Public Meeting - After The Troubles - where now for socialists and republicans?

by Ed - ISN Sun Mar 08, 2009 19:57

Dear oh dear. The last few posters are obviously in the mood for a good auld denunciation. They share a common vice: instead of taking the trouble to find out what people actually think about a subject, they just consult their imagination and then denounce people for views which they don’t hold. This is not a dialogue, it’s just one person (or a couple of people in this case) having an argument with themselves. I don’t think any of the people so keen to denounce the ISN are going to listen to anything that contradicts their pre-established views, but I’ll take the trouble to correct some of their distortions for the sake of anyone else who happens to be reading this thread.

The first poster on this thread asked a genuine question: did the use of the term “civil war” imply a belief that the British state was a neutral player in the conflict, “trying to keep the peace between two warring communities” as the old PR line used to claim? This genuine question got a genuine answer: no, that’s not what the ISN thinks at all, and a passage from one of the articles in the pamphlet which describes collaboration between the state forces and loyalist paramilitaries was quoted. Since then, nobody has added anything new, except over-heated and slightly daft rhetoric – apparently the ISN takes the same view of Norn Iron as the architect of British army counter-insurgency policy, which is probably news to most of us.

My own article, which features in the latest edition of Red Banner, is said to be the prime offender for using the term “civil war”. Anyone reads that article will find a few passages that the critics seem to have overlooked, so I’ll quote them at length:

“Mary O’Rawe gives a good summary of policing reform since the GFA was signed. Her argument is clear and hard to fault: the British government has controlled the process of reform and kept it within limits acceptable to the power elite. Various official reports (most notably the one delivered by Chris Patten) have been watered down to exclude any changes with the potential to transform the balance of power relations. Reform has been managed from above by the police hierarchy, while the Ombudswoman Nuala O’Loan was vilified for pushing ahead too far and aggravating powerful interests within the security establishment ... the Pat Finucane case tells us a lot about the limits of change. The British government vowed to hold a public inquiry into the killing of Finucane if Peter Cory’s report urged it to do so. But that promise was quickly forgotten when Justice Cory delivered his report and called for an inquiry. London has refused to budge, and no amount of lobbying from nationalist politicians on either side of the border has made a difference.”

“Socialists must decide whether they intend to work within the framework of the GFA. The case against this seems overwhelming: the Northern Ireland Assembly does not have the power to carry out radical reforms, and would be abolished in a jiffy by London if it showed any sign of wanting to do so. By taking part in the power-sharing executive, Sinn Fein are earning themselves the chance to introduce cutbacks in public services on behalf of the British capitalist state, soaking up the anger of working-class people in the North that should be directed towards London. The same goes for policing – whenever unpopular decisions have to be made, the British government will be keen to implicate all the northern parties. We can be sure that the PSNI will not be impartial in dealing with strikes, occupations or protests that challenge the economic order.”

“From a socialist perspective, the case against partition is clear. It is an ugly legacy of British imperialism, which has divided the working class within the Northern Irish state and spawned a vicious sectarian war. Unionism is a dead-end for the Protestant working class, tying them into “loyalty” to a capitalist, imperial state that holds all workers in contempt … if we remain agnostic for fear of alienating Protestant workers, we will end up blunting our own principles without gaining anything in return (as we’ve seen recently, any left-winger who opposes the occupation of Iraq or Palestine is likely to get Unionist hackles up – anti-imperialism is not something that radicals can discard for the sake of political calculations, anymore than anti-capitalism or anti-racism).”

I’m not sure that you could imagine Frank Kitson, or the Workers Party circa 1985, making those arguments. And as was already pointed out, another article in the pamphlet describes collaboration between loyalist paramilitaries and the British state, and refers specifically to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. People could have saved themselves a lot of indignation if they bothered to read a little before rushing into the fray. The event notice above describes the Provos as “the movement that took up arms against the British state”, so it can hardly be accused of denying the role of London as an active player in the conflict.

For those interested, there’s an article in the latest edition of the ISN paper Resistance which is relevant to the “civil war” question. It’s a review of the recently-updated history of the UVF by Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack. Cusack and McDonald are of course fiercely anti-republican and anti-Provo and make an argument which is the exact opposite of the one made by the last few posters on this thread: they claim that the loyalist paramilitaries were completely independent, and would have been strong enough to defeat a united Ireland even if the British government had wanted to withdraw from the North.

