18.02.1999

‘Union’ Jack and defence of the ‘British nation’ - part 1

Allan Armstrong of the Red Republican faction of the SSP replies to ‘Unenlightened Myths’ (Weekly Worker November 19 1998)

‘Progress’ and the nation

So, the task of opposing the Communist Tendency and the Red Republicans has passed from Mark Fischer to Jack Conrad. Jack’s contribution to the debate on the national question in the UK largely consists of a two-millennium romp through British history, prefaced by an outline of Stalin’s Marxism and the national question.

Jack’s resort to Stalin’s theory of the nation forces him to adopt some of the notions of the high social democracy which developed in the heyday of imperialism. Most Second International social democrats viewed capitalism as progressive and socialism as inevitable. Each nation or “definite community of people” was brought about “by the dynamic of capitalism”. Acknowledging the social democratic provenance of Stalin’s theory, Jack states that “Karl Kautsky had a similar objective approach.” Thus, provided your nation passed the ‘objective’ test of being ‘historic’, there should be a one-directional movement towards a greater unity, which ‘objectively’ helped to create the basis for a socialist future. This notion has certainly given much succour both to the British Marxist and wider ‘Brit left’ traditions from Henry Hyndman, the SDF and Sidney Webb to the CPGB, Neil Kinnock and Tam Dalyell.

For Jack, nations cannot arise until there has been a sufficient development of the productive forces. Therefore nations can only be said to exist with the triumph of capitalism. The first weakness in Jack’s approach arises from his concentration on the ‘objective’ development of economic forces and his ditching any notion of dialectical contradiction expressed through class struggle. Jack’s method is more akin to the bourgeois materialist approach of Ernest Gellner and the neo-Second International Marxism of Eric Hobsbawm. Faced with this, it needs to be emphasised that nations and nationalism rise primarily due to political, not economic factors. Their fullest development comes about as a product of increasingly democratic practice connected with rising class struggle, which then leads to further growth in the scope of democratic and national ideas. Elements, which later contributed to fuller democracy and to modern nations, can be seen to have existed before capitalism became dominant.

Marxists and others have examined the notion of ‘primitive democracy’ associated with pre-state communal social systems. The Scottish historian, William Skene, in Celtic Scotland describes an example of this in the Outer Hebrides, still remaining in 1847. Land was tilled, sowed and reaped in common and the crops divided amongst the producers. This was all arranged through assemblies of the males in the township. Now, one of the features of communal societies is the integrated nature of what would later, with the development of a state, and even more so with the development of capitalist social relations, become separate economic and political arenas. The notion of democracy itself could not really develop until a separate political arena arose, so it was ‘unrecognised’ by its practitioners in communal societies. In retrospect, though, we can identify ‘primitive democratic’ aspects of this communal form of society.

Furthermore, when such societies are severely disrupted by external pressure, as occurred with the clearances, then the class struggles and political awareness arising from these can bring new life to previously socially embedded and undeclared ‘democratic’ practices. A new democracy, resulting from the mixing of the old and new, can arise. Such an occurrence partly inspired the Highland Land League, which itself gave impetus to the Scottish Labour Party’s first attempts to stand independent candidates against the Liberals in 1889.

Similarly, we can recognise democratic notions held in the class-divided medieval urban communes, by Scottish Presbyterians such as Knox and Buchanan in the 16th century, and by the English Republicans in the 17th century. Their notions of democracy (again, not always expressed as such) were limited by the social conditions of their time - yet are recognisable today nevertheless. Many Levellers entertained a notion of a small property-owning democracy consisting of yeomen and artisans. Some opposed the extension of the franchise to wage-workers because they were seen to be under the control of their masters. A similar argument of lack of independence, rooted in lack of property rights, was also used to deny women the vote. Despite such limitations, communists today should have little difficulty recognising the democratic character of the Levellers, in contrast to the military republican Caesarism of Cromwell, or the ‘divine right of kings’ notions held by the Stuart kings.

