The auditorium in Trinity College on Friday 20th June was nearly empty at the advertised starting time for the lecture on “The Legacy of Power, Conflict and Resistance”. The start was delayed and more people came in but, by the time the speaker and the theme was introduced, the hall was still not full. That was surprising, because the speaker was Bernadette Mc Alliskey (nee Devlin), who had been at 18 years of age one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement in the Six Counties (“Northern Ireland”), at 21 years of age elected MP for Mid-Ulster in 1969 and still, 45 years later, holding the record for the youngest woman ever elected to the British Parliament.
Bernadette Devlin early 1969. She was elected MP on a People’s Democracy ticket in 1969 but later classified herself as an “independent socialist”.
The same year as her election, Bernadette went to the USA to gather support for the Civil Rights movement in a trip being used by others, rumouredly, to gather funds for arms. She shocked the conservative part of Irish USA, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Democratic Party political allies, by some of her statements and actions regarding blacks and chicanos and in visiting a Black Panthers project. Bernadette returned home to serve a short prison sentence after conviction for “incitement to riot” arising from her role in the defence of Derry against police (RUC and B-Specials) and Loyalist attack.
In 1972, during her five-year tenure as a Member of Parliament, enraged by his comments about the murder a few days previously of 13 unarmed protesters (a 14th died later of his wounds) by the Parachute Regiment in Derry, she stormed up to the then British Home Secretary and, in front of a full House of Commons, slapped him in the face. Bernadette had been there in Derry that terrible day – she was to have addressed the anti-internment march upon which the Paras opened fire.
The Tyrone woman was also a founder-member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party in 1974, which she left after failing to bring the armed organisation, the Irish National Liberation Army, under party control. She continued to be a Left-Republican political activist, in particular campaigning against the treatment of Republicans on arrest and subsequently as prisoners in jail, in the H-Blocks Campaign. She learned to speak Irish. In January 1981, she and her husband Michael McAlliskey were the victims of an assassination attempt by a squad of the “Ulster Freedom Fighters” (a cover name for the Ulster Defence Association, which was not banned until 1992). They both survived, though Bernadette had been shot seven times.
In 1996, while four months pregnant, Bernadette’s daughter was arrested on a German extradition warrant, charging her with being part of a Provisional IRA mortar attack on a British Army base in Osnabruck, Germany. Although taken to England, where a judge agreed to her extradition to Germany, a long and vigorous campaign fought by Roisín’s mother and her supporters eventually defeated the extradition and Roisín gave birth to a healthy daughter.
Recent portrait of Bernadette (Devlin) McAlliskey by Francis McKeeBernadette’s daughter was arrested twice on the same charge but vigorous campaigning impeded her extradition. Photo shows banner resisting the earlier attempt.
In 1998 and for some years after, Bernadette was an outspoken critic of Sinn Féin and of their direction in the “Peace Process”, which she saw as the party coming to accept British colonialism and Irish capitalism. In 2003 she was banned by the USA and deported, widely interpreted as being due to her speaking against the Good Friday Agreement, but continued her campaigning. However in 2007, another extradition warrant was issued for her daughter Roisín on the same charges as before and the young woman became emotionally ill. The whole trauma was seen by many as a warning to Bernadette to cease criticising the “new dispensation” and subsequently she was seen to fade from the ranks of public critics of the GFA, Sinn Féin and of the treatment of Republican prisoners.
Bernadette remained active through working with migrants in a not-for-profit organisation in Dungannon. In recent years she has returned, on occasion, to the issues upon which she was so outspoken previously, for example standing surety for Marian Price’s bail to attend her sister Dolores’ funeral and speaking at the ceremony herself. Bernadette also spoke at the Bloody Sunday Commemoration/ March for Justice in January this year in Derry.
With a c.v. of that sort, one would reasonably expect a packed auditorium.
Bernadette Mc Alliskey on the platform upon which she had earlier spoken in February 2014 at a rally following the annual Bloody Sunday Commemoration/ March for Justice.
Bernadette has walked the walk and thought the thought too but she can also talk the talk. With one A4 sheet in front of her, she spoke for over an hour, hardly ever glancing at her notes. Her talk was as part of Trinity College’s MPhil Alumni Conference on ‘Power, Conflict, Resistance’ organised by the Department of Sociology for its Mphil course in “Race, Ethnicity and Conflict”.
Bernadette McAlliskey began her talk with the theme of fear of conflict, developing the thesis that this fear is inculcated in us from childhood, as conflict arises out of challenging power and hierarchy. She traced this further back to religious indoctrination where dogma is to be accepted without question and finds its reflection in all aspects of life but particularly in the political.
Talking about Tom Paine, who expounded the theory that human beings, each independently, are responsible for themselves, she stated that this is fundamental to citizenship. Some aspects of this self-responsibility are delegated to institutions when we live in large groups but any decisions made for us without our consent are “an usurpation”. Tom Paine was an English Republican, author of, among other works Common Sense (1776) and The Rights of Man (1791). He had to flee England because of disseminating his ideas, which were considered revolutionary in his time.
Much of Bernadette’s talk was given over to this theme, to the lack of consideration of women even by such as Tom Paine, and also to the racism spread by colonialism, which the Christian hierarchies condoned and even encouraged.
When she finished to sustained applause and took questions, there were two from people identifying themselves as Travellers, another from a person from an NGO working with migrants, another regarding anti-Irish racism in English colonial ideology and the continuing power of the Catholic Church in the education system.
One question seemed to throw her and she admitted that she found it difficult to answer. Ronit Lentin, Jewish author, political sociologist and critic of Israeli Zionism asked Bernadette was it not true that racism in the Six Counties came mostly from within Loyalism, allied to anti-Catholic sectarianism. Bernadette struggled in replying, at one point denying it and pointing to anti-Traveller discrimination in the ‘nationalist’ areas but following this up by observing that Travellers would only camp in or near ‘nationalist areas’ (presumably because the hostility in a ‘unionist area’ would be worse).
Bernadette then went on to recall the recent anti-Muslim remarks made by a prominent Belfast evangelist preacher, James McConnell, and how the First Minister of Stormont, Peter Robinson, had defended the evangelist’s right to free speech. Asked for his own opinion of Muslims, the First Minister had replied that he also distrusted them “if they are fully devoted to Sharia law” but would trust them to go to the shop for his groceries and to bring him back the correct change. All the examples Bernadette drew on, apart from the generalised one about Travellers in ‘nationalist’ areas, were in fact from the Unionist sector.
The final question was from an SWP activist who pointed out that the State does not admit to its institutional racism and often takes no action on racist attacks or denies that the motive for the attack was racism. The activist asked Bernadette how she thought racism can be dealt with in this context. She replied that the legal structures are there and should be used and persisted with.
It seemed a strange response from one who would have described herself in the past as a revolutionary. Earlier in her talk she herself had quoted the black Caribbean lesbian, Audre Lorde, who said that the instruments of the State could not be used to dismantle it (actually I.V. Lenin had made the same point in The State and Revolution in 1917, nor was he the first to do so). A revolutionary’s answer to that question would presumably have been that while the structures should be used in order to expose them that ultimately the capitalist State’s power is the enemy of unity among the people; disunity rather than unity among the people is in the interest of the system. Mobilisation of the people against racism and directing them towards the source of their ills, the capitalist system, and building solidarity in action, is the only realistic way forward. Perhaps Bernadette felt constrained by the academic environment in which she was speaking but that is not the answer she gave.
[First published by Bristol Radical History Group on their s site earlier this year as “Some Hidden Histories of the British State Revealed in 2013”; reprinted by kind permission from same.]
In ten years we’ll leak the truthBy then it’s only so much paper[1]
According to the U.S. punk band the Dead Kennedys it takes about 10 years before our ‘democracies’ decide to “leak the truth” about activities of secret arms of the state. In the current world of social media and the information highway there seems to be a perception that no secret is safe and that “it will get out somehow”. This suggests the cosy idea that somehow the internet is leading us to a more open society with rapid access to the ‘truth’. In the US things certainly seemed to have been speeding up lately with the ‘Wiki-leaks’ by the ex-National Security Agency spook Edward Snowden becoming almost real-time in relation to the recent military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course the joke is on us, as Snowden’s exposés demonstrated that the sword of internet cuts both ways with comprehensive spying by the secret state on home populations facilitated by social media such as Facebook. However, Snowden’s revelations are the exception to the rule; I would argue the lack of concrete information on the activities concerning the ‘secret state’ on the internet leads to speculation and conspiracy theories rather than openness and ‘truth’. Interestingly, 2013 provided plenty of evidence of long-term strategies of secrecy in the British state which seem to be working on a minimum of 40-50 years and unbelievably up to 350 years before the ‘truth’ becomes “only so much paper”. I am going to concentrate on two particular ‘hidden histories’; the Mau Mau court cases relating to the Kenya ‘Emergency’ of 1950s-60s (Part 1) and British Army death squads in Northern Ireland in the 1970s (Part 2). Both of these stories hit the headlines in 2013 and demonstrate the lengths to which the British state will go to hide information in order to mythologise its history as well as the methods that are used to neutralise problematic fragments of the ‘real’ history of the British Empire.
