboration during the | 1974 stoppage. the movement had begun to narrow and decline and this had its effect on the PHRC itself; It was narrower than preceeding organisations, being based mainly on republicans and the revolutionary left. Where the Northern Resistance Movement had been on the offensice with the 'Smash Stormont' slogan, the PHRC was largely a defensive organisation carrying on the fightback against internment, Neither P.D. or the Provos clearly saw this and our behaviour became more and more ultraleftist as we urged people on to a victory that was .

slipping further and further aay. One result of this was a separation between the vanguard and the masses seen most clearly in the election results in that period, We steadily boycotted every election that came up and the majority of people steadily voted SDLP, This meant that the PHRC was able to slow down but not to stop the SDLP selloyt, partly because of the leading organisations refusal to combat them on their own ground, Another sign of the decline in mass struggle — was the increasing political sedarianism between political groups, The withdrawal of Sinn Fein from the PHRC in February 1974 was an example of this, It was based not on any political disagreement but simply on a hysterical attack on P,D, "Sinn Fein will not allow itself to beused to support the meandering polics of PLD." said the only statement that Sinn Fein ever - made on the withdrawal. The PHRC was to remain a major focus of activity for some time but its base became too narrow and in Oct, 7 it was dissolved, The narrowing of political perspectives had its effect on P.D. The Loyalist mobilisation did not cause us to attem: the polttical organisation of the minority, propa ganda within the Trade Union movement or to appeal to the Southern workers, We concentrated on appeals for a united military defence - important in itself but only one of the tasks that should have been essential to Marxists, Convention This disunity and disarray among antiimperialists was to continue until 1976, In the meantime the UUUC were to consolidate their leadership of unionisin, A second Westminister election was held and the UUUC again smashed the Fallknerites and took ll of the 12 seats, Britain called a ‘convention' to discuss the future of the North and the UUUC took a majority of the 76 seats, Faulkner's Unionist Party of N.I. took only 5 seats, The convention report called for majority rule and a return to Stormont but revived Faulkner's old plan for all-party committees as a sop to the SDLP, Even the SDLP could not agree to this and in practice it was obvious that the sheer sectarianism of the Loyalists would prevent even this operating, Britain shelved the reports and dissolved the Convention, There was little protest, Loyalism had proved strong enough to prevent reform but not strong enough to impose it's own solution,

Page 20

THE

REGROUP MENT

Following the loyalist upsurge the Provos that it did not possess, We failed to take reacted to a growing weakness in Ireland account of the detailed economic control of itself by launching a bombing campaign in imperialism and certain limits on Britain's Britain, Like all the previous campaigns it freedom of action represented, for example, had little effect but provided the excuse for by the latent power of Southern workers. In greater and greater repression. The fairness it should be potnted out that the Birmingham bombings, denied by the Provos, Republicans at that time were arguing that were followed by a wave of hysteria in which victory was just around the corner and that Westminger passed the racist 'Prevention of agreement could be reached between FRepub- ‘Terrorism Act' and launched a reign of licans and Loyalists and it was important for terror against the Irish community in Britain, us to point out the weak position of the anti- The Provos came under a lot of pressure in imperialist movement and the utterly reactionthe South and in February 1975, following ary nature of groups like the UDA, We began negotiations with the British, they declared an to win our. way back to a clearer appreciation indefinite truce, Again the results of the neg- of marxism with a series of internal discussions, otiations were never made public and in fact an involvment in economic struggles and the the truce never formally came to an end but founding of the James Connolly Society to gradually broke down under the pressure of encourage debate in the anti-imperialist move.loyalist assassinations and continued repression, ment, One of the worst effects of the military agreement was that it was accompanied by a polit- re : ical truce and incidents of repression led not Political Status to protest but to negotiations through 'Truce Incident Centres' set up by Sinn Fein, One result was that the British were able to gradually phase out internment and replace it with the torture cells in Castlereagh interrogation centre and the [plock non-jury courts without any immediate reaction from the minority.