Similarly, the term ‘nation’, along with many other notions, which we would regard today as contributing to the modern idea of nations and nationalism, predate both full bourgeois democracy and the development of capitalism. It was with the advance of democratic ideas in the American and French Revolutions that the notion of a nation incorporating all the male citizens first took firm root. Of course, it took most of another century and more, long after capitalist social relations had been firmly established, for the franchise to be extended to all male and female citizens, or to previously excluded ethnic minorities, in most ‘advanced’ capitalist states. However, the wider influence of more democratic notions meant that the ideal nation could now incorporate all of its members (including women and children), before the franchise itself was more fully extended.

Today, of course, it is widely accepted that a ‘sovereign nation’ expresses its political will through having the fullest suffrage. For bourgeois democrats universal suffrage guarantees that the working class has a place and say in the running of society. Communists, however, say that such bourgeois democracy disguises the real political relations which exist in a class-divided society. Democracy can only exist when these class divisions are fundamentally addressed.

Despite the limits of the bourgeois understanding of democracy, there can be little doubt that there is a close link between the idea of a wider franchise and the idea of a nation which incorporates all its citizens. It is the vote which makes you a full citizen of the nation. This is central to most versions of developed or modern nationalism, even if the nationalists themselves do not always adhere in practice to the fullest tenets of bourgeois democracy. However, neither universal suffrage nor modern nationalism suddenly emerged out of nowhere, with the triumph of capitalism.

There is a second problem with Jack’s approach. The “dynamic of capitalism” was not an inevitable outcome of history and was and remains constantly contested. Even in those parts of the British Isles, where capitalism developed out of an internal dynamic and was not imposed from without, there were other possible outcomes. Communal and freehold land was long defended by the peasantry, whilst artisans long resisted waged labour under direct capitalist supervision. Furthermore, despite the disparaging put-downs of those advocates of the ‘inevitable’ and ‘progressive’ development of capitalism, the resistance offered by peasants and artisans was not always a conservative defence of the existing order. The Levellers and the Diggers; the various United and Corresponding Societies in Ireland, Scotland and England; and the Chartists - all fought to achieve new social orders, which, to different extents, represented real historical alternatives to the capitalism which did emerge.

Jack’s theory, however; needs capitalism to ‘objectively’ emerge, and to open up the road to ‘progress’, as much as the nationalists need their nation-states to emerge ‘naturally’. This presents Jack with further problems when dealing with pre-capitalist societies. For it seems central to Jack’s understanding that only the development of larger economic units can provide the basis for capitalism and its nation-states later in history. By ignoring the actual class struggles which did take place in pre-­capitalist societies, Jack has to look for other bearers of historical ‘progress’. In particular he is looking for “revolutionary centralisers” such as Edward I, ‘Hammer of the Scots’!

If we are examining societies which offered some possibility of ‘progress’ in the Middle Ages, it certainly was not the dynastic empires, whether Plantagenet, Hapsburg or Capetian. The most ‘advanced’ societies of the period were to be found in the city states of northern Italy, in Flanders and later in the Hanseatic League. These cities, which were major production and trading centres, faced both intense class struggles within and attempts by surrounding feudal magnates and empires to subordinate them and impose a fully feudal order. Many of these cities preserved their political independence for several centuries. Their richness, productivity and command of resources gained through trade (and sometimes plunder), allowed them to hold off the power of seemingly much vaster feudal-imperial states. These conflicts were prolonged and many city states did succumb, as the dynastic empires grew in size, enabling them to field much larger armies. Wherever these dynastic empires succeeded in overthrowing independent cities, progress was halted and society pushed back. A possible alternative path of social development was aborted.

However, it was not only in the major city-states that such resistance to the feudal dynasts took place. In some areas, like Switzerland and Scotland, urban centres were relatively close to rural societies where feudalisation either had not yet penetrated deeply, or was still being contested, whether by a free peasantry or those still involved in more patriarchal communal production.

