The challenge to the UK state and British Empire from 1879-95

Contents of forthcoming book

1. Introduction
2. The growing conflict between liberal and conservative unionism in the period of New Imperialism
3. Michael Davitt and the launching of the Irish Revolution in 1879
4. Davitt adopts an ‘internationalism from below’ strategy to spread the revolution
5. The struggle against coercion and for land triggers off a new movement in England and Scotland
6. Parnell’s ‘counter-revolution within the revolution’
7. Shifting the main focus of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance to Scotland
8. The ending of the liberal consensus in the face of the rise of the New Imperialism
9. Davitt widens his ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, and brings in Wales
10. ‘Internationalism from below’ and the weaknesses of Irish nationalism and British Left radicalism
11. From land and labour struggles to the beginning of independent labour political organisation in Scotland
12. From land nationalisation to the eight hour day
13. Broadening the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance around the political demand for Home Rule
14. 1889-92 – the new industrial and political offensive
15. The rise and wider effects of New Unionism in Ireland
16. The limits of Davitt’s politics reached as the Irish Home Rule Movement splits
17. The thwarted hopes of New Unionism and the Home Rule Movement after the 1892 General Election
18. The employers’ offensive and the retreat of New Unionism
19. The final break-up of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance
20. 1895 – High Imperialism triumphant and the emergence of Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party

1. Introduction

Why should we spend time examining a period of history from over a hundred years ago? Perhaps the best reason is that, between 1879 and 1895, there are striking parallels to the situation we find ourselves in today. This was also a period of increasing inter-imperialist competition, as the previously dominant world power began to lose its leading position. In the late nineteenth century it was the UK that found itself in this new position in the world; today it is the USA, with the UK continuing to fall well down the global pecking order.

Furthermore, when we compare the situation in the UK, over the two periods, we can see the continuing significance of national democratic challenges to the unionist state. The Irish Revolution(1), which began in 1879, led to a questioning of the very existence of the UK, and to profound divisions amongst the British ruling class over how best to maintain its rule over these islands and their wider empire. The demands for national self-determination in Ireland, Scotland and Wales were linked to major social and economic struggles. Clearly, there are significant echoes of this situation today.

From 1875, under the impact of the New Imperialism(2), Disraeli’s Conservative government had begun to pursue increasingly aggressive colonial policies. These reflected the concerns of a British ruling class, now facing global competition from a larger number of European states. From 1879, however, a challenge developed to this recharged British imperialism. The new opposition drew its politics largely from the social republican tradition found in Ireland, and the radical tradition found in England, Scotland and Wales. It formed largely as result of the failure of traditional Gladstonian Liberals to uphold their earlier support for civil rights and opposition to colonial expansion.

Michael Davitt, migrant, former textile worker, Fenian and Irish Land League organiser, was the central figure involved. He attempted to unite land and labour struggles, across the four nations constituting the United Kingdom, and beyond into the British colonies and the USA. Davitt developed an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance to win wider support for the Irish National Land League (INLL), one of the biggest ‘lower orders’ movements in the nineteenth century UK. However, he deepened this alliance in England, Scotland and Wales, by contributing to the development of independent land and labour organisations in each of these nations.

The leader of the INLL, Charles Parnell, though, had other ideas. In 1882, he closed down the INLL in order to form a purely constitutional nationalist party, the National League, with the aim of winning Irish Home Rule. However, the first Irish Home Rule Bill, adopted by Gladstone’s Liberal government, was defeated in 1886, and a new government, led by the Conservative Lord Salisbury, took office.

Davitt now had to confront the thoroughly jingoist, racist and sectarian Unionist alliance. It would countenance no concession over Irish Home Rule, and revelled enthusiastically over every latest imperial exploit. This was the conservative unionist approach to maintaining British ruling class domination at home and abroad. It vehemently opposed the liberal unionist approach(3) with its support for home rule (devolution) for the constituent nations of the UK.

As New Imperialism increased its stranglehold on British politics, the Liberal Party, including many on its Radical wing, were drawn into its slipstream. A section of advanced Radicals, however, reacted against this and made the first tentative steps towards Socialism. Robert Cunningham-Graham and Keir Hardie were just two examples. However, many former Radicals (and Liberal Party members), who became Socialists, retained much of their earlier politics.

Furthermore, the Conservative Party, hitherto seen as a major impediment to any democratic advance, began to develop a Tory Democrat wing. Its supporters made appeals to the newly enfranchised workers. They were offered limited economic reforms in return for giving their support to British ruling class attempts to expand the Empire. Disraeli was one of the first to see the possibilities of harnessing the link between reform and Empire; but it was Randolph Churchill, who attempted to develop this further, by appealing directly to the working class. He also strongly linked expansion of the British Empire with the defence of the existing British Union. He looked to the local dignitary-led, Orange Order in Ulster, for inspiration in forming his pro-imperial, cross class alliance.

Many workers were drawn into Conservative Unionist and further Right populist organisations. They did hope to gain economically from the Empire, or to draw some psychological comfort by celebrating their racial or religious ‘superiority’. The growing number of wars directed against the peoples of the colonies took only a small number of British lives. The real cost was to come later, when the inevitable consequence of growing inter-imperialist competition led to the mass slaughter of the First World War. The leaders of the Conservative Unionists though, were then able to look with smug satisfaction as their Liberal, Irish constitutional nationalist, and some Labour and Socialist ‘opponents’, threw themselves into the promotion of the carnage.

However, back in the 1880’s, a few Tory Democrats, such as Henry Hyndman and Henry Champion, broke with the Conservative Party and became leading figures in the new Socialist movement. Like the former Radical Liberals, these individuals also retained aspects of their old politics, especially their lingering support for English/Anglo-Saxon/British supremacy and racism. Some of the clashes, which took place in the early Socialist movement, reflected this earlier division between Radical Liberals and Tory Democrats.

The infant Social Democratic Federation (SDF), formed in 1885, showed many of the characteristics which have plagued later attempts at Socialist agitation – whether to concentrate on direct action and socialist propaganda or to seek political office; and whether to seek constitutional change or economic reform. Failure to develop a coherent programme and an integrated strategy contributed to many of the setbacks and consequent splits amongst Socialists at the time, just as they continue to do today.

One of these breakaway organisations was the small but quite influential Socialist League (SL). It soon became divided between those who wanted to make propaganda for Socialism, and those, mainly in its affiliated Scottish Land and Labour League (SLLL), who wanted to orientate upon trade union, crofter and cottar struggles.

However, it was the launching of the Irish Land War, in 1879, and the formation of the INLL, which had largely inspired the formation of the SDF, as former advanced Radicals turned to Socialism. They joined the wider struggle against those forces, both Conservative and Liberal, either aggressively advancing the Empire and defending the Union, or meekly bowing before this new onslaught.

