Workers' Liberty

After the referendum how can socialists judge the prospects for peace and the development of working-class politics? I share Sean’s view that the agreement, endorsed by over 71% of the people of Ulster, is not a solution to the baseline conflict in Ireland.

Nevertheless, the deal represents some hope that “normalisation” can return and promote the development of working class politics in the months and years ahead.

The arguments of those opposed to a Yes vote are confused and contradictory.

In my view there is too much at stake for the working class in Northern Ireland to simply sit on the fence. I don’t accept that calling for a Yes vote is to endorse, to a greater or lesser degree, the agreement in all its details. “The details matter” says Sean. But only if we accept them as final. This is certainly not our agreement, but it represents the current state of movement on the ground in Northern Ireland. Some have argued that a Yes vote cuts across building a profile for our politics, but our politics are not an option in the current scenario — it’s up to us to make them an option if the new situation makes that possible.

The agreement may fall flat on its face but if it does the likelihood is a return to sectarian violence and that would put us a million miles adrift from our politics having any resonance on the ground. Without for one minute endorsing the artificial partition of Ireland, and given our own political impotence, it is not heresy to suggest that a federal solution may not be the first break with the sectarianism of the past. For all its faults, this agreement may in some way be a bridge to the future — poorly constructed, likely to collapse in bad weather and built by a cowboy construction company — but a bridge nonetheless. When Sean concedes that this agreement just might work, he presents the strongest case for voting Yes. Some things have changed in Ireland. Sinn Fein have been forced to concede, in deeds if not in words, that the long war against the British Army was pointless. They have recognised somewhat belatedly that no solution in Ireland is possible without the consent of the Protestants. They have become bourgeois constitutionalists instead of dyed in the wool green gung ho, and bourgeois, nationalists. This is about as good as we could have expected from them.

The south is now richer than the north, and it continues, for the moment, to witness rapid economic growth. It is more secular now. It is possible to argue that “Home Rule” cannot so easily be associated with “Rome Rule”.

The development of new forms of Unionist politics is encouraging, making it more likely, though not inevitable, that the agreement might stick. Paisley, assisted by half of the OUP, was unable to seriously dent the Yes vote in the referendum. Paisley may yet carry the day, but the Yes vote has weakened the DUP. Anything we could have done to assist that could only have been in the interests of the working class.

Peace in itself will not guarantee the development of normal class politics in Ireland, but without peace such a development is virtually impossible. When we endorsed the idea of developing independent Labour politics in the north, this did not mean we endorsed partition. Supporting the Yes campaign did not mean that we support the details of the agreement, but the result may give us the opportunity to further develop Labour politics.

Arguing that we “cannot endorse their (the Blair Government’s) bourgeois communal alternative”, Sean sites Trotsky in his defence. “To vote the military budget of the Negrin Government”, said Trotsky, “signifies to vote him political confidence”. There are numerous problems in using this historical analogy. Voting guns for Negrin was just as likely, if not more likely, to lead to dead workers and socialists as to result in dead Franco troops, a point Trotsky makes himself. At stake then was the whole fate of the Spanish revolution. Under such conditions of servitude, says Trotsky, “how can we prepare for the overthrow of the Negrin Government?”

At stake in Ireland is something much more limited, and much less clear cut for our class. A Yes vote could help develop a class-based civil war a la Spain, instead of the simmering sectarian civil war we’ve had for the last 30 years, with the prospect of a full blown civil war if the “no” hopers get their way. I don’t think we will have any problem explaining why we supported the Yes campaign. There was no chance of altering, in the short term, the words in the agreement. Had we been in Parliament, we would have argued and voted against this agreement for all the reasons Sean has given, fighting for an agreement with a better chance of drawing the poison out of the communal conflict. Sean says “we do not accept the gun to the head choice of lesser evils they normally offer”; but in this case the alternative is guns to the heads of many workers in Ireland, and the continuation of sectarian politics at a new, more reactionary, level.

Trotsky says in the polemic against Shachtman that comrades should also refuse to vote for more money for schools and roads. In the middle of the Spanish Civil War, or in the middle of the Russian Revolution, such positions would be entirely correct. But what position would Trotsky have taken on the Welfare State and National Health Service in 1945? The agreement is full of flaws, but if it holds, it could represent a much brighter future for our class than the abyss represented by the actually existing alternative in Northern Ireland.

Liam Conway

“Bourgeois communalism and independent class politics”

If the Irish workers remain in the tow of bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalist and communalist politicians, then the only alternative to stalemate is one solution or another imposed by bourgeois forces, in their own way and in their own interests. And if the British and Irish governments continue their push for normalisation and conciliation both sensitively and with energy, then the agreement they put to a referendum is the least bad of the bourgeois solutions on offer, less bad than the die-hard Unionist or Catholic-chauvinist alternatives.

That is the case for seeing the agreement as qualifiedly positive. It is also the case for not voting Yes to it. There is nothing of any consequence to vote Yes to except hopes of the future constructive role of London and Dublin.

We may reasonably believe that the Dublin and London governments have some real interest in normalisation. We can hope for that. It is no part of Marxism to believe that bourgeois governments and states are always brutishly short-sighted, or never capable of introducing real elements of bourgeois civilisation. But it is essential to Marxism that we never trust bourgeois governments and states to be better than brutishly short-sighted, nor give them credit in advance.

