28.10.1999

Confused and inconsistent democracy

Allan Armstrong of the Scottish Socialist Party and Republican Communist Network slams the CPGB’s position on the British-Irish

Despite the awe in which Jack Conrad is held by the producers of the Weekly Worker, to others his ‘British-Irish’ therapy appears like a quack remedy.

The first thing which needs examining is Conrad’s diagnosis of the origins of the ‘British-Irish’, “an historically constituted and distinct community of people”.

“The British-Irish have continuously inhabited parts of what is Northern Ireland since the early 17th century. They were settled in Antrim and Down as a mass of ‘strong farmers’ - from England, but mainly from Scotland - to pacify the most rebellious part of Gaelic and Anglo-Irish Ireland and hence ensure it for an absolutist British monarchy that had redefined itself according to its nationalised version of Protestant-ism: ie, Anglicanism” (Weekly Worker September 9).

So, let us begin by examining these claims of a continuous British-Irish identity going back to the 17th century. There is considerable confusion here, both theoretically and historically. Conrad denies the existence of any manifestations of nation or nationality at such an early period as the early 17th century - well, except when it suits him. He has dismissed fellow therapist Dave Craig, in the Weekly Worker (September 23). Craig’s “whole approach reeks of petty nationalism” because he has the temerity to suggest that there may be such things as “English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish nations”. To Conrad these are nothing other than “crude Victorian inventions, designed to mystify the past and divide the working class.” Yet fully two centuries before, Conrad has the presumably ‘non-national’ Scottish and English settlers “quickly stop[ping] being Scottish or English as they formed another - hybrid - Irish [nationality] identity” (Weekly Worker September 9).

If Conrad can push his chosen ‘British-Irish’ nationality back to the 17th century, he cannot convincingly attack others who point out, with a lot more justification, that the English and Scottish had many of the features of a nationality, and England and Scotland many of the features of a nation, during the same period. The notion and reality of nationality (a cultural group) and nation (the people in a given territorial area) arose alongside each other, with nation states becoming the dominant political form as capitalism extended its influence.

Indeed, it was precisely the strength of national identity, already reached in Scotland by the end of the 17th century, which ensured that the United Kingdom, formed by the 1707 Act of Union, was a union state which recognised the existence of subordinate nations. The UK was not a federal state like the future USA or a unitary state like post-revolutionary France, neither of which recognised other national constituents. The union state form was further underscored at the time Ireland joined the UK under the 1801 Act of Union, because of the still remaining strength of national feeling, despite the defeat of the 1798 United Irish Rising. Therefore we can see that the UK state form preserved the English, Scottish and Irish nations (all at different stages of development) within it, and even allowed the emergence of a new Welsh nation, Wales having previously ‘disappeared’ as a political unit, under the 1535 Act of Union.

Certainly a nationalist or quasi-nationalist intelligentsia did develop strongly in Victorian times, peddling all sorts of national myths, but the real reason for the increasing political re-emergence of Irish, Scottish and Welsh nations was the extension of the franchise to the ‘lower orders’. They felt these national identities more strongly than the Welsh gentry or the Scottish and Irish landlords and merchants, who had acquiesced with different degrees of enthusiasm to the respective union treaties and helped eventually to form a real British ruling class.

What of Conrad’s ‘British-Irish’, with “antecedents” going back to the 17th century? There was no British ‘nation’ (never mind ‘British-Irish’) in the 17th century. ‘Britain’, under the union of the crowns of 1603, was a dynastic term, which did not extend to Ireland. With separate parliaments and churches in England and Scotland, most people would then have described themselves as English or Scots (or belonging to particular denominations, localities or even kindreds), but not British.

Next we have to deal with Conrad’s poor history. Those in Ulster who came from Scotland were very mixed. Gaelic-speaking Macdonnells from Scotland’s western islands and Kintyre had long been settled in Antrim, and along with the ‘native Irish’ Gaels had eliminated Norman lordly and later English kingly control in this area. Far from considering themselves British, they were hardly reconciled to thinking themselves as Scottish, seeing no contradiction in having a continuous Gaelic-speaking realm stretching across the North Channel.