The social struggle was closely linked to the political battle for greater Irish self-determination. Furthermore, as new Land Leagues were formed in Scotland and Wales, the demand for Home Rule was taken up in these nations too. The majority of the independent Crofter candidates of 1885, and the new Scottish Labour Party, formed in 1888, supported both Irish and Scottish Home Rule.

Many key individuals, from the land and labour struggles of the 1880’s, contributed to the massive wave of ‘New (Trade) Unionism’, which burst out in 1889. They faced a similar situation to that faced by socialists and trade unionists today. Only then, socialists were up against the politics of Lib-Labism. Trade union leaders were still tied to an earlier Radical Liberal vision of a Free Trade Empire and a ‘fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.

Today we are up against the politics of New Labour, with trade union leaders locked into ‘Social Partnership’. Sometimes these misleaders may still hanker back to the disappearing vision of the post-war, Welfare State Empire, when workers in the UK were looked after ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

Furthermore, prior to 1889, the vast majority of unskilled and casual workers lay outside the Old Unions. Today, union membership has shrunk back to a minority, mostly concentrated in the public sector. This has left vast numbers of private sector workers, particularly women, migrant and part-time workers unorganised.

Today, the majority of the British Left is tied to a Broad Left strategy of recapturing the ‘old’ unions by replacing their existing leaders with new Left leaders (many of whom are earlier Broad Left leaders!) In contrast, any contemporary ‘New Unionism’ would aim to thoroughly democratise existing unions and bring them under rank and file workers’ control; or, where necessary, build completely new unions to organise those workers now completely unorganised.

Nor is the Left nationalist notion of breakaway unions much use against the global corporations, which workers confront today. Yes, national (and sectoral) union sections need more autonomy, but unions should be as extensive as possible. The key issue is not the existence of union HQ flying a national flag (e.g. the tricolour or saltire), but the necessity for union sovereignty to reside with workers at the workplace level, not in the union HQs. The independent Scottish teachers’ union, the EIS, is one of the most fervent upholders of the embrace of government and employers, not so much in social partnership, more a morganatic marriage(4).

Today, some may take comfort from the fact that the majority of the British ruling class has opted for the liberal, and not the conservative unionist option, in order to maintain its rule over the UK, and its continued, albeit now indirect, influence over Ireland. New Labour promotes ‘Devolution-all-round’ (i.e. for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and the ‘Peace Process’ in Ireland, backed by the social partnerships of compliant trade union and demanding governments and employers.

Yet, the aims of today’s liberal unionists are the same as those of the conservative unionists of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They both want to create the best political environment for their principal class backers. Today this means allowing corporate capitalists to lower wages, attack working conditions and undermine pensions, through deregulation and privatisation. It means fawning before the requirements of finance capital.

The British ruling class may indeed have learned some political lessons from their one-time support for intransigent conservative unionism. When Conservative and Liberal Unionists tried to face down the rising demand for Irish Home Rule, in the 1880’s, ‘90s and first two decades of the twentieth century, this eventually proved to be a disastrous strategy for them. By 1922, direct rule over ‘the Twenty Six Counties’ had been ended, and the UK state had begun to break-up.

However, the post-1922 UK-Irish ‘settlement’, imposed after the threat of a renewed war on the Irish people, seemed so permanent, that this lesson appeared to be forgotten by the late 1960’s. This was when new national democratic movements confronted the British ruling class. Initially this ruling class did flirt with both liberal centralist(5) and devolution(6) measures to deal with these challenges, which coincided with major working class struggles. However, once the ruling class had reasserted its control, under the two post-1974 Labour governments, it returned to the old failed conservative unionist strategy of defence of the constitutional status quo, backed by threats and coercion. Meanwhile, anti-trade union laws soon tamed most union leaderships. The TUC and the Labour Party leaders left the miners isolated, when they defied these new laws. The NUM faced the full panoply of state power between 1984-5. The Labour/TUC’s acceptance of ‘New Realism’ was but the beginnings of the road back to the Lib-Lab ‘Old Unionism’ of the nineteenth century, and its complete acceptance of capitalist rule.

Thatcher’s British Unionist ‘No, No, No’ intransigence first began under Labour, in the late 70’s in Northern Ireland. The attempt by Labour Irish Secretary, Roy Mason, to criminalise any effective opposition had its parallels in Forster, Gladstone’s Liberal Irish Secretary, and his introduction of coercion to Ireland in 1881, long before Lord Salisbury’s Conservative Irish Secretary, ‘Bloody Balfour’ was given free rein in 1887.

The failure of the UK state to meet the constitutional and economic reform demands raised by the Civil Rights Movement in ‘the Six Counties’, produced another period of constitutional instability, lasting over a quarter of a century. An overt and determined republican challenge emerged within the UK’s frontiers. Thatcher’s later attempt to deny any political self-determination, for either Scotland or Wales, made the ‘National Question’ an even wider and more volatile political issue.

This is one reason why the majority of the British ruling class unceremoniously dumped Thatcher in 1990 and, under John Major’s government adopted The Downing Street Agreement. The Conservatives were now committed to a liberal unionist strategy to defend the Union. When this proved too limited to contain the wider challenge, the ruling class turned instead to New Labour’s policy of ‘Devolution-all-round’. This is, in effect, a return to the old nineteenth century Liberal Home Rule strategy.

However, as with the nineteenth century division between Conservatives and Liberals, there is little difference today in the real aims of the Tories and New Labour. Both are committed to maintaining a British imperial presence in the wider world. Both accept that the British ruling class can now only achieve this as a junior partner to US imperialism. This leads to continuous wars, attacks on civil rights, austerity welfare provision, and the scape-goating of migrant workers. There is now a tension between New Labour and the Tories’ liberal unionism and their increasingly conservative militaristic imperialism. And, under today’s prevailing political conditions it is the liberal unionism which is more likely to give.

New Labour soon falls back on the nastier traits, usually associated with conservative unionism and imperialism. Indeed, as international competition becomes more pronounced, in the wake of the current Credit Crunch and the deepening worldwide recession, New Labour is preparing the ground for even more jingoistic, racist and sectarian forces.

The Immigration Minister, Philip Woolas, has shown that it is not only conservatives, who will stoop to the gutter, when it comes to racist attacks to divert attention from the real causes of the economic crisis. Meanwhile, the rise of the BNP, and the continued presence of malevolent loyalist forces in ‘the Six Counties’, show that even more sinister forces are lurking not far below the surface in the UK. Events in Berlusconi’s Italy demonstrate that it is but a short step to government encouraged racist assaults and murders of migrants and ethnic minorities.