Maybe some good will come of the agreement. But no socialist should have voted Yes to it, because working-class politics begins only where trust in the Irish and British bourgeoisies ends, and this agreement depends entirely on those bourgeoisies’ initiative and good will. The job of socialists is to create better alternatives by developing a working-class opposition. We must not be “sectarian”, or “abstract”, or “ultimatist”, as we would be if we failed to help along even the most partial steps towards that working-class opposition — but in the referendum the only way to nurture working-class politics was to flag up its necessity by refusing to vote Yes (or no). The Yes meant not Yes to a partial or limited step in working-class activity, but Yes to the Dublin and London governments as the accredited active forces in this “stage” of development, after which we hope will come the workers’ stage.

It is a matter of knowing who we are and what our job is. We are not, as Trotsky put it, the inspectors-general of history. We are not general philosophers of progress. Our fundamental job in situations like that in Ireland is not to nudge along the lesser evil within the existing alternatives, but to create the basis for new alternatives. We could not possibly have any weight within the Yes vote camp, created and shaped by the most wealthy and well-resourced forces in world politics (the US government, the European Union, etc.) With our distinctive Marxist ideas we can have an indispensable role in assembling the forces for a new, independent working-class camp. Marx once commented that the difference between him and some former comrades in Germany whom he saw as opportunists was: “They are ‘realistic politicians’, and I am not”. We should not be “realistic politicians”, either.

We should be with the working-class youth in Catholic and Protestant communities who say: this agreement offers us nothing towards decent jobs. It offers us, on the Catholic side, no relief from RUC brutality; on the Protestant side, no real guarantees of our rights as a community.

We should be with the workers who say: we do not want the communal divisions frozen, institutionalised and manipulated by power-sharing and Dublin-London supervision; we want them overcome by working-class unity on a consistent democratic basis. It is better to be with those young workers than with those who would explain to them that perhaps, with luck, by the time they are middle-aged, the enlightened bureaucratism and parliamentarism of Dublin and London will have created opportunities for their middle-aged selves to win better conditions.

Workers will be assembled for an independent “Third Camp” only on the basis of utter hatred and distrust of the Irish and British bourgeoisies. Those who allow their class hatred to be overridden and softened by the thought that these major bourgeois forces are, after all, less recklessly destructive than the Paisleyites or the worst Catholic chauvinists, and thus offer the best options for now, will never create the new alternative.

If the only forces immediately able to pacify the communal conflict in Northern Ireland are Dublin and London, and the working class is not able to pose any alternative, then we must recognise the fact. But in that case the bourgeois governments will do their work without our support and advice. Our job is not to be a fifth wheel to their chariot. The case for the Yes vote rests on confusion about our place in the alignment of forces.

Two questions of general political method are involved here, I think. The first is that our idea of the united front is unity in action, but with separate political explanation. As regards political ideas, manifestos, candidates, votes, the rule for Marxists is that we have our own banner distinct from all others. This rule is obscured for us, perhaps, by the long-time position of British Marxists as a small minority within or alongside a mass federal Labour Party. But we vote Labour only as a tactical expedient to aid intervention in the labour movement. There was no analogy in the referendum. We are not about to undertake intervention in the Irish and British states, aided by a Yes vote.

The second is that recognising a bourgeois development or force as progressive does not necessarily at all mean that we should positively endorse it. Marx, Engels, and the classical Marxists before 1914 understood this well.

The confessional “power-sharing” state set up in Lebanon in the 1940s was a lesser evil than immediate communal war, and survived for 30 years; but no Marxist should have voted Yes to it. The European Union is a lesser evil than the re-raising of national barriers and conflicts in Europe; we do not vote Yes to it. British rule in India brought progress compared to the decaying Mughal Empire; Marx registered that without indicating any sort of Yes to British rule. Bismarck’s unified Germany was an advance on the old Germany of dozens of principalities and dukedoms; no Marxist voted Yes to it. When Germany’s presidential election went to a run-off between the old conservative militarist Hindenburg and Hitler in 1932, Hindenburg’s victory was a lesser evil; Trotsky vigorously disapproved of the Social Democrats’ decision to back Hindenburg. If an election goes to a run-off between a Tory, or Liberal-Democrat, and the BNP, or between a mainstream right-wing politician and the Front National in France, then the victory of the mainstream right-winger is a lesser evil; we do not vote for them.

And in Northern Ireland, the “freezing” of the situation in August 1969 by British troops going onto the streets was a lesser evil than big pogroms and full-scale civil war. All the more so, one might realistically have estimated at the time, since the British government clearly wanted to reform and normalise the situation in Ireland Yet — whatever mistakes we see in hindsight — weren’t we right not to say Yes to the troops? Weren’t we right to dispute the logic of Tony Cliff and the leadership of the SWP (then called IS), who insisted that we must choose the lesser evil of the two immediate possibilities, British army intervention or Paisleyite pogroms? Did we not explain at the time that “Troops Out” was not “realistic” as instant quick-fix advice to the British government, but the task of the Marxist minority was not quick-fix advice but mapping out principled paths for the future?

