Orangeism, and the question of bombing targets, etc. is relevant in this context. But the line taken by the Officials is a dangerous strategical diversion.
THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE Thirdly, the United Irishman argument misunderstands the nature of the national struggle. The catholic minority in the North are not mobilised by abstractions like "national unity", "self-determination". or "political independence". They fight for an end to internment, to get the British troops out of their streets, and to ensure that Stormont never returns. This does not mean that they are consciously restricting themselves to basically democratic demands, but that they are responding to the concrete problems posed for them by the nature of the Six County State.
To return to the argument above: the national and socialist struggles consist of a series of concrete tasks, none of which can be achieved within a partitioned or capitalist Ireland. The mobilisations around the democratic demands off the Civil Rights movement therefore cannot be seen as a purely democratic struggle because, while individual demands could be achieved within the Six County State, as a programme, which mobilised large sections of the catholic minority, these demands could only lead to the smashing of the state. It is vital for revolutionaries to understand this, because revolutionary leadership does not consist of convincing the masses to make a revolution, but in convincing them to take the steps which will move them into revolutionary struggle; and then enabling them, on the basis of that experience, to make the leap in consciousness required to understand that they require a revolutionary transformation of society.
THE AXE TO THE ROOT!
The trajectory being followed by the Officials has grave dangers. It is now clear that te split in the Republican Movement was the tragic and politically confused result of an attempt to graft a reformist programme onto the Republican tradition. Since the split the Officials have been adjusting their policies and actions to align with that programme, and have therefore been changing the nature of their organisation. Their continued counterposing of a reformist to a revolutionary programme (which means that they counterpose democratic to national struggle, and immediate working class unity to the struggle to smash the barriers between the workers), has only one logic - the abandonment of Republicanism. The need of the Irish revolutionary movement is to move beyond traditional Republicanism to a Marxist understanding of the inseparably nature of the working class and national struggles in Ireland; but at the same time to encompass the aims and fighting tradition of Fenianism.
The Officials instead are moving back, away from Republicanism, and towards the creation of a new kind of reformist movement in Ireland. Such a development would be a tragedy, it would make more difficult the task of politicising the mainstream of Irish Republicanism, and would surrender all the advances made within Republicanism since the 56 - 62 campaign. We know that this would not happen without a deep internal struggle, but without a correct programmatic basis those who are opposed to this trend within the Officials would be defeated and demoralised.
Like a despairing gambler, doubling and redoubling his stake, the leadership of the Officials now repeats in more frenzied and exaggerated terms the wrong analyses it made in the Sixties, and the tone of the United Irishman becomes increasingly paranoic and abusive. We know that many genuine militants within their ranks are becoming more and more disturbed at these trends. It may well be that they can arrest the rate at which the Officials are travelling along their present path, but this can only temporarily hold back their political decline. The axe to the root comrades! It is the wrong analysis, wrong politics and wrong methodology of your organisation which is responsible. It is this which must be understood, and this which must be changed. from the LCDSU. The IS have issued a statement explaining their reasons which basically boil down to two. First, that *a mass politicisation on the question of autonomy is not on the cards and that the scene looks set for a peaceful NUS executive compromise with the government." Second, "The IS participate in student politics as part of the overall struggle to build a revolutionary party... which. • . сал prove in practice to the mass of students that an alliance with the working class is a real alternative." This view is proffered in opposition to the IMG who supposedly "regard the autonomy campaign as an isolated issue" and "can't even pose correctly the question of a political alliance with the proletariat or relate the struggle for socialism to students." Let us look at these reasons a little more deeply. AUTONOMY "A mass politicisation on the question of autonomy is not on the cards. There would be two sorts of reasons which could be accepted to show this. First, that there actually was no such issue of autonomy, s tudents unions did not need to be reintegrated, or were already integrated into the college bureaucracies. If that is the case then right from the start there was no justification for the LCDSU. It would be completely bogus in that case for the IS to say that it was only since the LCDSU refused the IS's programme that it became an historical impediment. So, this can't be meant.
