{"id":20403,"date":"2022-02-09T00:09:43","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T00:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=20403"},"modified":"2023-02-10T15:31:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T15:31:51","slug":"irelands-reunification-prologue-to-democratic-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2022\/02\/09\/irelands-reunification-prologue-to-democratic-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s reunification: prologue to democratic revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allan Armstrong<\/a>\u00a0addresses some of the issues raised in\u00a0<\/strong>Ireland\u2019s Partition: Coda to <\/em><\/strong>counterrevolution<\/em> by John McAnulty<\/a><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>a) Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>b) A Socialist history of Irish history but with some blind spots<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>c) Unionism and British identities<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>d) Building a coalition for Ireland\u2019s reunification<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>e) Under the guise of opposing Neo-Liberalism, a worrying accommodation to the Hard and Far Right <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>f) Taking on the Hard Right\u2019s and Liberals\u2019 hypocrisy<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>g) Developing \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 solidarity<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>a) Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s Partition: Coda to <\/em>counterrevolution<\/em> begins within an introduction by its author John McAnulty. \u00a0John is a veteran Irish Socialist, active in revolutionary politics since the 1960s.\u00a0 He was a member of Peoples Democracy (PD), which he represented on Belfast City Council from 1981-85.\u00a0 PD dissolved in 1985 and John became a leading member of the Trotskyist, Socialist Democracy (Ireland), which is a sympathising section of the Fourth International.<\/p>\n

Emancipation Liberation and Self Determination<\/em> (EL&SD<\/em>) has posted many articles by John covering Ireland. \u00a0Although John has visited Scotland and spoken at a Scottish Socialist Party conference fringe meeting organised by the RCN (predecessor to the RCF which publishes Emancipation, Liberation & Self Determination)<\/em>), and I have attended Socialist Democracy weekend schools in Ireland, John has been opposed to a central aspect of RCN\/RCF politics – the exercise of Scottish self-determination. \u00a0However, EL&SD <\/em>frequently posts articles by comrades who disagree with aspects of our politics, especially if they provide good accounts of particular political situations. \u00a0And John with his long experience in Socialist politics in Ireland has often done this.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s introduction states that his new book \u201cis about Ireland’s partition, but it is not a history. \u00a0It is a polemic which sets out to refute the idea that the arrival of the Peace Process in some way will lead to an Irish democracy and to argue that working class mobilisation is required to expel the British and overthrow the existing capitalist order.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Emancipation, Liberation and Self Determination<\/em> (EL&SD<\/em>) \u00a0is also keen to help bring about Irish reunification and shares John\u2019s doubts about the institutions of the Peace Process being able to provide a suitable vehicle for this aim, and about a Sinn Fein-led constitutional nationalist campaign being able to achieve it. \u00a0EL&SD<\/em>\u00a0also prioritises the role of the working class, but we add an emphasis upon the need to be organised on an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 basis with our class united in its diversity.\u00a0 Furthermore, whilst Socialists should have \u201cthe overthrow of the existing capitalist order\u201d as their aim, there can be a danger that, in the absence of a revolutionary situation, this can lead to an abstract propagandist approach to politics.\u00a0 This would be unable to relate effectively to the immediate political conditions, where democratic demands are important.\u00a0 Socialists don\u2019t make support for the overthrew of the wages system a precondition for supporting strikes to improve or maintain workers\u2019 pay and conditions.\u00a0 Irish reunification is also an immediate demand, rooted in the already existing socio-economic and political conditions.<\/p>\n

And, at the moment, economic, social and democratic struggles are taking place in a period when the Right is in the ascendancy.\u00a0 Resistance to this Right around immediate demands provides \u2018schools of struggle\u2019. \u00a0Socialists\u2019 active participation in these struggles provides a good opportunity to advocate our wider ideas.\u00a0 But the \u201coverthrow of the existing capitalist order\u201d requires a new International Revolutionary Wave.\u00a0 This amounts to more than the sum of Left social democratic, national governments, which sometimes take office through existing constitutional means and electoral timetables. \u00a0Historically they have never led to the \u201coverthrow of the existing capitalist order,\u201d and indeed have always acted as a block to such an aim.<\/p>\n

In widening the base of support against both Right Populists and neo-Liberals, EL&SD<\/em> sees Irish reunification as being a key component of a strategy to break-up the UK (also directly involving Scotland and Wales) and what remains of the British Empire.\u00a0 In \u2018Brexit Britain\u2019 the Right operates on an all-islands basis, which for them includes 6 counties British-Ulster\/Northern Ireland and 26 counties Ireland.\u00a0 John\u2019s book examines the history of the First Irish Republic, within a wider international revolutionary struggle. However, at that time, only the very first elements of all-islands thinking appeared. These are particularly associated with the Scottish Workers\u2019 Republican\/Communist politics of John Maclean. \u00a0But Maclean\u2019s politics were soon marginalised and either forgotten or misrepresented following the defeat of the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

However today, the UK faces much wider national democratic challenges, not only in Northern Ireland\/Ireland but also in Scotland and Wales. \u00a0The British Empire has largely been reduced to overseas tax havens (e.g. the Cayman and Virgin Islands), which along with the UK\u2019s offshore tax havens (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man), mainly benefit the City of London.\u00a0 The City of London is also linked with USA\u2019s Wall Street.\u00a0 Both the US and UK states prioritise the defence of their corporate financial sectors, but with the UK now acting as junior partner.<\/p>\n

Again, this is very different from the period in which the First Irish Republic emerged.\u00a0 After the First World War, the British Empire attained its maximum territorial extent.\u00a0 The British ruling class had not given up on remaining the world\u2019s imperial leader. \u00a0This was the reason they entered the First World War in the first place. \u00a0But just before this war, when the UK was still the world\u2019s dominant imperial power, the British ruling class became divided over whether to concede or to crush Irish Home Rule. \u00a0The liberal unionists and constitutional nationalists thought Home Rule would strengthen the Union and Empire; conservative unionists (including the misnamed Liberal Unionists) and reactionary unionists thought it would weaken it.<\/p>\n

What shocked many British liberal unionists and Irish constitutional nationalists at the time was the readiness of British conservative unionists to unleash reactionary unionist forces and to utilise anti-democratic and violent methods.\u00a0 This has become a continuous feature of unionist politics, and when the challenge was to break with the UK state altogether, then liberal unionists have been prepared to resort to such methods too, often with the \u00a0backing of constitutional nationalists.<\/p>\n

And every anti-colonial movement against the British Empire faced suppression, whilst Partition was not only enforced in Ireland, but also in India, Palestine and Cyprus too. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t until the Suez debacle in 1956, that the majority of the British ruling class finally accepted its future depended on continued life support from the USA, hopefully in a \u2018Special Relationship\u2019, to defend what remained of the British Empire. \u00a0And again, back in 1919, it was John Maclean who highlighted the beginnings of renewed inter-imperial tensions in his The Coming War with America<\/em>[3]<\/strong><\/a>(even if the eventual line-up in the next world war which he predicted turned out to be somewhat different).<\/p>\n

In the UK, EL&SD<\/em> is currently helping to develop a strategy to counter the authoritarian populism and reactionary unionism promoted by a British, Hard Right, Tory government. \u00a0This is why we seek to create a wider all-islands alliance to pursue this.\u00a0 The political space is opening up for such a strategy because there is minimal opposition from neo-liberal economic and liberal unionist political forces to the rising Right.\u00a0 Indeed, their own earlier economic and political actions contributed to this rise. \u00a0Labour and the Lib-Dems are wedded to the existing UK state too. \u00a0Their rush to embrace the defence of the UK was highlighted when they joined David Cameron\u2019s Conservatives in the pan-unionist, ‘Better Together’ alliance during Scotland\u2019s IndyRef1 campaign from 2012-14. \u00a0And Labour\u2019s defence of the Union was continued under Jeremy Corbyn.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Furthermore, today, Sinn Fein, SDLP, Aontu, SNP, Alba, Plaid Cymru and Propel all pursue constitutional nationalist approaches to Irish reunification or national independence. \u00a0Members of these parties (particularly in Aontu, Alba and Propel) promote or tolerate quite reactionary social ideas and practices.\u00a0 Some constitutional nationalists can be more spirited in opposition to reactionary unionism than liberal unionists.\u00a0 Others such as the SDLP and Plaid Cymru have not fully broken from seeking a new liberal unionist devolutionary settlement, however unlikely that may now be.\u00a0 But no constitutional nationalist party is able to break through the limits imposed by the profoundly anti-democratic Union state with its Crown Powers, which buttress the power of the British ruling class and the City of London.\u00a0 Despite the UK being formally a parliamentary democracy, sovereignty lies not with the people, but with the Crown-in-Westminster.<\/p>\n