In May 2013, the British government, after it had failed in its disgraceful attempt to avoid responsibility for the torture of five Kenyans during the ‘Mau Mau’ rebellion in the 1950s, finally agreed to negotiate ‘out-of-court’ compensation for up to 10,000 similar victims[3]. Revelations about torture, rape and murder carried out by British police and army units during the Kenya ’emergency’ have sporadically hit the headlines over the last few years, whilst debates have raged between historians as to their scale, longevity and systemic nature[4] of the main problems in answering these questions has been getting at concrete evidence. What became clear during the ‘Mau Mau’ case in 2013 were some aspects of the British state’s enduring strategy in covering up its numerous crimes against humanity in the post-war era. The two practical features of this policy seem to involve time and suppression and/or destruction of information.
The four Kenyans at the high court who have been given the go-ahead to sue the British government over alleged atrocities committed during the Mau Mau uprising.
Many journalists and commentators complained about the length of time it had taken to bring the ‘Mau Mau’ cases to court; their naiveté is astounding. For British citizens seeking justice who have had a relative killed by the Police[5], to the family of Stephen Lawrence[6], the families of the Hillsborough victims[7] or those gunned down by British paratroopers in Derry in 1972[8] or in Ballymurphy in 1971[9]; time is clearly a weapon of the British state. In many of these cases decades passed, interspersed with botched, half-arsed and faked inquiries, before anything like the ‘truth’ was even hinted at. As for ‘justice’ well you might as well be searching for Shangri-La! For the various arms of the British state this ‘war of attrition’ aimed at its victims and their relatives, often not only breaks their resolve, their families and personal relationships but crucially demoralises future victims from taking them on. In the case of the thousands of surviving victims of torture and rape in Kenya, the British state clearly followed this delaying strategy. They relied on the Kenyan authorities enforcing colonial-era legislation which outlawed Mau Mau and branded them ‘terrorists’. This law stopped victims coming forward through fear of prosecution and was not repealed until 2003, over 50 years since the start of the uprising[10]. After the rejuvenation of the status of Mau Mau veterans in Kenya, a number of civil cases were launched against the U.K. government, which responded by trying to claim any legal technicality, however ludicrous, it could find to hold up the proceedings. For example in 2010, I kid you not:
The British government claimed the issue was the responsibility of the Kenyan government on the grounds of “state succession” for former colonies, relying on an obscure legal precedent relating to Patagonian toothfish and the declaration of martial law in Jamaica in 1860[11]
Clearly the plan was to hang on for as long as possible trusting that most of the victims and crucially the perpetrators would be deceased when finally some of the truth was revealed[12]. Then it would just be a matter of (if absolutely necessary) making a ‘statement of regret’ about some ‘bad apples’ to put this particular isolated fragment of colonial history to bed for good. Not only would this save significant compensation money but more crucially avoid the possible embarrassment of having to expose systemic murder, rape and torture by the British state. As one commentator noted this could challenge the “British people’s carefully nurtured narrative of the final days of their imperial mission”[13].
The Road to Hanslope Park
So despite international criticism[14], the British government lawyers forged ahead with their time-wasting strategy. Years passed, until horror of horrors, in July 2011, a judge granted the surviving elderly Kenyan test claimants the right to sue the UK for damages. This allowed the claimants lawyers to demand access to documents pertaining to the ‘Kenyan emergency’ which a number of historians, called as expert witnesses in the case, believed were secretly held by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). Finally in April 2013, after decades of consistent denials (that is lies), the FCO suddenly “discovered” the “existence of an enormous secret archive at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire, a repository for more than 8,000 files from 37 former colonies”.[15]
Hanslope Park, where the secret archive of colonial papers was held.
As the Guardian noted, amongst the contents relating to the ‘Kenyan emergency’:
was a damning memo from the colony’s attorney general, Eric Griffith-Jones, a man who had described the mistreatment of the [Kenyan] detainees as “distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia“. Despite his misgivings, Griffith-Jones agreed to draft new legislation that sanctioned beatings, as long as the abuse was kept secret. “If we are going to sin,” he wrote, “we must sin quietly.”[16]
More than 50 years later, with the imperial endgame long over, evidence of those sins remained quietly concealed in a secret archive within one of the British government’s most secure facilities. Set deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside and surrounded by 16ft-high fences topped with razor wire, lies Hanslope Park, home of, Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre, where teams of scientists – real-life versions of Q, the fictional boffin of the James Bond films – devise technical aids for the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6. What better place to bury Griffith-Jones’s letter to Baring, along with thousands more documents from colonial-era Kenya and countless others from 36 other former colonies and protectorates? Were this secret archive to be stacked upright, it would create a tower 200 metres tall. And every document was selected for concealment on the basis of an instruction that nothing should be handed over to any post-independence government that might “embarrass HMG or other government” or cause problems for any colonial policeman, civil servant or member of the armed forces.[17] The documents suppressed for so long by the British State not only provided further evidence of systemic abuses during the ‘Kenyan emergency’ (including forced labour, organised starvation and the burning of detainees alive) but crucially demonstrated that:
The government in London knew what was going on, Anderson states. “These documents contain discussion of torture and abuse and the legal implications for the British administration in Kenya of the use of coercive force in prisons and detention camps, by so-called ‘screening’ teams, and in other interrogations carried out by all members of the security forces.” The legal limits of coercive force were debated. “They reveal that changes to legislation, and additions to the emergency powers regulations, were made retrospectively in order to cover practices that were already normal within the camps and detention centres.”[18]
Throughout the legal saga of the 2000s, FCO lawyers had consistently denied that the abuses in Kenya in the 1950s had been systemic or widespread and a central plank of their defence was that “London knew nothing”. The newly released information seriously undermined their position and once again demonstrated that they had systematically lied over a number of years. In October 2012, after the judgement which granted the right of the victims to sue the British government, the FCO ironically responded:
The judgement has potentially significant and far reaching legal implications. The normal time limit for bringing a civil action is 3 to 6 years. In this case, that period has been extended to over 50 years despite the fact that the key decision makers are dead and unable to give their account of what happened. Since this is an important legal issue, we have taken the decision to appeal[19]
This is a bit like a Mafia boss complaining that if key witnesses (who he had arranged to be killed) had been present in court he would have been found innocent! The disgraceful and widely condemned decision of the FCO to continue to fight the case against the Mau Mau victims was followed by an embarrassing climb-down, leading to ‘out-of-court’ negotiations in May 2013. The FCO response to the release of the secret information and their ‘U-turn’ was characteristically nauseating: “We believe there should be a debate about the past. It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history.”[20] You have got to be joking! From a historical perspective the opening of the secret files or as the FCO called them, the “migrated archive” (sic) seemed to be the final act in the Mau Mau case, but this was far from the end. The suspicious historians, who had struggled to uncover the suppressed history of the Kenyan emergency over many years[21], were at best sceptical and at worst paranoid[22]. The Guardian naively noted:
Hague ordered an independent review of the “migrated archive” before its transfer to Kew, overseen by Professor Tony Badger, master of Clare College, Cambridge. The first documents, representing about a sixth of the total archive, are now available at Kew, with Badger promising that very few have been redacted, usually to conceal the identities of informants.
Many historians remain suspicious of the FCO and believe it may seek to retain some of its secret files. Caroline Elkins, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian of the Mau Mau rebellion, warns that the FCO’s history of concealment and denial is such that the public should also continue to sceptical.
As the files come available, Badger admits that many of his colleagues wondered whether the FCO was “up to its old tricks again”, and adds: “Given the failure of the Foreign Office to acknowledge the existence of the migrated archives, I understand the legacy of suspicion. It is difficult to overestimate the degree of suspicion.” But he believes the depth of embarrassment suffered by the FCO over the Hanslope Park scandal offers the best reassurance that it will now finally offer up the full archive.
