Who Now Beats Orange Drum?

separate movements -- each with their own strategy. The 'Prolonged Popular War! tendency aimed to surround the cities from the countryside, the 'Insurrectionist! movement held to the foco theory and had links with figures in the bourgeois opposition, and the 'Proletarian!

tendency aimed itself at the urban worker s.

FSLN In 1978 the Insurrectionist tendency led a mass uprising. The uprising itself was mis-timed, co-ordination between the groups poor, and Somoza crushed it in a river of blood, despite heroic resistance, Despite all this, less than a year later the Nicaraguan masses were on the offensive again. A general strike was followed up by a mass uprising which continued until Somoza fled the country.

FSLN ASSESSMENT OF ROLE OF MASSES Ciaran O'Dowd!'s analysis of this is rather surprising. He attributes victory to the 'flexibility' of the Sandinistas and the fact that each different tendency was able to mobilise different sections of the population. A flexibility that requires three different organisations frequently working at cross purposes is somewhat difficult to understand. The Sandinistas leadership have a somewhat simpler and more direct explanation. They say that all their analyses were wrong because they all assumed that the military organisations would carry out the revolution. In fact the masses them-— selves carried out and led the revolution with tne military organisations acting in support.

As Commander Humberto Ortega has said, "We had thought that the masses would support the guerillas in taking power. But that's not how it happened. Instead the guerillas ended up supporting the mass insurrection that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship... !

SUBORDINATION TO ARMED Any review of struggles outside Ireland should lead to more than a summing—-up of general military principles. It should bring to light general political processes which revolutionaries can grasp because they relate to their own struggle. This the series fails to do, not because the general political lessons do not exist but because the Republican movement itself assigns to these processes a subordinate role to the demands of the armed struggle.

The problem for the Republican left remains, Both republican tradition and their own brand of leftism stress military action and assign a lower level of importance to the mass self-activity of the working class, but more and more in both the struggle svorld-—wide and in Ireland itself it is these forms of struggle that are forminc the central dynamic of the revolution. The republican left's solution will of course depend on prac-— tice -- on how well they are able to build and work in a unity of all anti-imperialist forces and how well they are able to intervene in and learn from the struggles of the working class. But this process is too important to both themselves and to the Irish revolution to be left to chance. A clear under standing of the lessons of the struggle world-wide will make their paths easier and their final goals clearer, For some time now in the North, there.has been much conflict within Unionism causing multiple fractures to the once solid block of the loyalist ascendancy. Nevertheless, the splintering stopped and a process of consolidation has set in so that now there are two main camps. These are the Democratic Unionist Party led by lan Paisley and the Official Unionist Party led by James Molyneaux, Since the EEC elections Paisley is clearly seen as the leader of Ulster unionism. His party the DUP has developed from being a group of associates to a political machine with with contacts and penetration all over the Six Counties. At local government level the DUP sets the pace in maintaining discrimination against Catholics and in demanding more repression for the Northern anti-unionists, Previous to this, the recognised loyalist leader ship had been the Unionist Party which was badly shaken by the anti-unionist revolt in 1969 and thoroughly demoralised after the parliament at Stormont was brought down in 1972. The party staggered on to help form the 'Power Sharing Executive! but when il col-— lapsed in 1974 the Unionist Party shattered, One of .the main fragments titled itself the 'Official Unionist Party! and has been trying ever since to get back to power, However the resulting power vacuum from all this was quickly filled by Paisley and his DUP, They were at first dismissed as lunatic fringe elements, particularly by the population in the South, A dangerous mistake, but it was quickly recog-— nised, To under stand this division in unionism, we must look at the class characteristics of the parties to see whose precise interests they serve, The Official Unionists represent the wealthy farmers, industrialists, the professional and middle classes (doctors, teachers, etc.). This category isnot directly threatened by more equality for Catholics, They are conscious of their image in Western Europe and in favour of cosmetic reforms —- reforms which vision] very shortsighted, bunch, second. be imposed, will not alter the basic sectarian nature of the state but will smooth down its rougher edges so as to exhibit a more acceptable facade, The Democratic Unionist Party mostly represents the protestant small farmers and shopkeepers as well as a large proportion of the protestant working class, They are the 'frontier elements! of unionism; economically vulnerable, they are thus hostile to any reforms which might tip the balance away from their favour, Politically they are susceptible to right wing even fascist views and it is no coincidence that their religious worship, for the most part, is of a narrow fundamentalist type.