The constitutional nationalists\u2019 strategy has been based on pushing the post-1998, liberal unionist, Peace Process and Devolution-all-round deal further.\u00a0 This deal claimed to recognise \u2018parity of esteem\u2019 between Irish Nationalists and \u2018Ulster\u2019\/Northern Irish-British Unionists (those not accepting the official \u00a0Irish Nationalist\/Republican or Ulster Unionist\/Loyalist labels are constitutionally ignored); and the equality of the four (in reality three and a bit) nations \u2013 England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. \u00a0But far from further extending the limited self-determination gained under the Peace Process and Devolution-all-round, these concessions are now being rolled back by the Right. \u00a0In Ireland, the confrontation over the EU Protocol has become an issue for the Tories and even more so for Unionists and Loyalists in Northern Ireland.\u00a0 Such attacks on the liberal unionist legacy are a constant political feature of \u2018Brexit Britain\u2019.<\/p>\n

John examines \u00a0the record of those liberal unionists and constitutional nationalists pressing for Home Rule before the First World War. This was a time when there was a social Liberal UK government. Under pressure, they had introduced some genuine social reforms. This was also a time, when the British ruling class was more confident about being able to maintain the British Empire as the dominant force in the world.\u00a0 Yet, under mounting extra-constitutional pressure, encouraged by the conservative Right and delivered by the reactionary Right, they buckled.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s constitutional nationalist calls for Irish reunification and\/or Scottish and Welsh independence take place went there is a reactionary unionist, Right authoritarian, Tory government. \u00a0Its members are deeply aware of the UK\u2019s declining economic and political position in the world.\u00a0 Far from promoting genuine socio-economic reforms, which benefit the working class, this government promotes a continuous counter-reform project to dismantle the welfare state and protective labour laws.<\/p>\n

Liberal unionism is asleep, only to be prodded into activity as a \u00a0\u2018fire and theft insurance\u2019 policy, should any growing movement for greater self-determination or against the all-pervading \u2018New Corruption\u2019 threaten the Hard Right’s project. \u00a0And if those capitalist backers of the constitutional nationalists also take fright, their \u2018Indy-Lite\u2019 political representatives would join the liberal unionists in trying to help-out the British ruling class too.\u00a0 Their aspiration, a direct reflection of the amount of capital their capitalist backers control, is for a junior national managerial buy-out of British assets in their nation.\u00a0 Their new ‘Indy-Lite’ states, in Scotland and possibly Wales, \u00a0are to be achieved under the existing US dominated corporate-dominated world order. \u00a0They would be updated versions of the Irish Free State, which remained subordinate to the UK and British imperialism. Although today US imperialism has pushed British imperialism into junior partner status.<\/p>\n

The US\u2019s own junior UK partner would still be in control of the long reach of the Crown Powers; the City of London would still run Scotland’s financial sector; and the British High Command, itself subservient to US controlled NATO, would be still in overall charge of Scottish armed forces. \u00a0Before the First World War, the constitutional nationalist supporters of Irish Home Rule faced fewer obstacles. But it took the emergence of an Irish Republican opposition in 1916 before the British ruling class treated the demand for national self-determination more seriously.<\/p>\n

This review approaches the issues John raises from a Republican Socialist stance. It will look at John\u2019s historical precedents from chapters 6 to 10 and duplicated to some extent in chapter 1, 2 and 5. \u00a0It will see how they contribute to the political situation we confront today when trying to being about Irish reunification. \u00a0 It \u00a0will also examine the two principal non-Socialist ways of thinking and political forces that have contemporary influence on the Left.\u00a0 These could be characterised as Liberal and Radical Separatist. \u00a0In this review, Liberal is not used in its party sense, but to describe a politics based upon pressing for and recognising rights enforced by the state by \u00a0legal means. \u00a0Radical Separatism also has a long history, and its proponents can be seen in a wide variety of Movements, which are not necessarily directly politically related, e.g. Dissident Irish Republicans and Radical Feminists.<\/p>\n

This review is only seen as an initial contribution*. \u00a0I very much hope others will join the discussion and add to our wider Socialist thinking and our ability to organise, based on their own knowledge and experiences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

b)<\/strong>\u00a0A Socialist history of Ireland but with some blind spots <\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the whole purpose of John\u2019s history of Partition is an attempt to provide a politics to overcome Partition today, it is worth jumping to his concluding chapter 10.\u00a0 A couple of statements jump out at you. John wants to puncture some of the current Liberal and Left myth making \u00a0– \u201cWith {their} happy clappy stories of a border poll, organised willingly by the British government that will see a sweeping majority for unity and immediate agreement to a United Ireland.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

This is followed by John\u2019s clear rebuttal – \u201cWhen it came to frame the peace {in the 1990s} it was in the context of the Government of Ireland Act.”[6]<\/a>\u00a0 That 1920 Act had also framed the December 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.\u00a0 Providing no restraints on the Unionist Labour, armed Loyalist gangs that took part in their pogrom in the Belfast shipyards in April that year, the British government let these and other Loyalists determine the full territorial extent of the already agreed partition principle for Ireland. \u00a0This would maximise the territory under direct UK control. \u00a0So, as John writes, they utilised ‘the Specials’.\u00a0 The \u2018A\u2019 Specials were incorporated into the new Royal Ulster Constabulary formed directly from the Royal Irish Constabulary. \u00a0The \u2018C\u2019 Specials dissolved into loyalist paramilitary forces. \u00a0The \u2018B\u2019 Specials became an official terror force with the blessing of the state.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

The 1921 Treaty also put the Crown in the position of determining what was and was not constitutional in the Irish Free State.\u00a0 The same goes for Northern Ireland with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and its successors . \u00a0Therefore, as John argues, it is not surprising that \u201cthe content of the Good Friday Agreement has been constantly redefined in the interests of Britain and the Unionists.\u201d [8]<\/a> And, although the UK state\u2019s constitutional remit is now confined to Northern Ireland, the British government can resort to other methods to enforce its will upon the Republic of Ireland.\u00a0 This is being shown over the Northern Ireland Protocol, with Boris Johnson\u2019s government threatening to go it alone in defiance of an agreement he had already signed up to with the EU.\u00a0 The Tory government is also exerting British pressure to destabilise the already shaky Irish economy.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s main historical section starts with Chapter 6.\u00a0 Here John outlines Ireland\u2019s colonial and imperial past.\u00a0 There is much in this that is useful for Socialists today, who want to understand this historical background.\u00a0 Although it somewhat misleadingly states that, \u201cIreland was Britain\u2019s first colony.\u201d [9]<\/a> \u00a0However, those first colonies back in the eleventh century were not promoted by Britain, which did not yet exist, nor even by England, but by feudal Norman French mercenaries and conquerors. \u00a0They did bring over English, Welsh, Flemish and Scottish colonists, although whether these people thought of themselves in these nationality or ethnic terms, is unlikely at this time. \u00a0From the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland, under James I\/VI in 1603, you might talk of British colonists, but again this is not how they saw themselves.\u00a0 They considered themselves to be Anglo-Irish or Scotch-Irish.\u00a0 The antagonism between key sections of these two groups could, at times, be as marked as their antagonism towards the \u2018mere Irish\u2019. \u00a0John\u2019s lack of clarity here reflects a weakness in this book, when it comes to examining his understanding of the wider nature of the UK\u2019s unionist state, the nations which make it up, and the peoples and classes who have inter-acted with each, other, both negatively and positively, in the history of these islands.<\/p>\n

Today, we have some unionists, Right and Left, who want to describe Ulster Unionists as the \u2018Irish-British\u2019 or \u2018British Irish\u2019.\u00a0 In the Republic of Ireland, there is a small, once more influential, but now declining group, who maintain a Rightist, pro-British unionist stance. \u00a0Eoghan Harris, ex-Workers Party theoretician and one-time Sunday Independent <\/em>columnist, provides a leading example.[10]<\/a> \u00a0He detests Irish Republicanism, both during the 1916-23 struggle for Irish independence and during The Troubles from the late 1960s-1998. \u00a0Rueing the failure of the British government to hold on to all of Ireland, following Irish Republican \u2018blowback\u2019 after the slaughter of the First World War; and later the UK state\u2019s inability to completely defeat the Republican Movement by 1998, Harris gave his support to George Bush\u2019s and Tony Blair\u2019s bloody and disastrous Iraq War in 2003.<\/p>\n