It may be significant, he adds, that Hague and David Lidington, the junior foreign minister responsible for the transfer process, are both historians and should be conscious of the potential for further “reputational risk” if the FCO continues to conceal documents.[23]
“Embarrassment” and “reputational risk”, you are having a laugh! The British state is covering up a recent history of mass rape, torture and murder; do you think they give a toss about these? What about getting obstruction of ‘war crimes’ trials onto the agenda; that might concentrate some minds!
End of Empire: “The great destruction”
Of far more interest than dubious assurances from Cambridge dons and government ministers was the revelation uncovered in the ‘migrated archive’ files that:
many of the British empire’s most sensitive and incriminating documentation was not hidden at Hanslope Park but simply destroyed – sometimes shredded, occasional dumped at sea, but usually incinerated – as the British withdrew from one colony after another[24]
Starting in the mid-1950s and then formalised in 1961 by the secretary of state for the colonies, Iain Macleod, the British state activated a plan to deny post-independence governments and others access to colonial documents that:
“might embarrass Her Majesty’s government”, that could “embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others e.g. police informers”, that might compromise intelligence sources, or that might “be used unethically by ministers in the successor government”[25]
In at least 23 countries and territories, from Kenya to Malaya, documentary evidence of systematic torture, murder and other crimes was removed from the colonial archives in an operation kept secret from British subjects both in the colonies and on the mainland. Interestingly, and this is something for historians to note, the plan made provision to hide the fact that the ‘sifting’ had even happened by creating sanitised ‘dummy’ files to replace those that had been selected. It was imperative that post-independence colonial administrations (or future historians) were unaware that the selected files existed or that a “cleaning” process had taken place. Finally, the colonial cleaners were told that the ’emphasis is placed upon destruction’[26] rather than transferring the selected files to London. So the files recovered from Hanslope Park are probably the least “embarrassing” tip of an iceberg of destroyed information. This was backed up by a memo from an MI5 liaison officer in 1957 which stated after an 8 month long incineration operation of files pertaining to Malaya that “the risk of compromise and embarrassment [to Britain] is slight”[27]. One of the ‘Mau Mau’ case historians, Professor Anderson, sarcastically noted:
As a nation Brits nurture memories of empire that are deceptively cosy, swathed in a warm, sepia-tinted glow of paternalistic benevolence. The British empire, so the story goes, brought progress to a primitive and savage world. Education, hospitals and improved health, steamships, railways, and the telegraph – these were the tools of empire, brought to colonised peoples by the gift of commerce and good British government.
We take pride in this imperial heritage, pointing with scorn at the lesser achievements of other European powers – the French, Italians, Germans, Belgians and Portuguese – whose empires we variously view as haplessly mismanaged, malignly exploitative and brutally coercive. Britain’s empire was better than all the others, historians such as Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and Lawrence James have assured us, so why should we worry?’[28]
It amazes me after revelations concerning the suppression and mass destruction of the colonial records that famous ‘establishment’ historians have the gall to peddle this nonsense. After all, if the ‘official’ evidence has been destroyed, this means you have to turn to other sources, not just assume it was all a bed of roses. Caroline Elkins faced this very problem when researching her book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya published in 2005, which helped begin the process of uncovering the systematic campaign of brutality during the Kenyan emergency. Elkins faced a barrage of criticism particularly over her assertion that “tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands” of Kenyans died during the ’emergency’[29]. To a certain extent, Elkins had a point regardless of the figures, that is if the evidence had been wilfully sanitised and thousands of ‘dirty documents’ destroyed by the British who could say she was wrong or in fact what was correct? In October 2013 she wrote:
“Africans make up stories.” I heard this refrain over and again while researching imperial history in Kenya. I was scarcely surprised when it came from former settlers and colonial officials living out their days in the country’s bucolic highlands. But I was concerned to find that this position took on intractable proportions among some historians.
At the time of decolonisation, colonial officials destroyed and removed tons of documents from Kenya. To overcome this, I collected hundreds of oral testimonies and integrated them with fragments of remaining archival evidence to challenge entrenched views of British imperialism.
My methods drew sharp criticism. Revising the myths of British imperial benevolence cut to the heart of national identity, challenging decades-old scholarship and professional reputations.
Some historians fetishise documents, and historians of empire are among the most hide-bound. For decades, these scholars have viewed written evidence as sacrosanct. That documents – like all forms of evidence – must be triangulated, and interrogated for veracity using other forms of evidence, including oral testimonies from colonised populations, mattered little.
Instead, many historians rarely questioned the official archive, nor the written, historical record. Instead, they reproduced a carefully tended official narrative with either celebratory accounts of empire, or equally pernicious, by turning their collective heads away from the violence that underwrote Britain’s imperial past and towards more benign lines of inquiry. Either way, their document-centred histories served as excuses for liberal imperial fictions.[30]
Elkin’s point about the discrediting victims of British torture, emasculation and rape has a horrific resonance with Holocaust deniers. How would it have sounded if subsequent to 1945 historians had said “Jews make up stories”?
October 2013: Hanslope Park and the dam busters….
It appeared by the summer of 2013 that the revelations about secret archives and the destruction of colonial documents on a massive scale was the final chapter of the story. However, the cracks that had appeared in the wall of secrecy erected by the British state were beginning to spread, and in October 2013 the dam burst. Having originally been caught out by an eagle-eyed historian who “had located a 45-year-old Whitehall memo that referred to the material” stored in the secret archive in Hanslope Park, a court directive led to the FCO effectively admitting it had hidden 1,500 Kenyan files[31]. This was the first crack in the dam. Then:
Ministers then informed parliament that there were a total of 8,800 files from 37 former colonies being stored at Hanslope Park; when these were finally handed over to the National Archives at Kew, the true figure was found to be nearer 20,000.
What the Foreign Office did not disclose at that time was that the colonial-era files were just a tiny part of the vast repository at Hanslope Park. Instead, it has since acknowledged, it asked the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, to sign an authorisation for the retention of 1.2 million files, putting them on a legal footing for the first time while a plan could be devised for their transfer to Kew. That was done without any public announcement. The exact number of files within the archive that have been withheld in breach of the Public Records Act is unclear. Initially, the Foreign Office said there were 1.2 million[32]
As the FCO admissions began to turn from isolated torrents of ‘hidden’ information into a deluge, the volume of the dam became apparent:
The scale of the hidden archive is demonstrated by an inventory that the Foreign Office has published, which appears to show that one of the listed items may itself contain 2.9 million documents
So one ‘file’ may comprise 2.9 million documents and there are 1.2 million files! No wonder one estimate put the length of the shelving at Hanslope Park at 15 miles; potentially representing tens or even hundreds of millions of documents! Even more incredible was the scope of historical periods covered by the secret archive which dated back over 350 years to 1662 and which ranged in content from the West African slave trade to Nazi war criminals in the U.K, including documents right up to the present day. The sheer volume and historical sweep of this evidence demonstrates the systematic suppression of information in the British state for hundreds of years; which comes as no surprise to some of us, but absolutely crucial for all historians of Britain and its Empire to confront. Of course getting access to all this information is another matter. Ostensibly it is meant to be handed over to The National Archive (TNA) at Kew, but despite the information spewing from the shattered dam, the FCO are still trying to hold back the flood water by a series of stalling measures:
The Foreign Office has presented its plans for the release of some of the Hanslope Park files during a meeting of the National Archives’ advisory council, which usually scrutinises government departments’ requests to retain or redact a small number of files beyond the 30-year disclosure rule. The meeting, held last November, was closed to the public.
In a statement to MPs the following month, Foreign Office minister David Lidington said a portion of the files would be transferred over a six-year period.
