Emancipation & Liberation

INTRODUCTION

The rise and initial success of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), between 1998-2004, was a significant historical event, not only for the history of the Left in Scotland (with knock-on effects in the UK and Europe), but also in the wider world of Scottish politics. It is therefore vital that we account for this success, despite the SSP’s subsequent fall from grace. This record can not just be left to cynical media and academic figures who have claimed that the SSP project was always doomed from the start, so we should all just accept the current world order and make the best of it.  Nor can we leave the accounting to those Jeremiahs in their ‘revolutionary’ sects, who cover their own inability to grow significantly, by issuing their anathemas and pouring scorn on those who try.

Before the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg said that the choice facing humanity then was ‘Socialism or Barbarism’. Istvan Meszaros has modified this for today’s crisis-ridden world of corporate imperialism, with its austerity drives, mounting environmental degradation, and the continued threat to humanity posed by weapons of mass destruction. He claims that the choice we face now is  – ‘Socialism or barbarism if we are lucky’!

Therefore, to provide new hope, we must account for the factors that contributed to the initial success of the SSP, and see what can still be useful in the future. However, any meaningful accounting also means identifying those weaknesses, which contributed to the SSP’s decline, so that these are not repeated.

Many, from either side of the ‘Tommygate’ divide, still hold fond enough memories of “the good old days” before the split, to hope that something like the SSP can be built again. Recently, some have even been tempted to say, “Let us forgive and forget”. This may sound attractive, in the face of the current unprecedented attacks on our class. However, such a stance would just lead to the repeat of earlier mistakes, perhaps in more desperate situations.

This contribution, which is also based on a strong desire to rebuild that lost unity, argues that to be successful in such an endeavour, we need instead to ‘listen, learn and then move on’. Then we can indeed recreate socialist unity, but on a higher basis. We must take account of those challenges, which the SSP failed to meet, to better prepare ourselves for those that we will certainly meet in the future.

1. THE STRENGTHS OF THE SSP

a)          Politics

The drive for greater socialist unity in Scotland originated in the experience of the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign. This drew together socialists and communists from diverse backgrounds in a successful struggle against the Tories and their official Labour Party helpers – one of the very few.  Later campaigns against water privatisation, the Criminal Justice Bill, and in support of the Liverpool Dockers, also brought socialists and communists in Scotland together in common campaigns.

Militant, a section of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), led by Peter Taffe, had learned, through the bitter experience of the Liverpool Council Fightback and the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign, that conducting a successful major struggle was incompatible with membership of the Labour Party (LP), and that Labour is an anti-working class party that acts as a block to socialism.

The CWI majority (1) formed Scottish Militant Labour (SML) to challenge Labour more effectively. However, SML went beyond this, and drew upon the experience of those earlier working class campaigns. With the help of others, they initiated the wider Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA), in 1996, to draw in these forces, as well as those members in the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP) concerned about their parties’ rightwards drift. In the process, the CWI in Scotland changed from being the organisationally independent SML to becoming the International Socialist Movement (ISM), a platform in the new SSA. They called for the unity of socialists in Scotland.

The size of SML/ISM was important. Others had called for socialist unity before the SML had been able to ditch its Labour Party entrist past, and to seriously consider such an initiative.  However, it needed an organisation with a certain critical mass to make any such unity initiative gel.  In Ireland, for example, there have been a number of politically experienced people who were inspired by the example of the SSA/SSP. They formed the Irish Socialist Network to bring about such socialist unity there. However, they have not had the critical mass to create an Irish Socialist Alliance, then to build this up into an Irish Socialist Party.

The ISM wanted to build a wider organisation, which was not just a front for its own tendency – something that proved a stumbling block with the Socialist Alliance in England. This problem was highlighted there by the competitive sectarianism of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the CWI/Socialist Party (SP) (as Militant later became in England and Wales).

The ISM also wanted the SSA to move quickly beyond being an alliance, which might end up as little more than an electoral non-aggression pact between different participating organisations. Today, in Ireland, this remains a strong danger with the recently formed United Left Alliance (ULA). The ULA is heavily constrained in any attempt to move forwards to a new united party by the desire of its two major components, the CWI/SP-Ireland and People before Profit (an Irish SWP front), to preserve their own control above all else. The SSA, however, was able to move on and become the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in 1998.

When it was founded, the SSA drew in other political groups or some of their key activists. Allan Green had pushed from the start to get the Socialist Movement (socialists in the LP) signed up, whilst Bill Bonnar of the Communist Party of Scotland, and George Mackin, former member of the editorial board of Liberation (socialist Republicans in the SNP) joined up.  Members of the Trotskyist United Secretariat for the Fourth International (USFI) in Scotland joined, although they did not constitute themselves as a platform. The Red Republicans, who emerged from the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle in the Lothians, and the Dundee-based Campaign for a Federal Republic also joined. These two organisations later merged, on a new political basis, to form another SSA platform, the Republican Communist Network (RCN). The SSA soon threw itself into activity in support of the Glacier workers’ occupation in Glasgow, then in a variety of actions to save schools and other council facilities.

By 2002, all the major political groups in Scotland were in one political organisation (2) – the SSP. The SSP eventually included left Scottish nationalists, e.g. the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement (SRSM), many in the ISM, and some ex-SNP’ers; left British unionists, e.g. the CWI, SWP, Workers Unity (3) and some ex-Labourists; and socialist republicans, e.g. the RCN and others. Key figures from the Labour and SNP Lefts joined, e.g. John McAllion and Ron Brown (ex-Labour MPs), Hugh Kerr (ex-Labour MEP), Lloyd Quinan (ex-SNP MSP). The SSP included socialist and radical Feminists, and a small number of green Socialists (4).

Tommy Sheridan (former SML) was elected to Holyrood in 1999. He was re-elected, along with Frances Curran and Colin Fox (both former SML), Rosemary Byrne (former president of Irvine Trades Council), Carolyn Leckie (prominent Unison activist and strike leader) and Rosie Kane (environmental activist), in 2003. An impressive 117,709 votes were gained in this election. Keith Baldassara (former SML) and Jim Bollan (former CP member and Labour leader of Dunbartonshire Council) were also elected as local councillors. This was a considerable achievement. It showed that the SSP had become an important force amongst a significant section of class-conscious workers in Scotland.

SSP MSPs were seen to give public support to workers in struggle, including nursery nurses and working class communities occupying threatened public services. Tommy had been very publicly arrested in 2003, whilst Rosie was jailed for failing to pay a fine in 2005, as a result of the protests they made at the Faslane nuclear base. This highlighted the SSP’s policy of committing its elected representatives to taking direct action when it was deemed appropriate. The SSP policy of having a worker’s representative on a worker’s wage was actually implemented by the SSP MSPs between 1999 and 2007.

The SSP provided inspiration for the Socialist Alliances in England and Wales, and for the Irish Socialist Network. It also formed a part of the new European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL). The SSP inspired the USFI, including its largest European section, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) in France. They later went on to form the wider New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) in 2009.

After the split in 2006, the SSP continued to form part of the EACL, standing candidates under its banner in the Euro-elections of 2009, whilst the breakaway Solidarity retreated into the left British chauvinism of the No2EU campaign (5).

The SSP played a prominent part in the build-up of the Anti-War Movement, beginning in October 2001 with its principled and active opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and culminating, on February 15^th 2003, with the massive Anti-Iraq War demonstration in Glasgow, led by the Stop the War Coalition (6). The many marches, held all over the world on that day, formed the largest international demonstration yet witnessed.

The SSP played the leading part in organising the wider European Left opposition to the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in July 2005. Four of its MSPs, Carolyn, Colin, Frances and Rosie organised a protest in Holyrood against its failure to stand up to US/UK security force attempts to severely curtail the right to protest at Gleneagles. The four MSPs were suspended and the party was heavily fined. This led to international solidarity, including support from the acclaimed black poet, Benjamin Zephaniah (7).

The SSA and SSP leaderships recognised that there is a National Question in Scotland and that socialists should consciously address it. Although left Scottish nationalism remained a strong pull on the leaderships of the SSA and later the SSP, republicanism made considerable inroads. The party backed the Calton Hill Declaration, and the successful protest at the royal opening of the new Scottish Parliament building on October 9^th, 2004. This was the last SSP big event to gain favourable wider publicity (8).

The SSP contained a well-organised Feminist element with articulate women prominent in the party. The hotly debated and controversial 50:50 rule, addressing the issue of women’s representation at all levels of the party, was passed at the SSP’s 2002 Conference in Dundee. This contributed to the election of four women out of a total of six SSP MSPs in May 2003 – the highest percentage for any party in Europe.

The SSP was also able to draw support from influential cultural figures, e.g. the Proclaimers, Belle and Sebastian, Peter Mullen and Ken Loach.

At the height of its success between 1999 and 2004, the SSP enabled socialist politics to gain a public visibility. This meant that the ideas put forward by openly declared socialists became the topic of conversation, discussion and debate in workplaces and communities throughout Scotland.

b)          Organisation

With the founding of the SSA in 1996, the CWI/SML committed its resources and experienced organisers, at national and local level, to the new organisation. As ISM platform members, they took responsibility for developing the SSA, and later the SSP. However, in many areas, particularly where there was little or no ISM presence, other experienced socialist and communist activists played a key role in developing local branches, and exerting pressure to ensure that democratic practice became more embedded in the SSA and SSP, and to encourage the development of an open, non-sectarian culture.

A majority amongst the ISM, who constituted the SSA and SSP leaderships, appreciated the need to exercise a less tight political control over the SSA and SSP membership than the CWI leadership had desired. The ISM was more prepared to listen to suggestions from people who came from other political backgrounds, and with these comrades’ help, the SSA was able to develop open active branches and democratic structures.

Thus, the ISM majority (9) made a considerable contribution to building a wider more inclusive SSA (later SSP). This provided a striking contrast to the behaviour and unity initiatives undertaken by their original CWI mentors. The CWI/SP walked out of the Socialist Alliance in England, when they could not dominate it  (that role was left to the SWP!). Their Campaign for a New Workers Party has proved abortive, because of its inability to attract or hold on to wider socialist forces, whilst the Trade Union and Socialist (electoral) Coalition is turned on and off according to the needs of the CWI/SP. The CWI (and SWP) treats any unity initiative either as a ‘party’-front or as a recruiting ground. Therefore, the ISM’s support for developing an inclusive multi-platform party did represent a considerable achievement, and a big break from the Left’s past sectarian practice.

Platform rights were allowed and respected to a considerable degree. The SSA and SSP constituted a united front of self-declared revolutionaries and left reformists. Comrades could openly state their support for revolutionary politics. A real culture of debate and comradeliness developed in the SSA and SSP, which for a time was even able to rein in some of the sectarian practices of the CWI and SWP (10).

Despite some undoubted remaining problems, the SSA and SSP were more democratic than all previous left groups in Scotland and the wider UK. SSA and SSP conferences were organised where genuine debates took place in a largely comradely fashion. Attractive ‘Socialism’ events, with outside speakers, were also organised.

SSP branches were soon formed in every part of Scotland, including the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland. This represented the most extensive support for socialist politics in Scotland that had been achieved so far.

 2)      THE WEAKNESSES OF THE SSP

 a)         Politics

The development and handling of ‘Tommygate’ turned out to be the most public failing of the SSP. One effect of this was to disguise some other weaknesses, which would undoubtedly have emerged more clearly after the election of its six MSPs in 2003. The political conditions, which led to these other problems, were created by the international Left’s inability to prevent the Iraq War in 2003, and the decline of working class action in the UK, including Scotland.

The electoral setbacks of the European Left in subsequent (pre-2007 Crash) elections, including those in Italy, France and Ireland, demonstrated this. The Scottish Greens also lost five of their seven MSPs in 2007. If ‘Tommygate’ had not happened then the SSP would still probably have been reduced from six to one MSP in that election – i.e. Tommy. And he thought he was smart in helping to create Solidarity as his own special fan club to further advance his own celebrity politics!

Yet, there had been no prior public questioning in the SSP of the promotion of the Tommy ‘myth’. This failing was to have dire consequences. When ‘Tommygate’ erupted in 2004, the leadership was left floundering over how to deal with a ‘Tommy’ who had been their very own creation. This confused many members and supporters who began to look elsewhere – often either to the SNP, or even back to the Labour Party.

Remarkably, as Tommy had moved further and further into the world of celebrity politics (aided by his new wife, Gail, whom he married in 2000), the SSP leadership allowed him to build up an entirely new public image for himself as the Daniel O’Donnell of the Left. (He later utilised this in court to claim his leisure activities were largely confined to playing Scrabble with Gail!) This involved publicly turning his back on his pre-marriage image as the Errol Flynn of the Left (which he wistfully recalled in his chats with Coolio on Big Brother).

Key SSP leadership figures knew from early on that this new public image was false, but did not challenge Tommy’s hypocrisy. However, even if Tommy had been able to make a ‘Doris Day’ (11) like conversion, socialists should still not have been involved in allowing the public promotion of such a conservative, 1950’s, family man image.

When Solidarity was formed in 2006, it became, in effect, the Continuity Sheridan-SSP. Celebrity politics were enshrined at its founding conference, with the virtual anointment of Tommy by his mother, Alice Sheridan.  With Tommy in prison for the 2011 Holyrood election, Solidarity sought a new celebrity candidate in the form of George Galloway, accountable to nobody but himself.

The resort to celebrity politics was not, however, rejected in principle by the SSP leadership after the split. An attempt was made by the SSP International Committee to highlight this wider problem amongst the Left in Britain (e.g. Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone, Arthur Scargill and George Galloway), in a leaflet for the 2008 Convention of the Left in Manchester. However, a section of the SSP leadership suppressed this because it might have upset Galloway and his supporters (12).

Celebrity politics, however, are just one aspect of a wider populism, which avoids the open promotion of socialist politics. Promoting populism is a quite different matter to promoting popular politics in order to extend openly socialist ideas beyond their traditional narrow organisational confines. Populist politics, which downplay the centrality of the working class, have often revealed themselves in the SSP. Although the SSP stood as part of the EACL in the 2009 Euro-elections, it ditched the EACL’s own slogan, ‘Make the Bosses Pay for their Crisis’, and retreated to the vacuous, non-class specific, ‘Make Greed History’ (13).

This resort to left populism, though, was not as bad as Solidarity’s support for No2EU’s, ‘No to social dumping’ – a right populist, thinly disguised racist attack on migrant workers, reminiscent of the NF/BNP/Gordon Brown call for ‘British jobs for British workers’.

One reason for resorting to populism is the fact that those coming from the CWI tradition never developed an adequate understanding of what constitutes socialism/communism. Up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CWI largely equated socialism with nationalisation. Although the weaknesses in this position have been recognised by those who have moved away from the CWI, there has been no real attempt to develop a new clearly articulated socialism/communism, which could effectively challenge a capitalism very much now in crisis since the 2008 Financial Crash.

Part of the problem lies with the CWI’s long sojourn within the Labour Party, where they began to adapt to the reformist milieu they were working with. Whereas Marx had viewed the state as a machine designed to perpetuate the rule of capital, backed by “a body of armed men”; those from a CWI background tended to see the existing state as being in the hands of the wrong people – the capitalist class – instead of the representatives of the working class. In particular, they had looked forward to a future elected Labour government, pledged to socialist policies, ‘capturing’ this state, passing an Enabling Act and nationalising the top 200 companies. But the capitalist state can not be equated with its ‘representative’ institutions – behind these lie the ruling class’s ‘deep state’ with its military, security, judicial and other bodies, all beyond our effective accountability, ready to bypass parliament, and to take ruthless action against any fundamental challenges from our class.

Therefore, the solutions offered by the leaderships of SSP and Solidarity (where the SWP also avoids offering any socialist strategy), to meet the current crisis of capitalism, tend to be national reformist. They stretch from a call for neo-Keynesian state economic intervention to demands for nationalisation  - i.e. from left Labourism to old style, orthodox Marxist-Leninism. The call for nationalisation is sometimes relabelled ‘public ownership’, or supplemented with an unspecified, ‘under democratic’ or ‘workers’ control’.

There has been little appreciation of the international economic integration of the corporate imperialist capitalist order. This places very real restraints on national ‘solutions’, and makes the development of an internationalist strategy and international organisation vital. The massive anti-(corporate) globalisation, anti-Iraq war, anti-G8 and Occupy protests have shown that millions of people already understand the need for an international response. Yet there has been little indication that the Left can build on this by creating a new International (14).

The EACL is very much constrained by the limitations of the ‘socialist diplomacy’ practised between its two dominant political groupings – the USFI and International Socialist Tendency (SWP). There is clearly a glaring need for concerted international action in the face of the EU leaders’ austerity drive, which has led to unprecedented attacks on Greek, Portuguese and Irish workers. These will have a knock-on effect on the rest of the European (including the UK) working class.

