Letters

British-Irish

Jack Conrad’s ‘Theses on the British-Irish’ (Weekly Worker August 26) statement lacks clarity. I am forced, as is everyone else, to choose between, say, thesis 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”), and thesis 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”).

As Steve Riley pointed out in his thoughtful, extremely well argued, analysis of the questions posed by Jack Conrad - an article deserving far better than Conrad’s ill-considered, knee-jerk, dismissive response (Weekly Worker September 2, 9) - any support for thesis 15 would merely serve to justify a rejuvenated, leaner-meaner, version of the present-day institutionalised orange state. To offer support for this thesis is to identify communists with a reactionary state, one in no way preferable to the existing state, one distinguished from it only in having a far less precarious protestant majority, one, indeed, which could far more efficiently ethnically cleanse itself of troublesome republicans.

Some important, even relevant, points are made in thesis 16. Jack’s theses imply, or appear to imply, that a stable, voluntary and peaceful solution to the Irish question is possible within one, two, or more bourgeois republics of Ireland. What we have here is an example of naivety born of a theory of democracy incapable of distinguishing between bourgeois and proletarian rule. The reality is that the problem posed by the ‘British-Irish’ will remain a festering sore so long as the capitalist class have both the incentive and the resources to play the orange card.

Insofar as Jack insists that the borders of his (thus far) non-existent two Irish republics have to be determined by agreement with the population of the other zone, he is departing from the unconditional meaning of self-determination of nations attributed to it by his above-class revolutionary democracy. If to pass the Jack Conrad test for being a consistent democrat it is essential to endorse his thesis 15, it would be no less essential to support the right to an independent state for towns with a catholic majority trapped inside Jack’s new protestant state for a protestant people. And such a test would surely demand support for streets with a protestant majority trapped inside the catholic city-state enclave. That said, Jack’s theses do have much to commend them.

I have no problem in agreeing that if, within a victorious republican movement, there emerged an overwhelmingly powerful reactionary gang obsessed with exacting revenge against the protestant people as a people (in other words, a mirror image of loyalism) we would be presented with new problems. Theoretically, circumstances could, at some stage, dictate that communists champion a new independent state in the north of Ireland. Such a state would, though, be secular with equal rights for catholics and protestants, not a state with a permanently guaranteed protestant majority, a guarantee enshrined in thesis 15.

Tom Delargy
Paisley

Province of crisis

I have a number of comments on your article on Ireland (J Conrad Weekly Worker September 2). The first paragraph says, “Since Easter 1998 the situation in the Six Counties is best characterised as an unstable counterrevolutionary situation. Neither war nor peace.”

What is happening overall is progress. It is also an inevitable, essential step.

The agreement reduces violence and attempts to establish a level of democracy and hence accountability. It moves towards a situation where the governed determine how they are governed. The agreement creates stability and a degree of normalisation that we have not had in Northern Ireland since its establishment. It allows ordinary people to become involved in left-right, worker versus exploiter, politics.

In your penultimate paragraph you say, “We are for an immediate British withdrawal and reunification.” This is fine from the outside, but is completely useless as a practical, short-term programme for the workers’ movement inside Northern Ireland. This may well be the best long-term option. But that depends on the people. To get there we need stability and a level of democracy that allows these issues to be opened up in a way that does not threaten the interests of ordinary people, that cannot be manipulated and distorted by narrow sectarian forces.

The ups and downs you describe are important and interesting. They reflect the attempts, by people who want no compromise short of total victory for their side, to confuse and obstruct. The opposite forces to all this are within both sides and within the labour and socialist movement.

Why not support the overall process, show how it is in the ordinary people’s interest to advance democracy? The socialist and left movement has not been very good at using democracy. But that should not be used to dismiss any advance. We in Ireland intend to use the fight to win democratic freedoms to work for a just, fully democratic and socialist society. Whether within or without Britain or Ireland is not the central issue - although nor is it irrelevant. This is surely the way that the socialist movement would have seen things in its first years.