As we try to build a new socialist movement, an appreciation of the Left’s politics, between 1879 and 1895, provides us with useful insights. The Radicals were then the dominant force on the Left, from whom the infant socialist and labour movements inherited much of their politics. The Radicals wanted to return to the mid-century ‘glory days’ of free trade and international peace.

Today’s Left includes those ‘Marxist’ Radicals – the entrants and outriders of the British Labour Party – who hope to re-establish the welfare state and to prolong the long period since 1945 without a world war. This is often tied to their Broad Left strategy for reclaiming the trade unions for ‘real Labour’. However, just as the rise New Imperialism, at the end of the nineteenth century, spelled the end of the old international ‘free trade’ capitalist order, so the development of corporate capitalist imperialism today means that the post-1945 social democratic world has changed irrevocably. New answers and approaches are required.

‘Marxist’ Radicals in the SWP and Socialist Party(7), often defend the formation and continued existence of the UK as a ‘progressive’ achievement. They claim this historical gain needs to be defended against the attacks of the nationalists in Scotland and Wales, completely failing to see the wider democratic issues at stake. They take some consolation in the ‘Peace Process’ in ‘the Six Counties’, which appears, for the time being, to have reopened the road for ‘bread and butter’ issues, i.e. traditional labourist politics.

When ‘Marxist’ Radicals are forced to address the major democratic and constitutional issues, they tend to follow their nineteenth century Radical predecessors. They either see the ‘National Question’ as a diversion form the ‘real struggle’, or give support to liberal unionist options to defend the UK.

Some ‘Marxist’ Radicals go further, but still only end up tailing the more thoughtful sections of the British ruling class, when they call for more powers for the existing devolved assemblies. A few would go so far as to advocate a new federal arrangement between the constituent parts of the UK. This last ditch liberal option has a long pedigree, whenever the British union state is under threat from national democratic movements. Others, however, hide behind the formulation of support for the ‘right of national self-determination’. The political effect of this is to leave it to the various nationalist parties to take the lead formulating the politics of the national democratic movements.

By examining past history, we can see that the politics of those advocating various ‘British roads to socialism’ are but continuations of an older British Radical tradition, which dominated the Left in the UK, in the late nineteenth century. Radicals tended to leave the political initiative to the Liberal Party and their Irish nationalist allies. Today’s ‘Marxist’ Radicals also take their political lead over the UK constitution from the liberal wing of the British ruling class, or sometimes, if unwittingly, from the nationalist parties – Sinn Fein, SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Yet, between 1888 and 1894, an alternative tradition developed, which recognised some of the weaknesses of the ‘Marxist’ Radicals. The Scottish Socialist Federation (SSF) was formed, which brought together SDF and SL/SLLL members, as well as other socialists, to try and go beyond the politics of Radicalism and the subservience of Lib-Labism. In some respects the SSF anticipated the Scottish Socialist Alliance, (SSA) formed in 1996, in the aftermath of the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle, along with the continued failure of the Labour Party to meet workers’ needs.

In the end, just as Davitt’s social republicanism collapsed into populist nationalism in Ireland, so the SSF, along with the Scottish Labour Party, it had backed, collapsed into the hybrid Radical/Tory Democrat tradition of ‘the British road to socialism’ found in the Independent Labour Party or the SDF. Today, after a major internal crisis, the SSA’s successor organisation, the Scottish Socialist Party, faces powerful pulls, in the form of Left nationalism and Left unionism.

By 1895, the limitations of Davitt’s politics had become quite apparent, as the British ruling class regained the political initiative and derailed the Home Rule challenge. Furthermore, Socialists, at the time, were unable to take the vigorous post-1889 New (Trade) Unionism challenge forward. It also went into retreat, taking on some of the characteristics of ‘Old Unionism’ once more. A new politics was needed to unite the political and economic wings of a wider working class movement.

However, it was within the SSF milieu that a real alternative began to emerge, in the figure of James Connolly. Like Davitt, he was a member of an Irish migrant family. Connolly’s family had settled in Edinburgh. He received his initial political training within the Scottish Socialist Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. He was to make a quantum leap in his political approach, though, when he moved to Dublin and founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896.

Connolly developed the socialist republican politics needed to take Davitt’s social republican and radical ‘internationalism from below’ alliance on to a higher level, during the heyday of High Imperialism from 1895. Connolly’s consistent anti-unionism and anti-imperialism offered a clear strategy, which opposed both the Irish constitutional nationalism and the ‘British road to socialism’, which was supported by most of the British Left of his day. Instead, Connolly promoted a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire road to socialism’.

In today’s world, imperialism still calls the shots. The continued existence of the UK provides the British ruling class with a powerful bastion of support. This unionist and monarchist state is fundamentally undemocratic. It gives the British ruling class a whole host of draconian Crown Powers to maintain its rule. Even the formally independent Irish Republic has to bow to British ruling class needs. This was highlighted by Irish leaders’ recent reluctant acceptance of the liabilities of UK-owned banks in Ireland. Nor did the Irish government get many thanks for their pioneering bank rescue plan to save domestic capitalism, much of which Brown and Darling so quickly copied and took credit for.

However, the current financial crisis has also highlighted the close links between leading Scottish nationalists and the British banks. In panic, they have quietly rushed into the arms of the UK government to develop a common approach to address shared capitalist concerns. Meanwhile, in public, the SNP and New Labour continue their political squabbles, jockeying for position to gain relative advantages for their particular capitalist backers.

British politicians, whether they are Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, continue to argue with SNP politicians over the extent of power to be awarded to the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. However, they all agree that the monarchy and the ruling class’s Crown Powers have to remain in place, that the Bank of England will control the economy through the continued use of sterling, and that suitable arrangements have to be made to accommodate NATO and to protect US imperial interests. All these parties are wedded to neo-liberalism and are in hock to corporate capital.

The nationalist parties represented in the various devolved assemblies, in Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont, make no attempt to mount a joint challenge to continued British rule, or to the all pervading corporate capitalist power over these islands. Whilst Plaid Cymru leaders may be envious of the powers already devolved to the Scottish Parliament, it is pretty clear that, if parity were to be achieved, this would merely signal their intention to compete more effectively for inward corporate investment. When Donald Trump threatened to abandon his golfing complex project in Aberdeenshire, in stepped the then DUP Minister, Ian Paisley Junior, to offer an alternative site on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland.

Just as Davitt and Connolly realised, in their day, that they faced the combined forces of British imperialism (whether it be Conservative or Liberal) and Irish nationalism (whether it be Parnell or his successors), so socialists face a similar combined opposition of Labour, Conservative and Lib-Dem unionists and nationalists today. By studying our class’s history, we gain the advantages of hindsight. This is why we need to look once more to rebuild an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance of republican socialists in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.