There has been no real debate in the SSA or SSP over socialists’ participation in parliamentary and council elections. Are parliament and local councils vehicles for bringing about socialism through accumulative reforms; or do socialists participate in elections to these bodies to support independent class activity, and to put forward the case for socialism/communism?

Again this confusion arises because a significant section of the Left tends to see the state machine as neutral, and just requiring a different hand at the helm, rather than a capitalist state, shaped to meet the capital’s needs. The existing state machine is  worse than useless as a means of socialist transformation. Indeed it is a trap for the working class.  What should be recognised is the need for the state’s destruction and its replacement with a commune-like semi-state, intended to wither away as the lower phase of communism (socialism) gives way to its higher phase.

We never got near this kind of debate about a Maximum Programme within the wider SSP.  This was perhaps understandable in the context of the long debt-financed consumer boom, which coincided with the first ten years of the SSP’s existence. Efforts were concentrated instead on developing and implementing elements of an Immediate Programme. Now capitalism is once more in deep crisis. Attempts to buttress each national economy through superficial reforms can only lead to intensified international competition, with a downward pressure on pay and conditions, and an even greater likelihood of wars, possibly extending to the imperial metropoles themselves. Therefore, it has become imperative that socialists/communists outline their alternative society and the means needed to achieve this.

The SSP became too election focussed, particularly after winning its six MSPs. This sucked prominent regional or trade union activists into the parliamentary centre. The decision to spend so much money on parliamentary support workers for the newly elected MSPs was an indication of this creeping electoralism. A three way split developed between the SSP’s MSPs – 1) Tommy and Rosemary, 2) Caroline, Frances and Rosie and 3) Colin – as to how to relate to Holyrood. There was little effective party control over these MSPs. The parliamentary ‘tail’ sometimes wagged the SSP ‘dog’.

If ‘Tommygate’ had not erupted, a strongly electoralist wing would probably have emerged in the SSP, offering the party’s MSPs as coalition fodder in the event of a hung Holyrood parliament (15). Former Labour MEP, Hugh Kerr, was already suggesting, before the 2003 Holyrood general election, that the SSP stand down in favour of the SNP in first-past-the-post seats, anticipating such coalitions and a more parliamentary focussed politics (16).

Those who learned their initial politics in the British Left have shown little understanding of the UK as an imperialist, unionist and constitutional monarchist state, and the role of the Crown Powers in maintaining British ruling class control. Nor do they appreciate the real nature of the current British and Irish ruling classes’ ‘New Unionist’ strategy of promoting the ‘Peace Process’ and ‘Devolution-all-round’, aided and abetted by trade union leaders locked in ‘social partnerships’ with the bosses and politicians. This is done to ensure that the UK and the Twenty-Six Counties remain safely subordinated to corporate capitalism and US/British imperialism.

In reaction to their earlier left British unionist training, the majority amongst the SSA and SSP (and later the Solidarity) leaderships have shown a strong tendency to be pulled towards Scottish nationalism, and have become sentimental Scottish republicans rather than militant socialist republicans. Although the 2005 Declaration of Calton Hill represented a partial break from this, the SSP leadership has gone on to tailend the proposed constitutional reforms of the SNP in their proposed Scottish Independence Referendum (17).

After the split between the SSP and Solidarity, some members of the now defunct ISM became divided between the Frontline supporters found in the SSP, and the Democratic Green Socialists (DGS), who played a similar role in Solidarity. It was these two organisations’ initially shared break from the CWI, which had led them to move on from much of the old left British unionist politics (although long retaining elements of such politics over the issue of Ireland), only to court left Scottish nationalist politics as an alternative.

As a result, the ISM/Frontline’s and the DGS’s politics, with regard to Scotland, have not been drawn from the major contributors to anti-imperial/anti-UK state politics prior to Poll Tax, e.g. the Workers’ Republican tradition of James Connolly and John Maclean, but to a bowdlerised version of Labourism/Trotskyism inherited, but still not fully questioned, from the CWI. This is sometimes topped up with a little sentimental Scottish history and the use of the saltire in the Scottish Socialist Voice.

Those from a CWI tradition also have a poor understanding of the conflict in Ireland. They have been unwilling to address this issue in case any accusations of ‘sectarianism’ affected their electoral campaigns, particularly in the Central Belt. In the SSA’s preparatory stages, the one group, which CWI members went to considerable lengths to exclude, was the James Connolly Society (JCS). It also took years and years to get one-time CWI/ISM members of the SSP on to the JCS’s annual Connolly march in Edinburgh. The CWI’s left unionism was carried into the ISM. This led to their joint agreement to invite Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) as a ‘socialist’ Loyalist, with a background in the UVF, where the British state recruited its death squads (18), to ‘Socialism 2000’ (19).

Despite the 2002 SSP Conference’s 50:50 debate, there was insufficient follow-up debate about the nature of women’s exploitation and oppression, and how women’s emancipation and liberation contribute to wider sexual liberation and to socialism/communism. In the aftermath of the split in the SSP, a marked division remained between those former ISM members in Frontline, who wanted to take on board a more Feminist agenda, and those in the DGS, who retained an opposition to “gender obsessed politics” (many of them had opposed the 50:50 arrangements back in 2000).

In the case of ISM/Frontline members this led to a blurring between socialist and radical Feminist politics. In the case of DGS members this led to a slippage away from any socialist understanding of the role of women’s oppression, and to a schizoid split between holding to libertarian views on sex (e.g. believing prostitution is just another form of wage labour, not recognising the women’s oppression involved), or to a toleration of very conservative sexual relationships (e.g. not questioning the promotion of the ‘perfect celebrity couple’ in the never-ending ‘Tommy and Gail Show’). The political division over the role of Feminism, between the two wings of one-time ISM members, very much added to the acrimony during ‘Tommygate’ (20).

The SSP and Solidarity leaderships, following on the old CWI tradition, have remained wedded to Broad Leftism in the trade unions. This involves a ‘parliamentary’ industrial strategy, which sees sovereignty as lying in the trade union conferences (‘parliament’), when effective control really lies in the union HQs (where the bureaucracy forms the ‘Cabinet’). Broad Leftism concentrates on getting left wing union leaderships elected to replace right wing ones. This is countered to a Rank and File ‘republican’ industrial strategy of democratising and transforming trade unions to make them combative class organisations with sovereignty residing amongst the union members in their workplaces, who are prepared to take independent (‘unofficial’) action when required (21). There has also been no debate on possible new methods of organising workers, e.g. social unions.

There have been illusions around existing Broad Left trade union leaderships, and a failure to extend the principle of a worker’s representative on a worker’s wage in parliament, to campaigning for all trade union officials being on the average wage of the members they represent.  The SSP’s relationship with the RMT was focussed on its General Secretary, Bob Crow, and its Broad Left leadership (22), rather than its rank and file members.

Cultural developments can anticipate wider social and political developments, even during periods when the working class is in retreat. Whilst an effective struggle against exploitation and oppression needs confident economic/industrial and political organisation, attempts to go beyond the alienation we experience under capitalism often takes on a more disparate cultural form, which the ruling classes find harder to discipline and police. Despite the wider vibrant cultural debate found in Scotland, and signs of support from several significant cultural figures, there was no organised attempt to intervene in this debate and to encourage its development in a Scottish internationalist rather than a Scottish nationalist direction.

b)          Organisation

From the beginning, despite wishing to create a wider organisation, which brought in others, the CWI/SML still wanted to remain the leadership group. This in itself is not a problem. The issue is how do you go about achieving this aim – by encouraging the maximum democracy or by political manoeuvring?

The CWI/SML sought to bring about wider unity, not primarily on the basis of an agreed Immediate Programme (23), but by courting specific groups and individuals, whilst playing down the revolutionary side of their own politics. This involved a resort to diplomacy, rather than holding an open debate between some of the more advanced positions held by the CWI/SML (and others) and the undisguised left reformism and electoralism of those coming, in particular, from Labour and SNP backgrounds.

Of course, any such open debate, may well have resulted in the SSA adopting openly left reformist positions anyhow, given the historical weight of reformism in Scotland and the wider UK. This is why it was so vital to create and maintain the SSA and SSP as open democratic organisations, where such ideas could be challenged and changed in the light of experience.

The SSA and SSP depended overmuch on the initial political training given to its members from other political organisations before they joined up. There was no comprehensive political education programme put in place for new members. There was an attempt to produce an SSA magazine, Red, but it was short-lived.

When the ISM split into majority and minority CWI/IS factions, the majority ISM kept to the old strategy of trying to remain the leadership by making openings to certain individuals. An ‘Inner Circle’ coalesced within the SSP leadership, which consisted of Tommy Sheridan, Alan McCombes and Alan Green (he represented those from a non-CWI tradition) with a close periphery of Keith Baldassara and Frances Curran (she provided a link with the leading influential Feminists, such as Carolyn Leckie). The ISM used its position as the largest platform to ensure that this emergent ‘Inner Circle’ was given wider support in the SSP (24). As long as the ISM continued to exist, there was still some platform accountability.

The ISM also used its numerical strength to get sympathisers into key positions, whether or not they were up to the job. Paid organisers, who were not transparent or accountable, sometimes built their own fiefdoms either in areas of particular activity or geographical areas.

The ‘Inner Circle’ kept things from the membership (either with tacit ISM acceptance or without their knowledge), e.g. how many real paying members there were, and the fact that the SWP did not pay their subs (although some of their members did join as individuals). Therefore, the activities of the ‘Inner Circle’ were neither transparent nor fully accountable.

Many members of the ISM began to doubt the need for a distinctive platform to advance their specific politics. Instead, they increasingly relied on giving support to those experienced former members of the CWI, and founder members of the ISM, who had steered them through the difficult transition from the CWI/SML to the independent ISM platform in the SSA and SSP.  ISM members began to drop out of their platform, whilst still giving their support as individuals to the ‘Inner Circle’.

In engaging with new political forces, ISM members found themselves questioning some of their previously held beliefs. This is, of course, a good general principle for all socialists. Individual ISM members formed friendships and alliances with other individuals and tendencies, e.g. amongst the left Scottish nationalists and the radical Feminists. This led to a process of adaptation that left individual ISM, or former ISM members, strung out at different points along various lines of thought over a number of key issues. That made it increasingly difficult for the ISM to maintain a unified public position on these political issues.

This was demonstrated most spectacularly over ‘Tommygate’. However, over the issues of 50:50, ‘internationalism from below’ republicanism versus left Scottish nationalism, Ireland (particularly the Connolly march), and secularism versus support for specific identity (especially faith) schools, different ISM members also found themselves on differing sides (25).  As the ISM platform began to fragment, this left the ‘Inner Circle’ as the real SSP leadership, since they were no longer restrained by any remaining ISM discipline.

After 2003, those newly elected MSPs, who had their own trusted personal contacts in the party, also had to be acknowledged by the ‘Inner Circle’. That opened up the prospect of personal, rather than platform differences arising, which could bring about a more dysfunctional leadership, in the absence of either any platform discipline, or of effective wider party accountability.

The ‘Inner Circle’ was unable to successfully address the crisis in the SSP, when ‘Tommygate’ split them, along with their close personal and parliamentary supporters. Both sides put more trust in the bourgeois courts and leaks to the bourgeois media than in the SSP membership. Neither side confined its appeals for support to bona fide working class and socialist organisations. Initially a cover-up ‘deal’ was made between the SSP Executive Committee and Tommy, under which the reasons for his mutually agreed resignation were hidden from the membership. The minutes were not circulated. This sowed further seeds of confusion, adding to those created by the leadership’s shared responsibility in constructing the Tommy ‘legend’ in the first place.

This legacy of personalised politics very much added to the ensuing acrimony, which contributed to the split between the SSP and Solidarity. The two respective leaderships centred on Alan McCombes and Frances Curran on the SSP side, and Tommy Sheridan and his family on the Solidarity side. Supporters were expected to show uncritical loyalty for their leaders’ respective stances in the virtual civil war that developed. Those trying to put forward a more critical viewpoint found themselves subjected, not to real debate, but more often to misrepresentation, and sometimes to vilification.

Prior to the split, the SSP leadership had tolerated the existence of sects, in particular the SWP and the CWI. These were able to take advantage of the SSP’s recognition of platforms (26). The CWI and SWP saw themselves as having all the answers in advance, with nothing to learn from others, when important questions were debated. They were organised as alternative leaderships-in-waiting, ready to take over.

However, instead of establishing firm platform guidelines, diplomatic deals were also made between the SSP leadership and these sects. The SSP leadership did not openly and politically challenge the sectarian practices of these organisations’ leaderships (27). Such an approach could have won over some of their rank and file (albeit not their leaderships, whose sectarianism is hard-wired), attracting them with more open and democratic politics.

 3. THE CURRENT SITUATION – FACING UP TO REALITY

There has been no real attempt by either of the two post-split leaderships (SSP and Solidarity) to draw up a balance sheet of the strengths and weaknesses of the original socialist unity project, or to make any honest assessment of where socialists and the wider working class now are in Scotland. The SSP leadership’s main remaining hope, after ‘Tommygate’, seems to be that, “Things can only get better”! And, is Solidarity now on hold until Tommy gets out of jail?!

Solidarity launched itself, in 2006, with the claim that it would soon overtake the number of pre-existing SSP MSPs. However, it failed even to retain its celebrity leader, Tommy, despite his loudly proclaimed court ‘victory’ that year. Solidarity’s leadership took refuge in its ability to garner more votes (31,066 to the SSP’s 12,731) in the 2007 Holyrood election. Yet Ruth Black, its sole elected councillor, soon defected to Labour after an acrimonious internal spat (28).

The SSP leadership believed that there would be an upturn in SSP fortunes, once they were legally vindicated in the Perjury Trial. However, the SSP’s vote fell from the lowly 12,731 gained in 2007, to the abysmal 8,272 in the 2011 Holyrood election, despite the December 2010 court judgement, which upheld the SSP leadership’s version of the ‘Tommygate’ events. This electoral result showed the leadership’s wishful thinking.

Although the Tommy/Solidarity-backed Respect/George Galloway celebrity candidate only received 6972 votes, in the May 2011 Holyrood election (compared with the still unsuccessful Tommy’s 8544 votes in 2007), whilst Solidarity’s own vote plummeted to 2,837, this could hardly provide the SSP leadership with much comfort, considering that both the phantom Socialist Labour Party, and more worryingly, the British National Party, gained far more votes than the SSP.

Indeed, the fact that the BNP’s vote exceeded the combined vote of the SSP and Solidarity was not publicly acknowledged by either leadership, despite the BNP’s and SDL’s ongoing attempts to gain a foothold in Scotland, particularly amongst British Loyalists in the Central Belt. Indeed there had been more concern at leadership levels, to see that the SSP and Solidarity slog it out against each other in certain Glasgow seats, than to ensure that the BNP were opposed everywhere.

What remains of the SSP has become a much looser alliance than the old SSA. Work is left to individuals, the Scottish Socialist Voice has no Editorial Board, the SSP website (29) is Eddie Truman’s sole responsibility, Richie Venton is the SSP’s industrial organiser without any accountability to a committee of SSP trade unionists.

The Scottish Socialist Youth and the SSP International Committee have taken good initiatives, e.g. the Anti-Fascist Alliances (30) and the Republican Socialist Conventions. However, these have not had real united leadership backing (although individual leaders have sometimes given their support, particularly Colin in the latter case).

The SSP leadership does not necessarily follow through conference decisions (e.g. the principled support given to ‘No One Is Illegal’ at the post-split 2007 Conference, which would have meant working closely with the Glasgow Unity Centre). Part of this is due to exhaustion of leading members, but another factor is the continued SSP legacy of having the remnants of this unaccountable ‘Inner Circle’. Whilst no longer necessarily having the vigour to politically oppose initiatives, which they do not fully support at conferences, they can still ensure that any such agreed initiatives receive little effective national leadership promotion or coordination.

The current SSP leadership is divided over the way forward. Some from the old ‘Inner Circle’ are showing signs of abandoning the pretence of that the SSP is still a real party, and of retreating instead towards the formation of a socialist ‘think tank’, somewhat to the left of that recently formed to commemorate Jimmy Reid. This SSP initiative appears to be Glasgow based.

Colin Fox and Richie Venton, however, argue that the existing SSP can be revived if only the correct campaign can be found (e.g. Fighting Fuel Poverty, or Fighting the Cuts), or if members fully throw themselves into a continuous ‘hamster wheel’ of activity. Both work very hard and lead by example. They can always point towards a model branch out there to show that such activity is the way forward. The current example given is the new Ayrshire branch, built with the help of the party’s latest prominent recruit, Campbell Martin. He is a former SNP and Independent MSP. He remains a strong advocate of a left Scottish nationalist approach to the constitution, coupled with some support for populist politics (including the SNP’s minimum alcohol pricing and their misguided anti-‘sectarian’ bill (31).