The second argument might be couched in terms of a lack of perspective for fighting the issue. That because no leadership was being given, the radicalised elements were dispersed and demoralised, the struggles fragmented and localised. As Marxists, we know that political movements don't arise spontaneously, but need the active intervention of political forces to create them. This was what we witnessed last year with the failure of the CP leadership in the NUS to give any leadership to the fragmented local' struggles at North London Poly, LSE and elsewhere. It was on these grounds that the LCDSU criticised the CP and the NUS leadership. But if this argument held any water, the conclusion would be to strengthen the LCDSU so that it could begin to give some sort of perspective to the students in struggle on this issue. So this is not an adequate reason for withdrawing support from the LCDSU The IS itself comes up with a third reason, that "the scene looks set for a peaceful NUS executive compromise with the government". But this rather than being any justification whatever reveals truly monstrous errors.
COMPROMISE?
First it locates the content of the struggle as essentially against the Tory government and not flowing from the basic needs of the capitalist State. If the former is the case, then the CP has been right all along and the LCDSU never had any reason for existence. The whole fight of the LCDSU on this question through NUS and at North London Poly, at Canterbury, at Lancaster has been completely misguided. The IS should do a self criticism for ever participating in the LCDSU, Secondly, it bases its policies on the assumption of a peaceful compromise. But such a peaceful compromise has been on the cards right from the start. This was one of the reasons for setting up the LCDSU in the first place: to forestall such a compromise.
And at that time the situation was more unfavourable than it is now. This is why it was urgently necessary to unite all the forces who wanted to fight such a defeatist policy.
Today we are far stronger than then. We are organised, we have a well educated periphery, we have a modicum of generalised support (25 per cent of the votes at the last NUS conference) and so on.
Whether a peaceful settlement now ensues depends precisely on our actions. Whether such an outcome, between the NUS leadership and the DES, is decisive anyway again depends on how we have managed to intervene on the question during the time that this deal is being drawn up and in the continuing 'local" struggles. All in all it is quite fatal for any politician, revolutionary or otherwise to confuse history and politics in this way.
Now let us move on to the motivating principles of the IS. "The IS"" we are informed "only participate in student politics as part party... which ... can prove in practice to the mass of students that an alliance with the working class is a real alternative." This bundles together and confuses a whole variety of things. Clearly there is more than one way of linking up with the struggles of the working class. Let's look at the reformist answer to this.
The CP essentially views student struggles and workers'struggles as advancing in parallel, Workers struggle on the immediate questions facing them, students similarly take up the bread and butter issues. The NUS leadership seeks the support of the TUC leadership for student struggles and students give their formal support in turn to workers'struggles. The whole thing is topped off in the current period with the joint 'struggle against the Tories. This is one way of forging an alliance with the working class, albeit a reformist way. Reformist, inasmuch as it refuses to take the struggle against capitalist social relations, and only through that the fight against the Tories, as its starting point.
By J.R. CLYNES The IS are, of course, concerned to reject this view. How can this be done? Well clearly, the way to start is by rejecting the whole framework on which it is based: unity with the existing leadership of the class, left or right. The point from which a revolutionary must start is a struggle against capitalist social relations and to forge unity with the working class in that struggle. We can have unity inasmuch as the fight is against the same enemy. It is in this respect that the autonomy issue has some importance. STUDENTS UNIONS The radicalisation of students over the past few years has been manifested in a number of ways. Perhaps one of the most unobtrusive has been the changing role of students unions both locally and nationally.
These corporative bodies which had been set up by college authorities and financed by the State were being put to use by students for ends which were directly against their midwife and paymaster. In solidarity with anti-imperialist and workers' struggles, in opposition to the changes which were being introduced in the colleges themselves, students were turning to their student unions and changing them from the tools of integration of the bourgeoisie to organised centres of resistance and counter-attack. This process had been going on for a period of four or five years. Something had to be done sooner or later about this state of affairs. This was made more necessary by the impending massive reorganisation of the whole of higher education which is in the pipeline. So Thatcher last year introduced her proBut her reasons for this were not simply out of nastiness, but referred to the basic needs of capitalism. What she understood, was that the NUS and student union bureaucracies were not capable of performing a proper policing of students, and the students unions had therefore to be reintegrated into the college bureaucracies. This was commonly understood by the whole of the bourgeoisie - college authorities, LEA's, and the Tories. The question at issue was which side of the class struggle would the students unions and the NUS line upon. The State made its bid for them. As the LCDSU continued to emphasise, however, autonomy could not be posed in the abstract or in isolation. Consequently, the struggle for "autonomy" was precisely a struggle to line up with the working class in the fight against capitalism.
