07.11.1996

‘We have not gone away’

A Marxist revolutionary party needed in Ireland

Last weekend a meeting to be addressed by Kevin McQuillan, on behalf of the Ard Comhairle (executive committee) of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, had to be abandoned. According to the police, the BBC had received a message, using a recognised code word employed by the Ulster Volunteer Force, stating that a bomb had been planted at the London venue, the Red Rose Club.

There was no bomb, but the club management succumbed to pressure to call off the meeting. This was the latest in a series of incidents where IRSP comrades have suffered intense harassment from state forces in recent weeks.

This is the speech comrade McQuillan would have delivered:

Comrades, I welcome the invitation to speak here tonight. It is rare for our movement to have a public platform to espouse our politics and, on behalf of our whole movement, I thank the organisers for this opportunity.

Much rubbish has been written recently about developments inside the republican socialist movement. Much of the comment was inspired by a series of attacks launched on our movement by Hugh Torney, a former leader of the Irish National Liberation Army who had been expelled from that organisation. It was alleged among other things that there was a split/feud; that there was a struggle between militarists and those like Torney favouring the Provo peace process; that it was a war between brutal criminal elements.

Of course none of those explanations is true. Much black propaganda has been spread about our movement and unfortunately some republicans have succumbed to that propaganda and called for the disbandment of our movement and calling the death of Torney a “tragedy”.

The explanation for what happened is relatively straightforward. An effort was made to liquidate the only revolutionary Marxist republican organisation in Ireland because of its opposition to the pan-nationalist peace process. The struggle we have endured was the struggle for the survival of the revolutionary republican socialist movement. Out of that struggle there has emerged a steeled communist tendency prepared for the long haul.

While the death of Torney may have been tragic for the members of his immediate family, it was nonetheless a political necessity. While in leadership position Torney had attempted to de-politicise the RSM, sold off political premises and effectively sidelined the Irish Republican Socialist Party. He compromised our politics, alienated our supporters and tried to drive out of the movement anyone who posed a political threat.

The calling of the Provo ceasefire in September 1994 found him without political strategy or beliefs. By that time all he wanted was control to tail-end whatever the Provos told him to do. He had long since abandoned any pretence towards socialism.

When arrested in Balbriggan, he refused to recognise his loss of leadership (as is the case with all republicans when captured). Instead he tried to do a deal with the then Fianna Fail-led coalition government. If granted bail, he was prepared to call a ceasefire. When he appeared in court he announced that the Inla had been on ceasefire from the previous July, pre-dating even the Provo ceasefire! An announcement like this was, while totally untrue, also designed to sideline republican socialist militants, and dovetail our movement into the Provo peace process.

This of course was too much for genuine republican socialists. Very quickly there emerged a new collective leadership which clarified that, while we did not trust the British and were politically critical of the Provo ceasefire, we would not take any action to endanger that ceasefire. We were and are prepared to see that strategy run its course, while making firm political criticisms of that strategy and trying to pursue an alternative course of action that is not dependant on an all-class nationalist alliance.

The Irish Republican Socialist Party still, while others abandon that class, look to the Irish working class as the only class which can achieve political and economic freedom for all those exploited under capitalism. The fundamental criticism that we made all along of the Provisional movement since our establishment was that it was in essence a nationalist, all-class alliance.

We rejected that approach. We reject the creation of an all-class, nationalist alliance involving Irish America, the Free State establishment and the SDLP. That is not the republican approach. Irish republicanism was about the establishment of an independent secular state, led by the most progressive elements in Irish society.

We felt, as a revolutionary movement (and, comrades, it is politics, not guns, that make us revolutionary) that we had to pose a serious alternative strategy to that of the Provos. We re-established the IRSP, attracting back to the movement those political elements driven out by Torney’s blind militarism. An intense series of internal discussions were held to bring the movement back to its roots.

We also developed an external, two-tier approach.

Tier one: We tried to bring together those radicals, socialists, Marxists and republicans who were highly critical of the ‘peace process’. A series of meetings were held with interested individuals to develop a grass-roots opposition to what we perceived to be a sell-out of the struggle begun in 1968. As socialists we have no time for the attitude of those who, without reference to their base, make unilateral decisions. Elitism is not something that this leadership will succumb to. We worked behind the scenes to rally to the call for the Socialist Republic all those who rejected the politics of the Provo ceasefire.

Tier two: A series of political meetings were also held with political parties north and south to articulate the republican socialist position on the politics of the ceasefires. We were very critical in those meetings of the politics both of those parties and of the whole peace process, but as a movement we took the stance, because we recognised the desire for peace in working class communities, that we would do nothing to endanger that peace.

Equally we articulated the view that resistance would not go away so long as the British still ruled, so long as the unionists still campaigned for racist supremacy and so long as Irish nationalists were kept down.

To back up our two-tier approach campaigns were launched to repatriate our prisoners from English gaols and to gain equal rights with other republicans in Portlaoise and Long Kesh. This necessitated our prisoners going on hunger strike in Portlaoise.

While our movement was heavily involved in this work Torney, having got his Fianna Fail-backed bail, began to factionalise. He refused to recognise the leadership, held back finance and materials from the movement and began to spread a series of black propaganda articles about our prominent leaders, including Gino Gallagher, who, having succeeded Torney, had spearheaded the politic-isation of the whole movement.

The consequences of Torney’s dirty work were that the two-tier approach came to nothing. Given our past history, many genuine republicans and socialists did not want to get caught up in any of our internal arguments, as they perceived it.

All our efforts to reach political accommodation with Torney failed. There was no common political basis. He was not a socialist, his republicanism was suspect and his motives clouded.

Eventually after five months of Torney’s negative attempts to undermine the collective leadership and following his refusal to accept the movement’s policy, its discipline and his leadership, he was expelled from the movement in November 1995.

He then organised a gang composed of some former members and young druggies, and assassinated Gino Gallagher. However, he did not claim the assassination for two months, hoping no doubt that blame would go elsewhere. However, the death of Gino had the opposite effect to that which Torney intended. It cemented the collective leadership and united the movement.

Since February 1996 we have had to, against our own wishes, spend our energies defending ourselves from the Torney gang. Seamus Costello, in the heat of the Officials’ pogrom against the fledgling IRSP in 1975, said that a movement that cannot defend itself does not deserve to survive. We have learnt that lesson well. Our presence here today is witness to that. To quote a well known author: “We haven’t gone away, you know.”

But our survival is not our reason to be.

We exist because we want to establish in our country a socialist republic. As a Marxist party, as communists, we exist to help liberate both the country we live in from imperialist control and to help bring the working class into control of society. Those who attacked us had no such vision, no such politics and no such ambition.

Sadly, people died and as socialists we are not insensitive to the pain caused by the deaths of former comrades. But ultimately all the deaths arising from the Torney attacks, including his own, must be laid at Torney’s own door. He instigated, initiated and participated in armed attacks against our movement for his own narrow, personal, selfish ends.

The survival of our distinct form of republican politics has cost us a heavy price. But it is one that all genuine revolutionary organisations have to pay. There can be no doubt that throughout our history our movement has made mistakes - mistakes that need to be analysed and learnt from.

It is the intention of the leadership of the whole republican socialist movement to learn from our mistakes, rectify past errors and continue to build a revolutionary working class organisation committed to establishing socialism in Ireland.

Representatives of the Irish Republican Socialist Party have met with members of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain to discuss prospects for future cooperation.