The review article points out that they give us a stark choice: either the loyalists were sock-puppets of the British state, or else they must have been 100% self-sufficient. It’s not hard for Cusack and McDonald to show that the UVF and the UDA had a life of their own and weren’t on auto-pilot from London, so they think they’ve made their case. But it makes a lot more sense to say that, while the loyalist groups were not just sock-puppets of the state forces and were capable of independent action, they would have been much less effective if there hadn’t been systematic collusion with the British army, police and intelligence services, who found it useful to work with the loyalists when their goals coincided (for example, by encouraging the UDA to kill Pat Finucane).

Nobody can seriously deny the collaboration between the loyalists and the state forces, but it’s not at all useful to claim that the UDA and the UVF were directly controlled by the state and could do nothing without its permission. After the Shankill Road bombing, Johnny Adair sent one of his squads to carry out an attack on a Catholic Church congregation during Mass: if they had been successful, it might well have pushed the North over the edge into outright civil war on a Bosnian scale (by the way, it’s standard to refer to the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s as a civil war, although one of the parties, the Bosnian Serb army, was armed and funded by the Serbian state). It would be absurd to claim that the British government wanted that to happen.

It’s also not at all useful to pretend that the IRA campaign was exclusively directed against the state forces. Republicans and socialists have rightly refused to forget about the Bloody Sunday massacre or other atrocities committed by the state; it’s not realistic to expect unionists (or non-unionists for that matter) to forget about the bombings at Teebane or Enniskillen. There’s a mural on the Shankill Road these days that depicts a number of IRA attacks on Protestant civilians and sarcastically refers to the Provos as “non-sectarian freedom fighters” – it’s a loyalist mural of course, and utterly hypocritical, but it taps into a deep-rooted feeling among northern Protestants, including ones who are not at all committed to anti-Catholic bigotry, and it won’t do any good for those who want to see an end to partition to ignore that feeling.

I suspect this might be what really annoyed those who read the article in Red Banner:

“It is important to make some basic tactical judgements. The experience of the “long war” shows that it is futile to take up arms against the British state as long as it can put Ulster Protestants in the front-line against insurrectionary violence. The IRA campaign proved to be a bloody dead-end, and ultimately did more harm than good. Mass action of the kind pioneered by the civil rights movement in the 1960s was largely squeezed out of the picture by the eruption of paramilitarism, but it had a much greater potential to deliver radical change. A return to war at this point would be both tragic and farcical.”

That may annoy people who still imagine that you can end partition and achieve a 32-county republic by using the same methods as the pre-ceasefire IRA, but that’s too bad – if you insist on arguing for a failed strategy then people will disagree with you. You may think the killing of two British soldiers last night is the beginning of a mighty anti-imperialist movement that will drive the British Army into the sea, but don’t expect everyone else to share your delusion. If killing British soldiers and policemen was going to achieve a united Ireland, it would have achieved that goal long ago at a time when the Provos were killing dozens of soldiers and policemen every year, causing massive economic damage to the City of London, and nearly assassinating the leadership of the British ruling class. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

Anyway I think that's more than enough for now - anyone who wants to continue a discussion about these issues is welcome to come along to the public meeting next week.

by Liam - None Sun Mar 08, 2009 13:15

Describing the anti-colonial struggle in the 6 counties as a civil war is reductive and reveals the kind of ideological containment that was central to Frank Kitson's strategy of Normalisation/Ulsterisation (which incidentally has been updated for Iraq and called "Iraqi-isation" by the Brits). It also accepts the political-descriptive constructions that are engineered by the "divide and conquer" strategy that the Brits used in Ireland and are now using in Iraq: this policy is currently being used in both countries to distract atention from thir imperial role as occupiers.

Describing the war as a domestic conflict ignores the role of the British imperialist state in Ireland, where it operated by spying, killing and bombing on both sides of the border (not to mention its interference in Free State party politics, as the recently released State papers have revealed to have occurred in 1978). Were the Dublin and Monaghan bombs, which were constructed by the British army and delivered by their loyalist proxies, the product of a civil war?

What of the British troops who are marauding the 6 counties again in the guise of the Special Reconnaisance Regiment? These are hardly players in a "civil war".

by Gareth Bailey Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:45

It would appear that the "civil war" kicked off again last night. Was this an attack on "workers in uniform" as the lefties called the brits or was it a petty nationalist move. Its a pity the ISN cannot move on from jaded views of the conflict. if anything, A civil war was avoided because the republican defence committees defended their areas from protestant mobs. The subsequent war was waged against the brits and their pseudo gangs on the ground. This is a poor reflection on the ISN and leads me to question their politics in general. If you cannot get the issues of the conflict right , one of the most important pieces of irish recent history, how can we expect to believe your views on anything.
D minus-Must do better

by Séamus Sun Mar 08, 2009 02:36

I guess you can get a taster of this pamphlet in the article by Ed Walsh of the ISN in the most recent Red Banner (#35). In it he also refers to the "troubles" as being a "civil war".

by Séamus Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:11

Is the pamphlet written by one person or are there a number of articles in it written by different people?