Mounting campaigns is indeed an important activity for socialist organisations. However, without a proper assessment of the class forces involved, or of how a particular campaign links up with the organisation’s wider Immediate Programme and the struggle for socialism, then any such campaign will either run out of steam; or, it will be taken under the wing of the larger parties. Then, instead of contributing to the building of independent working class organisation, the campaign merely ends up buttressing these parties’ political position, by providing them with some cover for the cuts, or for the other counter-reforms they are imposing elsewhere. The Free Prescriptions Bill, initiated at Holyrood by the SSP parliamentary group, was only enacted by a subsequent SNP government, after the SSP ceased to have any MSPs.

In contrast to the SSP, Solidarity was formed as an alliance (calling itself a movement) and not a party. John Dennis of the SSP South Region made the original proposal for a breakaway, because he thought that internal relations had become too toxic to be contained in one party. However, Solidarity quickly constituted itself as a ‘marriage of convenience’, between Sheridan and the Sheridanistas of the DGS, CWI and SWP. It now has even less political cohesion than the currently loose SSP alliance.

The DSG website is showing signs of wishing to reunite the Left, but largely on the basis of ‘forgive and forget’ (32). The recently formed International Socialist Group (ISG), a Scottish breakaway from the SWP, also involved in Solidarity, seems to be adopting a similar path. Its co-thinkers in Counterfire, in England and Wales, have already drawn Socialist Resistance (33) into their Coalition of Resistance (CoR) against the cuts. Whilst CoR is all too willing to bow before Broad Left trade union bureaucrats and left-talking politicians, it constitutes the most punchy campaigning organisation fighting the cuts at present (as shown by its contingent on the STUC’s October 1^st demonstration in Glasgow).

CoR and ISG have even attracted some SSP members, despite their strong antipathy to those from an SWP background. However, any such unity is also likely to be on the shaky ground of ‘forgive and forget’, rather than ‘listen, learn and then move on’. Ironically, this would just repeat the ‘diplomatic’ approach the ‘Inner Circle’ adopted taken towards the SWP (the tradition from whence the ISG came), back in 2002.

Both wings of the current SSP leadership remain reticent about becoming involved in other political organisations’ unity initiatives, or even in wider campaigns where they might meet up. An exception is made in the case of the Scottish Independence Convention (SIC), which does bring the SSP into contact with Solidarity and ex-Solidarity members. Furthermore, the various struggles impose their own similar joint work, particularly in trade unions. Just as a shared left Scottish nationalism has led to common work inside the SIC, so a shared Broad Leftism has led to joint electoral slates in some unions (e.g. the Public and Commercial Service [PCS] union).

Some SSP and Solidarity members and former members, who have become disillusioned with these organisations, have called for their virtual dissolution into the various campaigns, e.g. Anti-Cuts. They hope that the experience of working with new forces, or ‘knocking heads together’ (i.e. of mutually suspicious SSP and Solidarity members or ex-members) will eventually provide a new basis for unity in the future. Whilst this path can seem attractive, it means glossing over the real political differences that have arisen, and the challenges neither side addressed. Such a course is also likely to lead to more public ‘diplomatic manoeuvres’ (usually accompanied by personalised put-downs in private), in order to bring about a superficial unity, mainly for electoral purposes. This is never a solid basis upon which to build.

Meanwhile, the CWI and SWP continue to slug it out with their own front organisations – the (now defunct?) Campaign for a New Workers’ Party and the National Shop Stewards Network for the CWI, and the (about to be abandoned?) Right to Work Campaign and Unite the Resistance for the SWP. Neither of these sects is likely to commit itself to building a real united party. They prefer to go no further than forming electoral mutual non-aggression pacts like the United Left Alliance in Ireland (which is likely to flounder, if it fails to develop further, after its initial electoral success this year). The prime political purpose of the CWI and SWP is still to build their own sects.

In 2003, a united SSP showed it had gained a definite foothold of support amongst members of the working class in Scotland. The abysmal 2011 (combined SSP and Solidarity) electoral result is an indication that, not only that most politically conscious workers, but also many socialists in Scotland, have moved on from the SSP and Solidarity.

 4) WHAT WE NEED TO DO -

LISTEN, LEARN AND THEN MOVE ON

The inspiring legacy of those successful working class campaigns in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, along with the recognition of the need for the working class to organise outside the Labour Party, and to address the National Question in Scotland in a serious manner, provided a sufficient political basis for the successful launch of the initial SSA and SSP project. However, the major challenges the SSP has faced since then mean that new lessons have to be learned if any successful socialist unity project is to be developed in the near future.

We need to acknowledge that the current SSP project is over. We can see that the attempt just to hold things together, hoping things will get better, has not worked. There has been little recognition, at the leadership level, of the need to face up to the new challenges, which the working class has faced; or of the necessary self-criticism about the handling of ‘Tommygate’. The SSP leadership had put the addressing of ‘Tommygate’ on hold between 2006-10, ostensibly for legal reasons during the Perjury Trail.  The 2011 Conference in Dunfermline took a retrograde step by overturning those self-critical decisions, which had been made at the first post-split SSP Conference in Glasgow in 2006.

In pursuing this ‘head-in-the-sand’ course, the SSP will end up as little more than another sect. The leadership’s refusal to develop a strategy to win back the more critical elements of Solidarity (using the Perjury Trial as an excuse), which would have involved some self-criticism, was the first step on this dead-end road. When the SSA was being set up, the SML/ISM understood the futility of trying to build a new organisation solely around an unquestioned and unquestioning CWI leadership. They actively sought wider support, and just as importantly, were prepared to be self-critical and to challenge some of their old shibboleths in the light of recent experiences. Those in the SSP today, who wish to re-establish socialist unity in Scotland, need to recognise that real answers have to be given to those challenges the SSP failed to meet.

Socialist unity, which has the capacity to address the many pressing issues the working class currently faces in a crisis-ridden world, can only be formed on a new and higher political basis. Such socialist unity will also involve those outside the SSP’s ranks. Such unity can not be built on the basis of ‘forgive and forget’ (which will just lead to a reoccurrence of previous bad practices), but must be done on the basis of ‘listen, learn and then move on’.

a)           Politics

To meet the new challenges the Left has faced in Scotland, we need to clarify our views over:-

-            What we mean by socialism/communism and how (and if) the immediate struggles we support promote this aim.

-            The promotion of internationalism, through building wider international organisation on the basis of ‘internationalism from below’ and by participating in international actions.

-            The rejection of populism and the creation of an ‘Immediate Programme’ that both enhances the position of our class, and encourages the development of  independent working class organisation and struggle.

-            An understanding of the reasons why socialists participate in elections to state bodies.

-            An understanding of how socialists participate effectively in trade union (and other working class) struggles.

-            Moving on from a left Nationalist approach to the National Question in Scotland, by adopting a serious commitment to socialist Republicanism.

-            A deeper understanding of Feminism (how to achieve women’s liberation and emancipation), and how this links with the transformation of sexual and social relations between the sexes, which socialist men (who should also have a vision of a realisable better society) have a real interest in achieving.

-            A serious approach to Ecology which takes into account the meeting of the human need for water, food, fuel, shelter and transport, but in an environmentally sustainable way.

-            An imaginative approach on how we relate to other areas of struggle, e.g, culture.

b)          Organisation

To learn from the mistakes of the SSP (and of Solidarity), and become more effective we need to:

-            Emphasise the vital importance of democracy, transparency and accountability in all the organisations of the working class.

-            The role of leadership

-            Reject the lure of ‘celebrity politics’.

-            Acknowledge that neither the bourgeois courts, nor the bourgeois media, are appropriate places for socialists to get rulings on how they conduct themselves, or to conduct their internal disputes.  We must confine our appeals to democratic working class and socialist/communist organisations and media. How can we convince the working class of the case for socialism if we have to run to the ruling class’s courts over how we handle our own affairs?

On November 30^th, two million public sector workers went on strike (including 300,000 in Scotland), thousands joined picket lines, and tens of thousands went on demonstrations throughout the UK.  However, there is no chance of defending our pensions, when the ruling class and its supporting parties are determined to roll back our class’s gains, and we remain divided between unions and a plethora of different pension schemes. Trade union leaders will all too soon be jockeying for sectional concessions. Only a class wide political offensive, which links up all struggles against the ruling class’s current austerity drive (and this must extend across the EU), has any chance of undertaking a successful defence and then moving on to make real gains.

Nor can the working class be left to the ‘tender mercies’ of a future Miliband (34) -led Labour government.  The Con-Dems may demand an immediate ‘arm and a leg’ from every worker in the UK; but New Labour also wants to saw off our ‘limbs’ – only more slowly. The SNP wants a Scotland that is a low tax haven for corporate business and a playground for the ultra-rich.

Socialists and communists must offer something better.  So let us ‘listen, learn and then move on’.

Allan Armstrong, Bob Goupillot, Iain Robertson, 20.12.11

Allan Armstrong gives his personal reflections on The Provisional IRA – From Insurrection to Partition, (by Tommy McKearney, with an Introduction by Paul Stewart)

I first met Tommy McKearney in the preparations for the initial Republican Socialist Convention, which was held in Scotland. He was due to pick me up from the Dublin Monaghan bus. I described myself over the phone – “Late fifties, with short grey hair.” Tommy laughed and said, “A lot like me then.”

When I opened the front cover of his new book, there was photo of Tommy in 1975 with long hair and a droopy moustache. His appearance then was not too different to mine at the time. Tommy, like myself, had also been drawn into political activity – part of that worldwide post-‘68 generation. Unlike many, we have both remained committed to socialist politics.

However, during my own political activity as a trade union militant and political activist, over more than 40 years in Scotland, I have never faced anything worse than minor inconvenience and mild harassment – often from union officials and the Left! In contrast, Tommy, who became an active IRA member, was arrested, ill treated, then convicted in a Diplock court on the uncorroborated word of an RUC officer, and imprisoned for 16 years of a 20 year long sentence in Long Kesh. During this time he spent a period of 53 days on a hunger strike that brought him within hours of death.

Tommy’s book explains better than any other I have read, why the situation in Northern Ireland – or ‘the Six Counties’ – has been and remains so different from those other parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland. In the process, the book also helps us to understand why the course of activists’ lives, on either side of the Irish Sea, has usually been so different; and why those from ‘the Six Counties’ have experienced degrees of repression unknown to most of us living on this side of the water.

So, whilst Tommy’s book is written from that shared international experience of being a socialist (red), it explains very clearly the political impact of the national differences between living in Northern Ireland (orange) and the rest of the UK, which in my case means Scotland (blue).

Back in 1970, as a young student and socialist, these differences were not that clear to me. I was mesmerised when Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey today) spoke to a large audience at Aberdeen University, giving her account of the Battle of the Bogside and the setting up of ‘Free Derry’. She easily demolished the arguments of those (including a Young Ulster Unionist invited for balance!), who were opposed to the actions taken by the Peoples Democracy wing of the Civil Rights Movement, of which she was then a member.

As young ‘68ers, many of us students had already taken the radical wing of the American Civil Rights Movement to heart. We loved the new wave of Black music. One or two even went for Afro haircuts!  However, the young protestors from Northern Ireland seemed even more familiar. They dressed the same way, listened to an even wider range of shared music (including traditional music, which, in Scotland, often took its lead from the resurgence in Ireland), and held the same disdain for the British Establishment.  Yet, not only those young people in Britain and Northern Ireland, but also those protesting in Chicago, Detroit, Mexico City, Paris, Prague and beyond, all seemed to be part of one common struggle.  Any still remaining national differences seemed insignificant as international revolution beckoned.

In January 1972, we got the first real inkling that things were different in Northern Ireland, at least compared to the rest of the UK. Fourteen people were shot dead by the Parachute Regiment during a civil rights march held on a Sunday afternoon in Derry.  It would still be a number of years before Kevin Gately (1974) and Blair Peach (1979) were to be bludgeoned to death by the police on demonstrations in London – but even these events were seen as exceptional. Meanwhile, in contrast, killings by the British army, UDR and Loyalist death squads had become almost routine in ‘the Six Counties’.

We were certainly outraged over Bloody Sunday. We cheered Bernadette when she mauled Reginald Maudling, the Tory Home Minister, as he lied in Westminster about the role of the British troops in Derry. However, after one last major march in Newry, on the following weekend (which attracted many from the South for the first time), the Civil Rights Movement just seemed to peter out.

How could protestors deal with the sheer brutality of the British state, its continued support for the Ulster Unionist leaders of the Stormont regime and, before long, its clandestine backing for Loyalist death squads too?  Even in the American South, as Tommy points out, “The US federal government made some serious attempts to redress {the} underlying grievances” (p. 50), which had held black people there in subjection for so long.

After Bloody Sunday, new images appeared on our TV screens. We tried to take in the appearance of those people wearing forms of dress unfamiliar to us – men in military attire with balaclavas or black berets. These people didn’t just throw stones and petrol bombs. They had guns and real bombs. They were the IRA. Republicans didn’t even call the place ‘Northern Ireland’. It was the ‘Six Counties’ – a name which revealed another struggle, much older than that shared by the world’s youthful ‘68ers. But was an armed response the only possible reply to UK state repression and Stormont intransigence?

As regular visitor to Ireland, including the North, I never knowingly met IRA members. However, I did come across RUC police stations built like small fortresses. I was stopped at British army-manned checkpoints (many later remotely-controlled from helicopter-supplied hilltop bases). I was forced to turn my car back when I found Border roads that had been rendered unusable by British army-made craters. I soon understood that Northern Ireland certainly was not “as British as Finchley” as Thatcher was later to claim – before she found that Brighton was nearly as Irish as Belfast!

Watching Brian Friel’s play, The Freedom of the City (1973), helped me understand that necessary moment of transition from the Civil Rights Movement to the Republican Movement. Michael, the earnest young civil rights protestor, believes the British army is making a big mistake, as they point their rifles at him, before shooting him dead; unlike Skinner, the young ne’er-do-well, who had up to this point survived on a mixture of quick wits and cynicism, but who now understands what is about to happen to him, and appreciates that an altogether more serious response is needed in the face of what they are up against; whilst the older Lily, drawing on her longer experience of the existing order, realises that they have transgressed and upset the ‘natural order of things’ and, as a result, are going to pay the ultimate price.

This play is not about just any British city council, calling upon the ‘boys in blue’ to get them out ‘a spot of bother’ with the locals. It is about Londonderry City Council, that beachhead of the local Unionist and Orange order, located on the furthest land frontier of the UK state. These locals are not even fully recognised by the authorities as belonging to the same country. This explains the presence not only of the hated RUC and B Specials, but also of the British army, ready to kill to uphold the existing order.

Therefore, as Tommy shows, specific national histories have to be taken into account. “Unlike other parts of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland had a quasi-colonial tradition where one section of the community {Unionist} participated enthusiastically in policing the other {Nationalist} (p. 49).  In the ‘Deep South’ of the USA some Dixie Democrats might well have been members of, or enjoyed close relations with the racist Ku Klux Klan. In Northern Ireland, however, the relationship between Unionist politicians and the sectarian Orange Order was even closer.

Both the southern states and Stormont could also draw upon armed police and militias. However, unlike those US federal forces, which had come to put a check on the segregationist South, the British army, when it arrived in 1969, came to bolster the local Orange state. Any covering rhetoric was just that, as Callaghan, Labour Home Secretary, revealed his tactics – “talk Green, act Orange” (p. 61).

Tommy highlights the mindset of the British ruling class, still wedded to the maintenance of an imperial order. This led to their “very calculated determination to protect its western flank by maintaining a physical military presence in Ireland… They were then, in the midst of an ongoing cold war with the Soviet Union” (p. 59-60).

However, as well as these undoubted strategic worries, the British ruling class faced mounting political opposition closer to home. They were confronted by rising national movements in the UK – not only in Northern Ireland, but also in Scotland and Wales. Douglas Hurd, then Tory MP, later Northern Ireland Secretary (1984-5), wrote Scotch on the Rocks, in 1971. This novel showed his concerns about the spread of new national challenges to the UK – in this case, Scotland. Perhaps, in contrast to the more determined efforts of the US ruling class in the southern states, the British ruling class’s unwillingness to seriously reform its troubled ‘Ulster’ political slum, reflected a growing uncertainty and an element of paranoia. The sun was setting upon the British Empire. Worrying shadows were being cast over the UK itself.

This aspect of British ruling class thinking would not be so apparent to others at the time, particularly anyone in ‘the Six Counties’. For the ruling class’s strategy in Northern Ireland diverged [1] from that in Scotland and Wales, because they faced different problems there. However, once the perceived threat from the USSR had evaporated after 1989, the underlying national threats to the UK state emerged as the central concern of the British ruling class.

They began to devise a common strategy to bolster the US/British imperial alliance, and to create the conditions to maximise corporate profitability throughout these islands – England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.  This strategy, perfected under New Labour, involved the ‘Peace (or pacification) Process’ and ‘Devolution-all-round’. Furthermore, the TUC, ICTU, STUC and WTUC leaderships, drawn by ‘social partnerships’ into cooperation with the state and the employers, gave this strategy a breadth of political support not enjoyed by any previous ruling class attempts to maintain the Union or Partition.