However, it remains unclear what proportion of the archive will be transferred during this period. Although Lidington said the Foreign Office was “committed to meeting our public records obligations in as transparent a manner as possible”, the department has released no details of its transfer plan, declined to say how long it will be before all the files are made public and given no details of expected cost.[33]
It is hilarious to hear so many historians from Oxbridge to Harvard complaining of the underhand methods used by the British state to obscure its real history. Many are threatening legal action against the UK government and FCO to gain access to the information; others are in shock:
Mandy Banton, senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, said it was “extremely likely” that the archive had been culled to remove material that would most damage the reputation of the UK and the Foreign Office. Banton, a Colonial Office records expert who worked at National Archives at Kew, south-west London, for 25 years, said she had been “very angry” when she discovered that the migrated archives had been withheld. “I would have been incandescent had I learned while still working there. In lying to me, the Foreign Office forced me to mislead my readers.[34]
Richard Drayton, Rhodes professor of imperial history at King’s College London angrily added:
For decades, historians of diplomacy and empire have spoken of the “official mind”, and have assumed it was possible through diligent work in the Public Record Office to know the “truth” of how policy was made. What do we do now that we know officials have had such an extraordinary power to sculpt the archival trace? It seems likely that no one individual even knows what this Babel of documents actually contains. These collections have the potential to force historians to revise their explanations of such major diplomatic questions as the partition of Africa, and the origins of the first and second world wars[35]
Professor Margaret MacMillan, warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford complained:
I am one of many historians who has benefitted from using the British archives and who had confidence that the documents had not been weeded to suit particular interests. Now I am wondering whether I will have to go back and rethink my work on such matters as the outbreak of the first world war or the peace conference at the end. But when are we going to get the complete records? So far the pace of transferring them is stately, to put it politely[36]
The Guardian estimated the rate of declassification by the FCO employing its spoiling tactics and came to the conclusion that it would take 340 years, ironically longer than the history of the modern British Empire![37] What is really shocking is the naiveté of these academics in swallowing the British lie, hook line and sinker. After all, how do they think the Brit ruling class seized the Empire in the first place and then defended it? By telling the truth? By openness and honesty? As for the establishment historians of Britain and its Empire; Ferguson, Schama, Starkey et al.? The silence was and remains deafening.
Part 2
November 2013: Northern Ireland
The evolution of British death squads
Unfortunately, for the establishment historians of ‘Empire’ the 2013 Annus horribilis continued apace. In November some more pieces of the jigsaw of colonial repression undertaken by the British state in the mother country, that is Northern Ireland, also began to emerge. The BBC Panorama documentary Britain’s Secret Terror Force[38] exposed the activities of the Military Reaction Force (MRF) a secret British Army unit which operated in Belfast from the summer of 1971 to early 1973. The programme was based on a series of interviews with former MRF operatives who described the organisation’s tactics and a number of operations it undertook. From this and other evidence it appears that the MRF had two main purposes, intelligence gathering and an offensive mode which was primarily to assassinate (or if necessary apprehend) suspected members of the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and its more important split the Provisionals (PIRA) as well as to generally terrorise the republican movement. The MRF’s actual offensive practice included targeted assassinations, random ‘drive-by’ attacks with automatic weapons on unarmed civilians, kidnapping and torture. In the context of the rest of this article, it is interesting to see how the BBC handled this particular fragment of hidden history of the activities of the British state. Consider the following passage which advertised the programme on the BBC website (my emphasis in bold):
In the early 1970s, the British Army ran a secret undercover unit. Its existence was deniable and its tactics were so controversial that the unit was disbanded after just 14 months. Now, for the first time in 40 years, some of the unit’s former members break their silence and talk candidly to John Ware about how they took the war to the IRA, sometimes even imitating the IRA itself. The soldiers believe they saved many lives. But Panorama’s new evidence reveals that some members of the unit operated outside the law, firing on and killing unarmed civilians. The Ministry of Defence says it has referred Panorama’s allegations to the police.[39]
A simple deconstruction would suggest:
The unit was short-lived, and by implication so were these ‘controversial’ tactics.
The MRF fought ‘dirty’ just like the IRA did and may have saved many lives.
Some operatives in the MRF went too far.
Something is being done about this by the MOD and the police.
Though what we actually have here is:
Isolation of this fragment of history from any contextual political-military strategy, tactics or policy during the war in N. Ireland.
Justification of the general tactics of the MRF in the context of the Irish conflict.
The use of some ‘bad apples‘ to obscure the practice of terror as a military policy and objective of the MRF.
Paternalism; the British state will investigate these ‘bad apples’ to see how bad they really were.
All of these tactics are standard practice in dealing with fragments of ‘controversial’ history concerning the British state. Of course, historians shouldn’t accept this nonsense. It would be like suggesting the Nazi counter-insurgency campaign in France during WW2 was an isolated ‘mistake’ but perhaps justified under the circumstances, the work of a few ‘bad apples’, or that the Nazi state would have investigated these miscreants and pressed charges after ‘stabilisation’ (sic) had occurred. Instead we have to look a bit deeper than this BBC fluff, albeit with the limited evidence we have available[40]. As briefly explained in the programme[41], the MRF was probably the inspiration of Brigadier Frank Kitson who pioneered and then theorised the post-WW2 British counter-insurgency campaigns in Kenya and Malaya[42], and was appointed commander of the 39th infantry brigade in Northern Ireland from 1970-72[43]. Kitson’s tactics for counter-insurgency in Kenya were based upon mirroring the tactics of the insurgents; that is capturing enemy operatives, ‘turning them’ and then along with specialist British army personnel setting up ‘counter-gangs’ (as Kitson calls them). Armed with the grass-roots knowledge of the insurgent double-agents these forces could then be used in a number of ways; to carry out surveillance in order to capture insurgents, as death squads to assassinate opponents or as terror units to demoralise the guerrilla’s civilian support base. Interestingly it did not take much imagination for states who employed these tactics to move towards the concept of ‘pseudo-gangs’, that is forming fake insurgent groups, equipping them with typical insurgent arms and kit and then directing them to carry out attacks which discredit the enemy or create confusion and divisions amongst dissenting civilian populations. Many of these tactics were present in the MRF, for example:
The MRF was a full on undercover unit; they were given false identities, dressed like their enemy, drove unmarked vehicles and prowled Republican areas looking for targets.
The MRF operated a series of ‘front companies’, that is business premises and vehicles which were used for surveillance purposes and for isolating potential targets for assassination.
Significant use was made of double-agents within the republican movement to provide intelligence information.
The MRF copied the style of attacks by loyalist para-militaries on republican areas, such as ‘drive-by’ shootings at community barricades. This exacerbated sectarian violence.
The MRF also began to act as pseudo-gangs employing weapons (such as the Thompson sub-machine gun) which were associated with the PIRA or OIRA in order to sow confusion amongst the victims of their attacks.
The MRF were colluding with loyalist para-militaries (often acting as pseudo-gangs) to carry out terror attacks on the republican/nationalist community[44].
All these forms of activity have the stamp of Kitson and his theories all over them, and if we want to believe it was just a bunch of senior ‘bad apples’ that were leading the British Army astray, then the BBC documentary has something interesting to say about this. Tony Le Tissier was a Major in the Royal Military Police brought in Belfast to deal with legal complaints against the army in Northern Ireland in the early 70s:
BBC Interviewer: “There were elements in the army that had imported a colonial approach to Northern Ireland”
Le Tissier: “Virtually the whole lot had imported this, it wasn’t just elements, it was a strong theme in the armed forces. That was the experience they were bringing to Northern Ireland… Well I mean you could do just about anything you wanted“[45]
The point is that these counter-insurgency strategies and tactics were entrenched in British Military theory by the early 1970s; the troops had been trained in these methods which had been employed in many places in the ’empire’ in the 50s and 60s[46] and were then applied to the colony of Northern Ireland[47]. This should come as no surprise. However, what should not be assumed is that the British Army had some kind of operational autonomy in Northern Ireland which allowed Westminster and Whitehall to duck responsibility for control of the ‘dirty war’. In fact the British Army’s own assessment of its involvement in Northern Ireland states:
At no stage in the campaign was there an explicit operational level plan as would be recognised today. This may appear surprising….It had been entirely normal to conduct campaigns, such as the Mau Mau or the Malayan Emergency, by a series of directives. The modern understanding of the operational level of war did not exist in the British Army until the mid-1980s[48]
These ‘directives’ came from Chief of the General Staff (the head of the British Army) who was directly responsible to the Secretary of State for Defence. So to a certain extent both Whitehall and Westminster were closer to day-to-day tactical control of the British Army in Northern Ireland in the 1960s-70s than they may have been if an operational plan had been agreed and the Army allowed to run it unmolested, as is more common today. The key points about all this are:
The British counter-insurgency doctrine was in place and had been tested in colonial wars.
Top level political and military authorities in London decided to apply it to Northern Ireland.
The Military Reaction Force was a small but important part of this counter-insurgency campaign.
The end of the MRF or a new strategy?
