Marxist Conference on Ireland

of non party academic L Accordingly it was provisionall An important Marxist conference on Ireland was held at Warwick University in July. It was confined to Marxist achclars who have written books or are doing research on Ireland and the idea was to pool some of this research and ita conclusions as part of the process of developing a Marxist analysis of Irish society.

This tsa vitally important development because of the extreme weakness of the Marxist tradition in Ireland, and the lack of serious Marxist analysis of developments in this country in the last 20 years or so, The effect of this has been seen lin the confusion and mistakes of even the Marxist left dur— ing the Northern crisis and the many blind alleys that had to be explored before even elementary errors | were discarded, Tf the present political Impasse in the North is to be surmounted and the grow- , ing contradictions in the 26 ‘ counties (massive unemployment! eontrol by multi-nationals ete) ‘ exploited to produce a new revolutionary upsurge It can only be done on the basis of a rigorous marxist analysis of underlying economic and social change and a clear strategy derived from It, Hopefully the Warwick con‘= ference has begun to lay the foundations for such a development, An Interesting feature ‘ of the conference was the broad spectrum of views represented, Organisationally this ranged from the FD and MSR, represented by Mike Farrell John McAnulty,and Fayner Lysaght, th the Communist Party, and a group of former supporters of the 3 Two Nationsttheory including ’ Paul Bew and Henry Patterson of the Politica Department at the new Northern FPeolytechnic, There was also a number sociologists and economists, Untill recently the intense sectaraniam of the Irish Left would have made such a gathering impossible but the fact {t took place at Warwick shows the growing awareness of the need for rigorous analysia, There were no sudden conversions at the seminar=- they were not expected or desiredbut the people involved evidently saw the need to familarise themselves with each others work if only to be able to answer their opponents arguments, of the seminar was that all Present, even those who opposed the anti-imperialist position of the PD--MSF, were agreed on the central importance of the National Questionin the struggle for a minority argued that {t had now been resofred, The PD and MSF fought for a long time to get that point accepted, evidently it is now a battle won, the participants. The area most thoroughly covered Was economic and social developments in the South since.the Znd world war. There were also papers on the establishment of the Northern state, and on the role of covernment reform agencles in recent times in examination of the role of and an important session on the Marxist and Leninist positions on Imperialism, and the right of National Self Determination, Most of the participants agreed that the conference was very simulating and worthwhile, At the same tlme they felt that there was large gaps in the areas covered, moat between the 1920s and the developments in both parts of the country in the 1970s, Another important feature public, socialism in Ireland, Though The Conference consisted of papers read on particular topics and then discussed by the North, There was some Fepublicanism past and present notably in regard to the North 1960s and reguarding economic agreed to convene a salmilar conference to cover these areas in about 6 months ime Hopefully such seminars will become a regular event, The Warwick conference was jointly sponsored by a socialiat trust associated with the Socialist Register an annual marxist review and by Ink Links a new Marxist publishing firm, Ink? Links alm to publish the conference papers as a book of essays on the background to the current situation in Ireland, It ie to be hoped that they will so that the new Informatiqn and anabkysie presented there can reach a much wider