Tommy provides a very clear rebuttal to those pro-British historical revisionists and a reminder that, back in 1968, there was no predetermined Republican plan to become involved in an armed insurgency – the memory of the IRA’s failed Borders Campaign (1956-62) was still too bitter. The struggle that emerged in Northern Ireland was originally for civil rights within the UK. However, the total intransigence of the Ulster Unionists, and the willingness of the British state to give its militarily backing to the Stormont regime, explains the turn to guns and bombs.

After the Loyalists launched their pogroms in the summer of 1969  (involving the B Specials), citizen defence groups emerged in the Nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry. They looked for whatever arms they could get, which meant they were illegally acquired, to defend themselves against the hugely better-armed Orange state and Loyalist gangs often using legally held guns. “One of the first groups to organise for the defence of Catholic Belfast was the Catholic Ex-Service Men’s Association, which was composed of former members of Britain’s armed forces” (p. 68). The Provisional IRA only emerged in December 1969. “When the British Army began shooting petrol bombers, the Provisional IRA began to shoot British soldiers. When the RUC or the British army raided Catholic houses, the IRA bombed British or Unionist-owned businesses’ (p. 112).

Initially the organisation of the insurgency fell upon the IRA’s Belfast Brigade. But “gradually, the British began to impose their strength on IRA districts… foot patrols soon learned the pattern of streets and roadways. More damaging still… was the accumulation of information and knowledge that was being gathered by the British Army and RUC… It became an unpleasant shock to both the IRA in Belfast and to the leadership of the movement overall, when they realised that its largest and most hard-hitting brigade was vulnerable” (p. 115).

Thus, the armed struggle became more focussed on the rural areas where, after “the IRA units gradually acquired the ability to destroy British Army road vehicles… the British used … the UDR (as the B Specials became), supported by the RUC reserve to gather intelligence and to act as a lightly armed counter-insurgent militia” (p. 117).

The UDR often had contacts and overlapping membership with the fascist Loyalist [2] death squads to whom they could pass on information, and offer a degree of protection for their illicit operations. It is not uncommon for reactionary regimes to resort to fascists when required; but usually their services are dispensed with once the particular ‘emergency’ has subsided. The B Specials had been a permanent feature of the Northern Ireland set-up.

Tommy describes vividly the insidious way that the Orange state was able to use these forces to penetrate rural working class communities. “Operating in their own areas… this force performed a function that was vital in every counter-insurgency strategy across the world. That is its members provided a constant on-the-ground presence of men familiar with their native districts who monitored events, responded quickly to incidents, and manned checkpoints at key locations” (p. 111). “They had dual military and civilian roles… Employed as school bus-drivers, postmen, refuse collectors and every other position in the workforce {which Unionist sectarian employment practice very much contributed to} they had a perfect ‘cover’ for travelling covertly through Republican districts” (p. 117-8). “The B Specials were often trusted to store personal weapons in their homes so that they could mobilise at short notice” (p. 50). “Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Provisional IRA responded by proactively targeting UDR members and RUC reservists, whether in or out of uniform” (p.118).

Yet, when it came to those local forces of Unionist law and order, as Tommy points out, “Strenuous efforts have been made over the years to portray {them} as well-meaning part-timers doing their best to protect society insinuating that any attack on their members was motivated purely by sectarianism” (p. 117).

One of the most unpleasant aspects of British counter-insurgency strategy was the attempt to portray this conflict – whether between Loyalist and Republican, Unionist and Nationalist, or Protestant and Catholic – as one between “two warring tribes”. This was used to justify the deployment of British troops “to keep the peace”. Yet, at the same time, British security agencies were clandestinely arming and directing one ‘tribe’, in the form of the Loyalist death squads, in order to intimidate the Nationalists (potential Republican supporters) and to break the real opposition they faced.

This opposition extended way beyond the IRA to the very real ‘communities of resistance’ found amongst the Nationalist working class.  These had originated in the ‘No Go’ areas established at the time Internment was first introduced in 1971. Photographs of working class women banging dustbin lids, to warn of British army patrols, became their iconic image. Although ‘Operation Motorman’ put an end to the ‘No Go’ areas, in July 1972, ‘communities of resistance’ persisted.

The fact that Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, and others in Peoples Democracy, made that transition from the politics of Civil Rights to Republicanism was reassuring for many socialists over here. Furthermore, Bernadette, over both phases of her political activity, retained a strong socialist commitment, which meant that she remained a critical voice. We were reminded of the high cost of such commitment when, in 1981, Bernadette was shot by the UDA seven times at her Coalisland home, with British soldiers waiting not far away.

One of the major strengths of Tommy’s book is how he shows that the war of attrition, which sometimes became derailed into murderous dead-end actions, could have developed in other ways. In the early stage, “for approximately three years… {the IRA} offered training in the use of arms to the local defence committees (p. 75). By late 1972… the Provisional IRA leadership decided to cease providing training for defence to non-members… In the short term this had some merit. In the long term, though, it deprived the organisation (and the Catholic population) of the means and the concept of a broad ground-level defence against Loyalist attack. To a large extent, deciding to tighten control over the armed insurrection illustrated a fundamental dilemma… the Provisional IRA… needed popular support yet felt uneasy about placing unregulated trust in the masses. This was and remains an unfortunate feature of insurrectionary Irish Republicanism” (p. 78).

This weakness became even more apparent in the context of the 1981 Hunger Strikes. “The Anti H-Block campaign drew a broad cross-section of left wing and working class people behind its cause. Very few radical elements of Irish society remained outside the movement and for a period a real opportunity existed to forge a new and dynamic anti-establishment mass movement. Fear of losing control, and a limited understanding of the nature and power of a mass mobilisation of people, led the IRA leadership to impose its authority on the movement with unfortunate consequences” (p. 153). “The Republican leadership recognised the power of mass popular actions but instead of creating a broad revolutionary movement from what they had helped to create, opted instead for a parliamentary path… The strategy was successful from a Provisional IRA point of view, leading eventually to the basis for the nascent New Sinn Fein” (p. 152)  – where ‘New’ has a similar connotation to the prefix placed before Blair’s Labour Party.

And it was in this context that Tommy became involved, with others in Long Kesh, with the Communist Republican Prisoners, and later the League of Communist Republicans. “Unlike those pushing for acceptance of a purely parliamentary strategy, this group of prisoners were firmly to the left of the movement and Marxist for the most part. They argued that it was imperative that the IRA put in place a strategy that would allow it to win significant support in the South and that its politics and strategy would also allow it to make a significant impact on a strategically important section of the British working-class and radical population” (p. 166).

Yet, perhaps this very notion of a ‘British working class’ also needs to be questioned. ‘Britishness’ is an imperially created identity, which has so often helped to imbue workers in these islands with ruling class ideas. Nowhere is this more obvious than in ‘the Six Counties’ itself, where the notion of being ‘Ulster-British’ was such a powerful pull on Protestant workers. The notion of being both Scottish and British exerted a strong pull on Loyalists over here too. And, of course, this British identity came along with support for the Crown, the Union, the Empire and the British armed forces.

However, when the Communist Republicans were first writing in Long Kesh, it is understandable why they could not see beyond this notion of a “British working class”. It was the Tories’ attempt to introduce the poll tax in Scotland that led to a significant increase in the hostility to the idea of a British identity amongst Scots. The successful Anti-Poll Tax campaign, initiated in Scotland, showed the potential for joint campaigns, organised on the basis of ‘internationalism from below’, bringing in, not British, but Scottish, Welsh and English workers. The Tories were smart enough not to extend this tax to ‘Northern Ireland’. However, once the British and Irish ruling classes had developed their shared ‘Peace Process’ and ‘Devolution-all-round’ strategy by 1997, to maintain their control over these islands, it became much clearer that any republican socialist ‘internationalism from below’ response should bring in Ireland too.

Later, Tommy draws readers’ attention to Bernadette McAliskey’s astute observation about the outcome of the ‘Peace Process’.  “She said that it was reminiscent of the Tudor policy of ‘surrender and regrant, in sixteenth century Ireland, when English power was being imposed across the entire island. The Provisional IRA leadership had achieved a certain status by surrendering its old programme and being allocated a place within the British system in Ireland. The era of New Sinn Fein had arrived” (pp.181-2).

Thus, Tommy’s outlining of the Communist Republicans’ viewpoint in the chapter, The Road Less Travelled – The Left Alternative (pp.164-71), provides a very necessary corrective to both those revisionist historians’ accounts and the ‘establishment Republican’/‘New Sinn Fein’ view of events. Tommy highlights the political consequences of  ‘the road not taken’. “Sinn Fein now holds 14 seats in the Dail but has not managed to fundamentally challenge the status quo. North of the border, they are partners with the DUP in the administration of Northern Ireland, having accepted Partition and the implications involved in this, including adapting to the neo-liberal consensus that reigns in Stormont” (pp. 170-1).

However, when appraising the course eventually taken by the Republican struggle, after it was eventually brought securely under the wing of ‘New Sinn Fein’, it is perhaps worth remembering the words which Victor Serge applied to Bolshevism.  “To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?”

Another strength of Tommy’s analysis is that, although very critical of the direction taken by the Provisional IRA, and now ‘New Sinn Fein’, he does not fall back on dissident Republican “mantras about ‘betrayal’ and the ‘right of the Irish people’” (p. 213). Neither does he turn his back on his the long years involved in the Republican struggle. “It broke the foundations of Orange state sectarianism – anti-Catholic discrimination in housing, welfare, the economy and politics. This was a transformative war” (p.202).

But Tommy’s excellent analysis of the nature of this transformation is very revealing. “Something that has not changed, though, is the sectarian division of the Northern Irish working class… The Orange state may have been brought to an end, but in its place is a {new} sectarian entity. This outcome has benefited a significant section of a Catholic middle class born out of the ashes of the Orange state” (p. 189). The new Stormont constitutionally entrenches the position of two ‘communities’ by ensuring that the votes of  “representatives of parties who decline to register as either ‘Unionist’ or ‘nationalist’… do not count when it comes to deciding if cross-community consent has been obtained” (p. 190). Furthermore, “the Northern Ireland assembly has about the same relationship with the House of Commons in London as the management in Tesco in Belfast has with the head office in the UK” (p. 193).

Thus, “if ever the Marxist dialectic of one contradiction giving way to a fresh contradiction was evident in any situation, it is surely visible in the Good Friday Agreement” (p. 190). Whereas the British ruling class once depended upon Ulster Unionists and their Orange state to directly defend its imperial interests, today they have positioned the UK state as ‘honest broker’ between the Unionists and the Nationalists, providing each, in the new Stormont, with a forum to raise their concerns, and to mediate between their claims. The British still call the shots and – if it proves necessary again – they will also still fire the shots. And, whereas in the past, there was always some American questioning of the British role in Ireland, the current strategy of the UK state enjoys the full support of US imperialism.

Tommy finishes his book with a call to launch, A New Republic and a Relevant Republicanism (pp. 207-14). There is a great deal of thought provoking material in this chapter. One doesn’t have to agree with all Tommy’s analysis or proposals, which by their nature are still tentative. What is clear though is that Tommy locates Republicanism within a clear class perspective, with a life beyond its main organisations.  Tommy shows that, depending on the available obstacles or opportunities, Republicanism’s largely working class base has usually taken a fairly pragmatic attitude towards support for a physical force or a political road.

This particular divide, though, has always led to splits within Republican organisations – whether during the Irish Civil War in 1922; as a result of Fianna Fail’s acceptance of the Irish Dail in 1926; the Provisional/Official split in 1969; or between what Tommy calls ‘establishment Republicanism’ (‘New Sinn Fen) and ‘anti-establishment physical force Republicanism’ (1986 onwards).  Attempts to prioritise the working class’s own economic and social issues, whilst keeping firmly to a socialist republican path, have been less successful. However, “as the Provisional IRA military machine has passed into history and the political party that it generated {‘New Sinn Fein’} has drifted into centrism” Tommy sees a real opportunity to create a viable new socialist republicanism, which takes forward the issues the Communist Republican prisoners first raised in Long Kesh.

What I found most satisfying reading this book, as somebody who has been interested in events in Ireland since 1969, is that Tommy has come through his experiences still very much committed to the working class and to socialist republicanism.  This is demonstrated in his current work for the Independent Workers Union, which challenges the ICTU member unions’ backing for ‘social partnership’; and by his commitment to wider political debate, whether in, for example, Fourthwrite and Red Banner, or by attending discussion and debating forums throughout these islands.

Tommy addressed the first Republican Socialist Convention in Edinburgh (November 29^th 2008), organised by the SSP’s International Committee on an ‘internationalism from below’ basis. He also spoke to the third Global Commune Event (January 29^th, 2011), organised by the Republican Communist Network, where he addressed the question – ‘Trade Unions – Are They Fit for Purpose?’

This latter event also involved Paul Stewart, who wrote the Introduction to Tommy’s book. Paul is from a Northern Irish Protestant background and is a politically engaged academic living in Scotland, researching workers’ struggles.  He has given his professional help to the Independent Workers Union, and has helped it in its embrace of social (trade) unionism – which may well turn out to be for the beginning of the twenty first century, what industrial (trade) unionism was for the beginning of the twentieth.

I also had the privilege of seeing Tommy speak to another meeting, this time in Derry. This was organised to celebrate the centenary of James Connolly’s return to Ireland from the USA in June 1910. Bernadette McAliskey, the person who first inspired my interest in the struggle in Ireland, also addressed this meeting. Connolly was born in my home city of Edinburgh. The British army shot him in Dublin for his role in the Easter Rising of 1916. Connolly was the first socialist to challenge ‘the British road to socialism’. He advocated an ‘internationalism from below’ break-up of the UK and British Empire strategy. In this regard, he also inspired that other great Scottish socialist republican and communist – John Maclean from Glasgow, who extended Connolly’s notion of the break of the UK to cover Scotland, after his visit to Dublin in 1919, shortly after the Limerick Soviet.

When people like Bernadette and Tommy remain committed to socialist republicanism, despite all the trials and tribulations they have faced over more than 40 years, we can be a lot more confident about the future.  Tommy’s book addresses the issues faced by socialist republicans in a serious and engaging way. Get a copy, read it, get others to buy it (or, if they can’t afford one, pass yours round) and discuss it.

17 December 2011

[1] see Allan Armstrong:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2012/01/11/why-we-need-a-socialist-republican-internationalism-from-below-strategy-to-address-the-crisis-of-the-uk-state/ (sections v-viii)

[2] see Chris Ford:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2002/08/05/british-nationalism-and-the-rise-of-fascism/

Tommy McKearney’s book, published by Pluto Press, is available from Word Power Books. The Edinburgh book launch was held on August 20th, 2011.

see:-  http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2011/08/26/tommy-mckearneys-new-book-the-ira-from-insurrection-to-parliament/

Celtic Soul Brothers

Tara O’Sullivan (from Red Banner, issue no. 45)

A review of From Davitt to Connolly: ‘Internationalism from below’ and the challenge to the UK state and British Empire 1879-95, by Allan Armstrong

Earlier in the year we witnessed much discussion of relationships between Ireland and Britain. Some was of interest, but the worst of it was that the debate was occasioned by the visit of a certain over-privileged woman with a big house in London, and accompanied by moronic assertion that acquiescing in such a parasitic presence was some sign of maturity. But the histories and destinies of these two islands are linked in plenty of ways infinitely more relevant than the backslapping banqueting of the rich and their retinues.

Allan Armstrong’s book examines such a part of our history, a history of combined efforts to break such power and privilege and end the injustices that working people laboured under. The official take on the period covered here focuses on the Westminster cattle trading between Parnell and Gladstone, the vagaries of the Liberal/Home Rule alliance up to the point where it notoriously ended in tears. Here, however, we see what could have been the makings of a very different kind of alliance, aiming for real political democracy and radical change in social and economic relations.

The book opens as the land war does, a sustained militant movement to overthrow landlordism in Ireland, which inevitably fused with the attempt to win greater national independence. As outlined here, Michael Davitt personally had higher ambitions than others in leading positions: he wanted the land nationalised, not just taken from the landlords, and an Irish republic rather than home rule within the British empire. But this point of view was only one minority strand within the movement, and one which was continually subordinated to more moderate aspirations. The author puts his finger on “Davitt’s main political weakness—his overriding concern to maintain public unity” (p 58). Again and again we read of Davitt agreeing to hush up his more radical demands, so as to prevent a common front to the enemy. The unity of the land war was firmly based on this low common denominator. In view of this, the following characterisation of Parnell’s position seems to miss the point (p 42):

“A different strategy was already forming in his mind—a slower transition to peasant proprietorship and to Irish Home Rule. He was planning his own ‘counter-revolution within the revolution’—the ‘revolution’ being “The Fall of Feudalism”, or the breaking of landlord power; the ‘counter-revolution’ being the cementing of bourgeois political, economic and social power in Ireland, with the backing of the larger tenant farmers.”

