25.07.1996

Wishful thinking

Around the left

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This maxim constantly springs to mind when reading much of the left press, particularly so when the issue of ‘Northern Ireland’ is being discussed. A yearning for what ought to beis often confused with what is. This can lead to disastrous conclusions.

Socialist Worker is a prime example. Motivated by a quite understandable desire not to act as a left cheerleader for Sinn Fein/IRA and to articulate a Marxist critique of Irish republicanism, it ends up ignoring concrete reality and promoting ‘workerist’ wishful thinking.

Thus, we see Socialist Worker stating that a “different political tradition from the blind alley of republicanism is desperately needed” (July 20) - a perfectly reasonable declaration. It goes on to say that what is needed is a “socialist tradition, one which recognises that catholic and protestant workers have nothing to gain from the poverty and repression in Northern Ireland” (original italics).

Fine, if you get your politics from a ‘Marxist’ textbook - where all workers are exploited ‘equally’ and have identical interests. Unfortunately, the real world intervenes. The very nature of the sectarian Six Counties statelet has turned the entire protestant working class (exceptional individuals aside) into a ‘labour aristocracy’, which benefits materially from the oppression of the catholic/nationalist population. That benefit may be very slender and marginal indeed (yes, there are no millionaires or posh gardens in the Shankhill Road) but that only serves to make the protestant/loyalist population even more insecure and even more determined to keep what it has got.

When Socialist Worker asks, in a semi-rhetorical manner, “Who gains from Orange bigotry?” the answer is simple: the UK state. If protestant workers can be convinced of the need to support and defend catholic workers from sectarian oppression, that would represent real progress.

An approach a million miles away from Militant, which makes repeated references to “both sides of the sectarian divide” (July 19), both of which have a “vested interest in seeing a return to the troubles”. Quite why the Provisional IRA, which came into existence precisely to defend the catholic population from sectarian mobs and pogroms, would want to see a “return” to the 1969/70 situation is unexplained.

Disgracefully, Militant equates David Ervine of the semi-fascistic Progressive Unionist Party with Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, an avowedly anti-sectarian, democratic secular party. But for Militant Ervine and Adams are both “sectarian bigots”.

Both Socialist Worker and Militant need to urgently rethink their positions.

Don Preston