Footnotes

• (1) ‘The Irish Revolution’ is the term given by Theodore Moody to describe the major period of social and political upheaval between 1879-82, initiated by the Irish National Land League and the ‘Land War’.
• (2) New Imperialism developed in Europe, the USA (and later Japan) in the 1870’s. This followed the defeats of the Paris Commune in 1871, and the overthrow of the Radical Reconstruction (the concerted state-backed attempt to bring about black emancipation in the USA, after the Civil War) by 1877.
• (3) Here, liberal unionism refers to one of the two overall approaches taken by the British ruling class to defend the Union. It is not to be confused with the Liberal Unionists, who were adherents of a conservative unionist strategy.
• (4) A morganatic marriage was an arrangement by which a king had a queen who was entitled to none of his property and whose children had no inheritance rights. In other words she only had the right to be screwed!
• (5) It was one of the ironies of history that Northern Ireland, ended up, in 1922, with the sole devolved parliament in the UK, in the form of Stormont, despite the Ulster Unionists’ earlier vehement opposition to Home Rule. This ‘Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People’, far from being liberal in inspiration, more resembled the old reactionary, pre-1801, Irish Parliament, in its attempt to exclude Catholics (or Irish nationalists) from any share of power. Thus, the Conservatives’ closure of Stormont in 1972 and resort to Direct Rule was initially a very weak liberal centralising political measure. However, responsibility for much of this ‘direct rule’ was undertaken by the British armed and security forces, negating any liberal intentions.
• (6) The proposals for Scottish and Welsh devolution enjoyed wider support, both from liberal unionists and constitutional nationalists. However, political support for a liberalised and reformed Stormont was much more narrowly based, and found primarily amongst constitutionalist nationalists.
• (7) Whilst the tradition of the Tory Democrats has virtually no remaining political purchase upon Socialists today in the UK today, it still perhaps enjoys a kind of afterlife in the Labour Unionism still found in the Socialist Party in ‘the Six Counties’. Here the SP has been known to flirt with plebian loyalism, particularly the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force.

Uniting the Left on the basis of ‘Internationalism from Below’

Frances Curran – Scottish Socialist Party
Mike Davies – member of former Welsh Socialist Alliance
Dan Finn – Irish Socialist Network
Tommy McKearmey – Fourthwrite
Declan O’ Neill – Convention of the Left

Speakers will lead off Introductory outlining struggles in their particular countries and the scope for joint work. The Introductory Session will be followed by Questions and Contributions. This will be followed by Workshops on a variety of topics (see below). There will be a Plenary Report back and Concluding Session with starting speakers.

Workshops

• i) The Scottish Independence Referendum – What it means for the Left
• ii) The irish ‘No’ vote and the Lisbon Treaty
• iii) Can the Good Friday Agreement unite Irish workers?
• iv) Scottish and Irish banks and the current economic crisis
• v) Internationalism from below – a new way of organising the Left

Social: Saturday, November 29th, 7. 30 p.m. on

Cuckoos Nest
Home Street
Tollcross (opposite Kings Theatre)
Music will be provided by
Chris and Paul from The Wakes

Organised by Scottish Socialist Party

I have come to Dublin to set our aspirations for Scotland’s future.
Alex Salmond, speaking at Trinity College, Dublin, 13.2.2008

There two official economic visions currently being offered to the electorates of these islands. The first has been promoted by Blair, Brown and New Labour. Their British imperial vision involves bowing and scraping before the rich and powerful, and subordination to the interests of big business, whilst flying the union jack.

The second vision initially had a more limited appeal – to the electorate of the 26 counties of the Irish Republic. Successive Fianna Fail governments have bowed and scraped before the rich and powerful, and have subordinated themselves to the interests of big business, whilst flying the Irish tricolour. This ‘alternative’ vision has been labelled the ‘Celtic Tiger’.

The night before St. Valentine’s Day, Alex Salmond declared his love for the ‘Celtic Tiger’, when he made a keynote speech to politicians, businessmen and union leaders, at Trinity College, Dublin. Only in Scotland’s case this vision is to be marketed as the ‘Celtic Lion’, and is to be labelled with a saltire. Salmond hopes to build a wider alliance, bringing in the new administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland, to promote a common front of ‘Celtic Tigers’, ‘Lions’ ‘Dragons’, and perhaps, ‘Red Hands’, against the beleaguered British New Labour vision, now clouding over after the collapse of Northern Rock.

So, what can we expect in Scotland, if we go down Salmond’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ road? Scotland’s right wing Policy Institute has highlighted what it sees as the key policies in Ireland’s economic success story. Ever since the launching of the 1987 National Economic Plan, Irish governments have pursued a policy of slashing corporate taxes, so that they now lie at 12%. It has very low inheritance tax. It has encouraged a huge speculative property boom, mightily helped by some of the loosest planning regulations to be found anywhere. New infrastructure projects are done under PFI schemes. In other words, Irish governments do whatever big business wants. A series of corruption charges, going to the very highest levels of the Irish government, have underlined this.

A key feature of this pattern of development has been the neglect of social investment in housing, education and health. The private sector has been given responsibility for dealing with this and, as usual, is highly selective in its approach. Increasing swathes of society are left trapped in poor quality peripheral housing schemes. The labour shortfall is made up by importing migrant labour, forced to live on low wages in sub-standard, overcrowded accommodation.

Poor shape

A decade ago, Ireland’s outdated physical infrastructure was in a very poor shape. Now, with business interests demanding change, new motorways are being rapidly built. This is being done with total disregard for Ireland’s historical heritage, particularly in the case of the new M3 near the ancient Celtic site of Tara. The Irish government now allows National Monuments to be destroyed, if they interfere with the plans of big business. Where people need new infrastructure, however, there is no such haste, as the scandal of Galway’s contaminated public water supply has highlighted.

However, perhaps the starkest example of the ‘Celtic Tiger’s subordination to big business, has been Shell’s development of the Corrib gasfield, located off the coast of north Mayo. Ray Burke, former Minister of Communication and Energy, now facing corruption charges, made the following deal, when in office. The Irish state undertook to pay Shell’s exploration and development costs. Shell would pay no royalties to the Irish government. Shell was given executive powers to undertake compulsory access and purchase orders for the land it wanted at Rossport to build a new refinery. Irish citizens became, in effect, Shell’s corporate subjects.