Also, are there plans to have a launch for the pamphlet outside Dublin, like maybe in the Six Counties?

by Battered Haddock Sat Mar 07, 2009 00:01

Jasus, ISNer you really take yourselves seriously. My comment about stickyness was tongue in cheek, I am well aware that the ISN are in no way similar to the Sticks.
It’s a pity that you didn’t reply to my point about your reference to a civil war in the 6 counties during your indignant rant. Maybe you could ask Tommy McKearney about your analysis of a civil war situation.

by ISNer Thu Mar 05, 2009 16:59

I'm not sure why the ISN has to explain itself to a person called "Fried Haddock", who obviously has no intention of making themselves and their political record accountable to anyone. Our fishy friend clearly has no interest in grown-up discussion and just wants to pursue a silly vendetta against non-existent Stickie bogey-men, like a sort of inverted Eoghan Harris.

Anyone with a more serious attitude can have a read of the pamphlet (the ISN will have a stall at the Anarchist Bookfair this weekend, so you can pick up a copy there if you're about) and see for themselves how much the arguments it contains have in common with the position of the Workers Party in the 1970s and 1980s. For what it's worth, of the two ISN members who contributed articles to the pamphlet, one was never a member of the Workers Party, while the other was a member of WP/DL for several years but is now as far from that school of politics as you can get. There's also an introduction by Tommy McKearney, who's not known for his Stickie background.

Again, if you want a serious discussion, come along to the meeting in the Teachers' Club - we're always glad to debate with people who take a different view to ours, but it's generally far more useful to engage with people who make the effort to come along for a face-to-face discussion than it is to spend much time on anonymous cyber-commentators.

by Fried Haddock Thu Mar 05, 2009 15:37

Sorry, ISN'er I totally disagree. It wasn't a civil war in the 6 counties. It was a war between Republicans and the British state, with the loyalist paramilitaries as a wing of the British state. This is a very important point. A civil war implies that there were two local warring factions when this clearly wasn’t the case. That aul stickyness still hasn’t been totally cleansed!!!!!

by ISN Thu Mar 05, 2009 15:24

There's no contradiction between saying that there was a civil war in the North and recognising the oppressive role of the British state in the conflict. There's been a civil war in Iraq between Shia and Sunni over the past few years - you can recognise that without ignoring the murderous role of the US-led occupation forces. If you want to know more about the views of the ISN, you can read the pamphlet when it's out, or come along to this meeting to take part in the discussion. Here's a couple of relevant quotes from an article by an ISN member which is included in the pamphlet:

"The recent Police Ombudsman's report on collusion in the Raymond McCord case, revealed the terrible truth for all except those in deep denial: that the British state through the Royal Ulster Constabulary, British Army and MI5/MI6 effectively controlled the loyalist paramilitaries of the UVF/UDA and their various offshoots. The report was a limited investigation into RUC Special Branch collusion in the murder of McCord by the UVF. He was a low-level UVF member who was killed in a dispute over small-scale drug dealing but a key figure in the case was a senior UVF member and police informer Mark Haddock. This was not a case of rogue detectives taking the law in their own hands by allowing their loyalist informers to maim and murder so as to protect their identities and allow them to pass information on paramilitary activity back to the police. This was an essential part of the politico-security strategy of the British state in the North. Though their growth and social base may have arisen out of particular cultural, historic and economic conditions of the Protestant working class, the loyalist paramilitaries were, in effect, pseudo-gangs or death squads operating as part of a broad state 'counter-insurgency' strategy...

"The state was a major sponsor of terror, including, again via infiltrated loyalists, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 which led to substantial loss of life in the south. In the context of the recent debates in Republican ranks on policing and government, what all this indicates is that it is pure folly to accept the state in a capitalist society and its institutions of security and control, as some sort of neutral arbiter. In times of stability its institutions may well conform to 'bourgeois legality' and indeed some individuals within these institutions, such as the current Police 'Ombudsman' Nuala O' Loan may really believe in ideals such as the rule of law but in practice the state as the guarantor of capitalist rule will deal 'by whatever means necessary' with any threats, perceived or otherwise, if the need arises."

by leftie Thu Mar 05, 2009 09:20

I have a question for the ISN arising out of the above notice. What do you mean by referring to a "civil war" in the north? This depiction of what occurred is associated with an analysis (associated with the Workers Party) that focuses on internal causes and fails to put British imperialism in the dock. Is it the ISN's opinion that what happened was a "civil war"? If so, it says little for their understanding of imperialism and the complexity of the so-called 'Irish Question'.