The Land League’s stated aim was to win ownership of the land for tenant farmers instead of landlords, while the Home Rule party had the explicit object of an Irish parliament subordinate to Westminster. Parnell’s strategy was nothing new, only a continuation of the agreed strategy: sticking to the original aims of the revolution (in so far as it can be called such), not a counter-revolution. It was the strategy of Davitt and his allies that would have broken new ground, extended the revolution further—and it was their failure to organise openly and independently for that which deserves blame for it not happening, not Parnell doing what came naturally to himself and the class he represented.

A particular quality of the period is well highlighted, drawing a lesson that needs reiterating today, on both sides of the Irish Sea (p 24):

“Migrant labour played a key role. The constant changes in the class composition of the ‘lower orders’, leading to the fall or rise of certain categories of labour, initially made working class organisation more difficult, as employers deliberately promoted ethnic or sectarian divisions amongst their workforces. However, migrant labour also brought its ready-made traditions of struggle, imported by workers from other nations and regions. These traditions were drawn upon and modified in the course of struggle. They contributed to the political awareness and fighting capability of a new ethnically mixed working class.”

The existence of such a contribution has been noted before, of course. Anyone who ever read a history of trade unions in England knows that if you removed all the Celtic names you would have precious little left. Armstrong doesn’t present this as just a pleasant multicultural curiosity, however, but recognises it as a powerful dynamic in the making and renewal of the working class, a dynamic which should be evident in struggles of our own day.

But is it the case that “From the early 1880s an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, of Irish social republicans and Scottish, Welsh and English Radicals, was created” (p 25)? Though a deal of evidence is presented here, it doesn’t back up such a sweeping claim. We read repeatedly of links made from time to time between struggles of working people in those four countries, but nothing that constitutes anything as strong or as lasting as an alliance.

In fact, a strange construction has sometimes to be placed on the material to make it fit this interpretation. In 1886 Davitt addressed Welsh miners and condemned the exploitation they faced. This is portrayed as “further strengthening the link between land and labour” across national boundaries (p 82). But he was electioneering on behalf of a Liberal Party candidate, in the hope that a Liberal government might grant a more generous measure of home rule to Ireland—hardly a radical alliance forged in the heat of class struggle.

This leads to wondering why—apart from the intrinsic interest of the events themselves—the period 1879-95 is chosen. Sympathies and common action between radicals in Ireland and Britain, encompassing Irish independence and social justice, were evident in earlier periods, after all. Left-wing Chartists and left-wing Young Irelanders stood together in 1848. In the 1860s and 70s radical Fenians and the International Working Men’s Association made common cause. So why 1879-95 specifically?

Armstrong explicitly argues here and elsewhere (see ‘The need for internationalism from below’, Red Banner 33, for instance) for a mutual internationalist alliance of socialists in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England, in answer to the concerted efforts of those who rule these countries. While myself and Allan have had a friendly disagreement around whether Britain and Ireland should form an especial framework of activity for socialists (see our letters in Red Banner 34 and 36), it is a noble aim which socialists here in the western reaches of Europe can only welcome.

There is something problematic, however, about reading this perspective back into history. The concept of an “internationalism from below” alliance is entirely the author’s own, not one that ever emerged in the actual struggles of the time. Solidarity with Irish struggles was widespread, but more often on an all-British basis than consciously Scottish,Welsh or English. The emergence of these national questions was more prominent in 1879-95 than before—which presumably explains the book’s focus on the period—but Britain, even the United Kingdom, still formed the dominant terms of reference.

This is evident among Marxist thinkers of the time too, who Armstrong either criticises or claims as supporters—but the proof for their support is weak. He presents Friedrich Engels in 1891 being “in support of a federal republic for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales… He now advocated a federal republic for the four nations” (p 131-2). In reality Engels had written (in a well-known critique of a German socialist programme) that such a republic “would be a step forward” compared to the UK, while still advocating a decentralised unitary republic for Britain and elsewhere. Similarly, “Connolly pursued a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire road to socialism’” (p 21). But while of course insisting on Irish independence, Connolly’s assault on the UK never envisaged an independent Scotland or Wales, or separate socialist organisations in Britain’s three countries (despite th option of establishing a Scottish Socialist Labour Party being wide open to him around 1903).

Again, the argument is more concerned with the early 21st century than the late nineteenth. The author makes no bones about this, as in his characterisation of many British Marxist responses to the issues (p 17):

“They either see the ‘National Question’ as a diversion from the ‘real struggle’, or begin by giving their support to liberal unionist options to defend the UK. When the ‘National Question’ refuses to go away, some ‘Marxist Radicals’ end up tailing the more liberal sections of the British ruling class, when they call for more powers for the existing devolved assemblies. A few go so far as to advocate a new federal arrangement between the constituent parts of the UK.… They hide behind the formulation of support for the ‘right of national self-determination’… take their political lead over the UK constitution from the liberal wing of the British ruling class, or sometimes from the Nationalist parties…”

There is much here that we can regrettably recognise, left-wingers who would prefer if questions of political democracy would conveniently go away and leave them to the bread and butter they know best. Not alone do such issues refuse to go away, however: we shouldn’t want them to. Demands for political democracy are an integral part of our work, often powerful elements in undermining the system we oppose and developing the desire for an alternative.

But is their demand for less than full Scottish and Welsh independence the problem? Take the case of Wales. The only trouble with demanding an independent Welsh republic is that few of the people living there want one. At the moment, most of Wales wants a certain level of self-government—more than it has at present—without breaking away from England completely. This can change, of course, and any decent socialist will fight for Wales’s right to separate as soon as it wants to. But until such a time, our job is to support the Welsh people’s right to vary, weaken, or sever that link as they see fit, to determine their own national future. Socialists support the right to divorce absolutely, but leave it up to people themselves whether they want to break up or not.

This doesn’t amount to defending the UK or a reformed version of it. The grave of the United Kingdom is one every socialist should want to dance on. This forced union, presided over by acres of feudal mummery, belongs in the museum, with its Union Jack torn up for dishrags. But does it have to be replaced by discrete Scottish, Welsh and English workers’ republics, or could a socialist Britain with full autonomy and the right to separate not do the job? The oppression of Ireland has always been greater, and its partition inherently sectarian and anti-democratic, but there are a host of reasons—geographic, economic, cultural and others—why the nations which inhabit Britain might want to share a workers’ republic which accommodated their diverse needs.

If we look to mainland Europe and further afield, it is hard to find many state boundaries that don’t perpetuate some kind of injustice. The map is dotted with nations, nationalities, ethnic and cultural groups whose existence is denied and marginalised by undemocratic capitalist states. Socialism—both as a future society and as a movement aiming for it—will have to come up with various ways to respect their rights, and independent statehood is only one solution among many. Proposing it as the only or primary solution fails to do so, especially in cases where it isn’t wanted by the peoples involved themselves. For instance, a socialist England or Britain should go out of its way to facilitate as autonomous a relationship as Cornwall wants and to support the use of the Cornish language—but proclaiming an independent Cornish republic that hardly any Cornish people want would only be dodging the difficulties involved.

From Davitt to Connolly goes to the heart of such debates, spurning a bad tradition on the left of ignoring tough dilemmas which defy banal answers. It throws light on a crucial period of history for Ireland and its neighbours, one which contains lessons for us today. It is clearly written, not by someone bestowing his private enlightenment upon lesser mortals, but a socialist concerned above all to build a movement of equals that can take capitalism on in these islands and beyond. It deserves to be met in the same spirit.

Looking For A Political Soul Sister

Allan Armstrong replies to Tara O’Sullivan’s Celtic Soul Brothers in Red Banner, no. 45

Once again, Tara O’Sullivan is to be congratulated for her contribution to the continuing debate on the relationship between Socialists in the different nations and states comprising these islands 1. Tara raises some interesting and challenging questions in her critical review of my book, From Davitt to Connolly – ‘Internationalism for Below’ and the challenge to the UK state and British Empire from 1879-95.

Tara wonders why I have chosen this particular period and points to earlier examples of  “sympathy and common action between radicals in Ireland and Britain.” My book is an elaboration of a single chapter from a much larger four volume work I have been writing, entitled Internationalism from Below 2. In this work ‘internationalism from below’ is considered first in relation to the development of nation-states and nationalism; then in relation to other oppositional strategies adopted as mercantile and industrial capitalism developed along with their particular forms of imperialism.

These strategies have included – ‘universalism from above’ and ‘below’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’; support for ‘historic nations’ against ‘non-historic peoples’; and social imperialism against the ideas of Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg and the Austro-Marxists. Tara will be pleased to note that, in volume 2, I do take up all the other examples she gives, whilst, in volume 1, I also deal with the first ‘internationalism from below’ alliance of the United Irishmen, United Scotsmen, the London Corresponding Society and their other international allies.

The Introduction in From Davitt to Connolly highlights one of the main reasons I have chosen this particular period. It was written in the context of challenging British Left unionist and Scottish Left nationalist currents, particularly in the Scottish Socialist Party. However chapter 1 is almost like a second introduction and points to the impact of the break-up of the UK, beginning in 1922, on Socialist and Labour historians’ reading of events in relation to class struggle in these islands. Therefore, I hope that, even if people still have doubts about my full-blown ‘internationalism from below’ interpretation, they will appreciate this aspect of the book. I particularly welcome Tara’s words of encouragement in this regard.

Tara’s first criticism of my book is that “the concept of an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance is entirely my own.” In reply, I would argue that my own particular contribution only amounts to the use of the label ‘internationalism from below’ to describe the strategy utilised by the alliance of social republicans, Radicals and Socialists that developed in the period I wrote about.

By way of an analogy, the term ‘capitalism’ was not used at the time to describe the system which tenant farmers, artisans, the new working class and others were up against when they first fought against capitalist encroachment. Thomas Hodgskin was the first to use this term in 1825 in his Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital. However, Marxists and others have also been quite happy to apply the term ‘capitalism’ to describe its mercantile and early industrial forms long before this word was actually in use. Similarly, I think the phrase ‘internationalism from below’ helps us to understand what was at stake in the struggles I describe, particularly when set against the ‘internationalism from above’ alliance of the Gladstone’s Liberals and Parnell’s Irish National League (INL).

Tara also suggests the word ‘alliance’ is too strong a word to describe the international cooperation she recognises did exist. Whilst there certainly was no signed and sealed formal agreement between the various participants I do think the book demonstrates that many of those struggling in the various Land Leagues, in the Scottish Land and Labour League (SLLL) (as the Socialist League was called in Scotland), the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) and Scottish Socialist Federation (SSF), were aware of the imperial nature of the UK state and the potential for an alliance of national democratic challenges from below. People will just have to read it to see for themselves!

Tara criticises my own characterisation of Parnell’s suppression of the Irish Land League after the Kilmainham Treaty as a ‘counter-revolution within the revolution’. She states that, “Parnell’s strategy was nothing new, only a continuation of the agreed strategy: sticking to the original aims of the revolution (in so far as it can be called such), and not a counter-revolution. It was the strategy of Davitt and his allies that would have broken new ground… Parnell {did} what came naturally to himself and the class he represented.”

Tara is quite correct in stating that Parnell’s class objectives did not change. However, what she misses out is the impact of the struggle itself. Davitt, and other leaders in the Land War, more closely involved on the ground than Parnell, saw the much greater potential that the mass Land League struggle opened up. This led them to raise new demands, to extend the fight beyond Ireland, and to advocate  continued mass action. This meant prioritising the Land League’s mass campaign over the earlier Home Rule League parliamentary and the Fenian Brotherhood military strategies. The mass action aspect of the Land League’s campaign was subordinated, both in the minds of Parnell and the Fenians, to their own preferred strategies – parliamentarianism and physical force respectively. This resulted in the emergence of the INL and the Invincibles, which both contributed to the undermining of the mass action.

However, Parnell’s success in diverting this struggle into purely constitutional channels was far from uncontested, and was not that easy for him to achieve. Precisely because of the mass struggle, initiated by the Land League, Parnell was unable to move seamlessly from his initial public support for mass action (whilst distancing himself from what he saw as it excesses) to the purely constitutional politics, which he probably always really wanted. Parnell’s attitude to growing women’s involvement in the action, demonstrated by his determination to shut down the Ladies Land League (much to the consternation of his sister, Anna), is just one example of the problems he faced in getting his way as a result of the huge impact of the struggle itself . Thus, it can be argued that the launch of the Land War opened up a period of revolutionary change in the social relations found in Irish agriculture; but that Parnell, and his bourgeois and large tenant farmer backers, severely reined in the wider potential, bringing about, in effect, a ‘counter-revolution within the revolution’.

Tara agrees with the criticisms I make of  “Davitt’s main political weakness – his overriding concern to maintain public unity” with Parnell. However, she thinks I place a “strange construction… on the material to make it fit {an ‘internationalism from below’} interpretation”. In particular, she cites my reference to “Davitt address{ing} the Welsh miners and condemning the exploitation they faced.”  Tara protests, reminding readers of the context. Davitt “was electioneering on behalf of a Liberal Party candidate, in the hope that a Liberal government might grant a more generous measure of home rule to Ireland — hardly a radical alliance forged in the heat of class struggle.”

I think though, that my book highlights the growing contradiction between many of those involved in the unfolding class struggles, which demanded a higher form of politics, socialist republicanism, and the inherited politics held by these people. The two dominant ways of thinking on the Left in Davitt’s day were Radicalism (mainly in Britain) and social republicanism (mainly in Ireland). Davitt was very much influenced by both of these ways of thinking, given his Irish birth and his upbringing in industrial Lancashire.

In retrospect, it is relatively easy for us today to see the need back then for a new specifically socialist republican politics, and to understand the political shortcomings of those who were unable to make that transition. The book shows how Davitt, along with others, was very much on the cusp of such a transition, but they were often dragged back by their adherence to now outdated politics.  Yet, they still made significant contributions to the struggle.

Perhaps, we can get a better appreciation of what was happening, if we consider today, how hard it is to get self-declared Socialists to break from the old social democratic shibboleths, outdated strategies (e.g. neo-Keynesianism) and misplaced party loyalties, even when throwing themselves into ongoing struggles, for example, against austerity and cuts.

We have the example of John McDonnell, possibly the last socialist Labour MP in the UK. He is still involved in the official machinery of the British Labour Party and the UK state. Yet, he is often prepared to offer his support for real class struggles on the ground. Davitt, whilst using his 1886 tour of Britain to garner support for the Liberal-INL Home Rule electoral alliance, also used the opportunity to try to bring the miners into struggle, on the basis of opposing mining royalties. I think this provides another example of such contradictory behaviour.  Engels appears to have appreciated Davitt’s contribution, even as late as the period of ‘New (Trade) Unionism’, as I show in the book.

Of course, there will always be some tension between those to whom the political limitations of others (such as Davitt in the past) and the needs of the current movement at the time are stark; and those who still remember the earlier contributions made by such people, but who now hold things back. Despite the growing evidence of Davitt’s political failings, particularly during and after the Kitty O’Shea Scandal, I still find Davitt a sympathetic character, especially when you examine his life of struggle and the changing problems he confronted.

My book ends just before James Connolly left Edinburgh in 1896 for Dublin. Keir Hardie provided Connolly with some money, thinking he was going to set up a branch of the Independent Labour Party in Ireland. Instead he chose to set up the Irish Socialist Republican Party.  In this he was very much influenced by John Leslie’s (fellow SSF and later SDF member in Edinburgh) interpretation of Michael Davitt and the Land League legacy. This led to Connolly rejecting the all-UK strategy of British Socialists at the time. He took Davitt’s social republican and Radical-Liberal alliance on to higher plane by arguing for a new Irish Socialist Republican and British Social Democratic/Socialist alliance, effectively on the basis of ‘internationalism from below’.

Tara points out that “Connolly’s assault on the UK never envisaged an independent Scotland or Wales.” In this she is quite correct.  However, the book shows how the challenge of the promising SLLL, SSF and SLP (all of which Connolly joined after he moved back to Scotland), had been contained by the British ruling class by 1895. This contributed to the tacit adoption of a ‘British road to socialism’ by the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party.  So although, as Tara points out, it was mainly Scottish members of the SDF who broke away to form the de-Leonite Socialist Labour Party, they did not form a specifically Scottish party in 1903.

It was not until 1919, that the Scottish SDF member, John Maclean, switched from its ‘British road to socialism’ course and adopted Connolly’s strategy of the ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire’. Maclean specifically added Scotland to the fault line in the UK state set-up, which he could clearly see in Ireland after his visit to Dublin that year, shortly after the Limerick Soviet. I have dealt with these developments elsewhere 3, but I also intend to write a follow up book, From Connolly to Maclean – ‘Internationalism from Below’ and the Challenge to the UK state and British Empire from 1896-1923, to develop these ideas.

