Padraig Pearse once said: "A French writer has paid the English a welldeserved compliment. He says that they never commit a useless crime. When they hire a man to assassinate an Irish patriot, when they blow a Sepoy from the mouth of a cannon, when they produce a famine in one of their dependencies, they always have an ulterior motive. They do not do it for fun. Humorous as these crimes are it is not the humour of them, but their utility, that appeals to the English."?
The Derry massacre demonstrated that this characteristic has not altered. The place, time and tactics were carefully chosen.
The place was Derry-Free Derry Corner to be precise; since internment Free Derry. consisting of Bogside, Creggan and Brandywell has thumbed its nose at Stormont and Westminster alike. Behind carefully constructed barricades of scrap steel, welded into place, and abandoned vehicles concreted into trenches sunk in the roadways, the minority has organised its life. Armed sentries from the Provisional ard Official IRAs, and the Catholic Ex-servicemens Association check everyone in and out. Within the district the people are in control, houses are allocated, disputes are sorted out, and educational and cultural activities organised. They have taken passive political and armed resistance one step further, to the creation of the first stages of a Workers administration. Of course this exists at present mainly because of the layout of Derry, which makes possible the barricading and defence of these areas in a way that would be impossible in Belfast (as the British Army has discovered on the two occasions in which it has been ignominiously driven out). But it provides an example which Stormont and Westminster dare not permit to spread.
The time was a political rally, just as Bernadette Devlin was about to speak, and after thousands of people had shown their contempt for Stormont, the British Army and their repressive laws.
The tactics were the deliberate killing of unarmed civilians, and the shooting of any who went to the help of the wounded.
The purpose was to turn a successful act of political resistance into a rout, to demoralise the minority, and to turn the tide of their resistance. resistance and strategy Unfortunately for the British Government the crime at Derry did not achieve its objectives. It has deepened the resistance, and has made it more difficult to establish control over the situation. More than that, it has laid the basis for a new development in the struggle, its spread to the South. The Irish vanguard is faced with the possibility of opening a new front-the re-unification of Ireland must now become an open objective of the struggle.
This is necessary because of the limitations of a fight solely in the North; although the minority has gone a good way towards its most important objective-the smashing of Stormont-and shows no signs of flagging, the fact remains that it is only one-third A strategy which limits itself to the North will also be confronted with the problem of the hostility of the Protestants to any change, and the willingness of British imperialism to make concessiohs to them. If the struggle is fought with the forces of the minority in the North alone, the boundaries of its progress are clearly set, and these boundaries stop well short of any meaningful change in their situation. To counterpose to an all-Ireland struggle a strategy of first winning unity between catholic and protestant workers in the North, would be a grave mistake; it is only through the destruction of the institutions of sec tarianism that the protestant workers will see that further reliance on the old form of privilege and domination is useless, and some of them will be detached from their reactionary mythology. It is clear that this cannot be achieved by the minority in the North on its own.
the south The response from the South to the struggle in the North has, until recently, been minimal. The long years of partition, the political logjam, which maintained the two reactionary Irish states in existence for fifty years, and the limiting of resistance to armed struggle had meant that there was never any mass involvement. In turn this has strengthened Fianna Fail, 2 and its fake Republican rhetoric.
Fianna Fail was able to come to power on the backs of the Irish people, because they had no political alternatives. Sinn Fein, following the defeat of the Republicans in the Civil War, refused to participate in the Dail, and since there was no possibility of a new military offensive, Republican symp athisers were impotent before the reactionaries of Cumann na nGaedheal.3 When. de Valera split from Sinn Fein, and declared his intention of participating in the treatyite Dail.4 he won the support of large numbers of Republicans, in fact the IRA was the backbone of his election machine.
Fianna Fail subsequently pushed the interests of the 26 County capitalist class as far as they could within the terms of the Treaty: this created a weak and inadequate Irish industry, which was to lay the basis under Sean Lemass 5 for an expansion through foreign investment.
The lesson of the whole Fianna Fail experience is that it is impossible to create an independent economy within the 26 Counties, not merely because of the weakness of the southern bourgeoisie, but because the chief economic fact in Irish history has been the insulation of the industry of the North East from the South, which prevented its expansion throughout Ireland.
This insulation, imposed by the 1801 Act of Union, was given state form by partition in 1921.