Mike Cunningham, former director of the Irish Statoil, said that, No country in the world gives as favourable terms to the oil companies as Ireland. The World Bank considered Ireland to be a softer touch than even Nigeria. It was here that Shell had brought about devastation to the Niger Delta lands occupied by the Ogoni people. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni’s best-known public advocate, was executed by the Nigerian military government in 1995.

In 2005, the Rossport Five were imprisoned for 94 days by the Irish government, at the behest of Shell. They had protested against Shell’s proposed seizure of their land in Mayo, and the construction of a dangerous high pressure gas pipeline, near to their homes and community. They were only released after massive protests. Nevertheless, Shell got their way and are proceeding to build an onshore refinery, against the wishes of the local community, who campaigned for one built offshore – ‘Shell to Sea’.

Policy Scotland and Scotsman writer, Bill Jamieson, made the following observation, when comparing Ireland and Scotland. The loose planning system… is in marked contrast to attitudes in Scotland. The planning regime is much stricter. Well, that is until the US property tycoon, Donald Trump, made his demands. Then, the SNP administration, and fawning local media, went into hyper drive to bulldoze local objections to Trump’s proposed development of the environmentally sensitive, Balmedie Beach, on the Aberdeenshire coast.

Trump wants to build 2 championship golf courses, a 5 star luxury hotel, 1000 holiday homes, and 36 luxury villas. He even has the nerve to invoke his one-time, croft dwelling, Lewis mother, as an inspiration for a development that will amount to a new ‘clearance’, as far as public access goes. ‘Mactrump Towers’ has all the hallmarks of yet another exclusive gated development for the very rich. Trump has also pushed for the cancellation of the proposed offshore wind farm, important for the development of renewable energy. It might offend his ‘guests’. And, just like Ireland’s National Monuments, so Scotland’s Special Sites of Scientific Interest, may well prove expendable too, if Trump gets the final go-ahead.

Of course, Jack McConnell, when he was Scottish First Minister, personally lobbied Donald Trump in New York. Under the new SNP administration, any ‘McTrump Towers’ reception centre may have to fly the saltire instead of the union jack. But whether its New Labour, SNP, or Fianna Fail, ‘It’s business as usual’.

As the SSP’s 2008 conference approaches, our party is still feeling the effects of the long running perjury investigations and charges linked to the libel trial brought by Tommy Sheridan against the News of the World.

The reality is whatever the outcome of any future court case, the fight for socialism has not been made any easier. However, whatever those conditions, it is imperative for socialists to stay organised and to continue to raise the red banner and to champion working class causes in Scotland, across these islands and internationally.

Stick to the task

The SSP has stuck to this task despite those unfavourable conditions. In recent months we have been on picket lines with striking civil servants, campaigned against Post Office closures, commemorated the 5th anniversary since the invasion of Iraq, stood in council by-elections and continued to discuss and debate the key political issues of the day.

Another vital task is to learn the organisational lessons of the previous two years. In the wake of the split by Sheridan and his supporters, the SSP set up a commission to precisely address these issues. The commission has conducted an exhaustive and extensive consultation with the SSP membership.

The main business of the March conference will be for the democratic structures of the party to decide what changes should be made to the Party’s constitution to ensure history does not repeat itself. This process, whilst time consuming and laborious, is necessary for us to lay the foundations, to re-build our party into a mass socialist party of the working class in Scotland.

However, we will be trying to do this in a situation where the SSP can no longer claim to be the party of socialist unity, uniting all the major forces of the socialist Left in Scotland; but is now having to campaign for socialist unity. This means we have to behave in a manner, which recognises that we are not, at present, the only force on the Left, and have to consider, how we can remain open to others, whilst maintaining our democratic structures and socialist principles.

Therefore, a key debate at conference will be whether the SSP upholds the principle of trade union affiliations. At heart this is a debate over whether the SSP builds as a labourist or a socialist party. Trade union affiliations allow many passive, indeed sometimes unknowing, workers to be seen as party members. In reality, trade union bureaucrats usually use these members’ passive support to wield ‘sledge hammer’ block votes at conferences to get their way.

Instead, we want the SSP to be a socialist party which is active within the trade unions, either by supporting Left (usually) opposition groupings, or when the political climate permits, branches of active party members within workplaces. This, of course, does not prevent any trade union supporting particular SSP campaigns. Indeed, we should be encouraging trade union members’ active participation in the use of their unions’ political funds, as an alternative to automatic support for Labour.

The main focus of this conference and the purpose of any changes to the constitution of the party must be to enhance party democracy from the bottom upwards and to extend accountability, building, in the process, a mass democratic party of action. If conference is to have a theme or a slogan then it must be politics over personality. This is reflected in the various proposals around the post of Convenor.

Accountability and democracy

Accountability and democracy must be central to the debates around the role of the Executive, party committees and the elected leadership. A crucial part to achieving this is through a network of healthy, active branches which should be the foundations on which the party is built. Among other things, there has to be assurances that any motion passed at conference is not quietly kicked into the long grass, but is instead acted upon. There needs to be a tightening up of how party committees operate: timetabled meetings, available minutes and bound by conference decisions.

Finally, the issue of platforms. There has been a call for the abolition of platforms. This right of members to organise in open platforms has been in the party constitution from day one. That, in and of itself, does not make it correct. However, without this right it is unlikely that the SSP would have been created in the first place. As a pluralist socialist party, we should recognise that a range of political viewpoints is a source of healthy debate and new ideas. Banning platforms would also further isolate us from the wider European Left. All the major organisations, such as the Portuguese Left Bloc and the French LCR have this provision, and consider it an essential component of socialist unity. Platforms or tendencies should be welcomed by the party as a way of promoting political discussion.

We do recognise that a couple of the platforms that have recently left the SSP did have a negative side to their involvement in our party. Often, they put their narrow, sectarian interests above the interests of the SSP and the working class as a whole. In our view, platforms should not just have rights but also have responsibilities. They must put the interests of the party first and not try to promote their own front organisations over the democratic decisions of the party as a whole. Below we re-print an extract from our editorial in Emancipation & Liberation No. 8 (Autumn 2004) explaining in more detail why we fight for the right ‘to platform’ in our party.

There is a Section on the SSP website on the Republican Socialist Convention.

The agenda is still to be confirmed so watch that page for details. The page also contains links to the motion which led to the convention taking place and an article on it.

Scottish Socialist Youth

Review by Andrew Weir

Available from: scottishsocialistyouth@hotmail.co.uk for

The Scottish Socialist Youth (SSY) have put together the pamphlet What Socialists Stand For, adapted from a similar pamphlet published by the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia, to serve as an introduction to socialist politics. The idea is a very good one; a pamphlet-length exposition of the socialist position provides exactly the right sort of introduction to potential readers, particularly young people, who may be interested in changing the world but are not yet aware of socialist ideas and perspectives on the world.