Jack’s support for “revolutionary centralisers”, like Edward I, puts him in direct opposition to those contemporaneous heroic struggles led by the William Wallace in Scotland, Pieter de Coninck in Flanders and William Tell in Switzerland. William Wallace, a minor non-noble landholder, led an army of mainly foot soldiers, backed by urban burgesses, against the feudal host of Edward I. The new schiltron military formation he pioneered, with its tight blocks of foot soldiers, projecting long pikes from every side, proved capable of dealing with attacks by the previously undefeatable medieval ‘panzer divisions’ - the mounted feudal lords and knights. At Stirling Bridge in 1297, Wallace’s army provided a similar upset to the arrogant feudal order as Pieter de Coninck’s weaver pikemen did at Courtrai in 1302 and the Swiss foresters and their urban allies did at Morgarten in 1315.

Nor is it necessary to place William Wallace in an unbroken nationalist tradition. Communists do, however, champion those heroic struggles which were the product of resistance to the tyranny of the day and which strove, within the limitations of the period, for a wider idea of freedom. Hence our admiration for Spartacus, Wat Tyler, the Hussites, Anabaptists, Levellers and many others who have filled this role in the past.

Despite what Jack appears to believe, William Wallace was not a Norman lord. Braveheart may indeed be largely “Hollywood hokum”, but enjoyable nevertheless. However, the one unremitting message that comes across is Scottish commoner hostility to the feudal nobility. Neither is it Patrick McGoohan’s wonderfully portrayed Edward I of England who appears most sinister. This role is reserved for the completely unprincipled Scottish feudal lord, the elder Bruce. The treacherous role of Robert the Bruce, at the Battle of Falkirk, is also portrayed. Bruce then represented the interests of feudal lords with land in both Scotland and England, who were fearful of the growing resistance of the commoners. Furthermore, unlike the Scottish feudal host, which merely agreed to new terms of submission, after being thoroughly defeated by Edward I at Dunbar in 1296, William Wallace and his allies fell back once more on a guerrilla war after the defeat at Falkirk in 1298. In the end it was the Scottish nobles who betrayed Wallace to Edward, handing him over for torture and execution. Despite some amusing historical anachronisms and colourful alterations in location, even Braveheart has a sounder grasp of the class issues at stake than Jack.

Jack finally attempts to dismiss the whole affair by quoting the academic historian, Michael Lynch: “The celebrated Declaration of Arbroath acquired its status of a surrogate Scottish constitution only in modern times.” The Declaration of Arbroath was written in 1320, long after the death of Wallace, at a time when the war against the kings of England was firmly back in the hands of Robert the Bruce, now king, and the feudal nobility of Scotland. We can agree that this Declaration includes only the most embryonic and limited idea of the ‘nation’, and more importantly excluded most commoners - the peasantry and artisans. Furthermore, it was in no way inevitable that a Scottish nation or nationalism would develop. But Jack is wrong about the date and circumstances which led to the re-emergence of the Declaration of Arbroath from its long period of relative historical obscurity. It was resurrected by Sir James Mackintosh in his Vindiciae Gallicae, written in 1791 to defend the French Revolution in the face of Edmund Burke’s attack!

However, if we turn to William Wallace, he provided a constant inspiration both to the ‘lower orders’ in Scotland, and to later struggles for freedom, whether democratic, national or international. Blind Harry’s Wallace was written about 1477 and appeared in 23 printed editions up to the Act of Union in 1707. It was translated and adapted by William Gilbertfield in 1722 and became the most commonly owned book in Scotland after the bible. Rewritten as a novel by Jane Porter in 1810, it was translated into French, German and Russian, but banned by Napoleon as too subversive! The legacy of Wallace was very much an influence in the period of the Great Revolutions following from 1789. Burns, Wordsworth, Lord Byron and others were inspired by his example. Burns anthem, Scots wha’ hae’ wi’ Wallace bled,became an alternative anthem to the Marseillaise and was sung by black Cato Street conspirator, Davidson, as he was escorted away by the Bow Street Runners in 1820. Ten thousand Scottish democrats had also marched in 1815 to Wallace’s first battlefield in Ayrshire.