When lowland Scots were first planted in County Down, it was as part of a deal which involved the king, the undertakers (those licensed to ‘plant’) and the local Irish Gaelic lord, Conn O’Neill. However, as their numerical strength grew, the rapacious undertakers and merchants either displaced the ‘native Irish’ or forced them into servitude. The Scottish settlers these undertakers brought across were a mixture of Presbyterians (including Gaelic-speaking Campbells), potentially troublesome Catholic recusants and very definitely troublesome Border outlaws, who were forcibly transplanted (or fled) once James VI had blocked their usual escape route into England, through the Union of the Crowns. Far from quickly forming a “British-Irish” identity”, some of these Scots intermarried and merged with the Irish. The majority, however, did form a distinct, but largely Scotch-Irish Presbyterian culture, which was often in opposition to the union state, and in particular to the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland.

Furthermore, just as there was some absorption of Scottish settlers by the ‘native Irish’, so there were conversions of ‘native Irish’ to Presbyterianism and intermixing of the descendants of Scots and English settlers in Ulster too. And of course, as the penal laws against Catholics took their toll after 1690, there was widespread ‘native Irish’ conversion to Anglicanism (since Presbyterians in Ireland still suffered political disabilities) and changing of Irish names to English forms. The myth of the longstanding division between the “Protestant-British-Irish minority” and the Catholic Irish can be illustrated by looking at the very Scottish (and English) surnames of Danny Morrison, John Hume and Gerry Adams on the Irish nationalist side and the very Irish surnames of former Stormont premier Sir Terence O’ Neill, current Ulster Unionist spokesperson Ken Maginnis and Lenny Murphy, the ‘Shankhill Butcher’, on the British, Ulster Unionist and loyalist side! The lines Conrad wants to draw are not so hard and fast, and there has been plenty of change-over in identity, not just the stable ‘British Irish’ community Conrad claims.

When the revolutionary pulse in Europe quickened in the late 18th century, many of the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish, still remaining in Ulster, joined with numbers of the dissenter Anglo-Irish, a small but significant number of the Anglican Anglo-Irish and large numbers of Catholic Irish to form the republican United Irishmen. The Irish nation became politically visible. It was at precisely this time that the hybrid identity of ‘British-Irish’ really emerged in opposition to the revolutionary challenge of the United Irishmen and to the united nation (people) of Ireland.

The initially Anglican-led Orange Order opened its ranks to Presbyterians, the better to create a common British sectarian front. The revolutionary Irish faced the counterrevolutionary British-Irish. It was the defeat of the former which led to the wholesale shift amongst the majority of Irish Protestants towards a ‘British-Irish’ identity in the 19th century. However, even significant numbers of the better-off Catholics adopted this identity too, at the official urging of their church. The Catholic church wanted them politically mobilised, not just to abolish any remaining penal laws, but to remove the political and economic disabilities their co-religionists still faced ‘on the mainland’.

Therefore, during the 19th century, British-Irish identity was not synonymous with Protestantism, but enjoyed Catholic Irish support, with largely Catholic Irish regiments in the British army building the empire. But old class divisions still remained strong enough for the British-Irish to be divided for much of the century between Whig and old Liberal on one side and Tory and Conservative on the other. When the widening franchise permitted the ‘lower orders’ to vote, these political alignments were increasingly displaced by the division between Irish Home Rule Party and the Irish Unionists. Yet some Protestant Irish supported Irish home rule in opposition to the large Protestant (and small and declining Catholic) majority of British-Irish who supported direct British rule from Westminster.

The high point of the British-Irish coincided with the heyday of the British Empire between 1850 and the 1880s. From then on two new challenges began to have a mass influence. The longer-term influence of the revolutionary Fenians, combined with the extension of the franchise first to the male ‘lower orders’, led to Irish nationality displacing this relatively new ‘British-Irish’ nationality, primarily, but not exclusively, amongst the Catholic Irish.