So what happened to the MRF? According to the BBC documentary the unit was wound down after an MOD report stated that there was “no provision for detailed command and control”[49] implying that it had gone ‘rogue’. What is certainly clear is that Republicans had begun to piece together the modus operandi of the MRF during 1972 and had concluded that their attacks on civilians were for two reasons:
Firstly, to draw the IRA into a sectarian conflict with loyalists and divert it from its campaign against the state; and secondly, to show the Catholic community that the IRA could not protect them, thus draining its support[50]
The problems of the MRF were that the terror attacks on republicans had left piles of civilian bodies on Belfast streets and some British soldiers had been ‘accidentally’ arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) after drive-by shootings. Despite the ‘pseudo-gang’ approach of the MRF in hiding behind supposed sectarian violence, it wasn’t just Republicans who had become aware of these British Army ‘death-squads’. As a result of persistent rumours and press articles, official denials followed, for example in May 1972 the Army Under-secretary stated: “In no circumstances are soldiers employed to assassinate people or in any way which would involve deliberately going outside the law”.[51]It was no surprise that the Provisional IRA struck back against these British Army ‘terror squads’. In September 1972 the PIRA exposed two MRF double-agents, who were interrogated giving up valuable information about the MRF and were then summarily executed. In October the Belfast Brigade of the PIRA launched coordinated attacks against several of the MRF’s ‘front companies’ and claimed to have killed six members of the undercover unit[52]. This effectively shattered the MRF’s cover and is a far more plausible reason for the shut-down of the unit’s operations than a sudden change of heart in Whitehall. In fact, rather than a change of heart in the British state, it appears a modification of tactics was underway. The MRF seemed to ‘disappear’ in early 1973, but according to several sources was in fact reorganised as the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU), expanded to over three times the number of active personnel and deployed more widely in Northern Ireland[53]:
In late 1972, according to a Northern Ireland Office brief, its (MRF) operations were brought under a more centralised control and a higher standard of training was introduced by establishing a Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) of 130 all ranks under the direct command of HQNI. It was classic British modus operandi in the wake of bad publicity – to re-form and re-name….The Defence Secretary, Lord Carrington, sent a…minute to the Prime Minister on 28th November in which he sought agreement for the use of volunteers with SAS training as the basis for reorganising “the old Military Reaction Forces” into what became the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU). He agreed that….every attempt would be made to conceal SAS involvement[54]
The SRU is also noted in an April 1974 briefing for Prime Minister Harold Wilson which states:
The term “Special Reconnaissance Unit” and the details of its organisation and mode of operations have been kept secret. The SRU operates in Northern Ireland at present under the cover name “Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Teams (Northern Ireland)”
So we have two Prime Ministers Heath and Wilson (Tory and Labour), briefed about the existence of the new, MRF inspired, secret Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU). This evidence clearly scotches any idea that Westminster was uninformed. The expanded SRU marked a move away from two phases of British Army engagement with the Republican movement and its armed wings. The first was the straight-forward deployment of Army units, in a colonial style, to put down protests and urban disorder. This had led to massacres of civilians in Belfast and Derry in 1971-2, which were international propaganda disasters for the British state and massively increased IRA recruitment. Their response to the intensification of armed Republican violence as a result of these and other incidents was to ‘take the war to the enemy’ using units such as the MRF. Within a year this tactic had been rumbled by the Republicans, so a new approach was needed. The subsequent phase had two main characteristics:
Comprehensive intelligence gathering as crucial to the counter-insurgency war.[56]
The use of proxy-groups (loyalist para-militaries) to carry out the targeted assassination and terror attacks against republican organisations and communities.
So rather than the British Army gathering intelligence and sending out its own assassination squads such as the MRF, the emphasis would be on coordinating all intelligence gathering by Special Army units, the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment. This information would then be used to help inform and plan attacks on the Republican movement by loyalist paramilitaries[57]. The beauty of the approach was that British soldiers would not now be directly implicated in killings whether in uniform or under-cover. This would help neutralise Republican propaganda and could draw the IRA into retaliatory sectarian warfare, thereby diverting them from their primary objective of direct attacks on the British state in an attempt to force negotiations for their withdrawal. Collusion between British state and proxy-forces would take a number of forms; by the mid-1970s a number of collaborations were underway including:
The official Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) which sat right between the British Army command and the paramilitary groups. This was effectively a ‘dual card’ organisation.
Unofficial ‘terror’ networks such as the ‘Glenanne gang’ which was comprised of British soldiers from the UDR, police officers from the RUC, and members of the illegal para-military Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).[58]
Collaboration between special units in the British Army such as the SRU and the numerous loyalist paramilitary organisations.
Republican mural drawing attention to the complex web of organisations involved in the counter-insurgency campaign in Northern Ireland
The difficulty in disentangling the nature of this collusion is that it came in several forms. The active version involved the British state arming and supplying loyalist para-militaries with information on potential targets and then facilitating their operations on the ground. In some cases however the loyalist para-militaries were unaware of the ‘long-hand of Whitehall’, as operations were instigated by British double-agents in their organisations. They may have believed they were carrying out missions for the ‘loyalist’ cause, but in fact were being controlled indirectly from London. A large amount of collusion was passive, in the sense that the British state did not organise it, but instead allowed it to occur as it suited their aims. This appears to be the case within the RUC and UDR and their relationships with loyalist para-military organisations. There is also significant evidence that ‘unofficial’ secret networks such as the murderous ‘Glenanne gang’ which obscured their origins, were actually orchestrated by British Military Intelligence and RUC Special Branch.[59] The evolution of special British Army units such as the MRF from self-contained intelligence gathering and assassination/terror squads to organisations gathering information and colluding with loyalist para-militaries who would undertake the operations was paralleled by changes in policing and army structure. The emphasis in intelligence gathering was marked by a fundamental alteration of policing philosophy in the RUC in the early 1980s:
Within the RUC this change gave supremacy to Special Branch (SB), which could now decide who should or should not see particular intelligence, who should or should not be arrested and whether or not criminal investigations should or should not be carried out. Informers, whatever they did, from murder to exhortation, became the backbone of the new policing strategy and were to be protected at any cost.[60]
Similarly, the British army aimed at rationalising its intelligence gathering networks and operations:
It is now apparent that the reform of the police was part of a wider, more deadly security strategy that had been devised at the very highest echelons of government and included fundamental changes in the Army and the way it collected, collated and disseminated intelligence. Until 1977, each battalion ran its own agents who were then passed on after the four month tour of duty. This practice was stopped and brigades became responsible. A short time later in 1980 all intelligence gathering was centralised in what was euphemistically called the Force Research Unit (FRU), based in the Northern Ireland Headquarters in Lisburn (HQNI). It was tasked with the responsibility of looking after all recruits from all the various units of the armed forces. It trained them to go under cover in Northern Ireland. [61]
Republican mural explaining collusion between Force Research Unit operatives and the Ulster Defence Regiment
The FRU’s covert role was not only to coordinate the gathering, analysis and dissemination of intelligence information but also to run ‘double-agents’ in both the loyalist and republican para-military groups. How ‘double’ the loyalist agents were, is up for debate; there is plenty of evidence that the relationship between the FRU and loyalist paramilitaries was cosy and productive in terms of dead republicans. The FRU provided reams of intelligence information about republican targets, helped organise arms shipments to loyalist gunmen, facilitated para-military operations and protected operatives from arrest and prosecution[62]. The British Army’s assessment of its 37 year campaign in Northern Ireland Operation Banner states: “By 1980 almost all the military structures which eventually defeated PIRA were in place”[63]. Clearly the evolution of British repression from trigger-happy Paratroopers via Army under-cover terror units to paramilitary proxy death-squads was a key part of this supposed ‘victory’. It is interesting to note that the PIRA in Northern Ireland was slowly strangled during the 1980s to the point where loyalist paramilitaries were in the ascendancy:
Reorganised, armed, trained and directed by the British state, Loyalists groups intensified their campaign. During the 1980s, Loyalist groups had been responsible for about 25 percent of conflict related deaths, but from the early 1990s onwards they were responsible for well over 50 percent outgunning republicans. In the six year period from January 1988 to their ceasefire on 13 October 1994, they were responsible for 229 deaths, 207 of which were sectarian assassinations. Between 1989 and 1993, loyalists killed 26 members of the IRA, Sinn Fein and relatives of republicans… “These lethal attacks on both wings of the republican movement by the SAS and loyalist paramilitaries, as well as conventional attrition by the police and the army through the courts were no doubt an important contributory factor in the IRA’s decision to call a ceasefire in 1994”[64]
The evolution and use of the death squad during the struggle in Northern Ireland demonstrates both the ruthlessness and innovation of the British ruling class in its attempts to defeat the republican movement and hang onto Northern Ireland, bucking the trend of decades of colonial withdrawal. Now the so-called ‘victory’ has been achieved there are new problems for our rulers and their historians to contend with. As part of the ‘peace agreement’ in 2005 the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), a unit of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, was set up to investigate the 3,269 unsolved murders committed during the Troubles (specifically between 1968 and 1998). This has presented a number of problems for the British state as it has to maintain its historic image as the benign democratic state attacked by ruthless republican terrorists. Interestingly as a result of the HET investigations and demands of relatives of victims, the Provisional IRA has been making frank statements concerning many of those killed or executed by the organisation during the war.[65] No one expects ‘justice’ from the British state, but some ‘truth’ about systematic collusion with loyalist paramilitaries or the activities of British Army ‘death squads’ would at least allow us to write the history. I suspect this will not be forthcoming.