The failure to create an independent Irish economy prevented the development of the Irish working class which has only recently become a majority of the population. It also meant that they worked in undeveloped fragmented industry and the most capable young Irish people were forced into emigration. Thus a weak Irish working class, politically dominated by the issue of partition, was unable to move towards a fight with the gombeen 'Republicans' of Fianna Fail, and struggle for socialism. This in turn means that such a fight can only develop through a struggle to over throw the Treaty settlement.
The masses in the South, the workers and small farmers have been unable to struggle effectively against any of the effects of partition, because there have never been any means whereby they could get at the roots of the problem. But now, for the first time since 1922, they can see light at the end of the tunnel; the struggle in the North can make the contin uation of partition impossible, if only the mass of the Irish people are mobilised to that end. And a series of events have revealed the possibility that this long slumber of the Southern Irish people is over.
The burning of the British Embassy in Dublin was only the most dramatic evidence of this. Even before the Derry massacre there had. been mass resistance in border areas to the cratering of roads; Gardai? and troops OODC21 of the Irish Army, were used at Ballyshannon to break up a crowd demonstrating for the release of IRA men who were appearing in court. The mass demonstration in Dublin organised by the Provisionals, which involved over 30,000 people from all 32 counties of Ireland is further evidence.
The burning of the British Embassy is about to become a legend, but it is also a symbol. The action stood out in sharp relief from the general passivity of the Irish people, because so far they have had no political channels through which to express their hatred of British imperialism.
failure of the vanguard Now that the tide has started to turn it is vital to discuss the strategy through which the fight can go forward. This is all the more important since so far none of the organisations of the Irish people have developed an adequate strategy for linking up the struggles North and South. The Trade Unions have continued their old tradition of non-involvement in the national struggle which is the hall mark of Irish reformism) while the Labour Party has deserted all of its former 'radical' pretences in order to offer itself, in partnership with the ex-fascists of Fine Gael, 8 as a more efficient agent of British imperial. ism in Ireland than Fianna Fail. But the most serious failure is that of both sections of the Republican movement. Despite the heroic role they are playing in the armed struggle in the North, the political limitations of both sections are shown most clearly by the new conjuncture.
The chief flaw in the thinking of the Provisionals is the old Republican one:
because they place the military struggle, to expel British imperialism from the North, on a pedestal, they underestimate the importance of political mobilisation either of the Northern minority, or the southern masses. They have so far refused to take any action which would confront the Southern state in the mistaken belief that this will protect their "bolt holes' in the 26 counties. The temporary dropping of charges against Provisional IRA men by the 26 county government is evidence that, in fact, the mobilisation of the mass of the people is the best guarantee of the safety of Republican soldiers.
The main political strategy which they propose is the establishemnt of Dail Uladh and Dail Chonnacht 9. We have already stated in The Red Mole that these plans have valuable possibilities, that they pose a challenge alike to Stormont and the Free State Dail, and could link up the struggles of Ireland's two oppressed minorities, the catholics in the North, and the Irish speaking population of the Gaeltacht. 10 But so far they have not developed as a real reflection of the people in these areas, they have been created from the top, and on a quite inadequate political basis (it is significant that the Provisionals have involved Desmond Fenell in Dail Chonnacht-a reactionary journalist who supports the 'two nations theory and opposes the changing of leg islation on such matters as divorce and contraception, which discriminates against the protestant minority in the South).
The axis of solidarity in the South has been revealed as Dublin, precisely because this is the area of the 26 Counties which has the greatest concentration of workers, and the longest working class tradition. The Provisionals are relatively weak there; because they have not intervened in the struggles of these workers, they are thus left with an orientation to areas which are important, but marginal to the movement now developing.
officials and eec The Official Republicans represent a step forward for Republicanism in political terms insofar as they understand that for Republicanism to be relevant to the people, the Republicans have to be involved in the struggles of the people. That is why they have participated in and led housing struggles, supported strikes, and developed numerous political campaigns. The correctness of this approach in the South, where armed struggle is not on the agenda at the moment, is borne out by the fact that the Official Sinn Fein in the South is much larger than the Provos. It was this correct thinking which led them to get involved in the Civil Rights struggle in the North from the start. But this has also led to a rigid separation of the struggles in the South and the North. Thus they appealed for their supporters in the 26 Counties not to cross the border for the Newry march, strengthening conceptions that the issue was one which concerned only the North.