The pamphlet is written in plain language with minimal jargon throughout. When writing material of this sort, there is always a tightrope to walk between oversimplifying our ideas – or worse, coming over as patronising – and writing in a way that will mystify (or simply bore) the casual reader. Anyone who has ever listened to the frequent debates in SSY around the style of the writing in our magazine Leftfield will know that the SSY often has to approach this problem. The SSY’s publication of a simplified, modernised version of Lenin’s The State was an excellent example of getting this balance right; and What Socialists Stand For also hits the right note in its language.

Good political health

The good political health of the SSY is reflected in the pamphlet’s contents, which are generally excellent. The pamphlet functions in the same way as an abridged version of Alan McCombes’s Imagine; but unlike Imagine, What Socialists Stand For puts forward a consistently revolutionary stance, with no illusions in the power of parliaments to change our world. I don’t intend to summarise the whole pamphlet – you should buy it for that! – but I’ll take a trip through some particular highlights below.

After a brief introduction, the pamphlet opens with a discussion of the environment. As green issues are one of the areas which most frequently radicalise politically interested youth, this is a good place to start; and the pamphlet explicitly links the destruction of the environment and wasteful over-production with the capitalist system and its need to create markets for its products, and the need to turn a profit being considered more important than the long-term future of humanity.

In a section entitled Making poverty history?, the hypocrisy of first world governments and liberal/reformist illusions in the willingness of first world governments to end poverty throughout the world are attacked. However, importantly, the notion of imperialism is also briefly but pertinently presented. For those who are disillusioned with the failure of first world governments to address global poverty, it is important to point out that the system actually requires that this be so, and that other solutions are required.

The section on unemployment addresses why capitalism needs unemployment to function and focuses on the growth of McJobs and casual/precarious labour, as well as the particularly strong alienation that comes along with these; again very pertinent issues for young people. The following section develops the idea of the socialisation of production over history and very clearly explains the socialist conception of class.

The explanation of bourgeois democracy – the Democratic Show, as the pamphlet refers to it – and the function of the state in capitalist society, which could have drifted into very abstract theoretical writing, instead remains pointed and clear throughout, without either oversimplifying the ideas or accommodating illusions in bourgeois politics.

The section on Scottish independence focuses on the republican and anti-imperialist aspects of breaking up the UK state, rather than relying on arguments about the supposedly further left-wing political centre of gravity in Scotland.

The SSY is proud of its principled feminist politics, so it is no surprise that the section on How capitalism oppresses women is particularly well-written, with a clear explanation on why capitalism actively encourages sexist ideas; this then develops into a discussion of the role of the family in capitalist society with an emphasis on LGBT oppression.

The last third of the pamphlet is dedicated to a view of the socialist alternative. It does not go into heavy details about a potential socialist system, although there are some brief suggestions about what a socialist democracy and planned economy might (not definitely will) look like in practice; but on the issue of how we get from here to there it presents a revolutionary perspective, drawing on examples such as the events of May 1968 in France to demonstrate our conception of people’s power. The pamphlet also emphasises the need for socialists and working people to organise to achieve this, consistently and persistently, whether we’re going through good times or bad; and the fact that such a revolution cannot be held in Scotland alone (and survive), but must challenge capitalism on a global level.

Highlights

The highlights of the pamphlet certainly comprise the majority of it; but there are a couple of points where the pamphlet could perhaps have been sharper. For example, although the discussion of casual labour explicitly makes the point that precarious working practices make it difficult to organise workers in these industries, the suggestion offered is essentially simply that young workers should join a union. Now although any emphasis on organising young workers is welcome, the pamphlet has perhaps missed an opportunity to point out that, in a situation where workers are changing job and workplace very frequently, structures other than the traditional trade union will be required in order to organise. It is also curious that, despite the fact that the pamphlet in general does not uncritically accept the existing order in any other area, the role of trade union bureaucrats in stifling or managing genuine rank-and-file action escapes criticism in this section.

Also, the section on racism is good as far as it goes, but does not include the principled socialist attitude towards immigration controls – i.e. total opposition. It also uses the argument that Scotland, with a shrinking population, needs workers to immigrate – true enough, and it is important to counter the swamped by immigrants standard media line, but as the No One Is Illegal campaign points out, we need to point out that we are against controls under any circumstances, not just when it would be economically beneficial for our nation-state. Knowing the SSY’s politics, I suspect that this is an oversight rather than a real political fault, but it is an important point all the same.

However these are very small quibbles when put in the context of the whole pamphlet, which consistently hits all the right notes both politically and stylistically. It will be a very useful tool for the SSY and it will be a good read for new activists – and any non-youth comrades interested to know about the SSY’s political thinking should buy it too!

Grzegorz (Greg) Rybak is Polish worker currently living in Edinburgh. He stood as the SSP candidate for the Leith Ward in the City of Edinburgh Council elections this year.

To tame the city

Sitting on a bicycle
With the speed of the wind
I wend my way through the city
Trying to tame the new city space.
New closes, and new bends in roads
New monuments, bridges, houses of stone,
New bus stops and brand new human faces
I tame them like I would tame an animal.
May the city quickly remember me!
I only recognise its habits with difficulty.
I stretch out my hand and try
To stroke the barriers along the road
Shaking with trepidation.
Soon I will tame it – I know this without modesty
Or with modesty, it will tame me.
Grzgorz (Greg) Rybak, Edinburgh

This is written for anyone who has ever suffered at the hands (or, more accurately, the mouths) of the Highland midge. Over the centuries the bear and the wolf have been hunted to extinction in the Highlands of Scotland, but it has never been remotely within the scope of possibility that its most voracious predator could ever be removed from that most remarkable of landscapes.

‘Neath oceans glides the great white shark,
In Africa, best fear the dark,
Where night is torn with eerie howls,
Where prides of lions, hungry, prowl.
There’s crocs from Oz, there’s snakes there, too,
They’ll bite, they’ll tear, they’ll feed on you.
But the greatest bloodfest of them all
Takes place ‘tween Scotland’s spring and fall.

By loch, in glen, on rocky ridge,
There lurks the evil Highland midge.
As sun descends this fearsome pack
In squadrons, moves in to attack.
With anguished yelps and flailing arms
Unwary tourists learn the charms
Of this fierce demon of the night,
Which doesn’t bark, it only bites.

The Romans came, they saw, they conquered,
Then thought, “Who lives here must be bonkers!’
History books, they don’t point out,
But I know it was the midge, no doubt,
That made them leave, and southbound haul
To build the dyke called Hadrian’s Wall.
Clans, battles, kings—all come and gone,
But the midge, it just goes on and on.