Epilogue: How to protect myths of the benign British state when the cat is out of the bag?
When faced with evidence of state sponsored murder, rape and torture and other crimes, there is an interesting parallel in the actions of ‘patriotic’ historians and their allies in the British ruling class. Both groups have an interest in protecting the benign ‘history’ of Britain and its Empire, although the latter may have more immediate concerns in dealing with the claims of victims and/or protecting the perpetrators. What is crucial to both is to avoid exposing patterns, policies or strategies systematically and consciously undertaken by the British state across time and geography. When caught out by ‘unethical’ (sic) use of information, there are a number of ways our rulers and their lackeys have learned to deal with the problem:
Temporal and spatial isolation: It is unusual for a great deal of damning information concerning the repressive activities of the British state to be released into the public domain. More typically, some investigative journalists write an article or make a documentary uncovering a particular incident or some fragment of hidden history. The approach of the journalists is in itself useful as it ‘ring-fences’ the issue by default. The rules are ‘keep it local’, do not disclose and hope it goes away.[66]
Discrediting the ‘whistle-blowers’: Persistent critics or witnesses need to be demeaned as unreliable sources, as ‘having an axe to grind’, a drug or alcohol problem or simply mentally ill.[67] Often personal information unrelated to the issue is leaked to the press by the state in order to undermine the ‘whistle-blower’ or victim.[68] Or a good old dollop of racism can do the job…after all “Africans make up stories”… don’t they?
The ‘inquiry’: Classically used by politicians and others to make some time for a ‘cover-up’ or for damage limitation. Inquiries create the idea that ‘something is being done’, despite the fact that the state usually withholds evidence and consequently it can take literally years to come to dubious conclusions. The aim is to draw a line under an incident, hopefully putting it to bed for good. State inquiries are also perfect for stifling debate about an issue, as politicians and other implicated figures can hide behind ‘I cannot comment as there is an inquiry underway’. It is also rare for inquiries to get translated into meaningful legal action. Perfect for delaying tactics, that can sometimes last decades.[69]
The ‘bad apple’ strategy: That is blaming and in some rare cases sacrificing a few low-level miscreants, in order to limit the issue to a local problem, rather than being systemic. For establishment historians it is symbolic, where the delinquent colonial administrator or military officer becomes responsible for the ‘crimes’ rather than a centrally driven policy or strategy of the British state. For the state it is a practical issue of deflecting blame away from the organisation and towards deviant individuals. If a sacrifice is required to bury the issue, then usually the ‘lamb’ is portrayed as having mental health problems or some other dysfunctionality.
The ‘justification’: Usually appears when the state officials (or historians) are on the ropes after their persistent denials have been exposed as lies. It is an appeal to the public to understand the context of some war crime or other in order to justify it. So the ‘troubles’ in Ireland suddenly become a ‘dirty war’ which justified assassination and torture; the torture camps in Kenya become necessary in order to fight the ‘psychopathic’ Mau Mau; and of course suspension of habeas corpus, extraordinary rendition (international kidnapping) and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (torture) during the so-called ‘war on terror’ were essential to fight ‘Al Qaeda’.
The ‘statement of regret’: This is an end-game move for the state which is part of the process of ‘drawing a line’ under some infamous history. However, a ‘statement of regret’ is a (reluctant) benevolent gesture not a legal apology, that is, it is not an admission of responsibility. This protects the state from both compensation claims and crucially from exposure of comprehensive evidence of systematic crimes in the courts.[70]
End
Notes
[1]I Am The Owl from the Dead Kennedys’ album Plastic Surgery Disasters (1982) ↩
[2] “In June 1957, Eric Griffith-Jones, the Attorney General of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony’s detention camps was being subtly altered. From now on, Griffith-Jones wrote, for the abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, “vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys”, and it was important that ‘those who administer violence … should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate’. Almost as an after-thought, the attorney general reminded the governor of the need for complete secrecy. “If we are going to sin,” he wrote, “we must sin quietly.” – The Guardian 18/04/2012 – Sins of colonialists lay concealed for decades in secret archive↩
[3] Interestingly, “One of those abused was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British government were castrated”. It should be noted that the 10,000 claimants were selected on the basis that “they suffered personal injury and grievous bodily harm, such as castration or rape”. Compensation was not extended to the hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu who had their property and land seized from them by the colonial authorities, reducing them to poverty which remains to this very day. The Guardian 05/05/2013 – Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement↩
[5] See for example the film Injustice (2001/98 minutes/UK/Dir: Ken Fero & Tariq Mehmood/Migrant Media) http://vimeo.com/34633260, which the UK Police attempted to suppress in 2001 and has yet to be shown on national TV stations. Central to this film is the extraordinary length of time (sometimes decades) it takes in order to get an inquest verdict if police officers are suspected of ‘unlawful killing’. Achieving a conviction against police officers is of course almost impossible. ↩
[7] The Hillsborough disaster occurred on 15 April 1989. The crush resulted in the deaths of 96 people and injuries to 766 others. Despite more than 40,000 witnesses, the South Yorkshire Police force and an MP with the collusion of the national press conspired to cover up their crimes. The incident has since been blamed primarily on the police and remains the worst stadium-related disaster in British history and one of the world’s worst football disasters. Not a single police officer has been charged as yet. Wikipedia – Hillsborough Disaster↩
[8] Thirteen unarmed civilians taking part in a Civil Rights March in the Bogside area of Derry were shot dead by British Army paratroopers on 30 January 1971 (and a 14th died as a result later). It took nearly 40 years for the British state to issue a formal apology.Wikipedi – Bloody Sunday↩
[9] Eleven civilians were shot dead by British Army paratroopers between 9 and 11 August 1971, otherwise known as the ‘Ballymurphy Massacre’ or ‘Belfast Bloody Sunday’. “The families of the victims…seek acknowledgment from the British government that those killed were innocent of any wrongdoing”. As yet, more than 40 years later, this has not been forthcoming. Wikipedia – Ballymurphy_Massacre↩
[12] In 2011 George Morara, a program officer with the Kenya Human Rights Commission stated “For the British government to continue to press its case for dismissal makes the issue ‘a war of attrition; these veterans are old.’ He estimated there are as many as 75,000 former Mau Mau fighters, scouts, and sympathizers still alive in Kenya. Most are 70 and older. Among the official claimants, the youngest is 75 and the oldest 84.” Harvard University News – Professor Elkins helps make the case that aged Kenyan veterans deserve justice. One of the five test case claimants, Susan Ciong’ombe Ngondi, died in 2010. ↩
[21] For example, Professor David Anderson author of Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. Weidenfeld & Nicholson (2005), Caroline Elkins author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. Henry Holt (2005) and Dr Huw Bennett author of Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya. CUP (2012). All three acted as expert historians for the Mau Mau compensation cases. ↩
[31] “It was only the persistence of a handful of FCO officials, notably Edward Inglett, and a witness statement by Oxford professor David Anderson in December 2010 alleging ‘systematic withholding by HMG of 1500 files in 300 boxes taking up 100 linear feet’, that eventually resulted in the migrated archives coming to light in January 2011” – Wikipedia – Foreign and Commonwealth Office migrated archives↩
[42] he two key texts (manuals?) which Kitson produced were Gangs and Counter-gangs (1960) and the seminal Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (1971) ↩
[43] The 39th infantry brigade had previously seen service in counter-insurgency campaigns in both Kenya and Aden. It was deployed in Northern Ireland in August 1969 with responsibility for the security of Belfast and the eastern side of the province. Wikipedia – 39th Infantry Brigade↩
[44] For example, McGurk’s Bar bombing in Dec 1971, the most deadly attack in Belfast during the conflict, was attributed to the MRF who allegedly both organised the attack and with other security forces, helped the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) bombers enter and escape the area. Fifteen civilians were killed and seventeen injured in the attack. The original target was a bar frequented by the OIRA, but the UVF attackers were scared off and impulsively chose a softer target. The MRF planned to blame the attack on the Provisionals (PIRA) in order to divide the republican movement. Wikipedia – Military reaction Force↩