The putative positive work of British intervention passed by way of the dismantling of the barricades in Belfast and Derry and, when it hit difficulties, lurched into periods of extensive terror against the Catholic community and British army collusion with the Protestant paramilitaries. Britain wanted reform, but it wanted the people — crucially, in that period, the combative elements of the Catholic community — to be subdued and wait patiently for the reform to be done in Whitehall’s good time. None of that is changed. The wide war-weariness in Northern Ireland — meaning that a lot of people are already subdued and willing to wait patiently — and the lack of combativity other than chauvinist, makes the balance look different. But the British government no more deserves our Yes vote now than it did in 1969.

Martin Thomas

“How do you judge the Northern Irish Agreement?”

The fundamental problem at the core of Northern Irish society is that it is made up of two peoples with conflicting national loyalties. History has created two very different communities with their own cultures and identities. No constitutional arrangement is going to solve that problem.

The solution is to transcend the communal differences, to create the circumstances within which they will, over time, dissolve. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that British and Irish governments, over the past 15 years, have wanted to create such conditions by developing a de facto joint authority over Northern Ireland, overseen by the EU. However the only stable, democratic, way to transcend the divide is socialism. Since no socialism is possible without the working class (and the working class is divided along national/communal lines) it is essential to propose a democratic answer to the national question as part of our general socialist propaganda.

Our proposal (federalism) does not abolish the national communal/division, but attempts to accommodate it. All proposals which address the Irish question in this way — rather than those like “Troops Out” which promise to end it forever by abolishing its alleged real cause — are open to the charge that they would “institutionalise sectarianism”. Similarly “Two States in the Middle East” would “institutionalise sectarianism” as our opponents in the SWP and elsewhere never tire of explaining. Our programme, they argue, is a product of a lack of faith in the workers to overcome the false consciousness of nationalism.

This side of socialist revolution addressing the national question means a democratic accommodation which will militate against national or communal oppression, recognise rights and above all allow our class the space to organise and develop as a class-for-itself.

The only reliable force for creating democratic accommodation between competing nationalities is the working class. Nevertheless we relate to settlements from other forces from our own class standpoint. We ask whether the interests of our class are advanced, whether communal division can be minimised or reduced and whether the hegemony exercised by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism over our class can be broken.

The peace agreement in Northern Ireland is in many ways an index of the extent to which relations between the two communities have changed. Change does not necessarily mean progress.

The objections put forward by most Protestant No voters in the referendum campaign concerned the issues of prisoner release and decommissioning rather than the principles of power-sharing and the Council of Ireland. That has become more accepted. In 1974 the issue brought the Unionist community and Northern Ireland closer to civil war.

Similarly Sinn Fein now accept that there will be no united Ireland without the consent of the people of the North. On the one hand 30 years of sectarian war has hardened attitudes to paramilitaries and deepened distrust. On the other there has been real movement on the constitutional question. The Agreement represents these changes.

There is a tendency on the left to play down and underestimate these developments. In our discussion in WL the Agreement has been dismissed as the work of tired old men motivated by war weariness. This is fundamentally mistaken. The method here is lazy and functional.

If your immediate motive is to avoid any hint of endorsing the Agreement, then it is very useful to point to the influence of war-weariness — something that is understandable, but also negative. However there are other factors.

The Republican movement are seeking an alternative to military struggle because they have reassessed the whole question. War, even on the relatively small-scale of Northern Ireland, often speeds up political processes, and the last 30 years has brought home sharply the futility of trying to unite Ireland by force. That conclusion has been reached — by the Republicans included — because of the nature of the problem: all the old watchwords like self-determination and unity mean nothing unless a settlement is reached between the Northern Protestant community and the Irish nationalist majority. We should welcome this shift and encourage it.

The Hume-Adams talks first revealed the new Nationalist strategy and eventually put pressure on the British and Irish governments to respond. Without similar developments in the Protestant community the process could not have gone much further.

Loyalism has been politicised. The emergence of the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party indicate a willingness to move away from militarism and a desire to break working-class Protestants from their traditional reliance on the Unionist establishment, although the lack of a real break with communal politics is a weakness.

The developments in both communities are not fixed or finished. However, I think there is an element here, albeit embryonic, of the disintegration of communal politics. Whether it is followed by class politics or intra-communal strife depends on the alternatives available.

The more astute and thoughtful of the Unionist establishment now know Britain’s support is conditional, there is no prospect of a return to Stormont. The rights of the Catholic community, including their Irish national identity, will have to be recognised in any settlement. Add to this the fact that within the next generation there could well be a Catholic majority within the state. Intelligent Unionists realise that they need to create a Northern Irish state with much broader popular legitimacy — preferably one with cross community support.

What we think of the detail of the Agreement is less important than registering what it represents. The Agreement is mainly flawed by being written in order to keep everyone on board in the short term instead of ensuring a genuine democratic settlement for the long term. It had to have a meaningful system of power-sharing, one which would give Sinn Fein places in the Executive. On the other hand it had to fudge decommissioning. These flaws are endemic and are not, for us, the main point.