Old Scotland’s remote north and west,
Ruled by this savage, tiny pest,
Has stores that sell sprays, potions, lotions
All geared to the quite absurd notion
That if you buy them, then all day
They’ll keep the hellish hordes at bay!
Believe that, then you’re not too bright,
They still get through, and still they bite.

How horrid, awful, bad, it feels
Your face a mass of crimson weals.
The fat, the thin, the poor, the rich,
They all fall prey and how they itch!
The midge cares naught for class nor creed
It just sees all as one more feed!
To miss this slaughter just don’t roam,
Stay safe inside, stay safe at home.

Allan Armstrong assesses the impact of the SNP plans for Scotland in the context of British ruling class thinking about reform of the UK

New Unionism and the reform of the UK constitution

On May 3rd New Labour lost its control of both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Scotland now has a minority SNP/Green Scottish Government, whilst Wales now has a Labour/Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly Government. This was followed by the replacement of a Ulster Unionist/SDLP-led Northern Ireland Executive by one run by the DUP and Sinn Fein-led Executive on May 7th. What does this all mean for the future of the UK and for socialists throughout these islands?

The current constitutional settlement to maintain the unity of the United Kingdom was implemented by the incoming New Labour government, in 1998, following upon successful referenda results in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This New Unionist deal involved Devolution-all-round for these countries, and replaced the Tories’ preferred UK constitutional order, represented by Westminster Direct Rule and administrative devolution through the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh Offices. New Labour’s political devolution measures are now so well embedded, they have become the new UK constitutional status quo. The Tories no longer seek to overthrow these – only the marginal, intransigent unionists of UKIP.

Constitutional settlements do not exist in a political or economic vacuum. The whole purpose of the New Unionism, initially developed by the Tories in the Anglo-Irish and the Downing Street Agreements, and brought to its rounded form by New Labour with Devolution-all-round, is to create the political environment in which the global corporations can maximise their profits. UK and Irish governments have cut business taxation, promoted privatisations and deregulation and undermined civil rights and effective trade union organisation.

Before we arrived at the latest constitutional settlement, the Tories had faced rising national democratic opposition, most obviously from the Republican Movement in the ‘Six Counties’, but also in Scotland and, to a lesser extent, in Wales. The election of Bobby Sands MP, during the Hunger Strike, in 1981, was the beginning of the end of attempts to break national challenges by head-on conflict.

Thatcher did manage to break much of the power of the organised trade union movement, when she defeated the Miners’ Strike in 1985. However, her continued attempts to break the whole working class, through direct confrontation, came unstuck with her attempt to impose the poll tax. Her efforts only contributed to further destabilisation of the UK, but this time in Scotland.

The British ruling class decided that subtler methods of control were needed. Thatcher, and then the Tories, were ditched in favour of New Labour. They also had a new way of dealing with working class unease. Get the trade union leaderships to act as a personnel management service for the employers through ‘social partnerships’. New Labour borrowed this model from Fianna Fail in Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has brought these two partners closer together. The STUC, Wales TUC and the Northern Irish Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have all given their public support to the New Unionist constitutional arrangements.

The mechanisms holding the New Unionist settlement together and the new challenges

The key mechanisms to keep the New Unionist, Devolution-all-round settlement in place have been:-

• i) supine New Labour-led administrations in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, willing to take orders from New Labour in Westminster.
• ii) the ‘cooperation’ of the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
• iii) the support of the Irish government.
• iv) the support of trade union leaders locked into ‘social partnerships’ both in the UK and 26 County Ireland.
• v) the backing of successive US administrations and the EU.

The elections to the Scottish Parliament, and to the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, have undermined the first two of these mechanisms. At first glance this sounds like a sure recipe for conflict between Westminster and these three devolved bodies. However, there are wider factors at work, which could lead to a further refinement of the New Unionist project. The most radical form this could take would be ‘Federalism-all-round’, where the Westminster Parliament is maintained for imperial, defence and certain domestic purposes, whilst parliaments, with more powers, are put in place in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. A less radical form would be the further devolution of powers from Westminster, to the existing Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, on an ad hoc basis, thus continuing the asymmetrical devolution model currently in place.

There would, of course, be opposition to these measures. There are significant Labour figures, such as George Foulkes, who would join with the Tories, to mount an intransigent unionist defence of the new UK devolutionary status quo. However, this approach did not go down too well for Labour, when they recently launched their way-over-the-top attack on the SNP, equating their taking office with ‘the end of civilisation as we know it’! Partly as a result of such attacks, New Labour lost control of Holyrood, when the electorate turned its back on such negative campaigning.

However, it is necessary to look to the global context to see that the wider balance of forces is shifting towards acceptance of the need for further constitutional change in the UK. The years of Bush/Blair gung-ho imperialism are coming to an end in the sands of Iraq. The Enron and Halliburton scandals, and the collapse of the housing market in the USA, are leading to increased questioning of neo-liberalism and a finance capital-dominated economy.

The rip-offs, at the expense of the state, taxpayers and employees, represented by equity capital and PPP deals in the UK, are also being increasingly questioned. If US imperialism and corporate capital, in cooperation with the UK’s political leaders, are to maintain their position then gung-ho imperialist, neo-liberal turbo-capitalism may have to be sidelined for a more consumer-friendly, cuddly capitalist alternative. George Soros, global speculator and Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist to the World Bank, have both said so. Retired generals and former CIA spokesmen have added their voices too.

Political adjustments will be necessary in the UK. When Gordon Brown became new Labour leader and PM, he was quick to outline new constitutional proposals for the UK. New Scottish Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, is tentatively looking to the possibility of increased powers for the Scottish Parliament too.

The ‘National Conversation’ in the wider UK context

This issue of Emancipation & Liberation has a special supplement which shows that the election of an SNP-led Scottish Government is unlikely to lead to a successful referendum on independence. Salmond’s ‘National Conversation’ is really designed to build a wider coalition for further reform of the Union – ‘Devolution-max’. The appeal is to Labour nationalists like Henry McLeish.

We have also included a very interesting report from Bob Davies, of the CPGB, on the situation in Wales. Bob comes from a Left unionist tradition. From this perspective, he is well able to see the continued retreats being made, not only by the very mild constitutional nationalist, Plaid Cymru, but also by Left nationalists in Wales.

Forward Wales took its inspiration from the SSP. It has now dissolved, with ex-Labour MPs, John Marek and Ron Davies, becoming Independents, but still (unsuccessfully) pursuing Old Labour-style politics. Marek has lost the Welsh Assembly seat he had won in the 2003 election. Others, including members of the former Welsh Republican Socialist Movement, have now joined Plaid Cymru, and its Left nationalist, Triban Coch grouping. Bob chronicles the Left nationalists’ continued retreats.