Today, trying to derail the rising support for Irish reunification, some neo-Irish Unionists offer a renewed Irish-British deal to subordinate a reunited Ireland to the UK.\u00a0 Ireland would be allowed to reunite after re-joining the UK and signing up to the \u2018Empire-Lite\u2019 Commonwealth.\u00a0 This would amount to the acceptance of the original 1912 Third Home Rule Bill before the \u2018Ulster\u2019 opt-out amendment, but under today\u2019s Union and what remains of the Empire. \u00a0If the 1998 Good Friday Agreement has misleadingly been characterised as \u201cSunningdale {1973-4} for slow learners\u201d, this neo-Irish Unionist deal would be for very slow learners!<\/p>\n

These days, there is rarely a Rightist stance, which doesn\u2019t find its echoes on the Left.\u00a0 The social imperialist and unionist Alliance for Workers\u2019 Liberty (AWL) and the abstract propagandist social unionists of the CPGB-Weekly Worker, <\/em>represent such thinking.\u00a0 They are proponents of a \u2018British-Irish\u2019 identity which doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 The people they hope to offer support to are the Unionist and Loyalist, ‘Ulster’-British. \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Left British unionists claim that, if Socialists support a new \u2018British-Irish\u2019 identity, this could lead to the ‘Ulster’-British acceptance of a future federated Ireland, as yet territorially undefined. \u00a0Far more likely, this would be a recipe for the old UDA\u2019s \u2018nullification\u2019 proposals, when they proposed the ethnic repartition of Ulster.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 And such proposals may raise their head again if the DUP ceases to be the majority parfy after the May 2022 Stormont elections. Perhaps it\u2019s not surprising we have had no AWL\/CPGB-WW<\/em> reports of their solidarity meetings on the Shankill and Newtonards Roads or in Sandy Row. \u00a0Maybe, if politics ever pushes these two groups into support for Scottish independence (don\u2019t hold your breath), they will advocate \u2018self-determination\u2019 for Airdrie, Bridgeton and Larkhall!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

c) Unionism and British identities<\/strong><\/p>\n

John\u2019s Chapter 7 goes on to provides an outline of Irish Unionist history. \u00a0Although this seems to have become detached from the headings to Chapter 2 – \u201cIrish unionism was once nationalism. \u00a0It was always anti-democratic.\u201d \u00a0However, that nationalism was never Irish-Irish, but always a provincial Irish-British nationalism. \u00a0It developed after the political marginalisation of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy and the integration of the Scotch-Irish in Ulster, following the 1801 Act of Union.<\/p>\n

For much of the nineteenth century, and right up to Partition in 1921, these Irish Unionists did consider themselves to be Irish-British. \u00a0After that, though, British nationalism became transferred to the very definitely not Irish, but now emphatically Ulster-British. \u00a0Indeed, so determined were these Unionists not to be Irish, that they rejected the term Northern Irish, which David Lloyd George\u2019s War Coupon Coalition government wanted them to adopt for wider British imperial purposes. \u00a0And today, one of the things many Unionists hate about the UK-imposed Good Friday Agreement (GFA) is that their beloved old Royal Ulster Constabulary has been renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland, again for wider British imperial purposes on these islands.<\/p>\n

But if you seek Irish reunification today, this begs the question – how do you win over significant sections of those currently living in areas that have been largely peopled with Ulster Unionists and Loyalists?\u00a0 Sinn Fein and other constitutional nationalists look forward to a demographic \u2018solution\u2019 by which the number of Irish Nationalists\/Catholics overtakes the number of Ulster Unionists\/Protestants.<\/p>\n

It is possible that some more middle class, liberal unionists (like those associated with the Alliance Party), could come to accept a reunited Ireland, and make their peace; just as many conservative unionists did in the Irish Free State after 1921, and in the Republic of Ireland after 1948. Others, including reactionary unionists, who had been very actively involved in bloody suppression, thought it wiser to leave for Great Britain, 6 counties \u2018Ulster\u2019, or other parts of the British Empire. \u00a0However, today unless a significant proportion of those workers currently living in Loyalist dominated areas are broken from their ‘Ulster’-British identity, then even if they still only constitute a quarter or fifth of the population, the continuing paramilitary presence (strongly concentrated in certain communities) would have the capacity to destabilise things and frighten the middle class, in particular both the Alliance aligned unionists and the SDLP aligned nationalists.<\/p>\n

Some Dissident Republicans would be prepared to bolster any\u00a0demographic transition, which is unlikely to be passively accepted by the ‘Ulster’-British, with a \u00a0return to the \u2018armed struggle\u2019. \u00a0But today, Dissident Republicans can only operate from deep within the most Nationalist\/Republican of communities.\u00a0 Their activities attract the attention of the PSNI and M15.\u00a0 During \u2018The Troubles\u2019, when people from the Nationalist\/Republican communities faced everyday harassment from the British army and the RUC, on their way to work, shopping or leisure facilities, and even in their homes, there was widespread support for the IRA as Defenders. \u00a0However, this situation has largely changed following the Good Friday Agreement, so this once widespread support is no longer there for the \u2018armed struggle\u2019. \u00a0 Although the PSNI\u2019s more half-hearted attempts at policing Loyalist intimidation continues to cause resentment.<\/p>\n

Confined as their activities largely are, within the most Nationalist\/Republican communities, then it is not surprising that Dissident Republicans\u2019 resort to the use of guns and explosives leads to such tragedies as the killing of Lyra McKee in Derry in 2019.[12]<\/a> \u00a0And in their eagerness to access guns and explosives, above all else, it is also not so surprising that the Dissident Republicans can be penetrated by the security forces.\u00a0 The MI5\/FBI and Gardai, appear to have managed this this in the run-up the, Real IRA\u2019s tragic bombing in Omagh in 1998.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

Some Dissident Republicans have their own political \u2018solution\u2019 to the problems presented by the large Unionist\/Loyalist community in Northern Ireland. \u00a0For example, like the AWL and CPGB-WW<\/em>, Republican Sinn Fein (formed as a breakaway back in 1986) also wants a new federal Ireland. \u00a0Although this would be with different and more definite boundaries.\u00a0 These would be based on the old four Irish provinces of Leinster, Munster, Connacht and 9 counties Ulster. \u00a0Back in 1920, Sir James Craig already clearly understood that a 9 counties Ulster would leave Unionists\/Loyalists in a minority there, and undertook the brutal actions required to control 6 counties, two with Nationalist majorities.\u00a0 Today, as demographics, even in their 6 counties \u2018Ulster\u2019 laager, are undermining a Unionist majority, then its Loyalist \u2018No Surrender\u2019 defenders are more likely to retreat to the 1981 UDA plan, with its \u2018nullification\u2019 proposals for Nationalists in Belfast, County Antrim, North Down and North Armagh.<\/p>\n

However, whether it is through Irish Nationalist attempts at political negotiation, or by Dissident Republican attempts at \u2018armed struggle\u2019, a considerable number of Unionists\/Loyalists, so long as they remain attached to an Ulster-British \u00a0identity, will view these as attempts to turn the tables.\u00a0 They will see this as leading to a new Nationalist\/Republican\/Catholic ascendancy.\u00a0 They are quite likely to take what they see to be appropriate action.\u00a0 The politics of the electoral head count could quickly lead to the politics of the body count.<\/p>\n

There are some Socialists, though, who think you can skirt round the existence of workers being brought up to think of themselves as British Unionists\/Loyalists or Irish Nationalists\/Republicans (enshrined in the post-GFA agreements) by uniting them around immediate economic issues in trade unions.\u00a0 It is indeed possible to have short term trade union unity and action, as was shown in the Belfast engineers\u2019 44 hours strike in 1919,[14] <\/a>and around another immediate economic issue, in the Out Door Relief (ODR) campaign in Belfast in 1932.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 And there have been several recent cross-community strikes within Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Some Socialists put down the \u00a0setbacks in such struggles to \u00a0the lack of wider official trade union support, or to the weaknesses in the leaders of political organisations, which workers have been involved with or related to. \u00a0However, those who took part in each of the earlier heroic struggles were soon targeted by the \u00a0Loyalists, state \u00a0and the employers. \u00a0Thus their 1919 struggle was followed up by the Labour Unionist pogrom[16]<\/a> in 1921; and the uniting effects of the Outdoor Relief campaign in 1932 were broken up in the \u00a0Orange Order provoked pogrom of 1935.[17] \u00a0<\/a>As soon as the Unionists, Loyalists and the Orange Order raised the issue of whether Unionist\/Loyalist\/Protestant workers were prepared to unite with Nationalist\/Republican\/Catholic workers to undermine \u2018their state\u2019, the previous impressive support for solidarity action around economic issues largely melted away (apart for a very small minority). \u00a0Undermining the politics of Unionism, Loyalism and the Orange Order and their Ulster-British identity takes a much longer process of political engagement, and one not confined just to immediate economic or trade union issues. It also requires a clear understanding of the nature of the UK state.<\/p>\n