The No campaign was entirely dominated by the hardline Unionists, overshadowing their Republican counterparts. Both sides refused to seriously contemplate communal compromise. Socialists who take any comfort from the criticisms made by these people or the size of their vote are playing a dangerous and dishonest game. Eamonn McCann argued for a No vote on the basis that the Agreement didn’t address social questions, didn’t in effect bring socialism. Thus he was able to sound like a left-wing critic and retain whatever credibility he still has with militant republican youth who see Adams as having sold out. This is the role played by socialists in Ireland for years; providing left cover for the most irredentist elements in Republicanism. Socialists need to confront Irish nationalist mythology and say that modern Republicanism needs to rediscover its roots in Tone’s notion of uniting all the people of Ireland, before it can unite the territory.

Socialists should broadly welcome the Agreement because of the prospect of new conditions for class struggle. In conditions of communal war it is next to impossible to take basic industrial class struggle and transform it into class politics which can span the sectarian divide in any stable way. Whether a better environment can be exploited depends on the orientation of socialists as to whether they can relate to the new conditions in any transitional way.

The political structure will be dominated by bourgeois nationalist parties whose policies will be communal, inadequate and certainly market-based. The labour movement in Northern Ireland cannot defend its interests by relying on these people. The need for labour politics will become tangible though it is not inevitable. There is no short-cut to contesting our answers against the Green and Orange parties with our class. If it cannot be done in these conditions then it cannot be done until the bourgeoisie resolves the national question. Yet they cannot resolve it, they can only manage it.

What Yes means for socialists is a posture of optimism — “optimism of the will”. Welcome the retreat from militarist communalism, isolate the bigots and advocate negotiated settlements to concrete sectarian disputes. Above all, call for our class to prepare for potentially new conditions, organise and assert yourselves as a class. If Northern Ireland is about to enter a new and different period where there is some local democracy then workers on both sides should fight for their class and not their creed.

Pat Murphy

“A panic for peace?”

Underpinning much of the discussion is, I believe, the fear that we may make the same mistake as the SWP made in 1969. Does our welcoming of the peace, extended for a period by this agreement, imply the same panic-ridden short-sightedness as the SWP demonstrated in ’69 when Socialist Worker argued that the British troops should stay, so that the besieged Catholics could re-arm themselves and then tell at their convenience all the troops “to go”?

Is the argument today comparable?

The political forces that presently occupy the terrain of our class in the North of Ireland still identify themselves as Protestant and Loyalist or Catholic and Republican. Is it not naive to expect that those forces will negotiate out of existence all the tensions and insecurities that justify their existence!

At present the vast bulk of the Republican and Loyalist organisations, and the working-class communities from which they sprang, have broken with militarism. That is undeniable progress. Politicians will counsel passivity and reliance on the new bodies of the state. We will argue for a militant working class response.

We are not bound by the institutions established by the Agreement.

Every point of contact between Loyalist and Republican working-class organisations should be open, democratic and accountable to the wider working class movement. The greater security provided by the Agreement makes that more realisable not less.

Independent political working class organisation is the key. What is needed is a working class re-alignment advocating its own policies for peace between the communities and a political offensive against capitalism.

We can welcome the peace that the Agreement makes possible and warn that without a genuine political settlement, without political working-class organisation and unity, that peace will break down again. There is no contradiction here. But can we advocate independent working class organisation while in the vote on the Agreement indicating indifference to the peace in which it can be generated? That is a contradiction! It implies that our politics inhabit only the realm of wishful thinking. Popular frontism

A Yes vote will make us indistinguishable from Blair, Trimble, Adams and others who drafted and signed the agreement? Are we part of one of history’s most bizarre popular fronts with its signatories?

When the majority of bourgeois organisations inhabit the plains of bland obvious reason we are called to take the high ground of — irrationality? Anything but appear, anywhere, in agreement with our enemies!

Popular fronts are created when working class organisations surrender the independence of their actions and ambitions to the interests of other classes. But independence is not gained by putting a minus where our enemies put a plus (nor by putting a question mark). If voting for the Agreement is likely to keep the militant communalists marginalised longer than voting against — then fine, we should say that — and advocate a Yes vote.

We will use the marginalisation of the militarists for the benefit of our own politics and not those of Trimble, Adams or Blair. It is because we value the opportunities of expressing our independence of such people so highly that we should not fear being seen to welcome the Agreement.

It is argued that the overriding concern in every revolutionary response to any government decision should be to express our intransigent opposition to that government. This is not our system. We peddle no illusions that any reform, no matter how substantial, will provide an answer of any permanence to the needs and requirements of our class. From that point of view we accept no responsibility for any reforms, especially ones drafted and administered by our enemies in the class struggle.

But does that mean we stand haughtily aside when reforms are implemented that drastically affect the conditions in which our comrades attempt to build their organisations of struggle? There are better and more intelligent ways of demonstrating our independence!

The Agreement could become the defining political issue of the next generation, just as the British troops were the defining issue of the last generation, and the 1922 Treaty the issue of the previous two generations.

We accept no responsibility for anything that is created by anyone else. We, and others claiming to be socialist, should be judged by our arguments for independent class politics and our actions to seek out means for their realisation. We should measure every constitutional reform by whether it makes those tasks easier or more difficult to achieve. There is no doubt that the Agreement has made that easier. Easier to challenge those in both working class communities who can see the value of, or claim to believe in, working class unity; easier to break them from their loyalty to their communalist organisations and organise them on the basis of class.

Pete Radcliff

Promote our own solution

There were distinct problems with advocating anything at all in the referendum in Northern Ireland.

