In Socialist Challenge No. 24, Bill Richards wrote a critique of the Provisional Republican Movement. The article attracted a good deal of controversy. We are pleased to print this alternative view submitted by Provisional Sinn Fein.
THE BASIC principles of trish Republicanism today are the same are they were when formulated nearly 200 years ago by Wolfe Tone. They are democracy, national sovereignty, and the union of all the Irish people in order to achieve the first two.
A further principle which was not applicable in Tone's day, when true national independence was coincident with the bourgeois nation state, is the necessity to dispossess the capitalist class and create a socialist republic. This principle was learned the hard way from the predictable failure of the "Free State' to liberate Ireland from British imperialism after 1921, and in the words of James Connolly:
ENGLISH *If you remove the English army Tomorrow, and noose the grew Hak over Dublin castle, unless you ser about the organisation of the Socialist Republic efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individual institutions she has planted this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyts.
Bill Richards sees the nationalist ideals of the Republican Movement as "conservative ideologs". But the nationalist and socialist struggles in Ireland, as in any colonised country in the world, are interdependent. Partition in 1921 retarded the growth of any significant socialist movement as there had been in the days of Larkin and Connolly. The artificial division of state shackled economically Bricain, the working class confused by the civil war and subsequent nationalist rhetoric of the ruling parties.
ARMED STRUGGLE The six county, one party state set up on the other side of the border had its only reason being in the maintenance of the political and economic ascendancy over the orber, on sectarian telgious, not class lines The relative benefits this gave the protestant working class led allies, whereas the discrimination against the catholics led them to look to the rest of Ireland for their ailies.
These relationships cannot be transformed while the border remains. The border is sustained by a British military occupation. That is why priority is given to the armed struggle for the inmediate nationalist aims of a British withdrawal and national reunification The Provisionals direct military war of liberation' is counterposed Bill Richard's article to the building of a mass movement. The Republican Movement is criticised believing that the SILLAI struggle is on 'a higher plane than reunification of Ireland). Storbecame clear that the Northern Ireland statelet could not contain a democratic MASS PARTICIPATION Under the Provisionals" almost negemonic leadership, a number of single issue campaigns have emerged attracted participation during the subsequent years. The rent and rate strike; the campaign for political and the anti-internment SELES campaign were the most successful. But there can be no return to the illusion that the Ireland statelet can be reformed by campaigns around single issucs.
Ball Richards shows contempt for what the Northern Ireland catholic people have learned since 1969 if he thinks that in 1978 = nASS movement can be built around such limited conceptions.
Yes, we do believe we are at a more advanced stage since the days of the civil rights marches. question now is not whether to turn back the clock, but how best to solve the problems that now face the people in the ghettoes.
Repression is not an "issue" in Northern Ireland. institutionalised. lence or the sx county stalE guarantees the repression of the the guns of the B-Specials, torture by the KUC, or the British Army's for community:
Repression is being CLUE CLUE daily life.
mass Northern an anti-imperialist war.
COMMON BOND political resistanceto The lives' Action liberation is being waged"
Repression i The very exisits popular support. day to day harassrcut of the fought day-hy-day both by the resistance of the people on the streets and the organised resistance of the IRA.
Just to he born in a catholic ghetto forces you to take a stand in your Does the writer suggest it is the job of the Republican Movement to bring thousands of people out onto the streets in civil rights style marches. to be met with tear gas, rubber bullets or worse? That it is capable of doing this is apparent Irom the massive turnout against the visit of Elizabrit. But Bloody Sunday was the watershed that made the civil rights quescion into The real political task of the Republicans now is to organise in the community to unite individual struggles into a common bond of imperialism. As the Belfast RelaCommittee pro claims: "Prisoners are not a civil Bill Richards rights issue, a war of nacional Bill Richards suggests a unite tront with the Social Democrats and Labour Party. The concept o a united front is to expose the leadership and polities of a reformist party and to draw away •To apply this to the SDLP Implies that the them.
SDLP has mass support in the the CHEDULI protestants? Protest in Fieet Street after the suppression of Republican News.
working class catholic ghettoes.
must have been misled into believing this by the massive catholic vote for the SDLP at election time, which is in fact an anti-unionist vote, not a vote for the specific policies and performance of that party. The SDLP is already well exposed as traitors in the eyes of the catholic working class people who vote for let the people down over the rent and rate strike, interument and RUC patrol in catholic areas, and ir has failed in word and deed to defend the people from the armed brurality of British troops on tbeir streets. The writer's proposal has distorted the real situation to fi into his doctrinaire concepts, and this has led him to make sugges tions which would be politically disastrous if taken seriously by the Republican Movement.
We can only cover two of the several points Richards makes in his criticism of Eize Nus. First, Lie quescion of federalism. Eire Nua is intended to provide guidelines for the unification of the country, and has to face the divisions created by partition. Federalist is an attempt at a realistic plan which woald enable the protescant people of the North to make the transition in a constructive way towards finding their future Interests in the Irish The writer condemns the fourprovince federation as a back ward step, as against what he calls the radical idea of ta united Ireland completely tree of the ald religious communities, coding the casce system once and for all'. This is not a political plan but an abstract wish. How does he propose we get there? Ban religion? Deport the CULTURAL IDENTITY He has no grasp of real political struggle. He merely displays his own terror of the diffia society with a divided working class and with problems of nattonality to solve. •Pro. visionals recognise the right to a cultural identity of the existing protestant working class, while removing the basis of sectarian dominance: the 9 county Utster in a United Ireland will nor have a protestant majority, and the link with Britain, the mainstay of the ascendancy, will be severed Secondiy, Bill Richards states that the criteria for judging the class character of any movement is its political progranune. Eire Nua, he says, is marked by its inability to champion be struggles and demands of the mast oppressed lavers of Irish sociery', This is a most despicable statement. The most oppressed section of the whole Irish working class is in the catholic ghettoes of Northern Ireland. The fighters, organisers, and all the local leadership of che Republican Movement are of that class. So are the emerging socialist tbeories of the Republican Movement, whose only universities are the concencamps of Lang Kesh, Magilligan, and Armagh FRONT LINE These are the people who are in the tront line the bartle against the British state in these bilands. Their ability champion the oppressed in Northern Ircland is not being fulfilled merely by words, not by proclaiming a programme, but more important, by the impicientation of a progrause. The graveyards and gaols of Ireland and Britain courage determination of the Republican Movement to delend and to champion the most oppressed people of Ireland Our "failure" up to the present time la not a reflection of our politics, Bill Richards arrogactly claims, but hecause we up DOSE experienced and one of the most vicious imperialist powers in the world. If there has been political failure it is on the part of revolutionaries in Britain who have failed to be whole licarted in their opposition lo the British occupation in Ireland, and bave failed to give their full support to. the anti-imperialist Jorces in London Comhairie Ceantair [Branch), Provisional Sin Feir [Britaire)
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 12 January 1978 page 11