[47] It is interesting how Le Tissier remarks in the film that such tactics were not appropriate to Northern Ireland; suggesting that either it is not a ‘colony’ or at least the full-on dirty war tactics are only applicable to colonial subjects rather than British citizens. Panorama: Britain’s Secret Terror Force. See 21:10 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhI_vs1gAX0↩
[55]Wikipedia – 14 Intelligence CompanyInterestingly, in the conclusion to the British Army assessment of their campaign in Northern Ireland, ‘Operation Banner: An analysis of military operations in Northern Ireland’ MOD (2006) Para. 856, a major tribute is paid to NITAT as ‘having high quality instructors and frequent visits to theatre so that troops deployed with confidence after training in appropriate tactics’. Is this a nod to the death squad? Operation Banner – An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland.↩
[57] “The De Silva report found that, during the 1980s, 85% of the intelligence loyalists used to target people came from the security forces” Wikipedia – The Troubles↩
[58] “It has been claimed that permutations of the group killed 120 people – all but one of whom were “upwardly mobile” Catholic civilians with no links to Irish republican paramilitaries. The Cassel Report investigated 76 murders attributed to the group and found evidence that British soldiers and RUC officers were involved in 74 of those.” Wikipedia – Glenanne Gang↩
[66] For example, spatial isolation; in the Mau Mau case the FCO claimed for many years that the issue was ‘local’ to Kenya and that the authorities in the Britain had no idea what was going on there. This defence was patently ridiculous and has now been proved to be so. Also, temporal isolation; the Military Reaction Force in Northern Ireland is portrayed as having a short, ‘rogue’ life before it is supposedly shut down as an embarrassing liability. This fragmented approach obscures the long-term strategy and tactics of the British state in dealing with the Republican movement. As we have seen the British state actually expanded its operations based on the MRF tactics with a similar (though more developed) approach to eliminating its military enemies and terrorising their supporting communities. ↩
[67] Two recent examples include: Craig Murray, the ex-British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who exposed systematic torture and rape of so-called suspects in the ‘war on terror’ by the regime to obtain what he called “dross” information for the CIA and MI6. Murray was accused of 18 offences by the FCO including being drunk and selling visas for sex; these were leaked to the press to discredit him. All the charges were eventually dropped, though Murray was removed from his post by the FCO for “operational reasons”. He finally resigned from the FCO after being charged for “gross misconduct” for speaking to the press about the torture allegations. Wikipedia – Craig Murray. The exposure of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret police unit used to infiltrate activist groups, by The Guardian and Channel 4 Dispatches programme in 2013 also uncovered the fact that its operatives had been used to spy on the family of Stephen Lawrence in order to gain information which could be used to discredit the campaign as well as family and friends of the victim. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIK5IAQkeII. In June 2013 right-wing journalist, nationalist and establishment historian, Max Hastings opposed paying the paltry compensation to the Mau Mau victims on the basis that 1950s “were a long time ago” and that the oral history evidence given by the victims “couldn’t be trusted”. ↩
[68] In 2006, a completely bungled police operation involving 250 officers and costing more than £2 million in Forest Gate, East London led to raids on two innocent families and the shooting by police of 23 year-old Mohammed Abdul Kaha. Police subsequently ‘discovered’ indecent images of children on Kaha’s computer and mobile phone, which he strenuously denied having put there. No case was ever brought against Kaha as the CPS was not satisfied that he had the knowledge to transfer the images. However, the wounded Kaha had been successfully discredited and the origin of the images was never established. Wikipedia – 2 June 2006 Forest Gate Raid↩
[69] For example, the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 led to three inquiries (Taylor, Stuart-Smith and Hillsborough Independent Panel) spanning nearly 25 years. The first two attempted to definitively draw a line under the dubious official ‘history’ of the event, however thanks to the endurance of the campaigners, a cover-up which connected the police, politicians and the media was finally uncovered in 2010. The ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre carried out by the British Army in Derry in 1972, had two inquiries (Widgery and Saville), the first a complete ‘whitewash’ and the latter launched in 1998 took twelve years to come to a conclusion! ↩
[70] The Foreign Secretary William Hague gave such a statement in June 2013 concerning the Kenyan ’emergency’ of 1952-63 but it had a significant caveat: “We continue to deny liability on behalf of the Government and British taxpayers today for the actions of the colonial administration in respect of the claims, and indeed the courts have made no finding of liability against the Government in this case. We do not believe that claims relating to events that occurred overseas outside direct British jurisdiction more than 50 years ago can be resolved satisfactorily through the courts without the testimony of key witnesses, which is no longer available….we will also continue to exercise our own right to defend claims brought against the Government, and we do not believe that this settlement establishes a precedent in relation to any other former British colonial administration.…” The BBC – Mau Mau torture victims to receive compensation – Hague↩
Campaigners fighting for the release of individuals or of small groups of prisoners do not usually make the case that the release of those specific prisoners will affect the macro issues which led to their activism and encarceration. This has occurred on a number of occasions, however, those of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, the Kurdish PKK leader Ocalan and Basque movement leader Arnaldo Otegi being cases in point.
However, when the numbers of prisoners is large, their release is often connected by the campaigners to the objective of resolution of the conflict.
The line often taken is that “the prisoners are (or should be) a part of the resolution of the conflict” or that “release of prisoners is necessary to create goodwill” or “to win support for the resolution process”. These lines emerged here in Ireland, in Palestine, South Africa and in the Basque Country; they form part of a popular misconception, all the more dangerous because of its widespread acceptance and seductiveness.
At first glance this kind of line seems reasonable. Of course the political activists and the prisoners’ relatives, not to mention the prisoners themselves, want to see the prisoners home and out of the clutches of the enemy. The prisoners should never have been put in jail in the first place. And all the time they have been in the jail has been hard on them and especially on their relatives and friends. An end to the conflict is desirable and so is the release of the prisoners.
But let us examine the proposition more carefully. What is it that the conflict was about? In the case of the recent 30 years’ war with Britain, it was about Britain’s occupation of a part of Ireland, the partition of the country and the whole range of repressive measures the colonial power took to continue that occupation. In the case of the Basque pro-Independence movement, it was also about the partition of their country, occupation and repressive measures (particularly by the Spanish state). But what was the fundamental cause? In each case, occupation by a foreign state.
OK, so if Britain and the Spanish state ended their occupations, that would end the conflicts, would it not? It would end the anti-colonial conflicts – there would be no British or Spanish state forces for Irish or Basque national liberation forces to be fighting; no British or Spanish colonial administration to be issuing instructions and implementing repressive measures. Other struggles may arise but that is a different issue.
So, if Britain and the Spanish state pull out, leave, those struggles are over. What do prisoners have to do with it? They are obviously in that case not part of the solution, which is British or Spanish state withdrawal – though their release should be one of the many results of that withdrawal. Prisoners may well be part of rebuilding a post-conflict nation but that is a different issue. They are not part of “the solution”.
PART OF THE PACIFICATION
As pointed out earlier, here in Ireland it was said that “the prisoners are part of the solution” – and most of the Republican movement, some revolutionary socialists and some social democrats agreed with that. And British imperialism and most of Irish capitalism agreed too. But what happened? Only those Republican prisoners who agreed with the abandoning of armed struggle and signed to that effect were released. And they were released ‘under licence’, i.e. an undertaking to “behave” in future. And as the years went by, a number of those ex-prisoners who continued to be active —mostly politically — against the occupation, or against aspects of it like colonial policing, had their licences withdrawn and were locked up. Some who had avoided being prisoners because they were “on the run”, or had escaped – many of those, as part of the Good Friday Agreement, had been given guarantees of safety from future arrest but this too, it soon became apparent, could be revoked.
In other words, the prisoners’ issue became part of imperialism’s ‘peace’ or, to put it more bluntly but accurately, part of imperialism’s pacification. The issue also became part of the selling of the deal within the movement, on one occasion prisoners being released early, just in time to make a grand entrance at a Republican party’s annual congress.
