The Provo Armed Campaign

With the disintegration of Britain's Sunningdale strategy and the re-emergence of militant Loyalism, the question of defending the Catholic minority from attack gains a new importance. The assassination of over a hundred Catholic workers in the last eighteen months, at a time when Loyalist was confused and demoralised, is a fearful warning of what could happen when the United Ulster Unionist Council launches its anti-Sunningdale campaign in earnest. Unless revolutionaires begin to assess the nature of the armed resistance and its effets up to now, many changes in strategy and tactics which are necessary to prevent a major military defeat of the Catholic minority will not be made in time.

Armed struggle and the role of the Provos When the Provo campaign was launched many socialists and republicans felt that the Civil Rights Movement had not exhausted its capacity to mobilise and sharpen the political consciousness of the Northern working class. They saw the armed struggle as an artificial adjunct grafted on by a handful of isolated diehards who wanted to substitute themselves for the genera! mass of people. The Provos were branded as individual terrorists and their activity castigated as sectarian and reactionary. Even today this continues to be the getral attitude of the Irish Left.

Tim); has shown however that this attitude is entirefy incorrect. The charge that the Provos initiated the armed struggle without any reference to the level of consciousness and state of preparedness in the Catholic community is | unfounded. It disregards one very simple and set up their own armed defence units. All over the North, Defence Committees and Associations began to spring up.

The more traditional Republican elements read the signs correctly. They worked assidiously in the committees and associations and simultaneously built the Provisional IRA. As J. Bowyer Bell, the most important historian of the [RA to date, and recognised on all sides as an objective and scholarly observer; wrote in the American journal Review of Politics: “Once the events of the summer of 1970 transformed the British army into a threat, the Catholic minority increasingly had to depend on the IRA for defence; the Provo growth was almost exactly proportional to the decay of British Army neutrality as perceived by the Catholics. By 1971 the Catholic community could not repudiate the Provos without losing their only sure defence”. “The Idea That Over Half The Working Class Must Be Armed.... Before Armed Activity ls Initiated Is A Preposterous Vulgarity Propagated By Centrist _Mass support and the armed struggte -The Provos took over the role of ‘local défénce force in the Catholic ghettos at an opportune moment. But there is considerable dispute on the Left as to the significance of their armed resistance and the amount of popular support they received. The Provos may have posed as the defenders of the Catholic working class areas and they may have been generally accepted as necessary but were they actually endorsed and supported by the Catholic community?

To answer this the real dimension of the struggle must firstly be understood. A proper index of this, which reveals all its ramifications, is hard to find. The number of fatal casualties — over a thousand — although crude, is probably the best. Even the significance of such a meagre Statistic iS NOt immediately apparent.

One can more easily appreciate the impact reached the five thousand mark.

One way or another, five thousand represents only 1% of the Catholic population and is a meagre enough figure especially when compared with the formerly massive Civil Rights Movemen‘ But once again statistics fail to convey in full the complexity of the situation. Armed struggle by its nature, even when it reaches mass proportions is always carried on by a tiny minority of a population or class. For example during the “War of Independence” (which was on the same scale as the current struggle in the North), the military mobilisation (i.e, the size of the IRA) was at most 1/3% and probably only 1/10% of the population (i.e. 3,000 strong.)

The idea that over half the working class mus be armed) or prepared to take arms, before armed activity is initiated, is a prepostereous . vulgarily propogated by centrist re from the Marxist movement.

In the light of this, a 1% military mobilisatior is quite substantial. For an organisation to carry out such an extensive mobilisation it would need overwhelming popular support. There is no doubt that the Provos received this support.

Some dogmatic and sectarian socialists may wish to dispute the fact to preserve the credibility of their accusation of “individual terrorism”. But British imperialism which had to deal with the situation was forced to face reality. A prominent pro-imperialist idealogue, Robert Moss, former lecturers at the Royal College of Defence Studies and an editor of ‘The Economist admitted in his book ‘Urban Guerillas’ that “The terrorists in Ulster no longer appear as an isolated military force imported from Dublin”. “They have managed to exploit genuine political sympathy among the Catholics of Northern treland”’. This . . . was their source of strength. By August 1971, British army spokesmen were ready to concede that as many as a quarter of the Catholics of Belfast and Derry were helpin the IRA and as many as hafi were broadly in sympathy”. (p. 93—94), Armed struggle and mass support Despite the obvious support the Provo campaign Bae