It is wrong to try and project modern democratic and national ideas back into the times of Wallace. There is no unilinear or inevitable outcome to history and nation-states may well not have arisen. However, as democratic struggles did indeed widen their scope and fuse increasingly with nation-building, it is important that we can appreciate the significant class struggles and historical turning points in history, which allowed for the possibility of new social and political developments.

Thus, although Jack does make the point that “nations come into existence and will certainly go out of existence”, his commitment to Stalin’s social democratic theory leads him astray. For, although Stalin’s theory appears to allow for a more dialectical approach, through the introduction of an historical element in the make-up of the ‘nation’, this is vitiated by his view that capitalism was historically ‘inevitable’ and represented the only ‘progressive’ option in history prior to socialism. We have already seen how Jack has to resort to “revolutionary centralisers” to prepare the ground for capitalism. However, once firmly established, the ‘objective’ “dynamics of capitalism” eliminate all contradictions and begin to chalk up Stalin’s ideal checklist characteristics of the nation one by one. Furthermore, in contrast to the nationalists, Jack also sees these ‘objective’ “dynamics of capitalism” going further and preparing the ground for superseding the nation and nation-state under socialism.

Now, in this view Jack is not alone. An increasing number of neo-liberal, ‘free’ market advocates of the new global economy and the New World Order view the continued development of capitalism (albeit ‘post-industrial’) as inevitably bringing about the merging of states and of peoples. They believe that their new capitalist economy, based on transnational corporations and the widespread use of information technology and linked through the worldwide web, will finally bring about ‘the global village’. So blinkered are these ideologues that they leave unexplained the formation of at least a dozen new states in Europe since 1991.

But there are also Marxist adherents in the ‘capital logic’ school who echo this theme. For, if you abstract the development of capitalist social relations from the actual state and social formations within which they developed, there is no apparent reason why capitalism should not create a genuinely global economy with a single global political centre. However, capitalism did not develop on the basis of its own logic, but out of the contradictions of already existing pre-capitalist social systems. Furthermore, this development began in a number of independent centres and developed at different rates.

Although a global market was created relatively quickly from the 16th century, a single integrated global capitalist production system has still not been developed. Imperialist competition remains the key characteristic of the current world economy. Capitalism also coexisted and continues to coexist with non-capitalist relations of production - slave, bonded, domestic, artisan and peasant labour, even if it has increased its power to subordinate these to its needs. It is this historically multi-centred, combined and uneven development of capitalism and its associated class struggle which largely account for the increased number of new states and the advance of some nations along with the decline of others. Furthermore, only conscious class struggle can lead to the superseding of nation-states.

Although Jack never makes it explicit, he is right in assuming we need some idea of ‘progress’. However, if the notion of ‘progress’ is based on the development of the forces of production and their greater centralisation, it will become totally disconnected with any idea of human emancipation. Liberal theorists used to champion the European colonisation (read conquest) of North America, which they claimed paved the way for the ‘advanced’ capitalism found in the USA. The ‘small matter’ of genocide was largely ignored. Indeed, it is not so long since some western historians attributed the greater economic development of states like the USA and Canada, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay to the relative ‘absence’ of American Indians, compared to countries like Mexico and Peru!

However, it was not only liberal economic theorists who defined progress by the degree of development of productive forces. As hundreds of thousands were sent to labour camps, or were shot or deliberately starved of food and shelter, in Stalin’s USSR, many socialists turned a blind eye and looked on in admiration at the growing tonnage of coal and steel produced. Such notions of ‘progress’ cannot lead to human emancipation.