“So what do you advocate then?” I can hear someone say “Vote Yes? Vote No? Or ‘Abstain’. There is nothing else on the table!”

We have to ask ourselves what the Good Friday Agreement involves. Is it something we would advocate anyway or are we simply wishing that somehow it will be a vote to extend the peace process? We must not overlook the specifics that the Agreement proposes.

Do we really believe that these policies, promoted by bourgeois governments, will bring lasting peace? I think that most of us would say “No, of course not. That is why we have serious criticisms.” This would be to underestimate the importance of a clear slogan and the sort of role that even a small group can have in this situation. We can say, “we have criticisms”, but what people will hear is that we support the deal. In such a way we could find ourselves in the role of an opposition within a bourgeois tide — albeit for the best of reasons and “having criticisms”. Critical cheerleaders for the Yes vote; but cheerleaders all the same.

There seems to be a view that we must advocate something at all times even if this would be an abstention. This would be wrong. We do not advocate Troops Out‚ as a primary slogan because that would be to see the main cause of conflict in Northern Ireland as one between the Irish people and British Imperialism. For us the problem is a divided community, and it is our responsibility to turn all our efforts to overcoming this.

“So you are in favour of keeping troops in then” might be the clever retort. Accepting the limitations of such an argument would be to fail to see the overall picture for the sake of the pressures of the moment. We are condemning ourselves to looking at lesser-evil solutions and always accepting the agenda that is given to us (which by definition will never be our agenda). The knock-on effect from this would be to blunt our most valuable instrument — clarity of vision and an ability to formulate and promote an appropriate slogan.

If Lenin had accepted such limitations in Russia in 1917, we would never have seen the birth of a workers’ state. We can read Trotsky’s account in The History of the Russian Revolution of the attitude of the old Bolsheviks‚ when Lenin came back from exile in Switzerland in April 1917 and proceeded to promote the idea of a workers’ revolution in backward Russia. They thought he had been in exile for too long, that he was out of touch and that workers’ revolution was “not on the table”! He was in a tiny minority, but he was relating the situation of the moment to the overall programme of the Bolshevik Party despite its comparatively tiny size. Without such a perspective, Russia would have had just another failed democratic revolution, with a return to Tsarism, or worse.

We are now in a situation where we must promote our own solutions to the problems of Northern Ireland. We must separate ourselves from the bourgeois tide. If we lose the sharpness of our own perspective then we lose everything.

Ivan Wels

Marxism and the lesser evil

Workers’ Liberty has attempted to understand events in Ireland and redefine Marxists’ attitude to the conflict in the North of Ireland. While much of the left have continued to promote “Troops Out Now” and pandered to Catholic nationalism, we have attempted to explain that the fundamental conflict isn’t between the Irish people and Britain but is a conflict between two segments of the Irish people.

However, because we have said that “Troops Out” without a political settlement will mean civil war, that doesn’t mean we should defend the status quo and the current borders of the Northern Ireland state. We have to put forward our own independent working class solution to the conflict: a federal united Ireland closely linked to Britain. If this is the case then what is the logic of calling for a Yes vote?

Voting Yes for the Good Friday Agreement is meaningless. The only argument for the Yes vote is that this is a vote for peace. What sort of a Marxist analysis is that?! We were not asked to vote for peace, but for a set of specific proposals that have been the ruling class’s answer to the conflict for 30 years: i.e. the border stays the same as it has since 1921. The Northern Ireland state will be run by a power sharing executive where power will be shared on the basis of a sectarian head count. The Agreement will institutionalise sectarianism and communalism within an artificial state framework — and there will be a Council of Ireland.

The deal is much the same as the Sunningdale agreement of 1973. There’s nothing new or ground-breaking — the only difference is that for now it has more support; there is widespread war weariness. It doesn’t constitute a solution to the conflict; in fact it legitimises the border and treats Northern Ireland as a stable political entity.

Northern Ireland is not a viable political entity. It is an undemocratic nonsense and we should not pretend it is possible to resolve the conflict within that framework. The fundamental conflict in Northern Ireland is between Protestants and Catholics: any solution must address those divisions in a democratic way. All the current proposals do is to keep the lid on the conflict. They plan to do what Tito’s regime did in ex-Yugoslavia — by ensuring political representation from Serbs, Muslims, etc, the regime was able to contain the divisions within an unstable, false political entity. Until...

The power-sharing executive will play the same role that British troops have played in the past: to keep the divisions under control. It might mean the lid is kept on more peacefully for a while. We can hope so, but our job isn’t to hope or vote for peace. It is to put forward our ideas on why there is a conflict and how it can be resolved. We have to say clearly that this Agreement does not do anything to solve the underlying conflict in Northern Ireland.

Ironically by voting Yes not only are we seen to be endorsing the ruling class’s peace deal but we can also seem to be endorsing the Provisionals’ approach to Northern Irish politics. Workers’ Liberty has rightly argued that the bombing campaign by the IRA could never work. It made divisions between Catholics and Protestants worse —but we said more than that. We said that their whole strategy, with or without violence, couldn’t solve the conflict. Their fundamental mistake was to look to the British state to impose a solution.

“The Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein are fanaticists looking for a British Solution to intra-Irish division.” “There is no British solution to the division of the Irish people.” “Socialists should support neither Provisional IRA militarism nor any of their multifarious political fronts (peace, release the prisoners, etc.)”