Tara argues that it is not necessary for Socialists to advocate the break-up of particular states, provided that they champion “the right to separate”. There are considerable problems with the ‘right of self-determination’ both as used by Kautsky and Lenin. I have also addressed these problems elsewhere ⁴  and would need a lot more space to do so here. Indeed one of the purposes in writing my longer Internationalism from Below is to show the profound ambiguities in this formulation and how, along with Luxemburg’s and the Austro-Marxist alternatives, they undermined the full potential of the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave.

Tara, who lives in a state that has already broken away from the UK (if not from its wider economic stranglehold, as the banking crisis demonstrated), appears to take this (partly thwarted) revolutionary action as having been almost inevitable. This seems to follow from her quite valid comment that “the oppression of Ireland has always been greater”. However, Tara rather underestimates the initially pretty isolated position of that great revolutionary, James Connolly, when he first advocated the break-up of the UK, and his considerable contribution to bringing about revolutionary change.

The vast majority of the Irish working class at the time gave its support to Home Rule parties, which did not advocate the break-up of the UK or British Empire. This was highlighted by their role in recruiting Irish workers and small farmers in the First World War. Even the early Sinn Fein looked to an Austro-Hungarian-style ‘dual monarchy’ solution (Britain and Ireland) to the National Question. It was only in the context of the horrors of the First World War that the majority of Irish workers began to move towards the break-up of the UK strategy, which Connolly and a few others had long being arguing, but from a minority position.

There is probably greater support for specifically socialist republican politics in Scotland today (albeit still far too small) than in Ireland in the days of Connolly’s ISRP.  There is even greater support in Scotland for Home Rule (now termed Devolution) than in the days of the Irish Home Rulers. Scotland’s own ‘dual monarchy’ party, the SNP, also enjoys much wider support than the early Sinn Fein. Mercifully, the ultra-Unionist, including Loyalist forces, whilst real enough, are also smaller.

What this shows is that not only is the National Question very relevant in the UK today but, as in the period before the First World War in Ireland, is dominated by bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces. Connolly didn’t start from an opinion poll showing the extent of support for Irish independence, but from an analysis of the role of British imperialism and the contradictions it led to, and the possibilities this opened up for Socialists.  This is the approach I advocate today, when the US/UK imperial alliance, fronting corporate capital, is the dominant imperial force in the world.

The future for the working class, and indeed for wider humanity, is pretty bleak as the current capitalist crisis envelops us all. We need to find an effective strategy to challenge this. Only we cannot afford to wait for a new inter-imperialist war to win majority support!  The National Question, which Tara recognises as constituting a vital issue of “political democracy”, still acts as a fault line through UK and Irish politics. This should not be left to the Nationalist parties, which are all prepared to make their own accommodation with corporate capital and imperialism.

Connolly’s proposed alliance of Irish Socialist Republicans and British Social Democrats turned out to be problematic, especially when it came to getting British support for the 1916 Rising. The British Left remains a problem today. I have argued that, in some respects, their hard-wired sectarianism mirrors their adaptation to the UK state.  This is why we have to take Connolly’s version of ‘internationalism from below’ on to a new higher plane through a specifically socialist republican alliance of organisations in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Indeed, some of the lessons to be learned from the negative experience of the ‘British Left’ – the SWP and IS (CWI), both London centred - in helping to sabotage the promising Scottish Socialist Party are probably of considerable relevance in Ireland. Here these organisations’ ‘colonial offshoots’ look set to repeat their divisive roles in relation to the promising United Left Alliance. Although the CWI and SWP constitute their own sectarian ‘internationalism from above’ alliances, they have no strategy to deal with the British and Irish ruling classes’ own ‘internationalism from above’ alliance promoted through the ‘Peace Process’ and ‘Devolution-all-round’, nor their promotion of ‘social partnerships’.

I particularly welcome Tara’s conclusion, which acknowledges that “From Davitt to Connolly goes to the heart of such debates, spurning a bad tradition on the left of ignoring tough dilemmas which defy banal answers. It throws light on a crucial period of history for Ireland and its neighbours, one which contains lessons for us today.”

1. See our previous debates on ‘Internationalism from Below’ in Red Banner, issues no. 33, 34 and 36.

2. All these volumes will be published, as they become available for free, on an internet site. In the meantime volumes 1 and 2 are completed and can be obtained in pdf format on request by e-mailing:- intfrobel@hotmail.co.uk

3/4 These can also be obtained by e-mailing intfrobel@hotmail.co.uk

Also see:-

A Review of From Davitt to Connolly by Chris Gray, and Book Launch: From Davitt to Connolly: ‘Internationalism from Below’ by Angela Gorrie, in the current Emancipation & Liberation, issue no. 20 and internationalism from below book launch//a>

Due to an oversight this report was not placed earlier on the ‘Emancipation & Liberation’ blog

The second Republican Socialist Convention was organised by the Socialist Alliance [1] in London on February 13^th.  In its initial conception it was ambitious. With a General Election looming in the UK, the organisers attempted to bring together figures from the Left who might be offering an election challenge this year.  Those invited included Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT and someone from the Socialist Party, both involved in the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition [2], Robert Griffiths from the Communist Party of Britain (and formerly of No2EU), Peter Tatchell of the Green Left, and Colin Fox, co-Spokesperson for the Scottish Socialist Party (as well as Tony Benn, now seen as somewhat of a ‘national treasure’ by the British Left). They were all to be asked how they saw the relevance of campaigning on political or democratic issues, especially the demand for a republic. The series of apologies given, some undoubtedly genuine, whilst others more probably sectarian in motivation, highlighted the over-ambitious aims held by the organisers.

The Convention Chair, Steve Freeman, introduced Peter Tatchell as a ‘republican in spirit’. He made a useful contribution to start the debate. Peter outlined his proposed ten points for the republican reform of the British constitution. As with most of the British Left, the ‘Six Counties’ was missing from Peter’s contribution. He did think, though, that a federal Britain could solve the National Question in England, Scotland and Wales.

There was a formalism about the republican principles Peter advocated. This was because Peter had not analysed the real nature of the British unionist and imperialist state we were up against, and the anti-democratic Crown Powers it had its disposal to crush any serious opposition. Nor did Peter outline where the social and political forces existed to bring about his new republic. In particular, he did not really consider the role of republican challenges to the UK state, emanating from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Unfortunately, Peter had to leave for another meeting, whilst time for further discussion was curtailed, so Colin Fox was then left to put the SSP’s socialist republican case in somewhat of a vacuum.

Colin pointed out how the MP’s expenses scandal has shown how unrepresentative they have become. James Connolly reminded those who aspire to represent working people ‘Rise with your class not out of it’. Some 650 MP’s or ‘representatives’ are elected to Parliament. So why are they so unrepresentative? It has been subverted by the neo-liberal consensus. Being an MP has become a career not a cause. Parliament is full of lawyers, businessmen, bankers, accountants and lecturers and that’s just the Labour side!

In 2005, the Queen opened her new £440m Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood in Edinburgh. The SSP MSP’s decided not just to boycott the event, but to organise an alternative. The SSP gave its support to the Declaration of Calton Hill. Socialist republicanism is at the heart of the SSP’s politics.

The Convention then moved quickly on to the last morning session, introduced by Mehdi Kia (co-editor of the Middle East Bulletin). Medhi provided an overview of the events in Iran over the last 8 months. Initially he addressed some of the myths surrounding the recent presidential election and provided reasons for rejecting them. These included suggestions that the election was not fraudulent, that the protestors are mainly middle class, that this is another “velvet” revolution orchestrated by the US, that it is led by the reformists, and that the Iranian regime is in some way anti-imperialistic.

He went on to point out that the protestors come from a variety of backgrounds, the slogans are continuously changing and becoming more radicalised, the movement is in its very essence democratic and anti-imperialist, and within it is a growing secular republican movement (rejecting the Islamic republic) with increasingly radical slogans. He concluded that under the immense repression of the regime the tactic of street demonstrations has only limited potential and unless the various movements (women, youth, nationalities and workers) co-ordinate more effectively and adopt different tactics the movement will not succeed in its more radical aims.

The afternoon session was meant to introduce the perspective of ‘Internationalism from Below’ – England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales – which had united the contributors to the first Republican Socialist Convention held in Edinburgh on the 29^th November, 2008. The SSP International Committee had to apply some pressure for this issue to be taken seriously by the London organisers. They accepted, given the prevalence of Left British Unionism in England, that a debate was indeed needed between representatives of this tradition and speakers from both Left Nationalist and ‘Internationalism from Below’ viewpoints.  A mixture of the shortness of time, the lack of non-English contacts held by the Left in London, and various apologies limited the scope for this debate on the day.

Instead, Steve Freeman spoke about whether there was a National Question in England, beginning by considering the flags and anthems at the 1966 world cup, the Scotland-England rugby match in 1990 and the Euro football in 1996 when the flag of St George became prominent. The National Question involves issues of political institutions (parliaments etc) and identity. Whilst the National Question was recognised for Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the Left had not examined the related situation in England.

Steve considered that a British nation had been created after 1707 through the wars with France in the 18th century. He saw the UK as one nation and four tribes – the British-English, British-Irish, British-Scots and British-Welsh. Now the political institutions and the identity of the British English were being questioned. There was no British-English National Question in the past but now there were signs of an emerging crisis of politics and identity. From this a new English politics and identity could emerge. How should the Left relate to this?

Allan Armstrong, from the SSP’s International Committee (and a member of the party’s Republican Communist Network platform), then outlined some of the lessons socialist republicans could learn from the decades long republican struggle against the UK state in Ireland. He pointed out that there was now a National Movement in Scotland that is wider than the SNP. Indeed the SNP, like its equivalent parties in Quebec, Catalunya and Euskadi, is increasingly settling for Devolution-Max, and pushing the interests of local business within the existing corporate imperialist order.

Today, the British, American and EU ruling classes are united against any move towards Scottish independence. This is why any movement to win Scottish self-determination must be republican from the start. It must be prepared, in advance, to confront the Crown Powers that will be inevitably utilised against us. Because genuine and democratic Scottish independence represents such a challenge to British imperialism and the UK state, we need allies in England, Ireland and Wales too. We need to be committed to a strategy of ‘internationalism from below’. We are socialist republicans and link our political demands with social and economic campaigns. This was the course advocated by two great socialist republicans born in Scotland – James Connolly and John Maclean.

This session prompted the most debate, which has now continued on the RCN [3] and The Commune [4] websites, and in the pages of the very Left Unionist, Weekly Worker. It was a pity that enough time wasn’t given to air this debate more thoroughly on the day.

The last session was a bit of a damp squib, since the SA had obviously seen it as an opportunity to get the same sort of unity around demands over democratic issues in the forthcoming General Election, that the Left can sometimes achieve (on paper anyhow!) over economic issues. Instead it was left to Colin Fox for the SSP and Joseph Healey, for the Green Left, to outline the nature of their parties’ proposed electoral campaigns. The absence of the other Left forces contesting the election meant the SA’s aims could not be achieved in this respect.

It was good to have a Republican Socialist Convention organised in England. It was traditional Left in its mode of organisation (platform and audience), even when there were only about 20 present, but everybody who contributed did so in a constructive manner  - yes, including those from the ‘Brit Left’! I feel that more could have been gained though if the Convention had concentrated on the debate between Left Unionism, Left Nationalism and ‘Internationalism from Below’.  Maybe the next time!

 Allan Armstrong (member of SSP International Committee)

A REPUBLICAN RE-ALIGNMENT

John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy – Ireland)

Shortly before Elizabeth Windsor’s visit to Dublin, the death of police officer Ronan Kerr led to a moral panic across Ireland, with demonstrations in support of the status quo and with the great and the good claiming all Irish society was under threat. In the Assembly elections which followed a new republican layer, opposed to Sinn Fein, marked up an unexpected vote. In the aftermath of the elections there has been a ramping up of state action, with statements of support for republican militarists seen as criminal acts in themselves, leading to a series of arrests.

Yet the background of the republican resistance has been one of
weakness. The republican groups have been slow to split from the
Provos, as they have split in successive waves they have fragmented,
riddled with informers and suspicious of each other. The aim has been
to resume the failed military struggle of the Provos on a smaller
scale, their explanation of the Provo collapse limited to calls of
treachery and British agents within the movement. Much of their
activity has been aimed at Sinn Fein supporters, calling on them to
return to the military struggle.

The standard claim is that these groups lack any support, yet they
have steadily grown. Old leaders have moved on, young people have been
recruited, the level of state intelligence has declined, the number of
bombs and hoaxes steadily risen. A steady pool of recruits has come
from ex-prisoners unable to adapt to the system of patronage run by
the Provos and from ghetto youth who found the bigotry and
discrimination of the new Northern Ireland little different from the
old. Control of areas in Belfast, Derry and Lurgan slipped from the
hands of the Provos. It was the emergence of this youth layer that led
to last year’s savage confrontations around Orange parades. A semi-secret dance is taking place. The republicans see increasing state repression as drawing in the mass of working class nationalists.

The state, aware of this danger, depend on the Provos, the church and Irish capital to isolate the republicans and allow focused
intelligence. So far this strategy has been successful, but the price
is a growing alienation of sections of nationalist youth, an
alienation strengthened by the asymmetric response by the state to
violence. The fact that the UVF have not disarmed, their role in
sectarian violence and the willingness of unionist politicians to
justify the sectarians all pass with only a muted response.

A more general problem is that the “peace dividend” – the economic
boom that was supposed to follow in the wake of the peace process,
never materialized. A property and credit bubble has come and gone,
unemployment is steadily rising and the Assembly is about to unleash
savage cuts in public services endorsed by Sinn Fein and the DUP. To
add insult to injury both parties endorse an enormous subsidy to
private businesses from the public purse to fund a reduction in
corporation tax. The economic vice is closing especially on young
people and a growing alienation is to be expected.

What has reduced the impact of the republicans has been the apolitical
and militarist nature of their campaign. No-one wants to return to a
blood bath, and that is all they seem to offer. What they count as
success – the killing of police and British troops – is used by their
opponents to strengthen the northern state, with Sinn Fein, the media
and all the forces of capitalist society, hammering home the message
that the only alternative to the sectarian and colonial settlement now
in place is a return to war.

All the evidence indicates that the May assembly elections were fought
and won in the furore around Constable Kerr’s killing. Sinn Fein were
able to further clarify their support for the state. The trade union
leaderships and sections of the left, by joining in the hysteria,
dismissed the possibility of a socialist alternative. Nationalist
organizations vied with each other in calling for new recruits for the
police. The republican groups largely remained silent. Eirigi issued a
statement indicating that they did not advocate a military campaign
and were attacked by Sinn Fein supporters for not going on to advocate
the use of informers and state repression of the republican
militarists.

When the elections came they were largely an afterthought and Sinn
Fein and the DUP romped home with large majorities. In the aftermath
of the elections the state has stepped up levels of repression.
Veteran republican Marian Price, a prisoner released as part of the
Good Friday agreement, has had her license revoked and been returned
to prison because she held a written speech transcript at a militarist
demonstration. A student was jailed for being in a van used by a
republican colour party.

However there was one exception. A substantial and unexpected vote was
recorded for the republican group Eirigi in the west Belfast council
elections – a political shift that was partly reflected in a large
vote for the People before Profit candidate in the Assembly elections
held alongside. The West Belfast result was accompanied by substantial
votes in Fermanagh, mid-ulster and Newry with a number of councillors
supporting the Eirigi program being elected.

Eirigi differs from the other republican groups in that it was formed
in a political split with class issues behind them, being formed in
inner city Dublin in opposition to a policy of coalition in a right-
wing Fianna Fail government. It fought the council elections by
explicitly ruling out a military campaign, by opposing the local
Stormont assembly and calling for opposition to the Sinn Fein/DUP
program of cuts.

There is obviously room for a republican movement to expand further,
but it must be borne in mind that any political movement will have to
withstand the assaults that will constantly try to link them to
military adventures, the tendencies within republicanism that tend
towards militarism and that the modest electoral gains in the North
have to be set against the enormous triumph registered by British and
Irish capitalism in the Assembly elections.

It should also be added that the current program of the republicans is
not far removed from that of left members of the Provos in the past. That program is obviously insufficient. The Sinn Fein and the DUP cuts
will lead to mass discontent that will seek an alternative, but a new
movement will have to face the class struggle around the bankruptcy of
the 26 county state and will have to seek common ground with the
socialist movement and confront the unionism and acceptance of
partition that defines sections of that movement. In the north the
frantic support of the revamped colony shown by the Catholic middle
classes gives the lie to any idea that revolutionary nationalism will
prove a mechanism for dealing with the vicious class struggle involved
in any struggle against partition.

Two telling local reports give a flavour of the current struggle. One
indicated that a majority of Catholics would vote for the continuation
of the British presence. The other indicated that the Belfast West
constituency, after 30 years of Provo electoral advance, remained one
of the most deprived areas in the north.

The potential for revolt is there. The appearance of a political
resistance from within republicanism creates a pressure for a
political representation of marginalised working class nationalists
and a discussion of class politics. A new republican movement will
force the socialist movement to acknowledge that Ireland remains a
country dominated by imperialism and it is in this context that a
working class program must be advanced.

