30.04.1998

Backing Blair on May 22

Around the left

In the face of the imperialists’ peace settlement offensive in Northern Ireland, most of the left has collapsed with barely a whimper. Going with the tide of propaganda - as opposed to resolutely standing against it - many Marxist revolutionaries have become transformed into peaceniks. Whether they come from the state capitalist, Trotskyist or ‘official communist’ tradition, principled anti-imperialism is certainly off the agenda.

Of all the groups and organisations on the left whose brains have turned to social pacifist mush, none come more soggy than the Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star grouping. For decades the CPB has been the loyal ‘Marxist’ opposition to the bourgeoisie - so loyal in fact that it seems to regard ‘ultra-lefts’ (ie, revolutionaries) as the main enemy of the workers’ movement. Totally committed as it is to the British road to socialism, proletarian internationalism takes a definite back seat for CPB leaders. When it comes to Ireland, the CPB abandons even the residue of genuine internationalism and instead embraces a sickly sentimental humanism that has far more in common with Clare Raynor - or Mikhail Gorbachev - than VI Lenin.

The Morning Star contains a jubilant report on the Scottish Trade Union Congress conference. It details how the “congress rose to its feet to applaud the role played by Irish trade unionists is securing the Northern Ireland agreement”. Grotesquely celebrating how the peace of the oppressors has triumphed over the violence of the oppressed, we are told: “Delegates welcomed Irish Congress of Trade Unions vice-president Inez McCormack, who said that the importance of the agreement was that all communities had ‘recognised their common humanity’. She said that ‘the healing process has to start’ and it was vital to end violence and promote justice and equality.” Here we have a trade union bureaucrat who cannot differentiate between the oppressed and oppressor. Someone who recognises the “humanity” of British imperialism and loyalist death squads but would not hesitate to condemn the revolutionary violence of the IRA or Inla.

Naturally, the peace-loving STUC congress - presumably along with its Socialist Party and SWP delegates - “unanimously backed an emergency resolution from the general council that not only welcomed the agreement, but also pledged practical support in the forthcoming campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in the agreement referendum”. STUC deputy general secretary Bill Spiers, we are told, “congratulated all the Northern Ireland political leaders who had worked to hammer out such a ‘historical agreement’. He paid particular tribute to the ICTU for the role it had played, ‘even in the darkest of times’, in reaching out to all sides of society.” Confronted by such even-handedness, the Morning Star reports that “congress rose to its feet to applaud”.

There was an important and very symbolic STUC fringe meeting on April 21. The chair was Bill Spiers and the speakers were Mike Kirby (Unison), Kevin McCorry (Campaign for Democracy), Martin Margan (SDLP) and ... that friend of Ireland, Roy Garland of the Ulster Unionist Party. Those who attended this fringe meeting politely applauded Garland after he explained how the British-Irish Agreement helped to cement the United Kingdom and legitimised the sectarian Six Counties statelet. Reaching out “to all sides”, as practised by the STUC and the ICTU.

The Socialist Party has essentially the same imperialist-friendly outlook - it is just less honest, that is all. Last week’s edition of The Socialist tells us that the “people of Northern Ireland, both catholic and protestant, are relieved that the months of ‘peace talks’ ended in agreement rather than stalemate. They feared the bloody implications of a total failure to agree” (April 17). This display of simpering and sickly pacifism is a disgrace to the name of Marxism, as is the SP’s liberal failure to distinguish between the ‘warring parties’. Thus we are told:

“There are plans for a new power-sharing assembly in Northern Ireland, but it will include only the parties who participated in the talks, sectarian and/or Tory parties. These establishment politicians depend on either almost exclusively protestant support or on almost exclusively catholic support. This new assembly will further institutionalise sectarianism” (my emphasis).

If that is the case, comrades from the SP, how come you are saying ‘yes - sort of’ to this new assembly, which will “further institutionalise sectarianism”? As the editorial, with tacit approval, phrased it: “The new assembly will give local politicians, unionist and nationalist, a (small) degree of power for the first time”.

We noted last week that “the SP is oblivious and ostrich-like towards the politics raging around it”. The latest issue of The Socialist (April 24) only serves to confirm this fact, as it fails to mention the forthcoming referendum at all. Obviously the SP comrades know their role ... discussing local authority cuts and drains, while Blair gets on with the real politics.

The Irish SWP, like its British counterpart, loves imperialism’s peace as well. It argues:

“Socialists are for peace in Northern Ireland because it creates the best conditions for catholic and protestant workers to unite. Any return to the armed struggle will heighten sectarian tension and bring more suffering to working class areas for no possible benefit” (quoted in Socialist Worker April 18).

If the heat gets too much, you can always resort to lofty-sounding digressions in an attempt to disguise a fundamentally reactionary position. Puffed up as ever, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty patiently explains that

“socialists who want protestant-catholic working class unity should welcome any moves that offer serious hope of permanent peace and an end to blind-alley militarism. We cannot and should not, however, take responsibility for either London or Dublin. We state what is and prepare the future. We work for the development of independent working class politics. The first step is to understand reality clearly, and that means rejecting all delusions that ‘anti-imperialist war’ can bring progress in today’s Ireland” (original emphasis Workers’ Liberty March).

Boiled down to its essentials, the AWL defends the right of the oppressors ... to oppress. This is made explicit elsewhere, if you strip away the convoluted stream-of-consciousness ‘method’ that characterises so much AWL thinking and literature:

“Ireland was partitioned against the will of the majority of Irish people. But the fact that the majority of Irish people were against any right for the minority to secede did not automatically invalidate secession, any more than the fact that the majority of the UK population were against any part of Ireland being given independence invalidated the right of the Irish/catholic/Gaelic people to secede ... The right of the protestants to secede should be taken for granted ... It is a lie to say that because the Six Counties is an artificial entity that cannot and should not survive, therefore no entity where there is a clear-cut protestant majority expressive of their desire for autonomy is possible” (March).

Full marks for obfuscation. But no marks for Leninist clarity - or principle. Does the AWL call for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on May 22? Or does it fight for an active boycott? The AWL does not hesitate to attack Sinn Fein ... but the referendum is another matter. Who is the AWL afraid of upsetting? Its reticence cannot - and should not - have anything to do with the fact that AWL members are still ‘implanted’ in New Labour and are cogs in the machine of the trade union bureaucracy.

In the final seal of approval, the Kim Il-sungist New Worker - publication of the New Communist Party - also gives its blessing to the Tony Blair/Bill Clinton-brokered British-Irish Agreement, myopically seeing it as a advance towards Irish unification. For this ‘official communist’ fossil, uncritical support for petty bourgeois national liberation organisations like Sinn Fein is second nature - even if it means embracing the imperialist project in the process.

Watching comrades line up behind Blair at the mere wave of his media-hyped peace settlement document is not pleasant. Just imagine how the left would behave if and when there was a real movement - or crisis - in society, whether it be from above or below or both

Don Preston