18.11.1999
Undermining the struggle
Statement on British-Irish
As readers of and/or regular contributors to the Weekly Worker,we have been following and taking part in the discussion on the national question. We would like to take a further opportunity to persuade the comrades to drop the demand for the right of the pro-British Irish to build their own state, for the following reasons:
1. Lenin only fought for the right of self-determination of oppressed nations - in opposition to oppressor nations. Lenin did not defend the right to secede of oppressor non-nations in opposition to oppressed nations.
2. Northern Ireland or the loyalist community is not a nation, but part of the Irish nation. Supporting the right of self-determination of the Irish nation as a whole is incompatible with supporting the right of secession of its pro-UK population.
3. Marx and Engels were against the ‘self-determination’ of the pro-slavery southern states in the North American civil war. Communists did not defend the right of self-determination for South Korea, South Vietnam, anti-communist China, monarchist unionists or West Germany in opposition to revolutionary unification with the rest of their respective countries. Leninism does not recognise self-determination rights for privileged communities interested in maintaining imperialist settlements.
4. The demand for self-determination for Ulster unionists does not have any real support and it is wrong to try to impose it on Ireland. The best way of winning unionist workers to our side is through a programme of revolutionary socialist transformation.
5. It is ridiculous to expect a republic to allow a part of its own nation to be ruled by a foreign monarchy under a segregationist regime that oppressed, harassed and ghettoised the oppressed people, those who favour a one-nation republic.
6. Lenin advocated self-determination as the best way to remove national obstacles preventing working class unity. If the workers of the oppressor nation defended the right of the oppressed nation to secede, it would build bridges with the workers of the oppressed nation. The new CPGB position would mean asking Irish republicans and anti-imperialist fighters to become the champions of the loyalist right to have their own state.
7. The goal of working class unity would be pushed even further into the distant future if the anti-republican community exercised the right to separate from a republic. A new repartition would create massive pogroms and ethnic cleansing. Nobody would be happy because the republicans would not see the achievement of national unity and sovereignty, and the unionists would lose territory.
8. The new position on the Irish question has two further implications. The CPGB always unconditionally (albeit critically) defended republican fighters against British imperialists and unionists. With the new position there would be a danger and a tendency to be concerned with the rights of the unionists to defend themselves and to impose their ‘legitimate’ self-determination rights. In a similar way, comrade Conrad is saying that the 2,000 Kelpers from the Malvinas islands and other settlers implanted by Britain against nations that they colonised should have the right to choose which should be their state. This could lead to siding with British loyalists against Irish republicans and Argentinean nationalists.
9. Comrade Conrad is extending the right of self-determination to non-nations and to non-oppressed nations. In doing so he is undermining the legitimate democratic and national rights of the oppressed majority.
10. The new position also undermines the struggle for revolutionary democracy because it assumes that the Irish question can be resolved without a proletarian revolution. The CPGB is not proposing to achieve Irish national self-determination through a socialist revolution and a workers’ republic. They seek a pure bourgeois democratic solution without fundamentally challenging capitalism in a futile attempt to convince unionists that they would be better off in a bourgeois ‘binational’ federal Irish republic.
11. We hope the CPGB will re-examine its position. Transforming the right of self-determination into a universal panacea has led to unconditional support for the pro-Nato KLA. After the KLA-Nato military victory Kosovo is an imperialist undemocratic enclave in which ethnic minorities are being persecuted or expelled. The imperialist triumph is leading to Nato expansionism, encouraging Russia to imitate the west and bomb Chechnya and Dagestan with imperialist complicity. This in turn will led to more worldwide attacks against workers and oppressed peoples.
12. The only solution to the national question in the British-Irish islands is a socialist federation of workers’ republics. Bourgeois federal republics exist in Germany, France, the USA, Argentina and Brazil, and all of them are exploitative capitalist regimes. In Ireland the workers of all communities should unite against their bosses, the segregationists and for an all-Irish secular, democratic workers’ republic.
Gerry Downing, Chris Edwards, John Stone, Dave Brown