21.05.1998
Follow my leader
Harpal Brar backs Blair on Ireland
The Socialist Labour Party failed to pronounce on the British-Irish Agreement. The most recent edition of Socialist News (April-May) did not mention Ireland at all, despite the May 22 referendum and the evident approach of a turning point in the struggle against the British occupation of the Six Counties.
One of the SLP’s national executive members is not so shy, however. The May-June edition of Lalkar, bi-monthly paper of the Indian Workers Association (GB), carries a long article on Ireland written in the inimitable style of its editor, Harpal Brar, who was elected onto the SLP NEC at the party’s December 1997 congress. Not only does comrade Brar give 100% uncritical support to Sinn Fein/IRA, as its leaders begin to transform themselves into respectable bourgeois politicians; but he also lambastes the “so-called left”, which is “totally useless and impotent in Britain”. “To this category”, according to comrade Brar, “belongs Mr Jack Conrad, the guru of a dozen-strong third class Trot outfit personating as the CPGB”.
In contrast to the “Trot doom and gloom” of “this would-be Leninist” comrade Brar offers a “rigorous Marxist-Leninist analysis” of the agreement. In his six-page piece he manages to ignore the role of the working class almost completely. Instead, in his haste to avoid judging the accord - in the words of Martin McGuinness - “through the filter of unionism”, he presents his appraisal in an unadulterated nationalist-republican light. Not content with quoting lengthy passages from the speeches of McGuinness and Gerry Adams, he uses Sinn Fein’s nationalist logic and phrases himself.
Comrade Brar concedes that “the agreement just concluded, since it does not put an end to the partition of Ireland, leaves a lot to be desired”. However, against the “mumbo jumbo” of “Mr Conrad,” he wants to give an entirely positive and, when it comes down to it, unproblematic spin on Sinn Fein’s historic retreat from principles it once regarded as sacred:
“While not achieving immediate Irish unity, national struggle and resistance have forced Britain and the unionists to make important concessions, which not only make for an equal and honourable existence for the nationalist minority, but also provide the basis for advance in the direction of the long-cherished and ardently held desire of the Irish people for the reunification of their forcibly divided country.”
This in fact is the dual argument of Sinn Fein. On the one hand, the concessions achieved have been so significant that they permit “an equal and honourable existence” in the Six Counties statelet - so much so that both SF and the IRA have now amended their constitutions so as to permit the participation of their members in the Northern Ireland Assembly - a move for them which de facto recognises partition and British jurisdiction.
It is clear that the SF leadership does not intend to make use of the assembly for purely propaganda purposes: Adams has his eye on power-brokering, if, as he hopes, his party gains the largest number of representatives from the nationalist community. In this scenario he will shore up and pressurise a Ulster Unionist Party/SDLP administration headed by David Trimble - unless of course Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party rides on the back of a protestant backlash and replaces the UUP as the largest single party.
On the other hand, while preparing to take seats in the new assembly - in effect helping to run the Six Counties - SF claims this will be done in the name of “weakening the union”. Of course many unionist leaders, most loyalist paramilitaries and just about the entire British establishment say that the opposite is the case. For example The Daily Telegraph, having previously condemned “the long-running farce called the ‘peace process’” (January 10), abruptly changed its tune once it saw the ‘propositions on heads of agreement’ on which the final accord was based. Blair’s plan, according to the Telegraph, “copper-fastens the union”. So much so that, back in January, the paper fully expected SF/IRA to abandon the peace process altogether and resume its armed struggle.
The advantage of an as yet untried constitutional arrangement is that both loyalists and republicans can present it as serving their entirely opposite and contradictory aims (indeed it potentially could serve the aims of those committed to bourgeois legal forms - on either side of the divide). Nevertheless the reality is that while continuing partition is written into the agreement, the IRA is to end its armed resistance. Diplomacy is a legitimate tactic for revolutionaries, but how can it hope to succeed unless it has armed power and self-activating mass support behind it?
So does comrade Brar see the accord as leading to a revolutionary unity of Ireland, backed up by this combination of armed power and mass support? Far from it. He puts forward four reasons why the settlement will lead, slowly but surely, to a united Ireland.
Firstly, with “the abolition of the petty privileges of the protestant working class, the latter lose much of the material incentives that turned it into an aristocracy of labour”, resulting in a reduction of “religious bigotry and anti-catholic fanaticism”. A highly dubious proposition, in that the opposite could equally be the case. But it gets worse.
Secondly, according to our friend, “As cross-border structures begin to operate and bring the benefits of cooperation on a national scale, workers and capitalists alike in the unionist camp will fear less and less the prospect of reunification.”
Thirdly, whereas in 1920 “the north constituted the industrialised part” while “the republic was characterised by near-absence of industry”, today the “very opposite” is the case. Therefore “there is much for [the northern bourgeoisie] to gain from economic and political integration with the south”. Another extremely doubtful contention.
Finally, Britain is just itching to get out. It wants to free itself of its “subsidy of £2 billion a year”. In addition, “The troubles in Ireland” tie up “a huge number of British army personnel, thus curtailing British imperialism’s ability to attend to other hot spots in the world which threaten its economic interests”.