This was expressed in many ways. Solidarity with the miners in struggle was understood by the LCDSU not as simple pious sentiments but as expressed, for instance, in the actions of its supporters in occupying the university at Colchester. Similarly with students at Canterbury in the fight against redundancy of the workers there. So too with support for the Irish revolution, and so on, It was in this way that the question of an alliance with the working class was posed. Now, was this counterposed to the "building of the revblutionary party""? It all depends. "BUILDING THE PARTY"
It is absolutely clear that "building the party" is not the same as arithmetic recruitment. The strength of an organisation is determined by the social forces it can bring to bear on any struggle; what groups look to it for leadership. In the present situation, it is unquestionably the reformist bureaucracies to whom the workers turn for solutions to their problems, who are the leadership. The influence, if any, over the mass battalions. The task of a revolutionary organisation is clearly, through an adept use of tactics, linked to an overall strategy, to alter the balance of forces inside the working class against the reformist bureaucracies. This, of course, involves developing the living struggles of the class and other sections of the masses. Obviously these struggles are not developed by the simple injunction, "build the party"
Now the question is did the LCDSU seek to develop the struggle of the mass of students? Clearly, yes (Canterbury, Colchester, NUS autonomy demo, North London Poly, LSE, Portsmouth, etc. etc.). Did it do this in such a way as to develop a revolutionary base in the student field? Well, we have already answered this in relation to workers' and anti-imperialist struggles, but let us look more closely at the question in relation to directly student issues. TECHNOCRATIC REFORMS The IS maintain that one of the planks of the LCDSU, the struggle against "technocratic reforms", is not a class notion. Let us agree, first of all, that the bourgeoisie is concerned to adapt education to its own needs. Now, the LCDSU accepted the view that the changes over the past ten years -the re-organisation, rationalisation and reorientation of higher education - were promoted by the bourgeoisie in or der to more closely adapt higher education to the needs of capitalist industry. It is this process which is referred to under the heading "technocratic reform" - a very inadequate term to describe the whole complexity of the process. Even so, that those developments have been going on in higher education - and will do in a much more draconian way in the near future - is undeniable. The LCDSU accepted the view that it was necessary to struggle against any of the effects of these reforms, in which the bourgeoisie attempted to solve its problems at the expense of students. Such a struggle was understood to be a struggle against capitalist relations as they worked their way through higher education. Now, this analysis might be wrong, but it is undeniable that to "build the revolutionary party" and to "show the relevance of socialism to students" demands an intervention in the struggles which this analysis attempts to understand. It also demands, in a similar way, a concrete explanation of how student struggles must be conducted as part of a struggle for socialism. The two cannot be counterposed. What any perspective must attempt to do is to show how a struggle in which the masses are involved can be developed into a struggle against capitalism. This view, accepted by the LCDSU, did precisely that.
It was therefore in this way that a link with the working class was posed. Given the fact that a struggle in the colleges, as we understood it, is part of the struggle for socialism, that such a struggle demands the social weight of the working class to accomplish this, we understood that the struggle on student issues would be determined by the balance of forces in society as a whole. Anything that students can do, therefore, to alter this balance of forces, we said, is part of their own struggle. To hit the bourgeoisie wherever it exposes its flank, is precisely what this implies and what the LCDSU attempted to do.
WEAKENED From all points of view, then, the revolutionary forces in the colleges can only be weakened by the IS withdrawing its support from the LCDSU. The cause of "building the party" can only be severely thrown back, It is to turn all logic on its head to argue that, "to maintain out presence in the isolated and sectarian atmosphere of the Liaison Committee is to divert the activities and energies of our comrades". It is not the LCDSU which is showing a sectarian face.
We therefore call on all comrades of the IS to participate in the LCDSU Conference on Sunday, 29 October, to hammer out how best to fight, in a united way, for a revolutionary line on all issues amongst the mass of students.
LCDSU CONFERENCE Sunday, 29 October at Imperial College (London)
Contact: 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
(01-837 9987) for further details.
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S? lemocracy, and the SDLP.