25.07.1996

‘Socialist’ loyalists?

Last month the Alliance for Workers Liberty held its summer school, ‘Ideas for freedom’.

On June 29 it was picketed by the ‘Ad Hoc Committee against Loyalist Terrorists’ and others, who believed that it was fundamentally wrong to give any ‘socialist’ respectability to loyalist terror groups. Billy Hutchinson, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party/Ulster Volunteer Force, was a guest speaker.

The AWL carried a ‘Portrait of Billy Hutchinson’ in Workers Liberty No33, July 1996. When questioned as to his reasons for participating in indiscriminate sectarian assassinations of catholics, he said it was to generate pressure on the catholic community to get them to extricate the IRA.

‘It had the opposite effect, as such things always do,’ explains the AWL. ‘We have a better way to help you achieve your goals,’ they imply!

Clearly there are fundamental differences between the Committee for Revolutionary Regroup-ment (CRR) and the AWL over Ireland and these differences are reflected in the wider vanguard of the labour movement. For instance the AWL views are close to those of Militant Labour, and have many things in common with the Stalinists of the old ‘two nations’ British and Irish Communist Organisation.

The AWL’s capitulation to the needs of British imperialism is akin to that of the Morning Star Communist Party of Britain and the New Worker New Communist Party. It is considerably worse than, for instance, the bad position of the Socialist Worker Party.

Many of the rest of the left groups have far better paper positions on Ireland, but tend to be sectarian, giving little or no thought on how to influence the mass of workers in the organised labour movement, including the Labour Party.

Gerry Downing
Committee for Revolutionary Regroupment