The landlord-led Irish Unionists (who remained British-Irish), now increasingly looked for ‘mainland’ allies amongst the reactionary British Tories and the British officer class to compensate for their shrinking social and political weight in Ireland itself. But as the Irish national democratic challenge grew in strength, culminating in the Irish Revolution of 1916-21, British-Irish identity faced a different challenge, this time from within, leading once more to a wholesale shift of identity. This new identity was Ulster-British and its leadership was an alliance of industrialists and landlords. Although they once more mobilised the old cross-class Orange Order, this in itself was not sufficient in the new world of mass politics. Hence the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Just as British-Irish identity had initially been forged in the counterrevolutionary assault of the Orange Order, Irish militia and British regiments on the United Irishmen of the 1790s, so the new Ulster-British identity was forged in the counterrevolutionary assault of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the later British Black and Tans and what was to become the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the Irish democratic movement from 1912 to 1921. Although the Unionists hesitated, when the British government offered them a devolved ‘Northern Irish’ parliament (preferring direct rule from Westminster), those from Ulster soon saw the possibilities of creating a ‘Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’ and of drawing a new line to uphold British and Protestant supremacy.

Therefore, the Irish-British (including the unionists living in the three counties of Free State ‘Ulster’) were largely abandoned to their fate, which, for the large majority who did not emigrate, meant within one or two generations becoming Irish. As for those “million British-Irish” whom Conrad has identified still living in the “one and four half-counties” of north-eastern Ireland, they are increasingly a figment of his imagination. By 1968, only 20% of Northern Ireland Protestants considered themselves Irish, with eight percent opting for British-Irish or Anglo-Irish identities. Instead 32% thought of themselves as having an Ulster identity. By 1990 Protestants considering themselves Irish (including only three percent specifically British-Irish) had declined to seven percent whilst 26% gave themselves a ‘Northern Irish’ (the official sectarian statelet name form) or Ulster identity. With the abolition of Stormont in 1973, those claiming British identity rose from 39% in 1968 to a high of 77% in 1984, just before the introduction of the detested Anglo-Irish Agreement, which prompted a decline of a simple British identity back to 66% by 1990 (J McGarry and B O’Leary Explaining Northern Ireland p110).

The current British government policy of restoring Stormont will most likely have the effect of increasing Ulster-British identity, once more largely at the expense of a mainly British identity, especially with the leadership of the republican movement giving de facto legitimisation to partition.

But here is the catch. If the Irish democratic movement regains its currently lost momentum, these Ulster-British are not miraculously going to re-emerge as Conrad’s British-Irish. Another wave of Irish revolutionary democratic struggle in Ireland will produce another counterrevolutionary response. The outlines of yet another identity change are already being debated. The Ulster Defence Association has already discussed their ‘doomsday scenario’ of a final British ‘betrayal’, if the British state did seem to be about to abandon ‘Ulster’. They propose to achieve their repartitioned ‘Ulster’ (with boundaries very similar to those suggested by Conrad!) by a process of ‘nullification’ of Catholics (and other ‘disloyal elements’): ie, ethnic cleansing.

It is clear from this analysis that the ‘British-Irish’ have a much shorter historical existence than Conrad maintains and the strength of this identity is directly related to the strength of the UK imperial monarchist state, with its maximum support at the high point of the British Empire. At that time those of a British-Irish identity included Catholics, so historically Protestantism cannot be considered an exclusive cultural marker. And it is worth re-emphasising that the Irish national democratic movement cannot be exclusively identified with Catholics either. There has always been some contribution from those of a Protestant background.

Whenever the Irish national democratic movement took on a mass revolutionary form, British-Irish identity was central to the counterrevolutionary forces. However, any counterrevolutionary future lies not in British-Irishness, because it has already been largely displaced by Ulster-Britishness. And of course this Ulster-Britishness still plays exactly the same counterrevolutionary role as before, as ‘the troubles’ of the last 30 years have demonstrated.