The only solution will come from the Irish working class, one that unites “Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter”. We need to say that now louder than ever.

We have also always stressed that to call for the adoption of a federal united Ireland position is necessary for any lasting solution. When we called for the setting up of a Labour Party in Northern Ireland based on the trade unions, we rightly said that such an organisation will only hold together if it quickly adopts a democratic solution to the conflict. We argued against the Militant (now Socialist Party) when they said don’t worry about the border, just concentrate on bread and butter issues. We need to say the same about the ruling class’s proposals for peace. There will be no solution to the conflict if the issue of the border is ignored or, even worse, as in this Agreement, endorsed. The root cause of the conflict — the division between Catholics and Protestants — is not being addressed. Our job as Marxists must be to explain that the ruling class are not to be trusted, that the nationalist leaders of Sinn Fein and the Unionists cannot deliver peace and that the only way forward is working class unity around a programme of social advance and consistent democracy. We therefore should not endorse the deal.

Why endorse this deal when in similar situations we have rightly refused such deals? On Europe we are for a united Europe, even a bourgeois united Europe. That is more beneficial to the working class than a collapse back into national isolation, chauvinism and potentially war. We might even agree with some bits of the European Treaties (unlike the Good Friday Agreement), such as the Social Chapter. But in referendums on the EEC and in the future perhaps on monetary union we wold not call for a Yes vote because we see these Treaties for what they are: attempts by the ruling class to link up on their terms. We do not endorse their deals and we don’t trust them. Instead we call on the European working class to unite and fight for our own demands: a 35 hour week, levelling up of public services, benefits, etc.

We make our own independent working class assessment whether we are in a position to organise a campaign which can gain widespread support, as might be done in the French referendum, or are just talking to small numbers of activists. Socialists shouldn’t passively accept the existing alternatives. (We often have that argument with the rest of the left.) Marxism isn’t about choosing the lesser evil. The point of our programme is to intervene to create new alternatives.

We can argue against the strategy of the paramilitaries without endorsing the ruling class’s peace deal. We can be in favour of peace without calling for a vote for a deal which contains little we agree with.

Our job has got to be to show that only a united working class movement with a democratic solution to the issue of the border can finally resolve the conflict.

Elaine Jones

III. Summations

“Backing the deal
discredits us”

A response to Pat Murphy, Liam Conway, Jim Denham and Pete Radcliff

“In the movement of the present [the Communists] represent and take care of the future of that movement.” (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto)

In your call for a Yes vote in the recent Northern Ireland referendum you are disorientated; you misunderstand the meaning of “independent working class politics.” You forget the proper role of revolutionaries in fighting for such politics. If followed through, your position will cause you to have to revise many past positions.

In other words: I think we have a serious disagreement.

1. Liam claims we are “voting Yes to working class politics in Ireland.” This is Grade A fantasy. Whatever next: “Vote Labour for socialism”? “Vote Tory for workers’ rights”?

Liam: the question on the ballot was: do we back the peace agreement cobbled together by British and US imperialism, the Irish ruling class and the more mainstream communalist politicians in the North? Yes or no to this question, not the one you’ve invented.

If the referendum question had been, “Do we favour working-class politics in Ireland?” I would have no problem in voting Yes. But the Agreement is a document produced by our political enemies. It has nothing to do with “working class politics”. The working class, as a class, has no imprint on this deal.

The Agreement, if it holds, may give socialist politics a better chance of influence — that’s the best that can be said for it.

Find the confidence to oppose Blair-Trimble-Adams and Co.! Tell workers who listen to us that they need to break from the communalist framework. Presenting ourselves as the “critical”, “left wing” “working-class” supporters of this project is not the way to help the class find a way forward. It discredits us.

2. Jim Denham says: “We do not have forces in Ireland”; and “No significant forces in Ireland have been persuaded to adopt our federal solution”. Liam — saying what Jim implies — explicitly gives up on independent working class politics for the time being: “Some have argued a Yes vote cuts across our politics,” but, you see, that doesn’t matter, because “Our politics are not an option in the current scenario.” He’s saying: we’ve got to back the bourgoisies and communalists for now; they are the only force able to clear the path for the possibility of working class political struggle.

Pat Murphy says: “[It has been] next to impossible to take basic industrial class struggle and transform it into class politics.” It follows that we should demand an end to the para-military campaigns — which we have. But why does it follow that we should back this Agreement? Why conflate the two things?

It’s gun-to-the-head: choose — either the Agreement, “full of flaws”, or the “actually existing alternative [a return to paramilitary campaigning]” (Liam). But it is not the job of socialists to accept this either-or choice! We have to take an independent working-class stand on such basic matters — or our ideas will never become a mass alternative. We will never break out of political lesser-evilism, of having to choose between different wings of the ruling class, or between different communalists etc.

And our politics are always an “option”; if we don’t dare present them in propaganda, they are never an option!

3. “It is no part of Marxist politics to counterpose a socialist Ireland to a democratic solution,” quotes Jim Denham. (Incidentally, Jim ignores that part of what he quotes which says that we do not take responsibility.) The use of this quote in this way only makes sense if Jim thinks that the ruling classes are carrying out part of our programme — generating a solution to the democratic question in Ireland.