Even today, cross-community, economic struggles still face considerable problems, not least the commitment of trade union leaders, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and its semi-detached, Northern Committee.\u00a0 They are both involved in real and attempted social partnership deals within their existing states. \u00a0In Northern Ireland, these are also backed by the TUC. \u00a0Meanwhile, the STUC and WTUC back the Devolution-all-round institutions in Scotland and Wales. \u00a0All these attempts at partnership deals have the effect of reducing trade union leaders\u2019 role to acting as a personnel management service, assisting their governments and the employers to keep their workers in line.<\/p>\n

But this goes one step further.\u00a0 In the Republic of Ireland any militant action is seen as a threat to the Irish government\u2019s acceptance of the agreed EU leadership\u2019s institutions to manage the deep crisis there. \u00a0The major contributor to this crisis in the Republic had been successive Irish governments\u2019 backing for the bloated property and financial sectors, before and after the 2008 Crash. \u00a0And this dependence has been reinforced by the backing the Irish government now needs from EU leaders over Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol.<\/p>\n

But in Northern Ireland any militant workers\u2019 action is seen as a threat to the post-GFA institutions. \u00a0When the issue of Irish reunification is raised, some full-time trade union officials might be prepared to support the idea sometime in the future. \u00a0But they would likely soon be spooked if their Unionist\/Loyalist members deserted their unions. Their attitude to re-unification would be quite like that of the SDLP and Alliance Party and the middle class in Northern Ireland, whose incomes and lifestyles, most full-time trade union officials share.<\/p>\n

There is also the additional factor that, although there is quite extensive trade between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (and hence employers in both either being opposed to Brexit or wanting only a soft Brexit), the wages and conditions for their respective workplaces are negotiated quite independently. \u00a0This is the case even for companies which operate on both sides of the border, e.g. Lidl, just as it is say for Germany and France both in the EU. \u00a0And in Northern Ireland, there is a considerably bigger public sector, from a percentage in employment point of view. \u00a0This employment is based around the activities of the devolved statelet, so the \u00a0divide, between \u2018North\u2019 and \u2018South\u2019, is further accentuated. \u00a0Indeed, even in Scotland, such devolved administrative institutions also lead to different wages and conditions negotiating frameworks compared to the rest of the UK. \u00a0These conditions have led to the formation and maintenance of separate trade unions, e.g. Northern Ireland Public Services Alliance (NIPSA) for civil servants, and the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) for teachers and further education college lecturers. \u00a0These two trade unions dominate pay and conditions negotiations in their particular areas. \u00a0And this is given an additional twist in Northern Ireland, where most primary and secondary education has been constitutionally divided between the state (read Protestant) and Catholic sectors. \u00a0The Ulster Teachers\u2019 Union (UTU) organises in the official state\/Protestant sector (alongside the all-UK NASUWT), whilst the (all-Ireland) Irish National Teachers\u2019 Organisation (INTO) dominates the official Catholic sector.<\/p>\n

It is true that Unionist\/Loyalist and Nationalist\/Republican workers, as well as using the local shopping and leisure facilities confined to their own communities, have long shopped in their city or town centres’ major shopping malls; have gone to some of the same leisure facilities, e.g. downtown cinemas and music venues; as well as often working in the same workplaces, increasingly so since the GFA (especially in the public sector).\u00a0 But these, in themselves, do relatively little to change their Unionist\/Loyalist and Nationalist\/Republican politics, or their Ulster\/Northern Irish-British or Irish identities, especially as these are actively promoted under the post-GFA arrangements.\u00a0In politically more quiescent times, as promised under a \u2018Peace Dividend\u2019, workers from both communities may show mutual toleration and limit the expression of their differences to what they see as humorous banter.\u00a0 But as women well know, \u2018harmless\u2019 behaviour (e.g. jokes, displays of sexist calendars and pictures) can provide a cover for some who behave in far more threatening ways. \u00a0Toleration is not equality. \u00a0In changed circumstances, with greater economic or social instability, open advocates of sectarian intimidation can find wider support, as shown in Kenneth Branagh\u2019s Belfast.<\/em><\/p>\n

What is required is the breakdown of the\u00a0old \u2018No Surrender\u2019, Ulster Unionism and Loyalism, largely based on Protestant sectarianism and support for the British Crown and Empire and of the old Defender, Irish Nationalism and Republicanism, largely based on traditional Catholic values.\u00a0This also means a reassertion of the real principle underlying democratic Republicanism in Ireland, which is based on the sovereignty of the people. \u00a0In many parts of the world, a \u00a0more restricted view of Republicanism as the absence of a monarchy provides a cover for authoritarian populist leaders, one-party and military dictators. \u00a0Furthermore, in the UK, the monarchy (although very highly privileged) only fronts the British ruling class\u2019s anti-democratic Crown Powers, based on the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Westminster. \u00a0And even in the \u2018republican\u2019 USA, the democratic principle of the sovereignty of the people was undermined by the transfer of the Crown Powers from the UK. These were divided between the President, the Supreme Court and the Senate. \u00a0A new American ruling class forcibly clamped down on the popular democracy \u00a0after \u00a0the War of Independence. \u00a0The American House of Representatives has fewer powers than the British House of Commons. \u00a0When press baron, Rupert Murdoch, gave his support to a republican constitution for Australia in the 1999 referendum, he wanted the Crown Powers transferred to a president \u2013 probably hoping it would be himself!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>d) Building a coalition for Ireland\u2019s reunification<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Northern Ireland, there have long been some cross-community personal relationships and intermarriages, which do break down this divide for those directly involved.\u00a0 But in the past, such contacts have often become the first targets for attack in troubled times.\u00a0 Today there is more scope for such cross-community relationships and they are growing.\u00a0 Furthermore, a breakdown in the community divide is already occurring, particularly amongst younger people within both communities. \u00a0They increasingly reject both the Catholic hierarchy (especially after all the internal scandals which have been uncovered) and those bigoted, mainly Presbyterian demagogues, who try to impose their own social values. \u00a0Reactionary activities are often backed, openly or behind-the-scenes, by politicians, who either go along with or tolerate these. \u00a0This in turn leads to a decline in support from young people for parties accepting the GFA-allocated political labels – Unionist\/Loyalist and Nationalist\/Republican. \u00a0It is mainly the younger people who have become involved in impressive cross-border actions (not yet seen in trade union struggles) over gay and abortion rights. \u00a0And, as the growing multifaceted crises of environmental degradation mount, the Border is seen as either irrelevant or an obstacle to the major changes which are needed to save humanity. \u00a0Many young people and others concerned with the environment can already see that.<\/p>\n

Today, social and environmental issues are more likely to produce the cross-border relationships and activities which can contribute most effectively to bringing about Irish reunification. These can break down old British Unionist\/Loyalist and Irish Nationalist\/Republican politics and Ulster-Northern Irish-British and Irish identities.\u00a0 Social and environmental issues are not something external to the working class. \u00a0Although this is how many more Economistically-minded Socialists see workers, claiming they are mainly concerned with \u2018bread and butter\u2019 issues. \u00a0However, workers don\u2019t just spend time in factories and offices (or work from home under Covid-19).\u00a0 Workers are more rounded human beings. \u00a0We \u00a0spend our \u00a0more valued time in social intercourse with families, partners and friends at home, in our communities, or downtown. \u00a0Many of us also visit urban and rural parks, as well as travelling to wilder environments, to enjoy interaction with landscapes and wildlife.<\/p>\n

In the past, it has sometimes been struggles outside the directly economic realm that have eventually brought about more effective workers\u2019 organisation in that arena as well.\u00a0 In 1931, the massive struggle to defend the Scottsboro Boys, nine Afro-American teenagers falsely accused of raping a white woman in deeply racist Alabama,[18]<\/a> was organised by many of those who went on to launch the new unionisation drive associated with the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) from 1935.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, today, as well as the many young people, who do not so easily fit into the sectarian political straitjackets of Unionism\/Loyalism and Nationalism\/Republicanism, or Ulster-Northern Irish-British and Irish identities, there is another major group, living in Ireland, \u2018South\u2019 and \u2018North\u2019, \u00a0who do not fit at all. \u00a0These are the migrants who will be the worst affected by any hardening of the Border.<\/p>\n