Conrad, having to his satisfaction diagnosed ‘the British-Irish’ as “an historically constituted and distinct community of people ... continuously inhabit[ing] parts of Northern Ireland since the 17th century”, now comes up with his therapy. Communists should support the right of the British-Irish to territorial self-determination. And presumably, since Conrad’s ‘British-Irish’ are a bit thin on the ground today, he would extend this demand to the majority of ‘actually existing’ British in Northern Ireland - the Ulster-British, who do indeed form quite a considerable political and cultural force.

He would be quite wrong to do so, since Ulster-Britishness (like British-Irishness before it) is an identity which cannot be politically separated from the reactionary monarchist and unionist British state which has promoted it. In contrast, and indeed in opposition, the Irish nation was built up from below, initially under the leadership of the popular classes. This left the task of trying to unite Ireland primarily to the popular classes amongst the oppressed in the ‘Six Counties’. Both Connolly and Larkin showed that it was possible to unite Catholics and Protestants, even in such barren territory as Belfast, particularly when republicanism was linked to social demands. Hence the significance of the ‘workers’ republic’ slogan.

Conrad is, of course, quite right to point out the difficulty of maintaining large-scale Catholic and Protestant working class unity on a sustained basis. Countering this has been the effect of growing residential segregation, particularly in working class areas. Similarly, whatever cross-border cooperation Irish and ‘Ulster’ businessmen find profitable, economic forces alone will not achieve unity for the working class. The task remains a political one, however difficult. But the best of such unity that has been achieved has been by Protestants joining with their Catholic brothers and sisters in both the Irish republican and Irish socialist movements.

Conrad attributes Steve Riley’s refusal to support territorial self-determination for the ‘British Irish’ as being “like a dyed-in-the wool Irish nationalist ... resigned to an unchanging British-Irish population” (Weekly Worker September 9). Actually, it is the other way round. Conrad cannot conceive of such change. In the past, the ‘British-Irish’ have changed to both Ulster-British or Irish identities, mainly depending on which side of the partition line they ended up living. Yes, for many there was a degree of reluctance in making such a change, but the most consistent class fighters amongst the Protestants joined Irish republican, socialist and communist organisations. If we are to achieve Irish unity from below, then this must be by revolutionary democratic methods, which means that our class must hold its Irish workers’ republican banner high. There can be little doubt that this struggle to achieve Irish working class unity will, as in the past, be a struggle against the British state and all political forms of British identity.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the ‘Conrad therapy’ is he argues that his ‘British-Irish’ should only have the right to territorial self-determination after all of Ireland has broken from the union. Why should the ‘British-Irish’ practise a democratic self-denying ordinance to join with their Irish comrades, brothers and sisters to win Irish unity and expel the British state (their best guarantee of continued ‘Britishness’), and then suddenly feel ‘British-Irish’ enough to want to exercise their right to have local referenda, in which of course, following Conrad, they will vote against secession? Conrad does not want communists to be tied to formal logic, but we can surely expect some connection between Conrad’s ‘logical’ treatment and any likely reality!

Now some of Conrad’s shell-shocked comrades have looked to ‘dubious’ external political forces - eg, Sean Matgamna (AWL) and Dave Craig (RDG) - to explain his latest turn. A much more likely reason is the CPGB-PCC’s political retreat in the face of Blair’s ‘new unionist’ offensive. This is clearly shown in Conrad’s insistence that, after quarter of a century of high-cost conflict, the capitalist class in Britain and Ireland “do have a manifest incentive to deliver a peaceful solution”. Conrad is right not to rule out the possibility of capitalism finding a ‘solution’ to their problem - which is the existence of ‘communities of resistance’ providing infertile soil for capitalist exploitation. However, the trajectory of the Good Friday agreement is not towards an imperially imposed united Ireland, but to an imperially imposed reorganisation of partition. If the republican leadership can lower political expectations and force the acquiescence of the ‘communities of resistance’ to becoming super-exploited enclaves of low-waged labour, then the British state will permit a ‘peaceful’ solution. But, just in case that fails, the UK state does have a plan B - which is why the British Army is not ‘decommissioning’ and is readmitting convicted killers to its ranks!

