For British revolutionaries who are interested in the struggle in Ireland, the publication of Mike Farrell's pamphlet, Struggle in the North, is an important event, since Mike Farrell's role in the development of People's Democracy and the fight in Northern Ireland during the past year has been of key importance. But, to be frank, what is important about this pamphlet is • its omissions, and the questions it poses for discussion.
The bulk of the writing is taken up with a - chronological survey of the struggles in Northern Ireland in the recent period, and an explanation of the forces which gave rise to them. Such a history from the standpoint of People's Democracy is important, but not so valuable as an analysis of some of the complex fresh problems which face PD, and since it is, of necessity, sketchy, it does not add much to our knowledge of these events. There has already been a large amount of material which has adequately covered this ground, and Comrade Farrell would have done better to turn his attention to other tasks.
For example, PD hoped that the Belfast/ Derry march of last January Ist would, through its propaganda and social as well as civil demands, which tackled problems of Protestant as well as Catholic workers, begin to crack sectarianism and win over some of the op pressed Protestants to the side of civil rights. In fact the march sparked off a train of events which exacerbated the old sectarianism, and not only did not win over even a tiny section of Protestant workers, but probably increased the rights movement. Disappointingly, this is not even mentioned in the pamphlet. This should not be taken as a carping criticism: God knows Mike put his head on the block for that aspiration; but if the experience is to be more than a courageous, blood-spattered failure, we must have Mike's views on why it failed and how a successful strategy for the future can be projected from its lesson.
There is a lack of a clear analysis of the extreme Protestant workers. It is correct to underline the fact that their attachment to Paisleyism is to a large extent conditioned by the frustrations of their life, and the lack of any consis tent attempt to win them over by anti-Unionist forces in the North, but this only explains why they do not take one alternative, not why they positively choose Paisleyism. Revolutionaries must face up to facts; so far the only section of the workers in the Six Counties to respond to left leadership are the Catholics. The reasons for the different responses to very similar problems by Catholic and Protestant workers lies in the fact that the former attach themselves to the the tradition of an incomplete, distorted, contradictory, but nevertheless anti-imperialist national-democratic revolution, while the latter have allied themselves to the imperialist counter-revolution. The Catholic workers are one trembling, indecisive step forward, while the Protestants are twenty steps behind, and heading in the wrong direction. So it is not enough to say, *...Protestant workers must have it explained to them that the reason for omic system.. the leaders who have betrayed them are suffering no economic loss... fighters for civil rights should try to involve both Protestants and Catholics in fighting redundancies, and demanding higher wages and better homes."
The problem for Protestant workers is not just to realise that their present course will not solve their economic problems, but that their whole tradition, their history, their conditioned responses to life, their beliefs, must be junked. For the Catholic workers, it is necessary that they understand the limitations of the struggle they have allied themselves to, but that, far from junking their traditions, they must retain them, adding to them, but seeing their future tasks as an extension of the anti-imperialist struggle. Thus they will slough off the clerical and Green Tory excrescences which have parasited off, and diverted that struggle.
This underlines another failure of the pamphlet, the relationship of the national struggle to the present battles in Northern Ireland. It goes without saying that the whole structure of the Six Counties and the contradictions within this artificial state stem from the struggle against British imperialism. This has meant that the main opposition to Unionism was until recently a simple demand for the unity of Ireland. Comrade Farrell explains the insufficiencies of such 'an approach quite well, but is not clear about an apparent change in his own attitude to this problem. At one time he was saying that unity except on the basis of a socialist Ireland should be opposed; in other words that there was a clear separation between the national struggle and the socialist one. Now he says:
"The struggle for socialism would mean snapping the link with Britain, overthrowing the rotten capitalist system, discarding the bor der, and rooting out British and US economic imperialism in both parts of Ireland. It would mean in fact the struggle for Connolly's socialist Republic."
The essence of Connolly's slogan of a Workers' Republic was that socialists must unconditionally support the national struggle in Ireland, while recognising that only the working class could achieve, not just economic, but national emancipation for the Irish people. Translated into the present situation, this would mean that socialists must unconditionally support the end. ing of partition, i.e. the completion of the national struggle, while recognising that the Green Tories are incapable of completing this struggle and that it is a part of the tasks of the working class. Implicit in this is the recognition that the present struggle of the Irish workers is an indi visible part of the centuries-long struggle against British imperialism, and is linked to all the finest traditions of the Irish national-democratic struggle.
The most serious omission however is in the field of programme. The short section at the end entitled "The Socialist Strategy" consists mainly of criticism of the strategy of other forces in Ireland, with some very general state ments like "The support of these men can only be won by an honest movement which makes it clear that civil rights are here to stay and tries to explain why they were denied, and then campaigns on economic issues and tries to build a united working class movement."
"The only solution is the building of a 32County socialist movement fighting the immediate battles of workers on both sides of the border, but all the time showing that the ultimate solution is the Socialist Workers' Republic.
A programme for the Irish revolution must start from a detailed analysis of the class strug gle in Ireland which discerns the ultimate tasks and tries to direct the immediate struggles towards those tasks, and tries to overcome the separation of immediate economic and democratic demands from the struggle for socialism, in other words a transitional programme. Connolly's New Evangel and Reconquest of Ireland (when their historical limitations are borne in mind) give an idea of how such a programme can be constructed.
The purpose of this critique is to indicate some of the lines along which discussion of the problems of revolutionaries in Northern Ireland
The Black Dwarf 30th January 1970 Page 6