22 June 2011 -

This article was originally written for ‘Permanent Revolution’ and was reprinted in the online version of ‘Fourthwrite’

The contribution by Allan Armstrong (SSP International Committee) at the Republican Socialist Convention in London on 13 02 2010

Allan Armstrong (SSP) welcomed the participation of the veteran campaigner, Peter Tatchell, a ‘republican in spirit’, to the Republican Socialist Convention. However, there was a formalism about the republican principles Peter advocated. This was because Peter had not analysed the real nature of the British unionist and imperialist state we were up against, and the anti-democratic Crown Powers it had its disposal to crush any serious opposition. Nor did Peter outline where the social and political forces existed to bring about his new republic.

Back in the late 1960’s, socialists (e.g. Desmond Greaves of the CP and those involved in Peoples Democracy) had been to the forefront of the campaign for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland – equal access to housing and jobs, and a reformed Stormont. The particular Unionist/Loyalist nature of this local statelet, and its relationship with the UK state, was largely ignored or downplayed, in an otherwise militant and vibrant campaign. Every repressive institution used by the UK state is prefixed by ‘royal’, e.g. the RUC, ‘her majesty’s, e.g. the prisons, whilst ‘loyalists’ is the name given to those prepared to undertake the more unsavoury tasks the UK state doesn’t want to own up to in public.

Socialists paid a high price for this negligence, when 14 people were gunned down in Derry by British paratroopers on January 30th, 1972. The socialist republicanism, which should have informed the struggle had been absent, and the Civil Rights Movement gave way to the combined physical force and political republicanism of the Provisionals. When Irish socialist republicanism did emerge, the leadership of the struggle had already largely passed to others.

Some of those earlier socialists, such as Bernadette Devlin/McAliskey, recognised the need for a new socialist republican approach. However, the Provisionals were adroitly able to widen their political base, and keep genuine socialist republicanism marginalised by a resort to populism, through addressing some social and economic issues. Now that the Provisional leadership has made its deal with the UK state, under the Good Friday and St. Andrews Agreements, these populist social and economic policies are being jettisoned.

There is a strong lesson in this for socialists in Scotland and the UK today. Scotland, with its valuable oil resources, and key British military bases, is far more central to British ruling class interests, than Northern Ireland was in the 1960’s. There is a growing National Movement in Scotland. Many supporters link the idea of an independent Scotland to an anti-imperialist vision (opposition to participation in British wars and to NATO) and to defence of social provision in the face of ongoing privatisation. This National Movement is wider than the SNP. Meanwhile, the SNP is taking the road of parties like Catalan Convergence, PNV (Euskadi) and Parti Quebecois. Its leadership is seeking a privileged role for the Scottish business within the existing corporate imperialist order. The SNP is tied both to the ‘Scottish’ banks and to cowboy capitalists like Donald Trump.

The SNP’s election manifesto pledged support for an ‘independence referendum’ to address the issue of Scottish self-determination. Although, the SNP leadership has been in full retreat over this issue, it will not go away, since there is a wider National Movement, and the probable election of the Tories at Westminster will once more raise the political stakes.

The SNP has no way of achieving Scottish independence. It is too tied to Scottish business interests, which want no more than increased powers for themselves – Devolution-Max. Recently, Salmond has come out in favour of the British monarchy. What this means is that the SNP accepts that any future referendum will be played by Westminster rules.

In the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, when the British ruling class was split over the best strategy to maintain their Union, the non-political Queen was wheeled out to make an anti-nationalist Christmas speech, civil servants were told to bury inconvenient documents, mock military exercises were launched against putative nationalist forces, whilst the intelligence services conducted agent provocateur work on the nationalist fringe. Compared to the role of the British state against Irish republicans, this was small beer. However, given the timid constitutionalism of the SNP, a further resort to Crown Powers was not needed at this time.
Furthermore, the taming of the once much more militant Provisional Republican Movement, so that it now acts as key partner in British rule in Ireland, shows that the British ruling class has little to fear in the SNP.

Today, the British, American and EU ruling classes are united against any move towards Scottish independence, so will be even more determined in their opposition than in 1979. This is why any movement to win Scottish self-determination must be republican from the start. It must be prepared, in advance, to confront the Crown Powers that will be inevitably utilised against us. Because genuine and democratic Scottish independence represents such a challenge to British imperialism and the UK state, we need allies in England, Ireland and Wales too. We need to be committed to a strategy of ‘internationalism from below’. We are socialist republicans and link our political demands with social and economic campaigns. This was the course advocated by two great Scottish socialist republicans – James Connolly and John Maclean. This is why the SSP is in London today seeking wider support.

A reply to Allan Armstrong’s arguments from Nick Rogers, CPGB (Weekly Worker 805, 18 02 2010)

Allan Armstrong of the Republican Communist Network and the SSP turned to the national question in Scotland. He thought Peter Tatchell’s rather abstract republicanism was exactly what was not needed.
The Scottish National Party had shown that it was prepared to play the parliamentary game to prove that it did not pose a disruptive challenge to the corporate status quo. It was now in favour of retaining the monarchy – not even offering a referendum to the Scottish people on the issue.

A Scottish republic, on the other hand, would ditch the monarchy, throw out USA and British military bases, and reverse the cuts and privatisation. The British state would use all the resources at its disposal to resist the loss of North Sea oil and the Trident bases. Scottish republicanism was a strategy to strike a blow against the imperialist UK state, break the link with the US and build internationalism from below.

Toby Abse declared he took a Luxemburgist position on the national question. Far from believing the break-up of existing national states to be progressive, he thought the creation of a European state would provide better opportunities for socialists.

I said… we should encourage a class-based identity that encompassed migrants and the working class internationally.

However, in Scotland and Wales there clearly was a strong sense of national identity and national questions existed. The demand for a federal republic was the way to relate to the question, both in England and in Scotland and Wales.

The English must make clear that they had no wish to retain either nation within a broader state against the will of their people, but neither would they force them to separate. As for socialists in Scotland, comrade Armstrong’s argument hardly provided a ringing endorsement of the case for independence, since it would be precisely the conciliatory SNP that would lead moves to split Scotland from Britain, making every attempt in the process to avoid rocking the establishment boat.

The strongest possible challenge to the British state was to be made by the working class across Britain – and preferably across Europe, raising the demand for a European republic.

David Broder and Chris Ford of Commune spoke after me and expressed support for the RCN’s internationalism from below and the perspective of breaking up the UK. Comrade Broder did not see why unity with Europeans was more important than, say, with Bolivia, where British multinationals were just as involved as in many European countries.

Comrade Ford spoke about the opportunities the national question created for socialists. The break-up of the UK would strike a blow against a major imperialist state. For his part, comrade Healey thought that the break-up of the UK was as inevitable as the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Time was now fast running out and in a short reply comrade Armstrong commended the arguments of the Commune comrades, while telling comrade Abse and me that our arguments were typical of the “Brit left”, without actually replying to them…

Comrades Colin Fox (SSP Co-convenor) and Allan Armstrong attended as representatives of the SSP’s international committee. Treating England as a foreign country is bad working class politics and fails to recognise the reality of the British state.

A reply from Allan Armstrong (24 02 2010)

As Nick points out in his reply, I believe his comments are indeed typical of the ‘Brit Left’. The reason I didn’t reply to him at the second Republican Socialist Convention, but stated that Chris Ford and David Broder of The Commune had made some of the points I would have used, was that I wasn’t given the time.

The preference of the SSP International Committee would have been for the second Republican Socialist Convention to have devoted far more time to the discussion of the relationship between the National Question and Republican Socialism.

The non-attendance of many from the British Left, invited by Steve Freeman of the Socialist Alliance (Convention organiser), still did not create anything like enough time for this debate. The first session contributions by Peter Tatchell and Colin Fox usefully highlighted the debate between bourgeois and socialist republicanism, whilst Mehdi Kia (Middle East Left Forum and HOPI) was most informative about the current situation in Iran.

However, personally, I thought the last session could have been sacrificed in order to enable the broader discussion on the National Question to be aired. The ignorance and lack of comprehension of much of the British Left over this issue needs to be addressed.

If, as I had hoped, there were also to be speakers from Ireland and Wales, then time for discussion would have been even more curtailed. Neither Dan Finn of the Irish Socialist Network, nor Marc Jones of Plaid Cymru/Celyn were able to make it. I thought that any republican socialists in England would have made contacts amongst the quite extensive Irish republican and socialist republican community in London, but this turned out not to be the case. I then suggested to Steve that Ann McShane (Ireland) and Bob Davies (Wales), both of the CPGB, be invited instead to fill the gap and enable the debate between Left Unionism and Internationalism from Below to be more fully aired.

So, let’s examine Nick’s points. I’ll start at the end of his contribution. Treating England as a foreign country is bad working class politics and fails to recognise the reality of the British state.

The first point I would make is that Nick must hardly have been listening. The whole thrust of my contribution (see above), taking on Peter Tatchell’s abstract republicanism, was exactly to highlight the imperial and unionist nature of the British state, and the formidable anti-democratic powers the British ruling class has under the UK’s Crown Powers.

Nick, somewhat revealingly, talks of me treating England as a foreign country. Now England certainly is another country. This is even recognised under the terms of the Union – which recognizes England, Scotland, Wales and part of Ireland (officially Northern Ireland, but colloquially and wrongly, Ulster) as separate entities. However, I have never used the word foreign to describe England. Is that how Nick describes Ireland, France, or any other country in the world? There are some words and phrases, such as social dumping and foreign which I think form part of the language of hostile nationalist forces and should be rejected in socialist discourse.

Now, the CPGB takes some pride in the solidarity work of HOPI, a united front organisation it initiated. Do CPGB members consider Iranian socialists to be foreign? Does the CPGB secretly think that joint work can not be effective because British and Iranian socialists don’t live in the same state? Nick invokes a mythical international unity provided by the British Left. However, a great deal of the CPGB’s work has been trying to combat the opposition of the largest ‘Brit Left’ organisation, the SWP, to HOPI. The largest socialist organisation in Scotland, the SSP, voted to support HOPI at its 2008 Conference.

The SSP is more than willing to go to meetings in England, Wales and Ireland, organised by others, to argue the case for united action across these islands. Internationalism from below is a hallmark of how the SSP tries to organise. Our International Committee organised the first Republican Socialist Convention in Edinburgh, with socialists from all four nations. The SSP has subsequently sent speakers to both England and Ireland.
Whatever reservations we may have had about the limited time for discussion of the National Question, Socialist Republicanism and Internationalism from Below, provided by Steve at this Convention, we engaged fully, providing two platform speakers and another three members in the audience.

So let’s now look at the second largest ‘Brit Left’ organization, which was invited to participate, the Socialist Party. I will quote Nick’s explanation for their failure to turn up at a meeting with representatives of the largest socialist organisation in Scotland. Quite possibly SPEW deliberately avoided a potentially embarrassing meeting. Embarrassing for who? Certainly not the SSP.

Nick also says, We should encourage a class-based identity that encompassed migrants and the working class internationally. So how does the British Left, which Nick champions, match up to this? Last year we saw the EU electoral challenge by the Left British chauvinist ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ campaign (with its notorious opposition to ‘social dumping’), bureaucratically cobbled together by trade union officials, the SPEW and CPB. It also had the somewhat incongruous Left Scottish nationalist bolt-on provided by Solidarity (although to their credit, many of its members refused to engage, and one prominent member advised people to vote SSP).

In contrast the SSP stood as part of the European Anti-Capitalist Alliance EU-wide electoral challenge, bringing Joaquim Roland, a car worker member of the New Anti-Capitalist Party to address meetings in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.

So, given the choice of ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ and the EACA, where did the CPGB stand? Quite frankly it made itself look foolish. It never raised the idea that ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ should form part of the EACA’s international campaign. It placed nearly all emphasis on demanding that ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ put support for citizen militias in its manifesto (support for migrant workers facing combined state, employer and union official attacks would have been far more appropriate). Then, failing to get support for citizen militias, told people to vote instead for the Labour Party and hence the very non-citizen militia, British imperial troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere! Even the SWP and SPEW didn’t stoop this low.

When Nick mentions his support for a class-based identity that encompassed migrants, he also fails to mention the woeful record of the ‘Brit Left’, in Respect or the Campaign for a New Workers Party over this issue. The SSP voted at its 2008 Conference to give its support to ‘No One Is Illegal’.

Chris Ford made the valuable point that the UK state, far from uniting the working class on these islands, divides it. The ongoing partition of Ireland is only the most striking case. The bureaucratic institutions of the British Labour Party, and the trade unions (TUC, STUC, WTUC, and the Northern Committee of the ICTU) frequently divide workers and play one national group against another.

Nick takes up the argument made by Toby Abse, to elaborate his own position. Toby had argued that the successive acts of Union {1535-42, 1707 and 1801} had had the effect of creating a united British nation, and that the British working class and its institutions were now organized on an all-British basis. Therefore, following Luxemburg, he believed that attempts to address the National Question in Scotland or Wales were either irrelevant or divisive. To be consistent, Toby should have argued that all UK state institutions, currently devolved on a ‘national’ basis, should be abolished, since they must, from his viewpoint, promote disunity.

However, Nick, who has certainly also called himself a Luxemburgist in the past, is now a member of the CPGB, so in opposing Toby, he has to make some contorted arguments. The CPGB believes there is a British nation and a British-Irish nation (the Protestants of the ‘Six Counties’) but only Scottish and Welsh nationalities. So Nick goes on to say that. In Scotland and Wales there clearly was a strong sense of national identity and national questions existed. First, you would wonder, if the historical thrust of the creation of the UK has been to bring about a united British nation (for most of the ‘Brit Left’, Ireland quickly drops from view!) and a united British working class, why you should consider it at all worthwhile to make any concessions to what could only then be reactionary national identities.

The reality, however, is that the UK state was formed as part of a wider British imperial project, which tried to subsume Welsh, Scots and Irish as subordinate identities. Whilst the British Empire ruled the roost, there was a definite thrust towards a British nation, but this was partly thwarted by the unionist form of the UK state. Once, the British Empire went into decline, those still remaining hybrid imperial identities, Irish-British, Scottish-British and Welsh-British have gone into decline too, as more people have asserted their Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities. This decline in British identification has been most rapid amongst workers and small farmers, whilst support has been clung to most fiercely by the ruling class and sections of the upper middle class.

Only amongst in the Unionist and Loyalist section of the people living in the Six Counties has a more widespread British identity been retained (although this has moved from Irish-British to Ulster-British). Indeed, it is in the Six Counties that the true nature of British ‘national’ identity is shown most starkly. It is here, amongst the Loyalists, that fascist death squads and other forms of coercion have created the worst repression, way beyond anything achieved by their ‘mainland’ British admirers, in the National Front or British National Party. The British Conservatives have just linked up with those more ‘genteel’ Ulster Unionists, but still sectarian and reactionary.

The moves to break-up the UK have their origins in wider ‘lower orders’ movements, such as the Land League in Michael Davitt’s days, the independent Irish trade union movement of James Connolly (founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party) and Jim Larkin’s days. It was John Maclean (founder of the Scottish Workers Republican Party), with his support, particularly amongst Clydeside workers, who offered the most consistent challenge, from 1919 onwards, based upon active campaigning for the ‘Russian Revolution’ and the ongoing Irish republican struggle. He adopted a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire’ strategy (was sharply marginalized as the post-war international revolutionary wave came to an end between 1921-3, allowing a Left British and reformist perspective to strongly reassert itself.)

In other words it has been the National Question, which has been to the forefront of the democratic and republican struggle in these islands. Without seeing this, you are left, like Peter Tatchell, supporting a rather formal republic, with no real idea where the support is coming from. Nick conjures up The demand for a federal republic… both in England and in Scotland and Wales. This is but a left cover for the last-ditch mechanism used by the British ruling class, from the American to the Irish War of Independence, to hold their Empire and Union together. The Lib-Dems keep the Federal option in their locker, to be dragged out whenever other mechanisms such as Home Rule or Devolution fail to hold the line.

Colin Fox also made clear in his contribution that the British ruling class could even accommodate a formal republic, if it felt it was necessary. So Nick’s republican suffix to his proposed federalism provides another paper cover. We saw the nature of such republicanism in the Rupert Murdoch-backed campaign for a republic in Australia. What it amounted to was a repatriation of the current Crown Powers, and their investiture in the Presidency. Not surprisingly, this proved not to be a winning formula!

Middle class nationalist attempts to renegotiate the Union have also emerged as the British Empire went into decline. The Irish Home Rule Party, Cumann na nGaedhael, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, and (I would argue) the post-Good Friday Sinn Fein have all fitted this mould. Whatever, their formal political position (e.g. an independent Scotland, or a united Ireland), as these parties have become the vehicles for local business and middle class interests, this has been matched by a retreat from their original stated goals, and new compromises with the UK state.