An unsigned article 'Britain's Dilemma', in the February issue of the United Irishman, spells out what the Officials regard as the key issue at the moment:
*The Northern problem cannot be divorced from the struggle going on in the rest of Ireland. The programme of economic reintegration, upon which Britain and her hireling lackeys are engaged, centres on the EEC issue. This is also a matter on which there is almost unanimous agreement between all sections in the North: Unionists, Populists, Republicans and Radicals are all opposed to the imperial union of the EEC...The defeat of the government's referendum on the EEC is the single, most important issue facing the Irish people at the moment, since it is the lynchpin of Britain's strategy for the North as well as for the South.
The statement that the EEC is the main issue before the Irish people, hard on the heels of the Derry massacre, is a startling conclusion. It is however the logical outcome of a standpoint which separates not only the struggle in the North from that in the South but the national struggle from the struggle for socialism. From this point of view, the minority cannot overthrow the whole rotten Unionist system, so it must aim to so transform it as to lay the basis for a successful overthrow at some later date when the experience of a democratic system has eradicated sectarianism.
This also means that the struggle in the 26 Counties must centre on preventing Lynch from successfully piloting the free state into the EEC. Since both are separate issues, and do not contribute directly and immediately to each other, this means that alliances can be built with forces which are in opposition to the long term aspirations of the Republicans, in particular that credence can be put on Paisleyites and U'nionists who oppose the EEC from a reactionary standpoint.
While a victory for the Irish people on the EEC issue would be a big step forward it would not challenge the imperialist set up between Britain and Ireland as much as the Officials claim, and while it is true that an integration of both Irish economies with the British one, through the EEC, is the main aim of British imperialism it is precisely the struggle in the North which has thrown their timetable out of gear, and which threatens the whole enterprise. While the EEC may be the key issue for Britain, the North is the key to the destruction of their plans.
If on the other hand the anti-EEC fight is fought as an isolated issue, with the dubious allies which the Officials are wooing, and even should the referendum result in a negative vote, Fianna Fail would simply negotiate associate státus at a later date. We are after all dealing with a Fianna Fail leadership indiarubber enough to twist its way out of the arms smuggling scandal.
The militancy and self-confidence displayed by the demonstrators who burnt the Embassy give an indication of what is possible. Once the people of the 26 Counties are on the move they will clearly see the meaning of Fianna Fail's manoeuvring and will make any attempts to submit the Irish nation to the EEC impossible. the way forward The 26 County workers are amongst the most militant in Europe, with a long and honourable tradition of struggle. Already they have indicated some of the forms of resistance and solidarity which can be developed in the South: direct action aimed at British firms, the refusal to unload the lying British newspapers, which slandered the Derry dead, the general strike which forced Fianna Fail to sanctify the situation with a day of mourning. This must be extended to mass crossing of the border in defiance of the British, to demonstrate rejection of Britain's right to divide Ireland, mass Southern participation in Northern Civil Rights demonstrations, the seizing of British factories, offices, property, etc. as a ransom for the minority in the North, and resistance to all attempts of Fianna Fail to coerce the Irish people into acceptance of British oppression. We must re-emphasise, this is the first opportunity in fifty years for a united fight of the Irish people North and South against the domination of their country: the Irish vanguard must seize the time!
-Bob Purdie NOTES the murder Machine, 1912 Fianna Fail, (Soldiers of Destiny): Governing bourgeois party in the South. 3. Cumann na nGaedheal (irish Partyl: Original governing party in South following Treaty of 1922 4. Dail Eireann: Irish Parliament 5. Sean Lemass: Fianna Fail Premier who prededed the present incumbent Jack Lynch. 6. Gombeen: Irish word for moneylender. 7. Gardai: Irish police. 8. Fine Gael (United Ireland): main bourgeois opposition party in the South, political des cendants of Cumann na nGaedheal. 9. Dail Uladh and Dail Chonnacht: unofficial 'parliaments' for the provinces of Ulster lincluding the 3 counties within the Southern administration), and Connaught respectively. 10. Gae Itacht: areas in which Irish is the main manquane
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provisionals and the working class