Traditionalists, whether Protestant or Catholic, sometimes publicly reject migrants.\u00a0 We saw this in Loyalist attacks on East European Roma in Belfast in 2008; and in the reactionary Peter Casey\u2019s bid for the Irish presidency in 2018. \u00a0Sinn Fein, with its Left Populist turn (after its failed Right turn in the 2018 presidential election), published its 2019 manifesto, Giving workers and families a break<\/em>.\u00a0 Whilst this manifesto had many supportable policies and defended asylum seeker rights, it also stated, in its Immigration<\/em> section, that \u201cSinn Fe\u0301in does not want open borders.\u201d[19] <\/a>So, when migrants attempt to try to cross the UK and Irish \/EU Border, how much support will they get? \u00a0This is a moot point when migrants are not being perceived as being part of Sinn Fein\u2019s \u201cDemographic trends {which} suggest a nationalist voting majority in the north is close\u201d[20]<\/a>. \u00a0However, this is not so bad as those sections on the British and Irish Left, who claimed a mandate for Brexit following the 2016 EU referendum.\u00a0 This was on a franchise which excluded EU residents (and 16-18 year olds).\u00a0 Perhaps, Republican Socialists, following the USA precedent of the Scottsboro Boys Campaign and the emergence of the CIO, will need to follow another US precedent in their campaigning for the free movement of migrants across the Border \u2013 the \u2018Underground Railroad,\u2019[21]<\/a>\u00a0which smuggled black chattel saves across another border – the Mason-Dixon Line. This would go well beyond the activities of Borders Communities Against Brexit, backed by both Sinn Fein and the SDLP, which looks to the EU bureaucracy and Joe Biden’s \u00a0US government, to prevent a further hardening of the Border.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s historical analysis of the United Irishmen is very brief despite its crucial significance in the development of both Ireland’s and Republican history. \u00a0 Though he does clearly state in chapter 2 that \u201cthe 1798 rising of United Irishmen was a real threat to British rule.\u201d[22]<\/a>\u00a0 But this is immediately followed by a description of all the reactionary forces which contributed to the defeat of the United Irish.\u00a0 And this defeat is returned to in chapter 7, where \u201cDemocratic revolt by Presbyterians in the United Irishmen was savagely repressed\u201d.[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

What is needed today is an upgrade of the United Irishmen\u2019s most serious cross-community challenge ever to the UK state. \u00a0In the 1790s they made a concerted attempt to create a new Irish national identity to overcome the old divisions \u00a0They called for the unity \u2018Protestant {Anglican}, Catholic and Dissenter\u2019 {mainly Presbyterian), who could otherwise be termed \u00a0Anglo-Irish, ‘mere Irish’ or Scotch-Irish, in a new Irish Republic. And debates went on about ending black chattel slavery, encouraging Irish Gaelic culture and women’s rights .<\/p>\n

And despite the absence of the term \u2018women\u2019 in the United \u00a0Irishmen, women did indeed play an important part in the United Irish activities, including the 1798 uprising.[24]<\/a>\u00a0 They included Anne Devlin, Mary Doyle, Betsy Gray, Jane Greg, Mary Ann McCracken and Martha McTier. \u00a0And a Republican coalition today for a reunification of Ireland would include both the exploited and oppressed of all religions and none, speaking any of the languages found in Ireland. \u00a0So, as an immediate demand, substitute the United Irish’s, religiously defined Irish nation of \u2018Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter\u2019, or ethnically defined \u00a0Anglo-Irish, ‘mere Irish’ and Scotch-Irish, with a \u00a0new civic Irish nation \u00a0– an Irish Republic of all citizens, both native-born \u00a0and migrant, and inclusive of \u00a0women and \u00a0LBGT+. \u00a0And it is by organising a coalition, which places workers, united-our-diversity, and with ‘internationalism form below’ links to the fore, that the ground is best set up for John’s concluding flourish a “workers republic.”[25]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

e) Under the guise of opposing Neo-Liberalism, a worrying accommodation to the Hard and Far Right <\/strong><\/p>\n

John\u2019s reluctance to examine the changing nature of Irish and British nationalism, including its hybrid versions, is tied up with his desire to avoid \u2018identity politics.\u2019 \u00a0\u201cIdentity has replaced democratic rights, self determination and opposition to imperialism\u201d.[26]<\/a> \u00a0However, as soon as you ask, \u201cself determination for whom?\u201d and \u201copposition to which imperialism?\u201d you see that specific identities or labels cannot be avoided.<\/p>\n

John wants to target the seekers and promoters of national, women, gay and, as we shall see for him, the particularly \u2018nasty\u2019 transgendered identities.\u00a0 Instead, John looks to working class-led campaigns for \u201cdemocratic rights, self determination and opposition to imperialism.\u201d \u00a0But once you remove all those \u2018identities\u2019 from your ideal working class, it begins to look remarkably white, male and straight! \u00a0This is the sort of thinking that in the Right\u2019s hands can lead to the championing of a \u2018white, male (and usually straight) working class\u2019.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, it wasn\u2019t the new \u2018break the glass ceiling\u2019 Liberals or the \u2018Radical Separatists (be they nationalists, feminists, gays or transgendered people) who first pushed \u2018identity politics\u2019. \u00a0That has long been done in the Labour Movement.\u00a0 We have seen the promotion of sectionalism, blue collar versus white collar, and the widespread acceptance of a \u2018national\u2019 working class \u2018getting its place under the capitalist sun\u2019.\u00a0 This has led to many, including Labour politicians and trade union leaders, Right and Left, accepting \u2018honours\u2019 and a place in the House of Lords.[27]<\/a>\u00a0 Today Hard Right Tories make the same appeal to ethnic British workers in the name of \u2018levelling-up\u2019.\u00a0Meanwhile those Radical Separatist calls for scatter-gun \u2018naming and shaming\u2019, so useful in pursuing any personal grudges and getting the attention needed to advance one\u2019s career, were anticipated in Mao-Tse Tung\u2019s Chinese Communist Party\u2019s \u2018rectification campaigns.\u2019<\/p>\n

It’s not so much the use of the term ‘identity’ which Socialists should be concerned about but the ability to distinguish between the exploited and the oppressed on one hand, and the exploiter and the oppressor on the other hand.\u00a0 Once this distinction is made it becomes much easier to dismiss calls by Liberal and Radical Separatist identity promoters to support a Zionist Jewish ethnic \u2018identity\u2019 backed by the oppressive Israeli state.\u00a0 They equate this with others giving support to a civic Palestinian \u2018identity\u2019 oppressed by that same state.<\/p>\n

This distinction between oppressor and oppressed also undermines Liberal \u2018Cultural Traditions\u2019 NGOs in Northern Ireland.\u00a0 They claim that Irish Nationalists\/Catholics should celebrate Loyalist marches and bonfires, as if they are nothing but friendly neighbourly celebrations, a bit like Morris dancing, Halloween nights or Hogmanay parties!\u00a0 But don\u2019t turn up in solidarity cross-dressed, wearing green or bring along an Irish tricolour!<\/p>\n

John\u2019s criticisms of transgendered people represent a wider contemporary, if sometimes unwitting, accommodation to some Right wing ideas.\u00a0 Since Brexit we have seen Socialists who want to claim the support of workers who are vociferously against Neo-Liberalism but who are also prepared to give support to decidedly reactionary forces, e.g. UKIP, the Brexit Party and Hard Right Tories. \u00a0In this, such Socialists inadvertently acted as outriders for far larger, Hard Right (and potentially for Far Right) forces.\u00a0 It is to the credit of John and Socialist Democracy (Ireland) -(SD(I) – that they opposed Brexit\/Irexit and the illusions of the Left Brexiteers.\u00a0 EL&SD<\/em> has posted SD(I) articles to add to our all-islands \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 opposition to Brexit.[28]<\/a><\/p>\n

The important thing to realise is that since 2008, Neo-Liberalism has lost its political hegemony, whilst the global economic order, dominated by the US, Wall Street and the City of London, is being undermined by inter-imperialist rivalry, particularly between rising China and declining USA.\u00a0 The Hard Right resort to economic protectionism and authoritarian politics, e.g. their bilateral treaties, constant external and internal bordering with new walls and \u2018moats\u2019, ever-increasing surveillance activities, and their removal of constitutional and legal constraints upon Populist politicians and capitalist buccaneers. These are not designed to maintain a global Neo-Liberal \u00a0order. \u00a0In economics they are leading to \u2018Neo-Liberalism in One Country\u2019 , and in politics to \u2018Neo-Illiberalism\u2019. \u00a0This is what the rise of the authoritarian Populism signifies.\u00a0 Those Socialists, who still see the old Neo-Liberals as their main enemy, have sometimes provided cover for the rise of the Hard Right.<\/p>\n