In this way Paisley is the personification of his base of support He is an aggressive, evangelical bigot, and always has been; and that is the key to his political prominence. He was always against reform; it was the thin end of the wedge. Didn't he warn in 1962 that the republican hordes were preparing to undermine the state and protestant religion? Then the Divis Street riots happened] And again in 1968 that these so-called 'Civil Rights! marches were part of an 'IRA-Vatican plot!, and we all know what happened after that! Big lan must have hada Events did prove him correct, ina way. Nevertheless, it wouldn't have taken a person of terrific political foresight to predict that the catholics would not accept their oppression forever, A revolt was bound to occur, but 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!. Politically the Ulster loyalists are By contrast James Molyneaux is something of a faceless man, Lacking both flair and imagination his political backwardness is drearily mundane. His qualifications for becoming party leader seem to be that he was the best of an unusually bad \ In personality terms, Paisley has! the mass appeal for unionist voters, build.

The Official Unionists deeply resent Paisley. Due to their economically topple him, they first of all need an issue and then massive pressure to be exerted, The !Atkins Conference! provided the first condition and the Orange Order the vehicle for the Hence the paradox; the !respectable! unionists are boycotting the Atkins talks (on the grounds that the SDLP might win some concessions) and the loyalist 'backwoodsper sons! are attendingJ Nonetheless this has been a bad tactical error for the Official Unionists, They presumed these talks to be a re-run of the Sunningdale Conference which led to the 'Power Sharing! experiment. Its collapse allowed the political initiative to pass over to the loyalist paramilitaries (UDA, UVF). Logically the same should happen again, destroying the participants, However, the terms of reference have since changed; Power Sharing is no longer guaranteed, Paisley spotted this deliberate loophole left by the British and focuses on it regularly, dispelling any suggestion that he is going soft on the anti-unionists, Secondly the Ulster Defence Association and its allies are not so powerful as before, though still very dangerous, Finally this British government is determined to bring about a '!settlement! even if it has to In addition, the Orange Order is an all-class alliance through which patronage is regulated. It is not an agitational organisation. True, it mobilises masses on the 'Twalf! and at other times, but these are traditional occasions held annually to celebrate loyalist-patronage. and protestant domination over catholics, The Official Unionists may hold considerable influence inside the leadership of the Order but it is the rank and file who matter and for the most part they stick with the DUP, 'Big lan' has made a promise; a return to majority rule, back to Stormont.

By the looks of things he is going to keep it. Their faith in Paisley is| reinforced by his notorious political record, They might turn out once or twice on a demo, so as not to let the Order down, but it will pose no threat to the DUP, The real power struggle will happen after a settlement has been reached and is likely to be brought about by Paisley's personality. For a start this reactionary cleric ‘embarrasses the British. Most European politicians regard him as a madman which would hardly be a great advertisement for the leader of a sup= posedly democratic administration. More importantly the Northern antiunionist population would find it repugnant to cooperate with a government led by Paisley. In this the SDLP themselves are no problem. At present they are fishing desperately for a legal formula to get them off the hook of their comit-— ments to Power Sharing without being seen to have sold out, Equally, the population of the 26 counties are aware of Paisley's inglorious past which would make military cooperation between the Northern and Southern states very unpopular, Particularly so since Fianna Fail are in power, whose main electoral appeal is their claim to republicanism.

Ideally, the British would prefer to deal with the Official Unionists, but for the moment they have to make do with the DUP. Their problem for the future will be how to engineer a switching of positions of the two parties, without fracturing whatever edifice they decide to NIALL MAC AN tSAOIR

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