Steve Riley has rightly pointed out the first hints of a new view in Conrad’s writings. Despite Conrad’s shrill insistence on maintaining his commitment to Irish unity, there is a suggestion that maybe the national democratic struggle no longer has a progressive role to play:

“The antagonism between the British-Irish and Catholic-Irish is not a ‘theoretical’ abstraction nor an invention of Jack Conrad’s. On the contrary it has dominated Irish politics for the last hundred years. The poles of oppression would in all probability be reversed in a united Ireland not brought about by the leadership of the working class” (Weekly Worker September 23).

This is sliding very close to the ‘warring tribes’ approach peddled by Militant/Socialist Party, with the role of British imperialism and the UK state airbrushed out of history. Furthermore, it is the “Catholic Irish” who are given a religious label, suggesting that the British-Irish have risen above sectarianism. If all we can see is a reversal of “the poles of oppression”, then perhaps the continuation of partition is the lesser of possible evils and perhaps indeed we should forge ahead with a partitionist CPUK! Conrad’s new turn is unstable and has not yet reached a settled point, but it undoubtedly represents a political retreat. We have already seen the notion of a CPUK aired in the pages of the Weekly Worker, with its acceptance of partition (part of a long accommodationist tradition within official communism inside Ireland itself).

It is not entirely clear in Conrad’s prescription, but the logic of some of his arguments would appear to be that communists should take up the ‘British-Irish’ right of territorial self-determination because the capitalist class could bring about Irish unity in a counterrevolutionary manner from above. Perhaps he is not ruling out the possibility that the combined forces of the British, Irish and US governments and the EU want a politically united Ireland and this could be imposed on the Ulster-British - Gerry Adams, dream on! But for Conrad such a ‘solution’ would leave his ‘British-Irish’ as an oppressed minority. This scenario would prompt the Ulster-British to become ‘Ulster’ nationalists, refusing the ‘Irish union’ for their four-county ‘Ulster confederacy’. We could then expect to see a local version of the Ku Klux Klan, which shares many of the features of extreme loyalism. It certainly would not be very auspicious territory for communists to intervene in.

Now, if Irish unity was imposed in such a manner from above, then, yes, it would be the duty of communists to win support for the victims of such repression. However, in answer to another unlikely scenario, invoked by Tom Delargy, of a “victorious republican movement” successfully uniting Ireland by militarily defeating the British and imposing “a powerful reactionary gang exacting revenge against the Protestant people as people”, (Weekly Worker September 23) we get the following response from Conrad: “Does Protestant blood really have to flow down the Shankhill Road in order to get you to propose self-determination?” Well, Protestant blood did flow down the Shankhill Road, as a result of the IRA bombing in October 1993, but Conrad did not raise such a demand then! For Conrad, self-determination and freedom from bombing and flowing blood are only on offer after Irish unity. Does Conrad seriously think such a line of argument will win over his ‘British-Irish’ now, or in the future?

Communist support is for the oppressed in the here and now. It is the nationalist population of the ‘Six Counties’ which needs our support, not some putatively oppressed ‘British-Irish’ group in the future, especially given the oppressing role of unionism and loyalism past and present.

But of course communists must offer their programme for the future as well. Communists make their plans, not on the basis of capitalist success, but on the basis of mobilising revolutionary democratic opposition. And, as long as Irish unity - first and foremost the unity of workers - remains central to our immediate programme, then we have to look to how to achieve this. The reason we still want Irish unity is to unite an imperially divided Irish working class and to weaken and destroy a major imperial state, the UK, by working class-led democratic struggle throughout these islands.

So, if we are appealing to Conrad’s ‘British-Irish’ as communists and revolutionary democrats, what are we asking them to give up and what do we offer? It has already been made clear that ‘British-Irishness’ and ‘Ulster-Irishness’ are intrinsically linked to the British state. This ‘Britishness’ has to be combated politically.