The problems with this are:

a. Even if the ruling class was uniting Ireland they would do it in their own way and for their own reasons — and we would not grant them our backing! (Marxists, for example, supported the unification of Germany but opposed Bismarck’s method of doing it. The Marxist leaders, Bebel and Wilhelm Liebneckt were jailed for their intransigent opposition to Bismarck.)

However, b., they’re not. The big players have produced a “nationalist”-tinted document which does create significant new cross-border institutions. Nevertheless it falls far short of anything we want and — centrally — does not even address the democratic question in a democratic way.

Because, c., the Agreement’s method rests on head-counting in Northern Ireland — which both misses the point (the Catholics are oppressed now and the Protestants have rights even if they are in a minority in Northern Ireland) and is potentially very explosive (if the Protestants begin to seriously mobilise).

d. Federalism is for the workers to implement, and is not intended as advice to the ruling class. In the first place it is to provide a political platform on which workers might unite.

4. Pat Murphy claims: “The detail of the agreement is less important than registering what it represents.” This is true for assessment and comment, not for our political response. This is the disembodiment of what Pat hopes, fingers crossed, might be produced by the deal, from the details of the deal and from who made it, and why. “Details” such as the continued existence of an artificial, unstable Northern Ireland are inconvenient.

5. Jim says we should vote Yes but that no-one “in WL would wish to take responsibility for the ‘Good Friday’ agreement”.

Look, voting Yes means taking responsibility!

It means — if you are serious — explaining, advocating and campaigning for a Yes vote and recommending it (critically) to workers. And it means, if it ends up in a mess (if it “blows apart”, or shores up or intensifies communalism in Northern Ireland political life), taking and deserving some of the fall-out and blame.

Liam says, “the agreement may fall flat on its face”. Jim says his “personal guess is that it will blow apart.”

And why would you want to take any responsibility at all for that? Jim says we don’t — a mealy-mouthed playing around with words. A vote Yes, however critically, implies taking responsibility.

6. If comrades think through their stance logically they’ll end up a long way from where they are now.

a. If you back this Agreement, why not back the process which came up with the Agreement? Why not the Anglo-Irish Deal (‘85)? Why not Sunningdale (‘73)? In the past we have opposed all these processes and deals.

b. If you need the ruling class to clear the ground here, why not in Israel too? Why not back the Oslo Agreement? This is what we [Socialist Organiser, 9 September 93] said at the time: “The Israel-PLO deal is, despite everything, a breakthrough for the Palestinians,” because, “this accord can be the thin end of the wedge for an independent Palestinian state, and because “the alternative is worse”. But the SO editorial also said: “Socialists can not take responsibility for a deal such as this, worked out by these people, in this way.”

7. a. Liam misunderstands Trotsky on Spain and Negrin’s budget. Trotsky’s point is not about the precise details of how the guns will be used. He is trying to signal no-confidence in the bourgeois government as a whole, fighting to pull the working class out from behind the capitalists and their socialist and Stalinist allies, and into struggle as an independent player, in consistent opposition to the government parties.

b. Liam seems to be saying: independent working class politics is for times of revolution, not for times like now in countries like Ireland, when other politics must suffice. This begs the question: how do we get to the point of socialist revolution in the first place? We prepare! We agitate. We make propaganda!

8. An argument used in discussions but not represented here is this: the workers of Northern Ireland want peace and that’s why they’re voting Yes. We must relate to them. It is “sectarian” not to vote Yes, it cuts us off from the workers.

Obviously it is pleasanter to be with the big “winning” side; it is more politically convenient — if reality and our principles allow it — to criticise from within a movement than from without.

But just travelling with the class —with its imprecise feelings and general moods — would carry us to Bhutto’s Peoples’ Party in Pakistan in the 1970s, even Peron in Argentina, and certainly Mandela and the ANC in South Africa — or, in 1930’s USA, to FD Roosevelt.

No doubt the Workers’ Organisation for Socialist Action — the comrades who stood as socialists against the ANC in the South African elections — found themselves “isolated”. They got a tiny vote. But sometimes it’s necessary to lay down a marker, to take a stand for class independence, to rally the left as best we can, to educate a cadre.

9. No one in this discussion — to my knowledge — has suggested advocating a No vote. That would be effectively to line up behind Paisley and the Protestant intransigents, and to seem to be against the element in the popular Yes vote that — no-one denies it — expresses the wish for peace.

So how do we answer the question: which way to vote? Yes? No? Abstain? Or otherwise? We should answer the question in the way which best illustrates our general political line — which is one of distrust, scepticism and opposition to the forces which dominate both Yes and No camps.

10. What are the roots of “lesser evilism”? I’m struck by a parallel — between the degeneration of the post-war Trotskyists, and an aspect of the current discussion.

After the Second World War the mainstream Trotskyists found themselves utterly isolated, in a new and strange world dominated by the two Cold War camps. So who would make the revolution? Not them, they thought. They developed illusions in Tito, Mao, Ho and Castro. They collapsed into what they considered to be the “best” of the two camps. and became the critical, left wing of Stalinism.

(Max Shachtman did similarly, becoming the critical left wing of US imperialism — “official” Trotskyism’s mirror image.)

The comrades have collapsed into being the left wing of the best of the two existing camps in Ireland!

