09.12.1999

Autonomy irrelevant

Alternative theses on the British-Irish

1. Ireland has historically been oppressed by British imperialism. Initially the peasants were the main basis for colonial exploitation. By the 20th century the working class had become the main exploited class, and was potentially the leading revolutionary class, as was shown by the 1913 Dublin general strike. The working class of southern Ireland was increasingly influenced by the revolutionary leadership of Connolly and Larkin. Hence the British ruling class sought to strengthen the religious and ideological divide within the Irish working class through partition. The 1913-14 proposals for home rule outlined the creation of a catholic south and an Ulster/Northern Irish protestant state.

2. Connolly acted to oppose partition through the struggle for an all-Irish workers’ republic (IWR). He effectively became the leadership of an anti-imperialist united front (bourgeois nationalists, petty bourgeois radicals and working class) in 1916. Consequently he advocated the necessity of an uprising that would facilitate the ideological and political conditions for achieving national independence and the IWR. The Easter Proclamation of 1916 was not a revolutionary socialist programme, but it did express the aim of national liberation and economic, social, and political progress. Hence the proclamation was a compromise formulation that united the various social forces of the anti-imperialist united front. Connolly’s working class followers represented a politically independent and vanguard expression of anti-imperialist national struggle. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (petty bourgeois radicals) had effectively accepted Connolly’s revolutionary socialist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle, and were not generally against his socialist aspirations.

3. The defeat of the 1916 Easter uprising, and the murder of Connolly meant the anti-imperialist struggle lost its socialist direction, and its hegemonic leadership was now bourgeois nationalist. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (which essentially became the Irish Republican Army - the IRA) became the main military force of bourgeois nationalism. The struggle for national self-determination led to negotiations with British imperialism, which resulted in the partition of Ireland. The result was the establishment of a southern bourgeois clerical state, and a northern clerical and colonial state. The dispute about partition within the south led to civil war. Without Connolly’s political leadership the working class was disorientated, and vanguard elements tended to support anti-partition forces. A principled revolutionary stance would have been for the working class to refuse support for either side of contending bourgeois nationalism. For both of the rival wings of bourgeois nationalism were incapable of overcoming partition and uniting Ireland in a secular and socialist manner.

4. The civil war led to splits within the IRA. The IRA that reorganised after the civil war was generally hostile towards the southern state, but was increasingly clerical nationalist, despite some leftwing tendencies. A physical force guerrilla ideology was hegemonic, and this was not consistently bourgeois democratic, and was not socialist.

5. The existence of the clerical southern state only increased the fears of the protestant working class about a united Ireland, and this was expressed in the consolidation of the sectarian and repressive state of Northern Ireland.

6. The development of the civil rights unrest, and mass communal strife, led to a split within the IRA, with the dominant tendency (Provisionals) placing emphasis upon the defence of the Catholics through physical force. Thirty years of mass struggle and connected theoretical development has led the republican movement to advocate and emphasise the importance of political strategy. This emphasis is connected to the establishment of a secular, bourgeois democratic republican movement, which has a potential for socialist politics that is linked to its working class mass base.

The Sinn Féin peace initiative represents a significant attempt to democratise Northern Ireland, and is an important step towards a United Ireland. The development of the power-sharing executive represents a potential to develop a secular and non-discriminatory Northern Ireland. Hence, class politics in the north are in advance of developments within the south because of the greater influence of secular republicanism. Thus revolutionary perspectives are turned into their opposite. It now becomes both possible and principled to advocate that the movement towards the formation of a bourgeois democratic and secular Northern Ireland be transformed into the revolutionary class struggle for a Northern Irish workers’ republic, as a crucial prelude to the struggle for a united IWR.

In other words, the development of a Northern Irish bourgeois democratic state is facilitating the possibility for working class unity, which enhances the ideological and political conditions for a Northern Irish workers’ republic, and this will advance the struggle for an all-Irish workers’ republic. This approach is not Menshevik and stageist, because the struggle to achieve bourgeois democratic gains becomes an integral part of the realisation of the Northern Irish workers’ republic.

7. Thus the necessity for a British-Irish autonomous state is irrelevant, given the progressive development of working class unity. The ideological fear of Catholicism and republicanism is decreasing within the protestant working class in the context of the important role of secular republicanism. The conditions for working class unity, and the potential for socialist class struggle, are greater than ever before.

Trotskyist Unity Group