14.05.1998
Irish referendum - Boycott May 22
Sinn Fein’s historic ard fheis on May 10 overwhelmingly accepted British partition of Ireland along with the protestant veto - inevitably dressed up as a stepping stone towards Irish unity. By 311 to 39, delegates backed the leadership’s recommendation for a ‘yes’ vote in the May 22 referendum - north and south. An emergency motion allowing Sinn Fein members to take seats in the proposed Northern Ireland assembly was also carried with a huge majority.
Not surprisingly all manner of “legitimate qualifications” and gestures towards “republicans who may wish to vote otherwise”, were included. Splits had to be prevented or at the very least limited. It was stressed that the referendum did not “constitute the exercise of national self-determination”. Changes in articles two and three of the Irish constitution were subject to a number of caveats. Nor did Sinn Fein formally recognise “the legitimacy of the Six County statelet” (An Phoblacht May 7 1998). In other words the May 22 ‘yes’ vote will be openly critical. Hence decommissioning weapons was contemptuously rejected. Demands for the IRA to disarm were “nonsense”, said Gerry Adams, and would be “resisted” (The Daily Telegraph May 11 1998).
Yet for all that the Sinn Fein of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness has made a momentous turn. To all intents and purposes it is following the footsteps of Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera and Tomas MacGiolla. The republicans “have abandoned their central article of faith”, crowed orange ‘Marxist’ Paul Bew (The Express May 11 1998). The Irish and British governments were likewise delighted. Indeed Westminster and Dublin were prepared to risk loyalist wrath by sanctioning the temporary release of 12 specially selected IRA prisoners so that they could put their immense moral authority behind the Good Friday British-Irish Agreement at the ard fheis.
From now on Sinn Fein will pursue a totally unarmed strategy and rely on demography to achieve its ultimate objectives. By 2015 present birth trends would result in a catholic/nationalist majority.
After nearly 30 years the revolutionary situation that gripped the Six Counties and which throughout that time implicitly endangered the constitutional existence of both the United Kingdom and the Twenty-six Counties is about to be resolved negatively. The peace of the oppressors has overcome the violence of the oppressed.
The Good Friday agreement must be set against the backdrop of the worldwide period of reaction ushered in by the ignominious collapse of bureaucratic socialism and the triumph of United States imperialism. In the 1970s Sinn Fein came to consider itself an integral part of a global fight against US imperialism, epitomised by the Vietnamese national liberation movement. Now it looks upon that blood-sucking monster as an ally. Bill Clinton and his plenipotentiary, former senator George Mitchell, played a well-publicised role in ensuring Sinn Fein’s compliance.
Besides the US-dominated New World Order the Northern Ireland peace deal has to be understood in the context of Tony Blair’s drive to remake the UK constitutional monarchy system. Since the late 1960s there has been a growing popular alienation from the state. Thatcher’s class war against organised labour successfully shifted wealth from the ‘have-nots’ to the ‘haves’. However, in so doing she further undermined the ideology of the UK state.
In the name of democracy, but against democracy, Blair is attempting to re-win popular identification. He has already dealt with Scotland, Wales and London. Other planks in his so-called ‘third way’ programme are due to follow in rapid succession. European integration and Emu, the most undemocratic form of proportional representation in European and Westminster elections, the de-Labourisation of Labour and party realignment, a House of Lords based on patronage not hereditary, a slimmed down royal family and - perhaps most important of all - Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland has not just seen a loss of popular identification. From 1969 the masses refused to be ruled in the old way. The ruling class could no longer rule in the old way.
Northern Ireland was established amid anti-Catholic pogroms in 1920-1 explicitly as a counterrevolutionary protestant statelet. Catholics were forcibly driven from their workplaces and homes in their tens of thousands. The Irish national democratic revolution - begun with the 1916 Easter uprising in Dublin - was stopped halfway by the British offer of 26 counties and an all-Ireland council (if agreed by the southern and northern parliaments). Claiming that it was a temporary phase along the long road to Irish freedom, Michael Collins signed the treaty dissecting the country. The IRA and Sinn Fein - which gained a big majority of Irish votes in the 1918 election - split. Internecine civil war pitted IRA volunteer against IRA volunteer. With British aid and collusion the pro-treaty forces won.
By dividing Ireland, the British ruling class successfully imposed a “carnival reaction both north and south”- James Connolly’s prediction of March 1914 proved correct (P Berresford Ellis James Connolly: selected works London 1973, p275). Progress was thrown into reverse and the possibility of working class unity indefinitely put off. Britain anchored its continued rule in the industrial northeast through the institutionalised oppression of the large catholic minority and reinforcing the labour aristocratic mentality amongst Protestants. They loyally rallied to Edward Carson’s UVF, voted Ulster Unionist, remembered an invented tradition of 1688, and fought and connived against Catholics, at work as in politics, so as to secure better conditions.
Gerrymandering and draconian laws, ‘no popery’ bigotry and economic bribery, sufficed for nearly 50 years. However, in the late 1960s the student-led movement for equal civil rights - one person/one vote and measures against discrimination - collided with the sectarian statelet. Demonstrations were met by RUC attacks. Ian Paisley stoked up hatred. But resistance only became wider, fiercer and more conscious. Irish nationalism informed. Black civil rights in the US inspired. Paris ignited.