There was a time when the CPGB-PCC liked to put forward the slogan, ‘For the IRA, against the British army’. Applying the same principle, we could adopt the slogan, ‘For the Irish nation, against the British state’. Like the first slogan, this is conditioned by the nature of the struggle in progress. For what we want to see is the mobilisation of all the revolutionary democratic forces of Ireland (atheist, agnostic, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and others, for Ireland is now more mixed than in the past). This will of necessity bring them into confrontation with ‘Britishness’ in all its political forms, since it has no democratic content. However, a revolutionary democratic mobilisation will also come into conflict with the Irish state and therefore with reactionary Irish nationalism. The willingness of Connolly and Larkin to hit southern Irish capitalists and their Irish nationalist apologists hard is one reason they could make some impact on Protestants in Ireland. This is a further reason why communists should remain united in Ireland (and not divide on partition lines) since to win over the best Protestants today the one communist organisation must be seen to confront the existing Irish state and Catholic reaction in the south.

Naturally, if your communism is of an abstract propagandist stripe, then this championing of Irish national democracy against British ‘national’ reaction will be viewed as merely capitulation to nationalism. However, this would be rather like saying that you opposed workers striking for higher wages, since all that did was confirmed the existence of wage slavery and hence capitalism. Communists cannot just step outside the existence of the nation-state system and therefore have to relate to the democratic and socialist traditions within each nation, drawing a distinction between the oppressor and oppressed.

Deprived of their ‘Britishness’, Protestant workers can still be shown their own democratic and socialist contributions both to Irish national liberation and to confronting capitalism. In both the north and the south, Catholicism and Protestantism are becoming increasingly a cultural marker, with fewer people holding strongly held, specifically religious convictions (although religious adherence remains considerably higher than over here). There is also considerable intermarriage and other relationships between Catholics and Protestants.

However, Conrad himself outlines a thesis which for once does put forward a principled democratic demand in relation to Protestants: “There must be no discrimination against Protestants. They must be at liberty to practice their religion.” But to this Conrad adds the demand that they must be “encouraged to freely develop the progressive side of their culture” (thesis 11 Weekly Worker August 26). The problem is, if you award the ‘British-Irish’ the freedom to exercise territorial self-determination, then as a “consistent democrat” you have to allow them to freely develop the reactionary side of their culture!

The answer here, of course, is that Protestants, or the Ulster British in Ireland for that matter, are not a distinct ‘nation’, but an ethno-religious group (a particular form of nationality - a category that applies to groups of people, not territories). Therefore the appropriate democratic rights which are extended in such cases apply to groups of people, not to territories. Conrad opposes this fundamental point. (We are tempted to say he departs from the “ABC of Marxism”, one of his own favourite phrases. However, Marxism is not a formula which can be learnt by rote and applied externally. Conrad’s rather frequent resort to the “ABC of Marxism” is more designed for internal CPGB-PCC consumption, to establish orthodoxy and silence any possible critics.)

But since Conrad holds up the ‘holy texts’, let us examine how Lenin dealt with the issue of nation and nationality as part of the minimum (or immediate) programme. In the RSDLP proposals to the Second International socialist conference in March 1916, Lenin wrote the following:

“The Russian socialist who does not fight for freedom to secede for the Ukraine, Finland, etc, against the war over Poland, the Italian socialist who does not fight for freedom to secede for Tripoli, Albania, etc, the Dutch socialist who does not fight for freedom to secede for the Dutch East Indies, the Polish socialist who does not fight for full freedom and equality for the Jews and the Ukrainians oppressed by the Poles ... is a socialist and an internationalist in name only.”

Now, why is Lenin making a distinction between “freedom to secede” and “full freedom and equality”? The answer is because Lenin sees the Ukraine, Finland, Tripoli (Libya today), Albania and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia today) as actual or potential nations, whereas the Jews and the Ukrainians are national minorities (nationalities) within a mixed-nationality Polish nation. Certainly the Jews of Poland were every bit as much “an historically constituted and distinct community of people” as Conrad’s ‘British-Irish’ and could claim territorial majorities in several parts of Poland (and some Jewish socialists did just that). Moreover, they had a far better claim than Conrad’s ‘British-Irish’ to exercise their right to self-determination since they were a long oppressed and persecuted nationality. Yet, in this case Lenin quite rightly stuck to principle. Nationalities have the right to full freedom and equality - exactly what communists should demand for the Protestant Irish within a united Ireland!