The last three points are all arguments why the accord is in the interests of imperialism and the Irish bourgeoisie. They amount to the contention that conditions are now favourable for a peaceful, imperialist-led transition to a united, bourgeois Ireland. As if communists have the slightest desire to see such an outcome. We are not nationalists. We do not view a united Ireland as an end in itself. Inasmuch as nationalist struggles - peaceful or violent - aim to defeat the imperialist state, we support them in this respect unconditionally. Through the revolutionary fight for self-determination, in which the working class becomes hegemonic, the possibility arises for anti-imperialists to see the potential for their self-emancipation - ie, the building of genuine democracy through the world struggle for socialism.
In other words, comrade Brar’s uncritical tailing of Sinn Fein has led him into the bourgeois nationalist mire. But what if, as seems more than likely, a section of the republican movement forcefully opposes the accommodation of SF/IRA with the British state and continues to wage anti-imperialist struggle? Will he join with both SF and the state in condemning them? Will he back their physical elimination?
Comrade Brar lays into the Weekly Worker for its assertion that the agreement is “an imperialist-driven deal” (April 9), and for its observation that Sinn Fein “now thinks of Ahern, the SDLP and Clinton as allies in a pan-nationalist front” (April 16). Waxing lyrical about “the art of politics”, he informs us that “Sinn Fein is in the real business of winning real power, and that requires winning allies, no matter how unreliable or how temporary such allies may be”. So “unreliable” indeed that Ahern, the SDLP and Clinton are also allies of British imperialism. Can comrade Brar deny it? Or when Clinton poses for photographs with Blair at his side, when he joins with Blair in an appeal for a ‘yes’ vote in the May 22 referendum, is he secretly in opposition to the British plan for a British peace in Northern Ireland? Perhaps Blair is reluctantly following Clinton’s lead as the US president obligingly pursues Sinn Fein’s agenda?
The Lalkar editor also attacks “the unnamed writer” of the Weekly Worker article, ‘For a republican boycott’ (April 16), whom he assumes is a CPGB member. In fact the article was clearly headed, “Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP)”, and did not represent an agreed CPGB position. On the basis of this article - and despite the call in its headline for a boycott - comrade Brar muddle-headedly writes: “The Weekly Worker is recommending that the nationalists should vote against accepting the agreement when the referendum is held on May 22!”
No, comrade, we did not side with Paisley, Thompson and McCartney in calling for a ‘no’ vote. Nor did we, like yourself, follow Blair, Clinton, Trimble and Adams - not to mention the UVF and UDA - in recommending a ‘yes’ vote. We have made it clear in numerous articles that we were for a boycott of the referendum (we shared this conclusion with the RDG). Neither the ‘yes’ nor the ‘no’ option was acceptable to us as revolutionaries and democrats. To vote ‘yes’ was to accept the imperialist-sponsored settlement and continued British occupation. To vote ‘no’ was in effect to back the status quo.
Just as comrade Brar claims that SF’s alliance with US imperialism is “temporary”, so he pretends to believe that its abandonment of the bomb and the bullet is “for the time being”. The truth is that Adams and McGuinness, aware of the virtual impossibility of an IRA military victory in the post-USSR world, are in the process of calling a permanent halt to the armed struggle and have opted for the more attractive vision of bourgeois respectability on an all-Ireland basis.
By the way, in this context comrade Brar seems genuinely unable to grasp the connection between the ending of SF/IRA’s armed resistance and the new world situation following the collapse of the USSR. The removal of this major counterbalance to global imperialism has greatly weakened all forces of national liberation and permitted the negative resolution of revolutionary situations and world ‘hot spots’. But that does not mean that the USSR was a positive force for human emancipation. There is no contradiction - except in the eyes of Stalin Society stalwarts like comrade Brar - in declining to mourn for the Soviet Union on the one hand and acknowledging that its fall has strengthened imperialism on the other.
However, the fact that many leaders of national liberation movements have - like SF/IRA - sued for peace in the conditions of the New World Order does not cause us “hurl abuse” at them, as Brar states. Perhaps he would like to give us an example of this alleged “abuse”. We can hardly blame petty bourgeois nationalists for not being communists - although, judging by the uncritical backing offered by the comrade, perhaps the two are identical in his eyes.
And just as he cannot bear to hear a word of criticism of Sinn Fein, so he views attacks on the authoritarianism and ‘revisionist’ British Road politics of Arthur Scargill and the SLP leadership as high treason. Explicitly linking the SLP and Ireland, and opposing the struggle for communist clarity in both spheres, comrade Brar writes, referring to the CPGB: “These despicable creatures are doing everything in their power to disorganise the working class. Hence, for instance, their attacks on the Socialist Labour Party.”
Apparently to criticise left reformism is “to disorganise the working class”. Just as to point out the fatal inadequacies of petty bourgeois nationalism is for Harpal Brar the equivalent of “condemning the foreign victims” in imperialism.
As both his “rigorous Marxist-Leninist analysis” of the British-Irish Agreement and his uncritical support for Scargill make abundantly clear, there is no place for the self-liberation of workers in comrade Brar’s ‘socialist’ master plan. According to his schema, the job of ‘communists’ is simply to follow the latest Great Leader - whether it be Gerry Adams, Arthur Scargill or JV Stalin.
Alan Fox