The British government of Harold Wilson made clear its desire for quick reforms. Northern Ireland Prime Minister, captain Terence O’Neil, duly unveiled a package of legislative proposals in November 1968. These moves from above provoked both more radical demands from the catholic/nationalist population and splits in the Ulster Unionist monolith. William Craig emerged as a key oppositionist. Civil rights agitation increased and demonstrations were broken up by rampaging loyalists. O’Neil sought compromise. The right wing of the Ulster Unionist Party under Brian Faulkner sought confrontation and made substantial gains in Stormont elections in February 1969. The Mid-Ulster by-election on April 17 saw Bernadette Devlin - an avowed socialist - defeat the Unionist candidate. Two days later street fighting erupted in Derry’s Bogside district.
Teenagers and republican militants in Belfast followed the example. Northern Ireland had proved itself unviable. O’Neil resigned. Loyalist reactionaries besieged catholic areas. Barricades went up in Derry and Belfast. Bogside became a self-governing no-go area. The British army was rushed in by the Labour government in August 1969. The RUC and the B-specials could no longer prevent what James Callaghan called “a breakdown in law and order” (quoted in K Kelly The longest war London 1982, p121). The revolutionary situation could not be denied.
The IRA was initially nowhere to be seen. However in 1970 ‘Provisional’ Sinn Fein and the ‘Provisional’ IRA were formed after the pro-abstentionist wing walked out of the January ard fheis. Within six months PIRA were “looked upon as rough and ready” defenders of imperilled catholic-nationalist communities (K Kelly The longest war London 1982, p146). There was an influx of young, mainly working class, recruits. In August 1971 the British and Northern Ireland authorities introduced internment. Torture was routinely used. In protest the respectable SDLP withdrew from Stormont. The southern government of Jack Lynch announced support for ‘passive resistance’ in the north. Following the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 30 1972 the war was taken to Britain. Ted Heath abolished Stormont in March 1972 and ‘temporarily’ imposed direct rule. The IRA had killed the protestant parliament.
Tragically the revolutionary situation was safely confined to Northern Ireland. The south remained passive. The left and the workers’ movement in Britain refused to actively side with the oppressed and demand the unconditional withdrawal of troops. In the main it piously condemned terrorism and economistically made the plea for normal trade union politics in Northern Ireland. The British government was thus able to ‘normalise’ the revolutionary situation.
Sinn Fein had no strategy to positively break the impasse. Instead, from the early 1990s the Adams leadership began pursuing a pan-nationalist alliance embracing the SDLP, the southern bourgeoisie and pro-Irish elements in the US ruling class. Hence, despite the fact that the British state was unable to defeat the IRA militarily, its diplomatic victory was in sight.
Blair’s government gave ground to Adams on prisoners of war and dropped Major’s insistence on decommissioning. But no real concessions were given in the Good Friday deal on the vital matter of sovereignty. In “some respects”, argues Paul Bew, New Labour “has been tougher on republicanism” than the Tories (The Express May 11 1998). The protestant veto is enshrined in the British-Irish Agreement. In return for the freeing of prisoners and what are essentially minor constitutional concessions Sinn Fein now accepts de facto the Northern Ireland statelet and the “principle” of consent.
Yet though there could be a steady trickle of defections to Republican Sinn Fein, the IRSP, the Thirty-two County Sovereignty Committee and the “true” IRA, Adams and co should be able to deliver Sinn Fein’s mass base for the May 22 referendum.
That does not mean Northern Ireland is about to return to the pre-1969 status quo. The deal creates what the SDLP’s Seamus Mallon rightly describes as a “new set of rules” (The Daily Telegraph May 11 1998). Throughout this century the central thrust of unionism has been to say ‘no’ to equal rights for Catholics. Blair’s project aims to win the consent, if not the active support, of the catholic/nationalist population. Partition post-1998 will no longer go hand in hand with crude gerrymandering and overt discrimination. Ireland’s national right to self-determination has been denied. But so has old loyalism. The labour aristocratic politics of anti-Catholic bigotry and protestant supremacism hardly dovetail with Blair’s ‘cool Britannia’.
That is why it would be foolish in the extreme to dismiss the ‘no’ campaign of Paisley and McCarthy as the Neanderthal rantings of an isolated and irrelevant minority. David Trimble heads a deeply divided Ulster Unionist Party. Six out of its 10 Westminster MPs oppose the deal. They know full well that the British-Irish Agreement redefines the union with Great Britain and necessitates a fundamental change in the nature of Ulster Unionism ... which they, and no doubt a whole swathe of the protestant population, are unwilling to countenance. Even with a big ‘yes’ vote on May 22 dangers for Blair lurk round the corner.
As Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George found to their cost, Ulster can provide the focus for all manner of privileged reactionaries and malcontents. At present most Tory opinion has joined the chorus of praise. However, faced with Blair’s constitutional project which is about to abolish their inbuilt Lords majority at a stroke, and the prospect of permanent opposition with the advent of PR politics, the Tory right could be tempted into extra-parliamentary methods - including a united front with Ulster rebels.
The May 22 referendum therefore demands the clearest response from the left. Mealy-mouthed ‘yes’ calls by the Socialist Workers Party, Workers’ Liberty, the Morning Star and the Socialist Party reveal a complete lack of anti-imperialist principle. Nevertheless the ‘no’ advocated by Socialist Outlook, Workers Power and dissident republican elements, while not unprincipled, will undoubtedly be swamped by the Paisley-McCarthy campaign.
There is nothing genuinely democratic about the May 22 referendum. If it was there would be an all-Ireland referendum around the fundamental question of the border. Communists therefore call for a boycott. We are for a democratically elected, all-Ireland constitutional assembly, whereby the Irish people can freely decide their own future without Blair or Clinton setting the agenda. Where Blair proposes to reform the constitutional monarchy from above, we communists single-mindedly fight for a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales and a united Ireland from below.
Jack Conrad