And in these islands, it was the Hard Right\u2019s 2016 Brexit victory, which marked their growing ascendancy.\u00a0 In Northern Ireland, Brexit was promoted mainly by the reactionary unionist DUP, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and Loyalist paramilitaries and by some conservative unionist UUP members. \u00a0Here was their chance to unravel the \u2018parity of esteem\u2019 of the Good Friday Agreement.\u00a0 Socialists in People before Profit (PbP) (originally an SWP front, now for its successor, the Socialist Workers Network ), the Socialist Party of Ireland (SPI) (with its much smaller and separate section reflecting Partition in Northern Ireland), the Workers\u2019 Party and the politically related Communist Party of Ireland, also supported Brexit.\u00a0 And so too did the majority of Dissident Republicans.\u00a0 However, only the PbP had enough support to field a Left Brexit-supporting candidate in the 2017 Westminster general election.\u00a0 In this electoral competition where the DUP and TUV led the Right Brexiteers, and PbP led the Left Brexiteers, the Right gained 98.1% of the Brexiteer vote, PbP 1.9%.\u00a0 This was not a very encouraging balance of forces!<\/p>\n

But Brexit has also gained the backing of Aontu, founded in 2019 as a socially conservative breakaway from the constitutional nationalist Sinn Fein, with some SDLP breakaway support too.\u00a0 Aontu sees Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland\u2019s previously shared EU membership as being responsible for undermining traditional Catholic social values over women, gays and transgendered people.\u00a0 And in this, they have been prepared to link up with the equally socially reactionary, Protestant fundamentalist supporters of Union and Empire and those reactionary Protestant fundamentalists and traditionalist Catholics, who form the base of the Hard Right in the USA.\u00a0 Aontu has 2 councillors in Northern Ireland (still less than the Socialists).\u00a0 But its vote overtook that of PbP in the 2019 Westminster general election.<\/p>\n

In the Republic of Ireland (which was given a severe doing over by both the EU and UK governments following the 2008 Crash), people first became aware of latent Europhobia in the 2018 presidential election.\u00a0 The openly racist, anti-Traveller, anti-migrant, Peter Casey came second with 23% of the vote, much of this at the expense of Sinn Fein.\u00a0 This contributed to the breakaway of the aforementioned all-Ireland Aontu.\u00a0 It now has 1 TD and 3 councillors in the Republic of Ireland, mercifully still smaller than the number of Socialists TDs and councillors. \u00a0Irexit is also supported by the more Right \u00a0Populist, Irish Freedom Party (IFP), which actively courted Nigel Farage (a bit like George Galloway in the UK).\u00a0 And beyond them, in their support for Irexit, are Hard Right TDs like Noel Greilish and the Far Right, National Party and Renua.<\/p>\n

Following the 2016 Brexit vote in the UK, Irexit became \u00a0publicly supported by Socialists in PbP, Solidarity (the SPI front in the Republic of Ireland) (and the more marginal and already declining Workers\u2019 Party and CPI).\u00a0 In the 2019 local elections, PbP lost 7 councillors, Solidarity lost 10 (although internal splits were also a contributory factor for both.)\u00a0 In the 2020 Dail general election, PbP lost 1 TD, Solidarity lost 3.\u00a0 The biggest winners by far were Sinn Fein, which had made a Left turn.\u00a0 Sinn Fein emphasised the importance of Ireland\u2019s continued membership of the EU, in their Left populist manifesto, Giving workers and families a break<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0And the growth of Hard Right opposition to the EU was not expressed so much by votes for parties like Right Populist, Aontu and IFP, or the still marginal Far Right, National Party and Renua, but for independent Hard Right TDs like Greilish.<\/p>\n

However, opposition to the EU forms just one part of the Hard Right\u2019s authoritarian Populist offensive.\u00a0 Even more important to them is overthrowing the whole legacy of the socio-economic gains made by Women\u2019s and Gay Liberation Movements, in the late 1960s and earlier 1970s, during an International Revolutionary Wave, symbolised in the USA by the 1973 Supreme Court, \u00a0Roe v. Wade amendment.\u00a0 The latest weapon the Hard (and Far Right) has found to assist them in their crusade is opposition to transgender rights.<\/p>\n

This is why it is worrying that John goes on to oppose those supporters of transgendered people who want a \u201cwide-ranging legal framework supporting self-identification.\u201d[29]<\/a>\u00a0 And his reasoning is much the same as that of the Left Brexiteers in relation to the Neo-Liberals and their outreach organisations. \u00a0These \u201cexisting movements are incorporated into NGOs and government sponsored community organisations,\u201d[30]<\/a> forming part of a Neo-Liberal elite.\u00a0 Instead, John gives support to those gender critical feminists who want women\u2019s spaces to be based on biological sex, not socio-cultural gender.<\/p>\n

Yet the prime motivation behind the original Women\u2019s Movement was to break out of the conservative and reactionary, hetero-sexual straitjackets, imposed upon them in work, family, leisure, cultural and sexual activities. These restraints were justified on grounds which equated biologically determined female sex with socially determined women\u2019s gender and sexuality.\u00a0 The resurrection of such arguments today by gender critical feminists can only lead to the thinking, long upheld by the Right, that if women don\u2019t prioritise having children, then they aren\u2019t fully women.\u00a0 It is only the recognition of the socially determined nature of gender and sexuality, which offers women and \u00a0people from an LBGT+ background more freedom.\u00a0 This can also provide a real challenge to capitalism\u2019s social reproduction relations.<\/p>\n

As with the Left Brexiteers over Brexit\/Irexit, John does not look at the Rightist political origins of transphobia which critical gender thinking accommodates itself to, whist trying to distance itself from its more rabid supporters.\u00a0 All those parties and organisations, which John so rightly opposed over Brexit\/Irexit, will line up with gender critical feminists against transgendered people – the DUP, TUV, sections of the UUP, the Far Right in the Loyalist paramilitaries\u00a0 and in the National Party and Renua, as well as the Catholic bishops\u2019 conference, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the Islamic Cultural Centre and the Orange Oder, which ganged up against the repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution criminalising abortion.<\/p>\n

The original source of such anti-transgender thinking comes from the very well-funded religious Hard and Far Right in the USA. \u00a0In the UK and Ireland this began as largely disconnected online trolls, targeting individual transgendered people. But they now have a highly organised political campaign, with its own front organisations, also targeting transgender organisations and other supporters. They receive \u00a0considerable US Hard and Far Right financial backing. \u00a0This campaign \u00a0has also developed outreach into other not initially Right-motivated bodies, e.g. Mumsnet in the UK.\u00a0The Right has been pursuing its \u2018culture wars\u2019 ever since their setbacks in late 1960s and early 1970s.\u00a0 Today\u2019s ongoing attacks on transgendered people are only the first phase in \u00a0their salami tactics to be stepped up next against gays and women as well.\u00a0 And any Left critical gender theory supporters would soon be trampled in the Right stampede, just as Left Brexiters were over Brexit.<\/p>\n

However, there is a specific ‘Marxist’ link with critical gender theory, which has seduced some Socialists today. This is based on \u00a0vulgar materialist thinking, which has continually reappeared on the Left, particularly during times of political retreat. \u00a0Such thinking does not make a clear distinction between the biological laws which largely determine the organic world (plants and animals) and the social laws which increasingly determine the human world. They do, however, recognise the distinction between the physical and chemical laws which largely determine the inorganic world (e.g. rocks, soil, oceans, rivers, rainfall and winds) and the biological \u00a0laws which largely determine the organic world. \u00a0These biological laws are not ‘free-floating’ but recognise the laws of physics and chemistry; just as social laws which determine human activity recognise \u00a0physical, chemical \u00a0and biological \u00a0laws. However, social laws are able to transcend some of these other laws’ \u00a0limitations and open up the prospect of far greater freedom – social and individual \u00a0(the two are linked) self-determination in its wider sense.<\/p>\n

During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth , especially under the pressure of imperialism, Social Darwinism had a big impact on Social Democrats and the Second International. \u00a0There was strong tendency to interpret the human world, if not always by the \u00a0direct application of, then by \u00a0analogy with the biological \u00a0world. \u00a0This had a particularly negative effect when it came to challenging \u00a0racism, but biological essentialist thinking also undermined attempts to promote women’s equality.<\/p>\n

Today, critical general theorists try to reduce socially created gender – women – \u00a0to the \u00a0biologically created sex – female. \u00a0Thus they say that ‘real’ women have wombs necessary to produce babies. \u00a0This, as with the earlier Social Darwinist thinking, overlaps with Right essentialist thinking. It is argued \u00a0women’s main purpose in \u00a0being a female\/woman is \u00a0to have children. \u00a0Thus for the Right (including their ‘Red’ allies, such as the Communist Party of Russia) \u00a0not only transgender women, but lesbians are less then ‘real women’, whilst those women who try to assert control over their ‘biological destiny’, by supporting abortion and contraception, are also seen as undermining families. \u00a0In these families the heterosexual male is dominant. \u00a0And those women who are infertile are also somewhat less than ‘real women’ unable to increase the number of children needed by the paranoiac racist Red\/Brown alliance \u00a0to increase White numbers. Here today’s \u00a0‘Reds’ invoking a vulgar materialist Marxism, revived by Stalin, \u00a0a few years after the defeat of the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave, give their assistance to the Browns or the Hard and Far Right.<\/p>\n