Worse still, if some continue to see external conquest as a legitimate contribution to human ‘progress’, it also follows that, if the ‘ruined fragments’, represented by remnant crushed peoples, are not to remain a constant reservoir of ‘backwardness’ or possible source of support for reaction, then the best ‘solution’ is complete genocide! There are plenty of precedents for such actions, whether the elimination of the Guanches in the Canaries by the Spanish or the Caribs in the West Indies and numerous native American peoples by the Spanish, English, British and white Americans. And it is not only in Africa, Latin America and Asia that such notions of ‘salvation’, ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’ held sway. They have informed the extremes of Ulster loyalism, white supremacism in the USA and Serb Chetnik actions in Bosnia and Kosova. These notions have not just contributed to the actions of the far right. During World War II Stalin practised genocide against the Crimean Tartars. And, in order to build up a wider base of support in central Europe for his invading Red Army, Stalin actively encouraged Czechs and others to physically eliminate Germans living in ‘their’ territories. Germans were now, in effect, relegated to ‘unhistoric’ pariah status, because they had succumbed to the Nazis.

Recently, the growing heroic resistance and consequent cultural and political re-emergence of the still remaining native American peoples has forced a new questioning of the baleful legacy of ‘progress’ externally enforced by conquest. In Mexico, the Zapatista movement, for example, has directly confronted the political agents of the transnational corporations and their US imperialist-sponsored ‘multinational’ Nafta. Such developments highlight the need to jettison some of the outdated notions of ‘progress’.

We have to look instead to whether historical progress led to greater real freedom or not. The key distinction, therefore, is whether new social relations were the result of attempts to resolve internal class contradictions arising out of pre-capitalist or only partly capitalist conditions, or whether they were imposed by conquest. The former was certainly the case in England and parts of Scotland. In other areas, capitalist relations were sharply imposed from without. This was true of much of the capitalist development of the Highlands and Ireland, and of course in the Americas, following the suppression of the communal production relations there, in the aftermath of Columbus. Capitalism, which develops out of internal domestic contradictions, may indeed be progressive in comparison with its preceding social system. Although once again it has to be remembered that many of those struggling to overcome these contradictions did not have capitalism as their ideal. However, capitalism which has been imposed by conquest is not progressive.

The idea of progress has become closely linked to the idea of ‘historic’ nations first put forward by Georg Hegel. Marx and Engels were initially deeply affected by this legacy. Engels, in particular, was vehement in his denunciation of the role of the “ruined fragments of peoples”, the “unhistoric peoples” utilised by reaction to crush the German and Hungarian Revolutions in 1848. The Ukrainian Marxist, Roman Rosdolsky, in his Engels and the ‘non-historic’ peoples,however, has exposed the role of middle class German and Hungarian nationalism in these revolutions. The mainly middle class revolutionaries failed to champion the cause of the downtrodden peasantry of central and Eastern Europe. This was the real cause of the mainly Slav peasantry’s shift into the arms of the counter­revolution.

Furthermore, as the centre of gravity of revolution moved increasingly eastwards in the 19th century, the same peasantry became increasingly revolutionary and “unhistoric peoples” became ‘historic’. In addition, Russia, an undoubted ‘historic’ nation, but which for Marx and Engels had previously represented an undifferentiated block of deep reaction, later became the very epicentre of revolution. Marx and Engels, later in life, were already registering these changes and modifying their theories of national development accordingly. By the end of the century Kautsky was also viewing the role of Slavs, such as the Czechs, positively. But the earlier enlightenment and liberal notions, particularly of certain “unhistoric peoples” when applied to colonial non-white Africa, the Americas and Asia, made a deep impression on Second International social democracy. These notions were later absorbed uncritically by certain schools of Marxism.