Alan Evans
Northern Ireland

Abstract?

Comrade Ian Donovan appears to suggest (Letters, September 9), that I no longer support the rights of nations to self-determination.

At no stage have I denied Kosova’s right to self-determination. However, as Lenin put it in The Discussion on self-determination summed-up of July 1916, “The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic world movement.” Does comrade Donovan deny that getting Nato out of the Balkans is a far larger part of “the general-democratic world movement” than supporting the KLA? This is especially the case since Kosovar self-determination is impossible without getting Nato out of the Balkans - something the KLA has never even suggested since Rambouillet.

Moreover, comrade Donovan says that “Hamilton counterposes to the Albanian national struggle ‘a multi-ethnic socialist federation without Milosevic, Nato and the KLA’. This is completely abstract and, in equating Milosevic with the KLA, baldly equates the nationalism of the oppressed with that of the oppressor.” At no stage have I counterposed the Albanian national struggle to a socialist federation, but I have argued that these two struggles should be interlinked, as “Only on the basis of breaking Serb nationalist illusions within the working class can Kosova be granted the self-determination it desires” (Letters, August 26). It is comrade Donovan who is making “abstract” calls when he calls for an independent Kosova through the KLA.

The principal reason for supporting Kosova’s right to self-determination is to get closer to my “abstract” aim of a “multi-ethnic socialist federation without Milosevic, Nato and the KLA”. It is not to set up a KLA-policed Nato protectorate. It seems that, rather than relying on the Yugoslav working class to save Kosova and the Balkans as a whole, comrade Donovan prefers to rely on the KLA, who in turn prefer to rely on Nato, rather than their various cheerleaders on the left such as comrade Donovan.

Ian Hamilton
Cambridgeshire

Legitimate

In my article last week (September 9) I made it clear that to actively call for Australian troops to intervene in the current situation in East Timor was a betrayal of independent working class politics.

The Democratic Socialist Party, in attempting to defend their opportunism - which amounts to social-imperialism - have claimed that they are placing a demand on the Australian government to ‘expose’ their connivance with the Indonesian military and its regime.

That Australian troops are now leading the UN expedition into East Timor - albeit after the Indonesian military has effectively destroyed Dili and massacred thousands of pro-independence East Timorese - has shown the DSP’s tactic to be utterly wrong. Nothing has been exposed.

This is not to say that communists refrain from placing demands on bourgeois governments - that would be pure ultra-leftism. In the current situation it is legitimate to demand that the Australian government immediately recognise East Timor’s independence. But to call on the Australian military to intervene (and effectively go to war with Indonesia) is to abandon Marxism and collapse into a desperate and defeatist liberalism (we cannot act, but ‘somebody’ should do ‘something’).

Marcus Larsen
South London

Proud

I would like to reply to comrade Logan (Letters, August 26). I am also a former member of the CPGB who joined in the 30s. But unlike comrade Logan I believe it had begun to change for the worse long before. However, the worst thing which happened was the adoption of The British road to socialism in 1950. I was still proud of my membership, even though I disagreed with more and more of its policies until it met its demise at the hands of the liquidators led by Nina Temple.

The problem of attracting youth is as old as the party itself, for without them there can be no future. I agree with our comrade when he says we must recruit within the trade union movement, but one must remember that not all union activists are even progressive, let alone communist-inclined. I am convinced the CPGB PCC endeavours to contact all parties to discuss the need for communist unity, within the framework of the party programme and, where such unity proves to be impossible, would try to find agreement for joint action on specific issues.

Ted Rowlands
Bishop Auckland

Very proud

I am an Italian 30 years old living in Rome. I am very proud that people like Mrs Melita Norwood still sustain their ideals! Please let me know if she needs economic support for legal defence. I read the story, a wonderful story of political ideals. I am young, but my father was a partisan during World War II, and such communist ideals are my daily task.

Sveva Morelli
Italy