Any genuinely critical female\/gender theory would assert the distinction between biological sex (which of course does have a major influence on human lives) and \u00a0socially created gender. \u00a0It is this distinction which helps women, those from a LBGT+ background, and men to move well beyond the biological limitations, capitalism and the Right \u00a0try to impose on us. \u00a0Such a recognition of the difference between the biological and the social is already preparing the grounds for social \u00a0and individual \u00a0self-determination in a new society.<\/p>\n

For Socialists, the fundamental political issue over transgendered people should be whether or not they are oppressed.\u00a0 There is plenty of evidence to show that they are, and just as important, that they have resisted this and fought back.\u00a0 Furthermore, as in the cases of black people, women, gays and other oppressed groups, the majority of transgendered people belong to the working class.\u00a0We have seen before the sort of arguments directed at transgendered people and now used by gender critical feminists.\u00a0 They were also used by the reactionary and conservative Right against the Gay Movement.\u00a0 These arguments evoke predatory behaviour in such \u2018safe spaces\u2019 as toilets and designs upon those below the statutory age of consensual sex.\u00a0 And the arguments that transgendered people threaten traditional, biologically based sexual relations between and men and women, and women\u2019s role in the family as mothers, were originally directed against the Women\u2019s Movement too.<\/p>\n

The promotion of such tactics is very handy for male chauvinists of all stripes.\u00a0 In Scotland, we have just witnessed the emergence of the politically ambiguous Left\/Right Populist Nationalist party, Alba.[31]<\/a>\u00a0 This is led by former SNP and Scottish government leader, Alex Salmond.\u00a0 In a major court case in 2021, he was successfully defended against an accusation of rape.\u00a0 But to marginalise this charge, his QC argued, in effect, that he was only a \u201csex pest\u201d.\u00a0 Back in May 2008, Salmond, then an MP took a special flight from Aberdeen to Westminster to vote to limit abortion from 24 to 20 weeks.[32]<\/a>\u00a0 Alba has attracted some racists, homophobes and misogynists.\u00a0 But it has also attracted gender critical feminists.\u00a0They have risen rapidly in Salmond\u2019s party (and like Tommy Sheridan\u2019s old Solidarity it is basically his vanity party).\u00a0 They provide a very useful cover for Salmond\u2019s and other members own sexist prejudices and behaviour.<\/p>\n

At the moment, transgendered people are often on the frontline of the attack upon our class and its other oppressed members.\u00a0 They cannot be adequately protected under the existing or any impending new laws, even if we have to try and use these at times.\u00a0 Better-off liberally minded people, like those privileged Right wing members of the ruling class, who don\u2019t conform to the Right\u2019s sexual stereotypes, can take some comfort in being tolerated behind-the-scenes (well at least until any possible future Far Right\u2019s \u2018night of the long knives\u2019).<\/p>\n

Nor should Socialists follow those who hope to avoid the Right\u2019s resort to \u2018culture wars\u2019, by concentrating on economic issues instead.\u00a0\u00a0 We should engage in these cultural battles in the same way we engage in other aspects of the class war – political, economic and social.\u00a0\u00a0Capitalism is an integrated system based on exploitation, oppression and alienation.[33] <\/a>\u00a0‘Culture wars\u2019 are a reflection of the alienation people experience under capitalism.\u00a0 And our answer to alienation is to support and to promote self-determination in its widest sense.\u00a0 Gender self-determination is a good example of this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

f) Taking on the Hard Right\u2019s and Liberals\u2019 hypocrisy<\/strong><\/p>\n

John\u2019s arguments could give succour to the Hard Right.\u00a0 In these \u2018culture wars\u2019, John claims that the new gender critical theory based, feminist and gay \u201cmovements\u201d (who are unspecified) \u201chave been savagely criticised by many traditional feminist organisations, now part of a partnership between unions, and government and operating through NGOs\u201d.[34]<\/a>\u00a0 Such criticism is seen by many, particularly the Right, as amounting to a \u2018cancel culture\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, there are no greater perpetrators of \u2018cancel culture\u2019 than the Hard and Far Right. \u00a0The \u00a0authoritarian Right wing of the ruling class is now politically dominant.\u00a0 They constantly use their control of the state and media to ensure other voices aren\u2019t heard or are suppressed, e.g. their bogus ‘anti-Semitic\u2019 accusations, and their campaigns to dismiss supporters of Palestinian rights from their jobs, all to protect the US and UK states\u2019 key imperial ally, apartheid Israel.\u00a0 So, even those Radical Separatist, feminist and LBGT+ people, who sometimes do try to silence their perceived oppressors, are responding in this wider socio-political context.\u00a0 The Socialist answer, however, to the Right\u2019s own \u2018cancel culture\u2019 designed to divide-and-rule, should be the promotion of solidarity based on unity in diversity.<\/p>\n

It is also important not to get trapped into the notion held by Liberals of defending ‘free speech’. \u00a0There is little free speech to defend when the media is dominated by state and corporate bodies; and members of a rich and powerful elite can silence others through threats of court action, and spendtheir money to buy the best \u2018justice\u2019 that money can buy.\u00a0 For Socialists it is far more important to promote freedom of information, and defend its advocates, e.g. whistle-blowers, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.\u00a0 Of course, there may also be specific cases of censorship, which the Left would oppose.<\/p>\n

The Hard Right already has control of so many media sources – TV, radio, newspapers and online platforms – that they are hardly affected by any Liberal editor\u2019s decision \u00a0not to promote one of their usually provocatively tendentious spokespersons.\u00a0 The Right does not campaign for universal free speech or freedom of information \u2013 far from it.\u00a0 We need to recognise that we live in a class divided society and constitutional, legal and access to media reflect the domination of the ruling class.<\/p>\n

And reflecting their wider hypocrisy, we have already witnessed leading Hard Right capitalist politicians, like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Lawson, using the Brexit furore as an opportunity to transfer their investments to the EU.\u00a0 They can fly in private jets, buy their second, third and more homes in the EU, and avoid all the post-Brexit obstacles faced by \u2018ordinary Brits\u2019.\u00a0 As Covid-19 has shown, there is one law for us and another law for them.<\/p>\n

Now, in the current Rightward drifting political climate, some Liberal advocates do try to champion the inherited but threatened Liberal political, constitutional and legal institutions, and the BBC against attacks from the Hard and Far Right. \u00a0And there are worse organisations around than Amnesty International, \u00a0other Liberal NGOs, or even the BBC, whatever criticisms we may have of them, e.g. the Hard Right\u2019s Migrant Watch UK, Breibart and Fox News in the USA.\u00a0 Both Right Populists and Liberals may have backing from different sections of the ruling class, but the much more widespread gaslighting and trolling by the Hard and Far Right has a far greater impact upon more people\u2019s lives than those Radical Separatists, who sometimes reply in kind.<\/p>\n

From a Socialist viewpoint, the main limitation of Liberals\u2019 arguments and practice is they confine their promotion of class-limited, \u2018break the glass ceilings\u2019 versions of feminist, gay and transgendered rights to activity within the existing legal and constitutional order.\u00a0 Furthermore, given their historical record, don\u2019t expect any Liberal consistency over defence of these rights. \u00a0Many Liberals have already capitulated to the Right over migration and ethnic minorities.\u00a0Some, like Gordon Brown, have even adopted the Far Right\u2019s language, e.g. his call for \u2018British jobs for British workers\u2019, first coined by the British Fascist, National Front; and his attempt along with Michael Gove to define British citizenship (read subjecthood) on ethnic criteria.\u00a0 Following the 2008 Crash of the Neo-Liberals’ socio-economic order, New Labour were among the first to abandon earlier Liberal concessions.\u00a0 They massively expanded migrant detention centres and promoted Islamophobia, as well as other reactionary measures.\u00a0 They paved the way for the rise of the Hard and Far Right.<\/p>\n