In a desperate corner, Conrad states that,

“Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union were constitutionally founded as federations of soviet republics. Amongst them was the Don Republic (ie, the land of the Cossacks). The Soviet Republic was established as a ‘voluntary union of the peoples of Russia’ - something for Lenin which ‘should fully reassure the Cossacks’. His optimism was not misplaced. The 1st Congress of the Soviets of the Don Republic ... ‘regarded the Don Republic as part of the RSFSR’ and ‘declared the working Cossacks’ readiness to defend Soviet power’. The Cossacks, it should be noted, were an historically established privileged caste who served as the counterrevolutionary terror troops of tsarism. Is there a qualitative difference between the Cossacks and the British Irish? Surely not” (Weekly Worker September 9).

Surely not, indeed! So, let us go through that again. Lenin, writing here in 1918, was no longer writing about the minimum programme, in which, despite his many writings on the nations and nationalities question in the Russian empire, support for Cossack self-determination never appears once! This may just be something to do with the Cossacks being “the counterrevolutionary terror troops of tsarism”. He was writing about the maximum programme, once the working class (and their peasant allies) had taken power. Today’s analogy would be that the ‘British-Irish’ had formed soviets in east Antrim, which were faced with imminent attack by British unionism and its allies. Faced with a scenario where, say, workers in the east Belfast-Ballymena-Larne triangle strike out and establish workers’ councils, it would indeed be the duty of Irish communists to encourage these councils to federate in an east Antrim soviet republic “in agreement with the population of the neighbouring zone” and, perhaps we should add, in consultation with the local ‘Irish-Irish’! But is Conrad seriously asking us to ditch a principled immediate programme for a maximum programme based on fairytales?

Let us look a little closer to what happened to the real, not the paper, Don Republic. The new

“Soviet regime ... attempted to supervise the establishment of Cossack soviets, stressing they did not plan de-Cossackisation - ie, the ending of separate Cossack identity - and that ‘working Cossacks’ should form their own Soviets ... In the summer of 1919, when the Soviet state faced a serious threat from the south, it reiterated its claim that it did not aim at ending a separate status for the Cossacks. But once the Red Army had won back this region, the Soviet state no longer needed to make such concessions ... A decree March 25 1920 then abolished the separate Cossack Soviets that had been announced in 1918" (H Shukman (ed) The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution).

A basic feature of any materialist analysis should be to analyse what people do, rather than be mesmerised by what they say. And by Conrad’s “consistent democratic” standards the Bolsheviks fell somewhat short of upholding the principle of “voluntary union” in practice!

Conrad’s ‘Iron Law of Britness’ has already cost his organisation the loss of its entire Scottish membership and a drastic loss of influence amongst socialists in Scotland compared to the early days of the SSA. The CPGB-PCC’s refusal to recognise Scotland as a nation, but to opportunistically acknowledge those of a Scottish nationality the right to territorial self-determination, ended up with the CPGB-PCC having the same position in Blair’s 1997 Scottish plebiscite as the racist Scottish Separatist Group. Both recommended stay-at-home abstentionism on the actual day of the ballot.

The feature both organisations share in common is that they define Scotland by ethnic criteria. If you are giving the Scottish nationality status instead of giving multi-ethnic Scotland nation status, then logically voting in any referendum should be confined to ethnic Scots - exactly what the Scottish Separatist Group advocated. Of course, if we maintain the difference between ethnic group and multi-ethnic nation, then it is the latter which is entitled to territorial self-determination and any ballot should be extended to all registered residents. The CPGB-PCC long remained embarrassedly silent when challenged over this. Furthermore, those they invited into their ‘Party’ front, the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination, were not allowed to help determine the campaign slogans.

Confused and inconsistent democracy seems to be the hallmark of CPGB-PCC practice.