Now, if “unhistoric peoples” can become ‘historic’ under the impact of particular class struggles, it also follows, unless you hold to a single unilinear view of ‘progress’, that apparent ‘historic’ nations can become ‘unhistoric’. The key to determining such shifts lies in the changing nature of the class struggle within the particular nation. It is this class struggle-based view that helps us to understand the development of the UK state, British empire and rise of the ‘British nation’. It also enables us to appreciate the decline of the British empire, UK state and the likely impending demise of Jack’s ‘British nation’.

It is significant that in Jack’s excursion through “Britannic” history from the “withdrawal of the Roman legions in the fifth century” to the Tory “opposition to Irish home rule”, class struggle is virtually absent. When class is allowed to intrude into Jack’s unfolding great “Britannic” pageant, there is only one class imposing its will. When conflicts do occur, they are only the ‘family’ concerns of the dominant class of the time: between “rival feudal interests” in the 14th century or “religio-dynastic struggle between Stuarts and Hanoverians” in the 17th and 18th centuries. Ironically, this is also the view of nationalist historians - it is just that, in the case of Scotland, they support the other side in these ‘family’ quarrels! Jack supports “revolutionary centraliser” Edward I, whilst nationalists support Robert the Bruce; Jack supports William of Orange and the Hanoverians, whilst the nationalists support the Jacobites - James VII and Bonnie Prince Charlie.

By failing to adopt a class struggle-based view, Jack once more finds himself looking for ‘objective’ structures and ‘motors’ to build and drive his ‘British nation’. The underlying social democratic theory Jack adopts continues to take its toll. He resorts to an undeclared geographical determinism to conjure up “a common territory of Britain”. Thus, going back to the dim mists of history, he declares that, “A Britannic approach which accounts for the existence of many overlapping cultures is far more accurate and rewarding” than the “traditionally academic historiography [which] has been taught within an invented ‘national’ paradigm”.

The problem with Jack’s “Britannic approach” is that this is just about as restricting as the nationalist approach he opposes. In reality, Jack is not offering an alternative to a nationalist approach. He is just anticipating a bigger nation - the ‘British nation’ - to develop his view of history. So whilst the “revolutionary centralisers” are carrying out the task of building the preconditions for capitalism, Jack introduces us to the iron necessity of geography, the “Britannic approach” to create the preconditions for the ‘British nation’.

Roman Britannia was merely a peripheral province of a much larger Roman empire, the history of which cannot be understood without taking this much larger area into consideration. Furthermore, Roman Britannia never encompassed the whole of ‘Britain’, never mind the British Isles. When it comes to the age of invading “Germanic cultures”, once again “a Britannic approach” divides the two sides of the North Sea where these “Germanic cultures” developed. Temporary Northumbrian advances notwithstanding, “Germanic” advances left the majority of geographical Scotland and Ireland virtually untouched. Similar problems arise when it comes to the Scandinavians. None of the Scandinavian kingdoms covered the whole of the British Isles. Some were independent of the original Scandinavian homeland, whilst others formed part of the wider kingdoms of Norway and Denmark. And despite nearly being overwhelmed, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom held out in Wessex, an amalgamated Scots-Pictish kingdom formed in Alba, and also various Welsh and Irish petty kingdoms and lordships survived the Viking onslaught.

Exactly the same problem emerges with the Normans. Along with their Angevin, Plantagenet, Lancastrian, Yorkist and Tudor successor kingdoms, their territories always, to different extents, crossed the English Channel. What was the Hundred Years War about? - did royal fortunes in France not have a considerable bearing on developments on the kingdoms of England and Scotland?

Furthermore, the fact that Norman knights were invited by the Gaelic King David of Scotland to help him impose a feudal system meant that the paths of state development diverged in England and Scotland. England was conquered and the English language did not become official there until the 14th century, French remaining the official court language till then. Serfdom was greatly extended. Most Normans moving to Scotland were absorbed into a Gaelic-speaking ruling class, which in many areas was based on communal landholding. It was only later that this ruling class increasingly adopted the Scots English developing in the new urban centres. Feudal serfdom was mainly restricted to this area. In Ireland, many of the ‘old English’ or Norman conquerors ‘went native’, becoming Gaelic speakers living beyond the shrinking English-speaking pale. Feudalism withered and retreated.