This easy Liberal accommodation to the Hard and Far Right has also been highlighted more recently by the Labour Right\u2019s defence of the Israeli state.\u00a0 In 2018, its Right Zionist government passed the Jewish nation-state law, with its constitutional guarantee of ethnic Jewish supremacy, which had long been in place in practice.\u00a0 Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) has been a visitor to, and is a strong supporter of Israel and its new law.\u00a0 He would like to see ethnic supremacist laws in the UK.\u00a0 The \u2018liberal\u2019 supporters of the Labour Friends of Israel have been (un)remarkably quiet over this.\u00a0 And Sir Keir Starmer is very likely to return to Brown\u2019s attempt to come up with an ethnic nationality version of \u2018Britishness\u2019.\u00a0 The debate between the Hard and the Far Right, though, is whether you can be British if you fully assimilate to the UK state\u2019s imperialist, unionist, monarchist and chauvinist values (e.g. Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Kwasi Karteng), or whether you can only be \u2018truly British\u2019 if you are white and are born here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

g) Developing \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 solidarity<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the 2016 EU membership referendum, many Socialists, including John, quite rightly looked to the defence of the \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 achievements made by domestic and migrant workers in mixed personal relationships at home, at work, in universities and colleges, and in their communities. \u00a0This intermixing has also greatly enhanced our cultural experiences.\u00a0 And we also witnessed some impressive solidarity in trade union and other struggles. \u00a0Workers from Turkey and Latin America brought their politically more advanced traditions to the Dublin GAMA and London cleaners\u2019 disputes.<\/p>\n

All these gains have been hard-won under the bureaucratically imposed, \u2018internationalism from above\u2019 umbrella of the dominant \u00a0ruling classes in the member states of the EU.\u00a0 John recognises this.\u00a0 The EU is an alliance of these ruling classes and their states; it is not a state in itself.\u00a0 It has no army or police force.\u00a0 There is no hidden Neo-Liberal European ruling class hiding behind an EU mask.\u00a0 Such conspiracy theories obscure what is in clear sight \u2013 the often very public competition and jockeying by the ruling classes of EU member states and their shared attempts to ensure that the costs of any crisis, economic or environmental, are imposed upon workers, women, small farmers and ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

Many on the Irish Left, who tail ended the Hard Right in their support for \u00a0Brexit (or unwittingly contributed to the Hard Right’s emergence in the case of Irexit) have now moved in the opposite direction. This change \u00a0has come about as a result of mass mobilisations, including the victory in repealing the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution over abortion rights.\u00a0 This victory was very rightly celebrated.\u00a0 Support for transgender rights is now seen to be a way of building on this and pushing for the greater unity-in-diversity of the oppressed.\u00a0 This is a way of overcoming the Right\u2019s continuous attempt to divide our class.\u00a0 The massive Me Too and Black Lives Matter Movements have also acted as further contributors to this desire to overcome class divisions, caused in these cases by sexist and racist oppression.\u00a0 These two forms of oppression are central not peripheral to capitalism and imperialism.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Liberals will fight tooth and nail to take over, mislead and, in their own way, divide these movements, as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and the Democrats have clearly shown.\u00a0 Radical Separatists, who sometimes promote their own versions of \u2018cancel culture\u2019 can also divide the exploited and oppressed.\u00a0 But abstaining from offering solidarity and participating in mass movements amounts to a form of abstract Socialist propagandism.<\/p>\n

We will certainly come up against other Socialists, who go along with some of the illusions promoted under the existing constitutional and legal order, particularly by Liberal campaigners.\u00a0 The Republic of Ireland still has the power of the Catholic Church deeply embedded into its constitution, with a strong hold over education and health in particular.\u00a0 Far from the Eighth Amendment referendum victory opening up the prospect of a full women\u2019s choice over abortion rights, the Irish government has handed over the construction of the new National Maternity Hospital in Dublin to the decidedly illiberal Catholic Church.[35]<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the cynical top-down imposed extension of the liberal British abortion laws to Northern Ireland in 2019, to punish the over-cocky DUP for not restoring Stormont, has even less prospect of bringing about a full women\u2019s choice over abortion rights.\u00a0 The inherited forces of conservatism and reaction are deeply embedded and constitutionally supported in Northern Ireland under the post-GFA political deals despite their liberal coating. \u00a0And the constitutional nationalist, Sinn Fein (and SDLP) don\u2019t want to alienate those socially conservative members and voters who have not already departed for Aontu.[36]<\/a><\/p>\n

Thus, any long-term successful campaigns to advance or even to defend our social provision cannot depend on the existing constitutional order. \u00a0John concludes his book with, \u201cBreaking the mould {the impasse in Irish politics} involves presenting a new political alternative, a revolutionary break from today\u2019s more or less universal corruption in favour of renewed calls for a workers\u2019 republic\u201d.[37]<\/a> \u00a0But Socialists need to go well beyond this abstract propagandist alternative.\u00a0 We need to develop immediate demands which arise from the current conditions we face, and to help create democratic autonomous coalitions to organise \u00a0resistance. \u00a0And we need to look \u00a0beyond Ireland, or Scotland, Wales and England individually to do this on an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 basis.<\/p>\n

8.2.22<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>References\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] John McAnulty, Ireland\u2019s Partition: Coda to counterrevolution<\/em> (IP:Ctc<\/em>), p. ii (Socialist Democracy, Belfast, 2021)<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0https:\/\/allanarmstrong831930095.files.wordpress.com\/2022\/02\/from-pre-brit-to-ex-brit-.pdf – p.806<\/a><\/p>\n

[3] https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/maclean\/works\/1919-america.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

[4]\u00a0 https:\/\/allanarmstrong831930095.files.wordpress.com\/2021\/11\/the-british-left-the-uk-state-1-3.pdf – p.46<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 10, p.8<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 10, p.9<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>\u00a0 John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 1, p.5<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 10, p.9<\/a><\/p>\n

[9] John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 6, p.8<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eoghan_Harris<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> http:\/\/ulstersdoomed.blogspot.com\/2009\/06\/partition-and-repartition-part-4-udas.html<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lyra_McKee#Death<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Omagh_bombing#Advance_warning_allegations<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> http:\/\/www.rebelnews.ie\/2019\/01\/29\/belfast-general-strike-of-1919\/<\/p>\n

<\/a>[15] http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/13\/review-struggle-or-starve-working-class-unity-in-belfasts-outdoor-relief-riots\/<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> https:\/\/www.theirishstory.com\/2020\/07\/20\/today-in-irish-history-21st-july-1920-the-start-of-the-belfast-pogrom\/#.YgGhLC-l0h8<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> https:\/\/treasonfelony.wordpress.com\/2015\/07\/09\/sectarian-violence-in-the-summer-of-1935\/<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scottsboro_Boys<\/a><\/p>\n

[19] https:\/\/www.sinnfein.ie\/files\/2020\/Giving_Workers_and_Families_a_Break_-_A_Manifesto_for_Change.pdf – p.70<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> https:\/\/www.sinnfein.ie\/files\/2020\/Giving_Workers_and_Families_a_Break_-_A_Manifesto_for_Change.pdf – p.11<\/a><\/p>\n

[21] https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Underground_Railroad<\/a><\/p>\n

[22] John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 2, p.3<\/a><\/p>\n

[23] John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 7, p.3<\/a><\/p>\n

[24] https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Society_of_United_Irishmen#Women<\/a><\/p>\n

[25]John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 10, p.10<\/p>\n

[26] John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 10. p.4<\/a><\/p>\n

[27] https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=q0FHEEuMvuI<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a> https:\/\/allanarmstrong831930095.files.wordpress.com\/2021\/11\/the-british-left-the-uk-state-1-3.pdf \u2013 pp.47-53<\/p>\n

[29]<\/a> John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 4, p.6<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a> John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 4, p.6<\/p>\n

[31]<\/a> http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2021\/04\/30\/the-alba-party-and-the-left-in-scotland\/<\/p>\n

[32]<\/a> https:\/\/edinburgheye.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/19\/goodbye-alex-salmond%EF%BB%BF\/<\/p>\n

[33]<\/a> http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/07\/exploitation-oppression-and-alienation-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination\/<\/p>\n

[34]<\/a> John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 4, p.6<\/p>\n

[35]<\/a> http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2021\/07\/12\/dublin-no-church-involvement-in-the-national-maternity-hospital\/ and <\/strong>http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/22\/12783\/<\/p>\n

[36]<\/a> http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2021\/03\/22\/abortion-abstention-at-stormont-what-is-it-that-makes-sinn-fein-a-left-party\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[37] John McAnulty, IP:Ctc<\/em>, Chapter 10, p.10<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

______<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

also see:<\/p>\n

For an all-islands, republican coalition – \u00a0 Part 1, The changing nature of British rule in Ireland: One response – Allan Armstrong<\/a><\/p>\n

For articles from Socialist Democracy (Ireland) see:-<\/p>\n

Emancipation & Liberation – Irish Coverage from 2002<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n