There is dire warning for the SSP in all of this. One of our former affiliated platforms, the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, has also raised the prospect of socialists joining the SNP. Others, particularly from the ex-ISM platform, continue to pursue a Left nationalist strategy, which, when it comes to constitutional issues, makes the SSP, in effect, a pressure group on the SNP. Our special supplement offers a critique of this approach from the RCN’s socialist republican, internationalism from below viewpoint.

We have also included a most unlikely piece – an editorial from the Belfast Newsletter, the DUP supporting newspaper for Northern Ireland. Many, including some in the SSP, have argued that Sinn Fein has ‘got one over’ on the Unionists, by ‘forcing’ the DUP into a new coalition with them, on May 8th. Now, if Ian Paisley had made any significant concessions to nationalists, which undermined the position of Unionists, he would soon have been called a ‘Lundy’. He would face the same future as David Trimble, a one-time unionist intransigent, originally in the semi-fascist, Vanguard Party, but later leader of the Ulster Unionists, until his party’s electoral demise.

Paisley signed-up to the St. Andrews Agreement, in October 2006, when it removed the concessions to nationalists/Catholics, which hard-line Unionists found most unacceptable in the Good Friday Agreement. There was indeed some internal intransigent DUP opposition. Paisley also faced a challenge from Robert McCartney, former intransigent, UK Unionist MP for North Down. McCartney stood for six seats, in the new Stormont elections, on March 7th, challenging Paisley’s St. Andrews Agreement. He was soundly beaten in all of them. The Belfast Newsletter editorial shows us why.

It also helps to explain, just why it is that Northern Ireland currently represents the least of the challenges to the existing constitutional set-up in the UK. Not having local New Labour stooges in place, the UK government has had to follow a different strategy to win the cooperation of the Northern Ireland Assembly. This involves the Westminster government manoeuvring itself into a position of being the ‘neutral’ arbiter between the main local parties either the UUP and SDLP in the past, or the DUP and Sinn Fein now. These parties squabble amongst themselves, over the distribution of the Westminster block grant to the Assembly, and over other concessions, either to nationalists and unionists, whilst making appeals to the UK government for its support. The government must be quite satisfied at the success of its strategy.

The UK government is therefore, for the time being, in a better situation in ‘the Six Counties’ than it has been for a long time. Not only did the intransigent Unionists receive a trouncing in the Northern Ireland elections, so also did the intransigent Republican Sinn Fein. Meanwhile the former ‘intransigents’ Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness get down to the business of running the province in the interests of big business.

Water privatisation looms, reform of secondary education has been dropped, whilst the only ‘challenge’ to Westminster being actively pursued, is the demand to cut corporate taxation in the province! It is even possible that, as with the possibility of the devolution of more its powers, Westminster may agree to differential business tax regimes for Scotland and Northern Ireland (and perhaps elsewhere). This would represent a neo-liberal replacement for earlier differential regional grants and subsidies, originally inspired by social democratic economic thinking.

The elections to the Irish Dail reinforce the British government’s hand

The 24th May election to the Irish Dail also strengthens the hand of the UK government. John McAnulty’s article shows why it was that apparently discredited Bertie Ahern has been able to remain in office. Fianna Fail has now formed an administration with the Greens as new Coalition partners. Here too, two ‘oppositions’ were seen off. One of these was the widely hated Michael McDowell, Progressive Democrat (PD), Minister for Justice in the last Fianna Fail/PD Coalition government. He is as anti-Republican as Paisley (only he would not have joined any coalition government involving Sinn Fein!), and he is also against any concessions to trade union leaders.

Although suffering a personal defeat, McDowell could take some consolation from the fact that the new Fianna Fail government is not in the position of depending on Sinn Fein TD support as some predicted (and Sinn Fein leaders hoped). The PDs were originally a split from Fianna Fail. They were the original Irish flag-bearers for neo-liberalism and accepted Ireland’s allotted place in the New World Order. Their reason to exist has largely disappeared. All the mainstream Irish parties largely accept their neo-liberal economic policies. Irish neutrality has been effectively ditched. Even McDowell must be surprised at just how far Irish trade union leaders are prepared to stoop in ‘the race to the bottom’. This is why most Irish bosses still give their support to ‘social partnership’.

However, if Fianna Fail has largely eliminated any threat from the neo-liberal Right, by occupying much of the Right’s own ground, the opposition to its left, has suffered a much bigger setback. Sinn Fein spent the pre-election period ditching radical policies, which might have caused it trouble in trying to gain a place in a post-election coalition. Gerry Adams hoped that by adopting the role of the national statesman, who delivered peace in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein could substantially increase its vote in ‘the 26 counties’. However, Gerry was upstaged by Bertie. Bertie shook hands with ‘Big Ian’ in Dublin on May 4th, and was then invited by Blair to speak to a joint meeting of the Houses of Commons and Lords on May 15th.

Sinn Fein was unable to ride two horses at the same time – appearing both as a statesman-like voice in the international establishment and the radical voice of local community concerns. It lost a seat and its vote fell badly in Dublin. The Socialist Party also lost its TD, Joe Higgins, and other independent Left TDs were defeated.

New Labour’s New Unionist strategy is designed to reassert the UK’s political and economic influence over ‘the 26 Counties’, as well as reforming the Union, which had received such a battering, when the Tories pursued their old-style intransigent Unionism. The May 24th Irish election result will reinforce the position of the British government. While Sinn Fein licks its wounds in the South, there are less likely to be nasty surprises in the North, when Brown begins negotiations to update the current Devolution-all-round settlement.

Building on the principles of socialist republicanism and internationalism from below

As long as the Left remains in a weak position, throughout these islands, the way is clear for future New Labour-nationalist reconciliation. The likely political basis for this is further reform of the Union and cleaning up the ‘excesses’ of gung-ho imperialism and neo-liberalism. However, in order that the Left can make a recovery, we must have a clear analysis of what is actually happening; not have any illusions that the SNP can deliver independence, nor Sinn Fein, a united Ireland. As a start, this means rejecting the Left nationalism currently being pursued by the SSP leadership and turning to the principles of socialist republicanism and ‘internationalism from below’ pioneered by John Maclean and James Connolly.

It is also a good reason why the SSP Conference should agree to sponsor a Conference for socialist republicans throughout these islands. The UK and Irish governments work hand-in-glove to maintain the current political order. Alex Salmond seeks cooperation with the anti-nationalist, London Labour mayor, Ken Livingstone, and with Stormont’s new First Minister, Ian ‘No Surrender’ Paisley. We need to organise internationally too, which is why the Republican Communist Network has presented its motion to Conference.