Furthermore, Jack’s description of “a common experience across the British Isles” could be termed somewhat euphemistic, given the conquest of Wales by Edward I, the Scottish Wars of Independence for over a century and the ruthless Tudor wars to conquer Ireland. Wars may well be common experiences to both sides involved, but they do not usually promote brotherhood and unity! Despite this, we can still agree that our present-day arrangements of ‘England’, ‘Scotland’, ‘Wales’ and ‘Ireland’ are accidental results of feudal marriage-bed deals, the fortunes of war and the continuation of the monarchical system. But then the present-day arrangements of most other nations or states in most of Europe have similar pasts, even if some have later become republics.

Jack’s whole method though prevents him from understanding both the emergence and decline of the ‘British nation’ he wants to uphold and the distinctive English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish nations he wants to deny. Jack makes the quite reasonable point that, “Neither Scotland, nor England, nor Wales were ever nations in the sense of having a unique common language, economic life and culture.” However, the impact of his argument is somewhat lessened when he goes on to state: “They were as much divided as Britain as a whole.” So bang goes his British ‘nation’ too! To fully understand their development, you have to look wider than the British Isles and to unfolding class struggles, which gave each of these nations their changing form.

However, even as we approach more modern times, when a recognisable UK state and British ruling class begins to emerge, the “Britannic approach” still fails. The “British nation” which Jack wants to uphold has rarely ever been coincident with the geographical area of Britain or the British Isles. Large areas of Ireland, separated by sea, were part of a joint kingdom with England and Wales long before Scotland, linked by land, joined to form the United Kingdom. This newly created UK, sometimes labelled the three kingdoms, first promoted English, Scottish and Irish settlement and later, after the Unions of the Parliaments, British settlement, in colonies around the world.

The struggle to create an independent United States of America, in the 18th century still left behind the colony of Canada, formed by those who wished to remain British subjects. Well into this century, a remnant British identification has been a barrier to the creation of an Australian republic. And, of course, there are still many in the ‘Six Counties’, who would insist on their British nationality today, in continuing disregard for Conrad’s “common territory”! British identity remains stronger in the ‘Six Counties’, albeit within one section of the population, than in today’s Scotland. And, whether the UK was involved with colonial America and Australia, or remains involved with Ireland or Scotland, there has undoubtedly been a developed “common economic life”. So perhaps Jack should have sided with George III as a “revolutionary centraliser” and opposed American independence too!

Nor is this just a question of past history. It even mars the otherwise very good Socialist Unity platform for the North Defoe council by-election. The platform clearly states that, although “the peoples of Scotland and Wales must have the right to self-determination”, this “does not mean that socialists stand for the break-up of the UK”! Leaving aside the differences between the Communist Tendency and the CPGB-PCC on the exercising of the right of self-determination for Scotland and Wales, does the CPGB-PCC really want to support a United Kingdom? Whatever happened to the ‘federal republic’? Furthermore, since the UK state also incorporates the ‘Six Counties’, does that mean the CPGB-PCC has abandoned the struggle for Irish unity and now supports the partition of Ireland?

And Jack thinks we are being “rather hysterical” when condemning the ‘Brit left’! Did John Bridge, writing as the CPGB-PCC delegate to the IRSP conference, in the same issue of Weekly Worker (January 7), inform the assembled Irish republican socialists that they should now accept partition and British rule? Perhaps this follows logically from their living in the ‘British Isles’. And how much longer before the CPGB-PCC raises the demand for the ‘Twenty Six Counties’ to join the UK too, in the interests of a truly ‘Britannic approach’?!