Unionists The inability of the loyalists to push on through the Convention and win a return to Stormont led gradually to the decay of the UUDUC and the re-establishment of traditional power relationships within unionism. West, the representative of big business, came to the fore and the petty- bourgeois elements if 3 represented by Paisley and Craig were pushed F to the side, The British siezed the opgenbinity, ; fo begin to dismantle the most active of the loyalist assassination teams and they evolved a Strategy of greater and greater concessions to unionism, This was to become enshrined | as a Unionist-Labour 'Pact' at Westminister, bie ER "he “i Takeover “mesa ais CARE P,D, and the M.S.R. (now fused with we pil P.D.) reacted to the events of '74 by arguing pl You: .

that a loyalist takeover and the establishment of a sectarian regime in the North was only a matter of time, Events proved us wrong and the P.D,. only extracated itself from this false position by a major split in the organisation, By reacting to immediate political events we gave Loyalism an autonomy from imperialism In 1976 the struggle protably reached its lowest level, In March the British went on the offensive with the ending of political status, In August the Maguire children were killed

Page 21 by a car that went out of cortrol after the IRA volunteer driving it had been shot dead by the army. This tragic incident served as the trigger for a vast explosion of warweariness amongst the minority and the reactionary leadership of the 'Peace People' attempted to channel this feeling into a support for the 6-county state and the forces of imperialism, But it was out of this situation that the regroupment began and in both areas P,.D.

was tc play a major role, In March we launched a petition in support of political status and partly as a result of the activity generated by the vetitior, partly as a spontaneous reaction by prisoners! relatives, th Felatives Action Committee was formed - the first major arena for joint activity since the collapse of the PHRC, On the day of the first 'Peace' march P,D,. were to the fore as well, In a leaflet 'Not the Road to Peace' we argued that the only real peace would come from an end to imperialist domination of our country, But it was the RAC who really took up the debate in the ghettoes and after young Brian Stewart was killed by the Army they showed up the hypocracy of a movement that called for peace yet supported the army and RUC, Since then the dangers have increased.

British repression of the minority has not appeased the Unionists but has led to more extreme demands and a shift to the right, -Paisley's failed coup in 1977 has been followed by a comeback and the Westminster and EEC elections in 1979 confirm him as the dominant force within unionism, The election of Thetcher in Britain and a revamped Paisleyism in the North makes new attacks on the antiimperialist movement inevitable, Opportunities However these dangers are matched by new opportunities, The defeat of the Coalition showed a massive revulsion amongst Southern workers against politics of collaboration, Since his election Lynch has been playing the dangerous game of using nationalist rhetoric as a cover for economic attacks on the working class, Mass strikes and demonstrations show the enormous combativity of that class and the possibility of an intervention by socialists and anti-imperialists, Both North and South there has been a broadening of political activity - in the Trade unions, the women's movement, the student movement and the battle against Nuclear power, The anti-imperialist movement has regrouped but there remains a gap between it and the : mass of the Irish population - a gap caused mainly by a crisis within republicanism itself ard reflected in the 'mass action and militarism' debate between the Provos and P.D. Since 1972 the Provos military campaign has carried on largely separated from any activity of the masses, The military campaign itself has gone into decline and it is now clear that while the Provos can fight on indefinitely they can not win a military victory over imperialism As this becomes clearer the Provos become more and more defensive of a campaign that .§ central to their own existence. They have jemanded from their supporters a more force~ ful support of the campaign and out of this has grown a political sectarianism that comes close to making support for military activity a precondition for membership of antirepression bodies. this tendency reached its ‘height at the Coalisland unity conference in 1977. ‘The Provos intervention there led to a failure of the conference and a fragmentation of the resistance afterwards, We in P.D. have a rather different concept of revolutionary force, bound up with the self activity of the working class and the ebb and flow of the struggle, Above all we believe that the collective activity of the workers is what changes history and that workers arm themselves to defend gains already made - arm: action never changes history by itself nor can it be used to 'win' freedom independently of the working-class. We see several consequences of the crisis in Republicanism - a narrowing of the base of the Relatives Action Committee as it refuses delegate status to political groups, a failure to take up issues like Diplock courts and the Bennett report and link them to the H-block struggle, More generally a growing insistence on illegalism means that major initiatives like to Burntollet march and Bernadette McAliskey's election campaign are weakened by squabbles ard splits rather than used as the base for a united onslaught on imperialism, We feel that we have a major role to play in the coming period, both in drawing the lessons from all sorts of new initiatives among the mass of the population and in taking part in the debate in the anti-imperialist vanguard and providing a programme that will give a united leadership to the new struggles ahead, There are deeper programmatic issues at stake as well, If one thing is absolutely clear after over ten years of struggle it is that a largely Northern-based movement will. not suceed in defeating imperialism, It follows the necessary 32 county movement will not be built simply on the demands of political democracr and independence or on an antirepression struggle. These have to be linked to the economic struggles of the working class and the economic and social struggles of other oppressed layers, In a sense, the simple demand for a United Ireland has proved insufficient, We must draw together all the strands of the struggle and in the process construct the programme for a Workers Republic, We in P.D. are confident that we will have our part to play in this work, JUJUj Vt} <<< Ee