We’re not strong in Northern Ireland, so the comrades believe we have to settle for the deal. Settle, perhaps, but only in the sense that we are not a force which is able to impose itself — matters have been “settled” beyond our control or influence. Settle for, but not endorse!

The precise job in Northern Ireland is to consistently — and that includes the times when we’re under pressure from popular opinion! — champion working class independence.

Mark Osborn

“Voting yes gives us an audience”

A response to Sean Matgamna, Martin Thomas, Ivan Wels and Elaine Jones

Comrades here have argued that we cannot say Yes to the Good Friday Agreement and fight for our federal position. In other words, our decision is a fundamental shift away from our own political position.

My reason for favouring the Yes — though initially a gut reaction rather than a reasoned, studied decision — was precisely because of our fight for many years with the rest of the British left to put class politics back into the Ireland debate. We have stood against the knee-jerk “Troops Out” and “British Imperialism is the central issue” sloganising, asserting that the real cause of the conflict is internal to Northern Ireland; that the two separate communities must recognise each others right to exist before real peace can be achieved and before a united working class can develop with a hope of fighting for more than just peace — for socialism.

We have understood that the working class in Northern Ireland is hopelessly divided and that exhortations to forget those divisions and follow the banner of socialism is meaningless. Every attempt this century to unite around bread and butter issues has been foiled by the beating of the orange drum. The military campaign of the IRA, directed specifically at Protestant workers as well as at the British establishment, has made unity between the two peoples impossible.

Our federal position is addressed not to the bourgeoisie but to a working class riven and incapacitated by communalism.

Or has been. You see, I think that this agreement represents a shift in peoples’ perception of each other on the streets in Northern Ireland. Very slight maybe, but a shift nevertheless. 71% of the people of Northern Ireland voted Yes because they are tired of communalism, and sectarian in-fighting. Their lives are shit. Their jobs are shit. Their houses are shit. And they want to do something about the things that matter. There has been a recognition that this is impossible under the circumstances as they exist now. This has been aided by the IRA cease-fire, and by Southern Ireland’s agreement to give up its hold on the North. Protestant workers are beginning to feel that they can let go of the “No Surrender” stance without the fear of being driven into the sea, or swamped by Rome. They may be mistaken in this. The Paisleyite drum-beaters may well be able to use their base of a sizeable Protestant No vote to once again whip up the communalism. But it is not necessarily so. The Protestants have watched the release of political prisoners (murderers to them) and let it happen. That is more ground than they have been prepared to give before.

When the workers in Northern Ireland voted Yes, I believe they voted for the positive things in the Agreement: the pushing of the bigots and paramilitaries to the sidelines, the strengthening of the cease-fire, the rescinding of the South’s hold on the North i.e., the prospect of peace. As socialists we are not indifferent to that desire for peace; indeed it is central to the position that has differentiated us from the knee-jerk “Trots”. It is, we have said, a pre-condition for the working class being able to unite and fight the real enemy, the bosses.

Our decision to say Vote Yes is, therefore, not a fundamental shift from our position but consistent with it. Indeed, it is possible to argue that those who called for abstention — that we should stand firm in our principals as communists and raise the banner of socialism — have shifted from our principled position: forget what’s happening on the ground, raise the banner for socialism.

Now, I don’t argue that because what distinguishes our comrades — all of them—from everybody else is our federal position. (Although I do think there is an element of sectarianism in an argument in danger of saying, “What we say makes no difference so we can say what we like. We can keep our politics pure in our splendid isolation.”)

We can say vote Yes and argue for a federal position. We can say: “We are with you in your desire for peace. We do not think that this agreement will solve your problems. Much more is needed. We are with you in a desire for a cease-fire, for the isolation of the bigots, for the South to let go of the North. But this is not enough. To achieve real peace the working class of both communities in the North must unite around class issues, while at the same time recognising each others right to exist.”

The abstentionists cannot say these things because they are not talking to anybody. They are not relating to those 71% who have a real desire for peace — the pre-requisite for working class progress. They are hamstrung. They cannot say No for fear of being lumped with the bigots. They cannot say Yes for fear of being indistinguishable from Trimble, Hume et al. They cannot actively campaign for an abstention for fear of... what? Of seeming indifferent to the real situation of workers on the ground, and of seeming to have nothing to say. Well, that is how they seem.

Our role as revolutionaries is to have our correct political analysis and programme for progress. But also to be able to relate our programme to our class. We do that by relating to their needs and desires, by recognising where they are and taking them forward from it. This does not mean sinking without trace into our class. It does not mean giving up that revolutionary separateness that is essential for a vanguard. There is nothing in saying vote Yes which prevents us from saying anything else. We have not been gagged. We have not been sidelined. We have mouths and magazines. And, more so than the abstentionists, we have a better chance of an audience.

We are not hanging on the coat tails of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie have a real desire for peace in Northern Ireland — for their own reasons. We too have real desire for peace — for our own reasons. They want to make Northern Ireland safe for capital. We want to create the conditions for a united working class which can smash capitalism. That our paths may coincide should not be a problem for us so long as we are clear what our program is —that we are their bitterest enemies. Far from us being on their coat-tails, the abstentionists are in danger of letting them off the hook. The agreement may be the petard by which the bourgeoisie are hoist.

Jean Lane