26.08.1999

Ireland and the British-Irish

Party notes

Draft discussion theses presented by Jack Conrad

1. The majority of Protestants in Northern Ireland have throughout the 20th century constituted a labour aristocracy (a politico-economic category). They sought to preserve meagre privileges at the expense of Catholics, on the one hand by initiating and buttressing sectarian discrimination and on the other by appealing to the Northern Ireland and British states. However, Protestants are not simply a labour aristocracy. There is an undeniable historically established religious, ethnic and cultural dimension.

2. The British-Irish have inhabited what is now Northern Ireland since the 17th century. They were planted - from England, but mainly Scotland - to pacify the most rebellious parts of Ireland and hence “assure it to the crown”. Inevitably the settlers quickly diverged from their origins and formed another - hybrid - Irish identity. They stopped being Scottish or English. Yet in general they kept themselves against and apart from the Irish catholic majority. The million-strong British-Irish are therefore a historically constituted and distinct community of people.

3. The British-Irish were deliberately given special privileges over and against the native Irish. The catholic majority was subject to constant persecution as Catholics and denied elementary rights. As a result the Irish national question and British domination both took the form of religion. This has undergone constant change. The politics of the Cromwellian plantations are not those of modern Paisleyism. Nor are the politics of the Land League those of Sinn Féin.

4. In 17th century Ireland British-Irish Protestantism represented not a progressive alternative to catholic obscurantism, but British colonial domination. Nevertheless historically there is a progressive side to the protestant tradition in Ireland. Inspired by the ideals of revolutionary democracy, Protestants like Theobald Wolfe Tone and Feargus O’Connor fought against British domination and for Irish freedom. There have been more recent manifestations of protestant-catholic unity, but due to the unresolved national question they proved fleeting: e.g. the 1932 unemployed struggle in Belfast and the early stages of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s.

5. Protestant loyalism is fundamentally not loyalism to Britain and the British crown. It is loyalism to the privileges of the Protestants. In 1912-14 Edward Carson threatened to seek an alliance with Germany if the Liberals granted home rule to Ireland. Similar warnings issued forth from other loyalist leaders. In 1945 the Northern Ireland cabinet - needlessly worried by the newly elected Labour government and its social democratic promises - discussed a constitutional break with Britain. In 1974 the Ulster Workers’ Council general strike wrecked British government plans for a Northern Ireland settlement. In 1980 its main leader, Andy Tyrie, advocated Ulster independence.

6. Communists do not invent or exacerbate national or ethnic questions. Our aim is to overcome such conflicts and antagonisms according to the principles of consistent democracy so as to bring forward and heighten the class struggle. For us the key practical task is not defining nations against a lifeless check list. The British-Irish do not constitute a nation according to strict scientific criteria. But neither are they merely a religion or a population of rootless colonialists who, by implication, should return from whence they came. The British-Irish have a common history, territory and culture. That calls for a definite political solution.

7. There can be no right of present-day Northern Ireland to self-determination. The six-county statelet was founded in 1921 on the cynical basis of permanently institutionalising the oppression of the catholic-nationalist minority. We do not, and cannot, support the right of the British-Irish majority in the north to oppress the catholic-nationalist minority.

8. The British-Irish do not constitute a single reactionary mass. They are divided - above all by class. The task of communists is to split British-Irish workers from their misleaders and win them to the side of revolution and communism. There are no irredeemably reactionary peoples who should be denied rights. Such ideas are alien to the spirit of Marxism and human liberation.

9. We note that the newly-founded Soviet Republic included a Don Republic. The Soviet Republic was established as a “voluntary union of the peoples of Russia” - something Lenin thought “should fully reassure the Cossacks” (VI Lenin CW Vol 36, Moscow 1977, p472). The 1st Congress of the Soviets of the Don Republic, held over April 9-12 1918, “regarded the Don Republic as part of the RSFSR” and declared the “working Cossacks’ readiness to defend Soviet power” (VI Lenin CW Vol 42, Moscow 1977, p509n). The Cossacks were historically a privileged caste who provided the counterrevolutionary terror troops of tsarism.

10. The CPGB is for the immediate abolition of the United Kingdom, not expelling Northern Ireland from the union. We are for the immediate - i.e. unconditional - withdrawal of the British state and British troops from Northern Ireland. The CPGB fights for a federal republic in Britain of England, Scotland and Wales and a united Ireland.

11. In a united Ireland communists are for the maximisation of democracy and therefore working class leadership. There must be no discrimination against Protestants. They must be at liberty to practice their religion and encouraged to freely develop the progressive side of their culture. Concurrently there must be the right to make atheistic propaganda. Communists are for secularism and against denominational schools, colleges and other such institutions.

12. We note that in the early 1970s Sinn Féin adopted a programme, Eire Nua, which advocated a “federal Ireland”. This ignored the living cultural/ethnic divisions in contemporary Ireland, but sought to revive the “four historic provinces” - Connacht, Munster, Leinster and a nine-county Ulster. This singularly fails to address the objective British-Irish question in a democratic manner.

13. In general communists are for the organisation of the working class in the biggest, most centralised states. That by no means contradicts far-reaching measures of local autonomy. As a transitionary measure, however, we are prepared to accept or advocate federalism as a step towards the unity of people, in particular the unity of the working class.

14. In order to overcome present-day divisions in Ireland it is necessary to seriously address the British-Irish question and the legitimate fears of the protestant community. This can only be done through consistent democracy. A united Ireland established through a “voluntary union” of its peoples should “fully reassure” the British-Irish.

15. Communists must include in their programme for Ireland the demand for a federal solution whereby the area containing a clear British-Irish majority has the right of self-determination up to and including secession. This area forms a geographically coherent whole and includes county Antrim, north Tyrone, south Derry, north Armagh and north Down: ie, one county and four half-counties (there are catholic majorities in Fermanagh, south Tyrone, south Armagh, north Derry and south Down: ie, again one county and four half-counties). West Belfast also has 100,000 catholic-nationalists. In a united Ireland a federal solution would require new federal borders.

16. We note that in February 1918 Lenin and Stalin, the commissar for nationalities, argued that the “geographical boundaries” of the Don Republic “must be fixed by agreement with the population of the neighbouring zone and the autonomous republic of the Donets Basin” (VI Lenin CW Vol 36, Moscow 1977, p483). A similar approach ought to be adopted in Ireland when it comes to exact borders. Today we must concern ourselves with principles, not details.

17. There would, of course, still be a catholic-nationalist minority in the British-Irish part of the country. There would likewise be a British-Irish minority elsewhere in the Irish republic. We do not advocate a movement of population or ethnically ‘pure’ counties or half-counties. Whatever the religio-ethnic community, there must be full democratic rights for all citizens.

18. Are we for self-determination up to and including the right to secede for orangeism? No. Are we for such a right vis-à-vis Irish Protestants? No. Orangeism is a deeply reactionary and sectarian movement. Protestantism in Northern Ireland is an ethno-politico-religious category.

19. There can be no right of secession for political movements or religions as such. Suggestions to the contrary have more in common with anarchism than Marxism. National rights have to be attached to a distinct, significant and historically established territorial dimension.

20. Communists support the right of a British-Irish one county - four half-counties entity in a united Irish republic to self-determination, but argue against exercising that right in favour of secession. We favour voluntary unity and the growing together of the two traditions in Ireland on the basis of a common struggle for international socialism and world communism.