Conclusion What conclusions can be drawn from over ten years of struggle in the North? The first and most obvious conclusion is that the Northern state is inherently irreformable and that any 'solution' that involves the continuation of partition in any gulse - be it 'devolution' or an ‘independent Ulster' - will involve a continuation of injustice and oppression, It also needs to be said ‘that imperialism has no progressive role to play in Ireland, Its .'peacekeeping' role means in reality bloodshed and death, its reforming role means poverty and destitution for the Irish people, The pressures of the struggle have also demonstrated clearly the client nature of the 26 counties and the bankruptcy of successsuccessive Dublin governments! claims to a political independence of imperialism, We must also say firmly and clearly that today as at the beginning of the struggle, all the elements exist for a successful revolutionary overthrow of imperialism and capitalism - bar one, The missing element is a revolutionary workers' party that in grasping the entwined character of the struggles for national liberation and socialism will be able to mobilise the Irish working ‘class throughout the 32 counties, Despite tactical gains the imperialists are as far as ever from any solution - in fact, the overthrow of Stormont represents a strategic defeat that they have not yet recovered from, Both North and South the economic systém is in crisis - a crisis that imperialism hopes to solve by gutting social services, cutting back wages and crushing the defensive organisations of the working class, In this area also the imperialists have not been successful and Irish workers show a willingness to fight back that offers great opportunities for a revolutionary movement, The resistance movement has not been defeated and continues to lead the fightback in many areas of struggle, But the situation is one of stalemate, If imperialism has no answers the anti-imperialist movement as it is presently constructed has no programme or strategy that will lead to victory, This programmatic lack does not come from imperialist repression but from internal contradictions within the movement and can be traced back to a failure to link up with the organisations of the working class in the early I970s, However objective conditions have changed and the economic and political crises are beginning to 'march in step’ and offer the opportunity of making those links and building a mass movement in all 32 counties, There are other causes for optimism, The Irish struggle has not occurred in isolation but against the background of the mass upsurges against capitalism that took place all over the world beginning in 1968. Those youthful struggles have fallen away to reveal a deeper and more determined movement, After defeats in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and deepening struggles with the working class world-wide - imperialism today is a weaker animal than‘it was ten years ago, Ireland's strategic position gives us the opportunity to be in the lead in the coming upsurges all over Europe, Peoples Democracy is proud of its history in the struggle and we feel that by continued analysis, discussion and self-criticism as well as through bitter experience, we have avoided stagnation and the dangers of political sectarianism, We feel we have the elements of a programme and strategy for the Irish revolution and that our members and supporters will not only have the opportunity to help close the long and bloody chapter of imperialist domination but also to take part in the world-wide struggle of the classes that will decide the future of all humanity.

NORTHERN IRELAND -

THE ORANGE STATE,

This book by P.D. membtr Michael Farrell is the only political history of the North from its foundation up to the present day and the only study of the North from a marxist viewpoint presently in print.

Available from Connolly Books price £5-00, Monthly paper of the Peoples Democracy, Annual subscription £2-00, Available from; Connolly Books Avoca Park Andersonstown Rd. Belfast ll. Plough Book Service 38 Clanawley Rd. Dublin.

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