Just as I would argue that the CPGB’s blanket support for the British unionist and imperialist Labour Party candidates, at the last Euro-election, provides a classic example of left British nationalism in action, I would also argue that any socialists pursuing a strategy which tail ends their local nationalist party, e.g, the SNP, act as Left nationalists.

The strategy behind the SSP’s republican socialism, exemplified in the Calton Hill Declaration, is to take the leadership of the National Movement here from the SNP. To counter the SNP’s own ‘international’ strategy – support for the global corporate order, for the use of Scottish troops in imperial ventures, for the British queen, and acceptance of a Privy Councillorship (Alex Salmond), the SSP’s International Committee counters with a genuinely international strategy based on anti-imperialism, anti-unionism, and internationalism from below.

The British Left tries to mirror the UK state in its organisational set-up. This attempt to apply an old Second and Third International orthodoxy was always contradictory. Applied to the UK it just seems to confuse the ‘Brit Left’. Occasionally debates emerge within the CPGB about, whether to be a consistent Leninist, it should not reconstitute itself as the CPUK, and in the process, add its own twist to Irish partition. Both the SWP and SPEW operate essentially partitionist organisations in Ireland, highlighted by their failure to raise the issue of continued British rule (with its southern Irish government support) in elections there.

The UK currently acts as a junior partner to USA imperialism. It has been awarded the USA license to police the corporate imperial order in the North East Atlantic, and to ensure that the EU fails to emerge as an imperial challenger. Apart from its membership of NATO, the provision of military bases, and such ‘police’ actions as bringing the ‘terrorist state’(!) of Iceland into line to bail-out the banks, the UK performs this wider role, with the 26 county Irish state acting as its own junior partner.

Politically, the ‘Peace Process’ (with the Good Friday, St. Andrews and now the latest Hillsborough agreements) and Devolution-all-round (Scotland, Wales and ‘the Six Counties’) represents the British and Irish ruling class strategy to provide the political framework to most effectively maintain profitability for corporate capital in these islands. In this, these two states can draw upon the support of the EU and the USA, as well of course, their ‘social partnerships’ with the official trade union leaders.

The SSP has realized that the British and Irish ruling classes have a political strategy, which covers the whole of these islands. You could be forgiven for thinking that much of the ‘Brit Left’ finds it difficult to see beyond Potters Bar, or where its members do live further afield, thinking their politics just depends on the latest dispatches sent out from their London office.

Nick somewhat condescendingly says that, The English must make clear that they had no wish to retain either nation {Scotland, or Wales} within a broader state against the will of their people (that’s very good of you Nick!), but then bizarrely adds neither would they force them to separate. Well Nick, we all know the ‘Brit Left’ have no intention of forcing us out of the British unionist and imperial state and its alliance with USA imperialism. That is the problem.

The SSP, though, is quite prepared to take the lead in making this decision ourselves. However, we will continue to insist that the break-up of the UK and ending of British imperialism are something that workers throughout these islands have an immediate interest in achieving, and will continue to argue our case to socialists in England, Wales and Ireland. We do want unity, but not the ‘Brit Left’ imposed bureaucratic unity from above, rather a democratic ‘internationalism from below’.

Allan Armstrong interviews Jim Slaven, a founder member of the James Connolly Society and currently Chair of the Connolly Foundation. Jim outlines the longstanding campaigns to have James Connolly commemorated in Edinburgh, the city of his birth.

Our own radical tradition is a mystery to us, that we don’t know about our historical links
with people who we should be proud of – we should be proud that James Connolly is an
Edinburgh man, why are we not proud of that? One of the greatest twentieth century socialists
was murdered by the British army in 1916. Why do we not admit what happened with John
Maclean, somebody who was murdered, who was poisoned by the State. Why is he not a
hero?

James Kelman, Edinburgh Book Festival, 26th August, 2009

James Kelman’s comments on James Connolly (and John Maclean) at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival seem very pertinent. How did James Connolly first come to your attention?

I think Kelman’s comments at the Book Festival really hit the nail on the head about the ignorance that exists about James Connolly in Edinburgh or John Maclean in Glasgow. Personally, with my own experience coming from Edinburgh, where my family was brought up in ‘Little Ireland’, when they first arrived in Scotland, I would have been aware of Connolly from an early age. I made the connection between James Connolly in 1916 and modern politics in the early 1980’s, at the time of the Hunger Strike, particularly when Francis Hughes died on May 12th. May 12th was the date that Connolly was executed by the British state and the date that this hunger striker died. For me, this connected the history and the reality of politics at the time.

When was the James Connolly Society formed and what was its purpose?

Well, the James Connolly Society grew out of the Rising Phoenix Republican Flute Band which had been formed in Edinburgh in 1984, round about the same time as many republican flute bands appeared in Scotland, in the late 1970’s and early 80’s political context of the prison struggle. The Rising Phoenix organised the first Connolly march in Craigmillar Edinburgh in 1986. It became clear that after that initial march in the city that what was needed was a broader political organisation to take forward the memory of James Connolly as well as some of the Irish solidarity work that was required at the time. So, out of the band, came the James Connolly Society, which was formed in the late 80’s after the first march.

The Connolly march in Edinburgh was the subject of a great deal of official hostility. Why was this?

For us, the primary reason why there was such hostility from the state to the Connolly march was because of its politics. James Connolly was a revolutionary leader who was incredibly important for working class people in Edinburgh, but also important to people in Belfast and other areas of the occupied ‘Six Counties’. We felt that Connolly had been very badly neglected in Edinburgh and that his revolutionary analysis of republicanism and socialism needed to be expounded to a wider audience.

The other element, which shouldn’t be neglected, was the fact that the Connolly march was very mucha working class event, organised by young working class people in the city. That is what differentiated it from earlier attempts in the early ‘80’s to organise Connolly events in Edinburgh. These had been smashed by loyalism. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen when local, young working class people were determined to defend their rights.

Although the struggle for Irish self determination, and opposition to British troops in ‘the Six Counties’, was at the centre of the Connolly marches, the organisers always invited a wider range of speakers. What was the thinking behind this?

Well, consider the Connolly marches principal objectives – one was to show solidarity with the risen people in ‘the Six Counties’. We were very clear that the Connolly march was taking place against a backdrop of ongoing military conflict and this was an opportunity to take to the streets in solidarity with the Irish people and their fight against the British state.

The second principal objective of the march was to try and take James Connolly to a wider audience; to make the connection with other people in struggle. So, it wasn’t just about Ireland, or the Irish in Edinburgh, it was linked to various other campaigns. Sometimes speakers were from some ongoing industrial action, and speakers from Palestine, South Africa or various other international struggles. So, it was important for us that we recognised James Connolly’s work in its totality, and not just one aspect.

Despite state and labour movement recognition in Ireland, and American-Irish and labour movement recognition in the USA, there has been a much greater reticence to recognise Connolly in the city of his birth. Why is this?

We have to recognise the difficulties in Scottish society. At times, Scotland is a terribly nasty, divided, sectarian state. The Irish community in Scotland is under continuing pressure and clearly James Connolly was seen as someone of particular significance. His memory was treated with great hostility by the forces of state, including the police and the council, but also by reactionary elements like the Orange Order and British National Party, in a way that would not happen in the United States, where there would perhaps be greater recognition of the contribution immigrants have made.

Scotland has been very slow to recognise the contribution of the Irish community. And certainly, with the revolutionary politics of James Connolly, some did not take very kindly to the centre of Edinburgh being taken over by people who were expounding these ideas.

Even the Left here is hardly aware of Connolly’s key role in building the first Socialist Movement in Scotland. What do you see as the reasons for this?

I think it has to do with the particular political terrain in Scotland. We have to be honest, the Left in Scotland, in this regard, is a bit of an embarrassment. They showed very little support for the Connolly march at all, which was a disgrace. Even when the annual Connolly march was the only place where the BNP publicly organised themselves in Scotland, with counter demonstrations in conjunction with the Orange Order, publicly encouraging large groups to come along and attack the march, significantly, most of the Left decided to stay away. At times they organised events to coincide with the march to provide an excuse to stay away. They were afraid of the legacy of James Connolly, scared of the conflict that was going on in Ireland, and wanted to keep their heads down, which, as I said, was a disgrace.

When the decision to end the annual march in Edinburgh was taken by the Connolly Society, how did you see the work to commemorate his memory continuing?

We made the decision in 2006, after 20 years of the Connolly marches, that it was time for a strategic departure. The Connolly Society decided it was going to advance Connolly’s memory through other pieces of work and the establishment of the Connolly Foundation, which would be a centre for research, education and advocacy, based in Edinburgh.

It was very important that, although it was the end of the Connolly march, it wasn’t the ending of commemorating James Connolly. Indeed it was about advancing Connolly, perhaps in a way that the backdrop of the march and all the controversy surrounding it, wasn’t able for us to do. So the Connolly Foundation is a new vehicle to achieve this aim.

How is work progressing with the Connolly Foundation, and in particular, with the campaign to have a statue erected in this city to honour Connolly’s memory?

One of the key pieces of work for the Connolly Foundation in the future is going to be to raise the necessary funding and the public and political support for the James Connolly statue. We’ve signed an agreement with Tom White, an American artist, who was recently commissioned to erect a monument to Connolly in Chicago, and who is ready to go ahead with one in Edinburgh.

A statue of Connolly shouldn’t be seen as an end in itself, but as a recognition of the contribution made by the working class and immigrants to the city. There are all sorts of statues in Edinburgh to all sorts of people – mostly distasteful – but there are no statues to working class people or to immigrants. So, it is in that wider context that we want a statue erected to James Connolly.

The Edinburgh Trades Council faced a considerable political battle, both within its own ranks and from the city council, to have the small James Connolly commemoration plaque installed by his birthplace in the Cowgate. However, the recent article in the Edinburgh Evening News, announcing the campaign to have a statue erected was surprisingly sympathetic. Do you think today’s campaign will face fewer obstacles?

We recognise that there will still be obstacles, but clearly we are in a different place to where we were, when we started in 1986. The James Connolly plaque was erected in 1968 at the end of a fifteen-year campaign. We hope that we can get a Connolly statue considerably quicker than that! We think it should be a process which directly engages with the local community.

Connolly himself saw the importance of song in creating a culture of resistance.Both Irish traditional and rebel songs and music have been very important to the Irish struggle. A more recent development, which goes back to Connolly’s own songs drawing on both republican and wider socialist imagery, has been the songs of The Wakes, who are also trying to bridge this gap. Do you see this as significant?

Definitely. One of the important things about Connolly’s life was the way he used different vehicles to get across his political message. So, as well as his political activism and the organisations he joined and founded, he was also a play-writer and a songwriter. I think over the years we have tried to work with various bands, like The Wakes, who have tried to make the connection between socialist song and Irish republican song. It is definitely something we think is significant. Cultural expression is important.

You personally took the decision to get yourself involved in the Edinburgh Peoples’ Festival. Do you see this as important?

I think that the Edinburgh Peoples’ Festival, as an organisation, does a lot of good work in taking the arts to working class communities that are excluded from the official cultural celebrations that take place in this city. I think by drawing attention to James Connolly, we want to work with the Edinburgh People’s Festival in highlighting the hidden histories of this city – the different narratives that exist. I think this is fantastic work and some people are very supportive.

Are there any other ways in which you think the memory of James Connolly could be enhanced in this city or in Scotland as a whole?

I think there are various ways that this can be done. One of the things the Connolly Foundation is keen to do, is to look at some of the research around the experience of the Irish community in this city; but also to focus on some of the problems that exist for that community, looking at material issues like health inequalities, educational attainment and the interaction with the criminal justice system. So the Connolly Foundation is keen that Connolly’s memory is enhanced in the city through improving the material conditions of working class people.

Republic of the Imagination Kelman also highlighted the importance of John Maclean in Glasgow. I think that Maclean is right up there with Connolly as a giant in the Socialist movement in Scotland. I think that it is vitally important that Scotland tries to explore the history of both James Connolly and John Maclean, as well as others. Certainly, the Connolly Foundation would like to work with comrades in Glasgow to try and uncover and celebrate the history of John Maclean. We recognise his contribution in combining the wider struggle for socialism with support for the Irish war of independence.

No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement, it is the dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude.

James Connolly, from the Introduction to his Songs of Freedom, 1907.

The Connolly Foundation

To support the campaign to get a statue of Connolly erected in Edinburgh contact: statue@connollyfoundation.org or go to: http://www.connollyfoundation.org

This article, written by Jim Slaven, is taken from the James Connolly Foundation website

James Connolly was born in Edinburgh in 1868. He led a truly remarkable life. Before transatlantic flights, telephones or the internet Connolly did not just join the fledgling socialist movement he instigated much of it. He was responsible for the formation of political parties, trade unions, workers armies and newspapers in Scotland, Ireland and the United States. He was a theoretician, military commander, propagandist, playwright, politician, songwriter as well as father, husband, cobbler, labourer and street cleaner.

Ground breaking initiatives

Indeed it is the scope and sheer ambition of Connolly’s writings, interests and activities that allow his significance to be distorted through cherry picking individual grapes from the vineyard of his life. For that reason I’ll resist the temptation to quote him at length and instead appeal to readers to view his life and work in totality. James Connolly was by his own description ‘an unrepentant revolutionist’. He judged every event by its potential to advance the cause of the economic reorganisation of society. This led him to take groundbreaking initiatives and adopt intellectual positions which often jarred with other socialists. He cared not a jot. Believing the role of revolutionary was to lead not follow.

He was unwavering in his support for women’s rights at a time when that was far from popular, even among socialists. Arguing feminists and socialists were ‘different regiments in the one great army of progress’. On religion, where his position is complex and often misunderstood, he rejected the orthodox Marxist view instead embracing a position closer to Feuerbach. While criticising (with some venom) church hierarchies he attempted to find progressive common ground with their congregations.

The great lesson of Connolly’s political philosophy is that the struggles for socialism and national liberation were not antagonistic but complimentary. He rejected the idea that a nation could be free while workers were enslaved or that workers could be free while their nation was enslaved. Furthermore he warned nationalists of the scourge of neo colonialism before the term had been coined. He argued that socialists should not just participate in the national liberation struggles but be in the vanguard. There are of course numerous examples of this phenomenon over the last century from Africa to Latin America.

Having declared during the Boer war that he ‘would welcome the humiliation of British arms in any conflict’ it is not surprising that at the outbreak of the 1914 war Connolly was one of few socialist leaders who opposed the war. Dismayed that other socialists did not oppose the imperialist war Connolly argued it was a great opportunity for revolutionaries in Ireland. This argument echoed Lenin’s call that the only ‘truly revolutionary’ position for workers was to ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war’. For Connolly this opportunity was not to be passed up and he decided upon a course of action which would change Ireland forever.

James Connolly’s life will always be viewed through the prism of the 1916 Easter Rising. In a revolutionary action which challenged the Empire at its very core and inspired others from India to Egypt, Connolly’s role was crucial not just militarily but intellectually.His influence can be seen in the text of the 1916 proclamation which declares the ‘right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’ and for a republic which ‘cherishes all of its children equally’. His execution by the British state has led to a distortion in analysis of his life. Nationalists focus on his position in the pantheon of Irish martyrs and socialists reject his involvement in the republican uprising as an aberration. Such partial interpretations have hindered a full appreciation of his contribution.

Permanent memorial

While it is right and proper that we should argue for Connolly to be recognised with a permanent memorial in the city of his birth, as he has been in Belfast, Dublin, New York and many other places. This should not be an argument only about bricks and mortar. The most fitting memorial to Connolly will be the end of the British state and the establishment of a socialist republic. The current constitutional and political juncture offer an opportunity to rescue Connolly from the political margins, recognising his life and work as an example which guides us towards the ‘reconquest’. As Scotland’s greatest poet, the Gael, Sorley MacLean said:

The great hero is still
sitting on the chair,
fighting the battle in the Post Office
and cleaning streets in Edinburgh

The Scottish Socialist Party site is carrying a report on the conference here.

As well as an overview of events there are some comments and feedback from attendees. These are reproduced below, visit the report on the conference for more details.

Brian Garvey, Fourthwrite, Independent Workers Union:

The space given to democratic discussion, the planning and facilitation of the event was impressive and I’m fairly confident that it was because people felt valued theat the exchanges were so constructive.

The honesty and will to learn from recent experience and experiences of others is a great example to us. So to is the acknowledgement that it requires our working alongside many other individuals and organisations to create a new society and on the bus home we talked of the inegrity and earnest of our Scottish friends and look forward to welcoming you to Ireland as we get things moving.

go raibh maith agat

Dan Finn, Irish Socialist Network:

Last Saturday’s conference in Edinburgh was an excellent day, well done to the SSP for organising it.

I learned a lot from the discussions as I’m sure everyone there did.

It was very encouraging to see left activists from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England who are all working towards similar goals and facing similar challenges come together to see where our work over-laps, what we can learn from eachother and how we can support each other’s efforts.

I hope this is just the beginning.