21.03.1996

Irish feud wastes revolutionary lives

January’s killing of Gino Gallagher, national organiser of the Irish Republican Socialist Party and leading member of the Irish National Liberation Army, appears to have sparked off a full-scale feud within the IRSP.

Last year four leading Inla members were arrested in Balbriggan, County Dublin, and Gino Gallagher took over. Speculation was rife that he was killed by a supporter of the former leadership, although at the time the IRSP fiercely decried rumours of a split.

However, earlier this month John Fennell, one of the organisation’s founders, was beaten to death in Donegal and now the faction loyal to Gallagher has issued a statement naming four old-guard members, associates of Fennell, as being responsible for the Gallagher shooting.

Last week’s attack on a Belfast house, which resulted in the death of a nine-year old girl, has also been linked to the feud, although her family has denied any connection with the organisation.

The IRSP claims to stand for a Marxist-Leninist communist party. Yet it completely eschews the Leninist method of resolving differences among revolutionaries - open ideological debate. It has a history of using the bullet, most notably in 1986, when a total of 10 people were killed.

Communists prefer the Leninist method not because we have a horror of revolutionary violence. Nor do we say comrades should not have the right to defend themselves. But the causes of the dispute can only be resolved when they are brought out into the open. Publish your views and let the working class judge who is right and who is wrong. That is why we have always said that communist organisations must give priority to maintaining a regular publication, in which all sides can state their opinions.

The present situation is leading to the tragic death of committed revolutionaries and has resulted in prominent IRSP figures going to ground, paralysing the whole organisation.

The concealment of differences - over tactics, strategy or even personalities - can lead to the attempt to suppress them altogether. This makes it easier, not more difficult, for infiltration by state forces to occur. Enemy agents can step in to eliminate isolated revolutionaries, particularly in the present atmosphere surrounding the ‘peace’ process.

The people themselves cannot take sides in a dispute where causes can only be guessed at.

Nor can they easily distinguish between the bullets of revolutionaries and those of the state.

Even now those committed to the cause of workers’ liberty must go into print. The Weekly Worker will publish the views of all who stand by that cause.

Jim Blackstock