16.09.1999
CPGB aggregate: British-Irish divisions
The September aggregate of the CPGB, held in London on September 12, dealt with two subjects in addition to routine business. First on the agenda were two motions submitted by the Provisional Central Committee dealing with attendance and conduct at Party meetings. Then the bulk of the day was devoted to a long, intense, and productive debate on the draft discussion theses on ‘Ireland and the British-Irish’, written by comrade Jack Conrad and published in the Weekly Worker (August 26).
The first of the PCC’s motions was passed unanimously after very little discussion and dealt with the need to ensure a full “attendance at all sessions of our annual summer school, the Communist University”. The second motion upheld the “right to heckle at CPGB meetings”, but stressed that there is no right to “disrupt a meeting”.
Comrade Jack Conrad introduced the debate on his draft theses. As predicted in ‘Party notes’ (Weekly Worker September 9), the debate was part of an ongoing process of clarification, and the theses themselves were not in the end put to the vote. Several amendments were proposed and debated: all were overwhelmingly defeated. But the process of debating the theses was not completed. Some comrades said they wanted to discuss the theses further at future meetings, and the chair suggested that the item be continued at the next aggregate.
Comrade Conrad had insisted on having separate votes on each of the 20 theses. He expressed the hope that comrades would vote for those they agreed with and submit amendments to those they opposed. In that way areas of disagreement would be highlighted and invention avoided.
One such misrepresentation is, he said, the claim that the theses argue for a redivided Ireland. Comrade Conrad reiterated that he stands for a united Ireland. Communists believe in the largest possible states organised on democratic centralist lines as a prelude to the dying away of all states. But unity - if it is to be “subordinate to the struggle for socialism” - has to be voluntary. It must not be imposed on an historically established people by force. Our call for Irish unity is not motivated by vicarious Irish nationalism, or simply by a desire to see British imperialism suffer political and military defeat if the cost of this would be fratricidal civil war between the dichotomised communities of Ireland. Rather, we wish to create the best possible conditions for the voluntary union of peoples and thus the working class.
Among the most vocal opponents of the Conrad theses during discussions at Communist University ’99 last month was a former CPGB member, comrade Steve Riley, who attempted to “trash” the theses in Weekly Worker September 2. His co-thinkers took up the cudgels against comrade Conrad at the aggregate. In light of the Conrad theses comrades in Manchester have begun a special study of the Irish question in their seminars. One of the Manchester comrades, Peter Smithy, declared that he was willing to be convinced, as he could see there may be some merit in the theses. But he could not at the moment agree with the conclusions they logically led to. He thought the Party was heading down a dangerous path. The comrade said opponents of the theses do not support the current 26-county state, which is reactionary, or wish to deny democratic rights to orangemen, protestants, or anybody else. But he believed that during a revolutionary upheaval it would be possible to win the protestant working class to a united Ireland without needing to offer them the retrograde step of forming an independent state.
Another strong opponent of the Conrad theses, comrade John Pearson, tried to show that the theses contradict comrade Conrad’s earlier position on the Irish question, by quoting at length from the supplements by comrade Conrad published in The Leninist in 1984, which discussed the question of nationality in Ireland. Comrade Pearson stated that, as loyalism defines itself through the oppression of Catholics, a British-Irish state that did not oppress the substantial minority within it is impossible. He argued that, while comrade Conrad may not be advocating a repartition of Ireland, he is countenancing such a division, which could never be democratic or progressive. Further, he insisted that all contemporary issues should be looked at primarily though the lens of class, not democracy. He denied the claims by comrade Conrad and his co-thinkers that Lenin insisted that democracy must be the primary consideration, quoting a sentence from The socialist revolution and the rights of nations to self-determination written in 1916:
“The proletariat can retain its independence only by subordinating its struggle for all democratic demands, not excluding the demand for a republic, to its revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.”
Several comrades sympathetic to the Conrad theses denied that anything from 1984 contradicts what is being put forward now. Comrade Tina Becker claimed that there is a development from the past in that we are taking a step forward. Comrade Marcus Larsen declared he was moving closer to Conrad’s position, and said he was disturbed by the first sentence of comrade Riley’s reply (Weekly Worker September 2), which mentions “strategies for neutralising Ulster unionists”, if by that what was meant was the working class British-Irish. We should go beyond “neutralising” them, comrade Larsen said, and try to win them. But, he went on, comrade Pearson was right in saying self-determination does have to be subordinated to socialism - even though the comrade does not understand what that actually means. The struggle by communists for a united Ireland is not a thing in itself. Moreover if the protestant majority in a one-county, four-half-counties British-Irish province insisted on oppressing Catholics through Paisleyism, etc, then the organised working class movement would be correct to defend the Catholics using whatever suitable means are available.
Comrade Peter Manson said that what should be neutralised is loyalism as a political force and, as Lenin said, the more you champion a people’s right to secede, the less likely they are to exercise it. Comrade Manson’s main disagreement with the theses, which was shared by some other comrades, was that thesis 15 is too specific about the exact area which should have the right to self-determination. He and others suggested amendments making the proposed area less definite. These were put to the vote but none were carried.
Replying to the debate, comrade Conrad reiterated that, as the British-Irish are a distinct people, to deny them democratic rights, including the right to secede, would run counter to the interests of socialism as the self-liberation of the working class - to which every democratic demand, including the unity of Ireland, must be subordinated. He said that imposing freedom on people leads to unfreedom and bureaucratic socialism. He commented that it is therefore totally logical that comrades who defend the bureaucratic system of the USSR under Stalin are by and large the same comrades who oppose a democratic programme for Ireland. He urged comrades to study the theses carefully and be ready to amend and vote on them all separately at the next aggregate, in order to take the debate forward.
Mary Godwin