The release of prisoners can be presented by those in the movement supporting pacification as evidence of the “gains” of the process. Those who argue for the continuation of the struggle then find themselves arguing not only against those who pushed the pacification process within the movement but also against some released prisoners and their relatives and friends.
THEY ARE NOT LEAVING
And prisoners continued to be hostages for the “good behaviour” of the movement. If British imperialism had left, there would have been no cause for the anti-colonial struggle to continue – so why would there be any need for any kind of release ‘under licence’ or any other kind of conditional release? Besides, the British would not be running the prisons in the Six Counties any longer. But the British are not leaving, which is why they need the guarantees of good behaviour.
Suppose the British were serious about leaving, sat down with the resistance movement’s negotiators and most details had been sorted out, including their leaving date in a few weeks’ time say, what would be the point for the British in trying to hang on to the prisoners? Can anyone seriously believe that they would take them with them as they left? If perhaps they had some in jails in Britain and were trying to be bloody-minded and hanging on to them there, well of course we’d want our negotiators to put as much pressure on the British as they could to release those as well. It would be in the interests of British imperialism to release them but the reality is that the anti-colonial war would be over, whatever ultimately happened to those prisoners.
In South Africa and Palestine, the prisoners’ issue became part of the imperialist pacification process too. It did not suit the imperialists to have numbers of fighters released who would be free to take up arms against them again. So in South Africa, they were incorporated into the “security forces” of the corrupt new ANC state, forces the corruption and brutality of which were soon experienced by any who argued with them or opposed the policies or corruption of the ANC, NUM and COSATU leadership – including the two-score striking miners the “security forces” murdered over a couple of days at Marikana in 2012.
In Palestine, the prisoners also became part of the “security forces” of Al Fatah after the shameful agreements at Madrid (1991) and Oslo (1993). The level of corruption of the Al Fatah regime and their “security forces” became so high that in order to oust them, in 2006 the largely secular Palestinian society voted for a religious party, the opposition Hamas. And then the “Palestinian security forces” took up arms against Hamas in order to deny them the fruits of their electoral victory. Unfortunately for them, Hamas had arms too and used them.
In both those countries, the occupiers had no intention of leaving and so it was necessary for them, as well as using the prisoners as bargaining chips, to tie them in to a “solution”. In fact, many of the prisoners became “enforcers” of the “solution” on to the people in their areas, i.e pacifiers in imperialism’s pacification process.
Teased out and examined in this way, we can see not only that the prisoners are NOT “part of the solution” but that accepting that they are plays right into the hands of the imperialists as well as facilitating their agents and followers within our movement, within our country.
Political prisoners, as a rule, are an important part of the struggle and need our solidarity. But for anti-imperialists, prisoners are not “part of the solution”, to be used as hostages for a deal with imperialism, even less as enforcers of a deal, forcing it upon the colonised people.
Our call, as anti-imperialists, without conditions or deals, is for the prisoners to be released and, while they remain in prison, to be treated humanely. We also call for them to be recognised as political prisoners. With regard to the solution to the conflict, there is only one: Get out of our country!
POSTSCRIPT:
The organisation representing relatives and friends of Basque political prisoners is Etxerat http://www.etxerat.info/. A separate organisation concentrating on campaigning, Herrira, has suffered a number of arrests and closure of offices by the Spanish state in 2013 and is under threat of outright banning.
Regrettably, I cannot give a similar link for Irish Republican prisoners, because of the existence of a number of organisations catering for different groups of prisoners and often with tensions between them. One day perhaps a united non-aligned campaign will emerge, along the lines of the H-Block campaign of the past, or the Irish Political Status Campaign that arose in London after the Good Friday Agreement. There is also a non-aligned Irish Anti-Internment Committee (of which I am a part), campaiging for an end to long periods of incarceration imposed on political “dissidents” through removal of licence, refusal of bail or imposition of oppressive bail conditions.
[Article by TOM, a contributor to Socialist Voice, newspaper of the Communist Party of Ireland and reprinted with their kind permission. In essence it agrees with the analysis of Mandela and South Africa given by Stephen Spencer and Diarmuid Breatnach in an article reviewing statements of the Irish Left and Republican movement following the death of Mandela — Rebel Breeze]
The presence of such friends of genuine democracy as the war criminals George W. Bush and Tony Blair, David Cameron, Bill Clinton and such right-wing media hangers-on as Sir Bob Geldof and Sir Paul Hewson (Bono) at Nelson Mandela’s funeral raises questions about the real content of the new South Africa that appeared in 1994, when the apartheid elite seemed to cede political power to the African National Congress.
Twenty years later, given the continuing racial inequality in present-day South Africa, the much lower life expectancy of blacks and their much higher rate of unemployment, the increased vulnerability of the country to world economic fluctuations and accelerated environmental decay during his presidency, did Mandela really change South Africa? And, if not, how much room had he to manoeuvre?
For many are still remembering the Mandela years as fundamentally different from today’s crony-capitalist, corruption-riddled, brutally securitised, eco-destructive and anti-egalitarian South Africa. But could it be that the seeds of the present were sown earlier, by Mandela and his associates in government?
Ending the apartheid regime was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest events of the past century. But, to achieve a peaceful transition, Mandela’s ANC allowed whites to keep the best land, the mines, manufacturing plants and financial institutions, and to export vast quantities of capital.
The ANC could have followed its own revolutionary programme, mobilising the people and all their enthusiasm, energy, and hard work, using a larger share of the economic surplus (through state-directed investments and higher taxes), and stopping the flow of capital abroad, including the repayment of illegitimate apartheid-era debt. The path chosen, however, was the neo-liberal one, with small reforms here and there to permit superficial claims to the sustaining of a “National Democratic Revolution.”
The critical decade was the 1990s, when Mandela was at the height of his power, having been released from jail in February 1990, taking the South African presidency in May 1994 and leaving office in June 1999. But it was in this period, according to the former minister for intelligence services Ronnie Kasrils, for twenty years a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, that “the battle for the soul of the African National Congress was lost to corporate power and influence . . . We readily accepted that devil’s pact and are damned in the process. It has bequeathed to our country an economy so tied in to the neo-liberal global formula and market fundamentalism that there is very little room to alleviate the dire plight of the masses of our people.”
Nelson Mandela’s South Africa fitted a pattern, that of former critics of old dictatorships—whether from right-wing or left-wing backgrounds—who transformed themselves into neo-liberal rulers in the 1980s and 90s: Alfonsín (Argentina), Aquino (Philippines), Arafat (Palestine), Aristide (Haïti), Bhutto (Pakistan), Chiluba (Zambia), Kim (South Korea), etc. The self-imposition of economic and development policies, because of the pressures of financial markets and the Washington-Geneva multilateral institutions, required insulation from genuine national aspirations—in short, an “elite transition.”
This policy insulation from mass opinion was achieved through the leadership of Mandela. It was justified by invoking “international competitiveness.” Obeisance to transnational corporations led to the Marikana Massacre in 2012 and the current disturbances on the platinum belt, for example. But the decision to reduce the room for manoeuvre was made as much by the local principals, such as Mandela, as it was by the Bretton Woods institutions, financiers, and investors.
Much of the blame, therefore, for the success of the South African counter-revolution must be laid at the door of the ANC leadership, with Nelson Mandela at its head. Hence the paeans of praise for the dead leader from the doyens of international reaction.
[TOM]
He was a friend of Ireland, it is true — I often heard him speak on Irish solidarity platforms in England. I don’t remember him supporting the hunger strikers in 1981, however. You may recall that Concannon, representing the Labour Party, visited the dying Bobby Sands to tell him that Labour would not support him or his comrades. In London, we marched to Benn’s house (VERY long, hot march) to get him to break with Labour on this but I don’t remember whether we were successful.
In the balance must also be put that when Secretary of State for Energy in a Labour Government, along with the rest of the Gvt, he conspired to break the embargo on apartheid South Africa by covertly selling them oil routed through Portuguese African colonies.
Someone referred to him as an “Ant-fascist fighter” — I don’t know about that. He served as a pilot in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa during the war. Hundreds of thousands joined up during those years and many others were conscripted. His reasons for joining could have been any, whatever he may have said afterwards. He certainly didn’t fight fascists on the streets of Britain as some did, both before and after the War.
(click on the title immediately above to access the video)
(A mobile-friendly version is also available, click on the author’s name below the video and the other version should show).
RAP POEM, VIDEO IMAGES WITH MUSIC IN PROTEST AT THE 3-MONTH INCARCERATION OF MARGARETTA D’ARCY, 79 YEAR-OLD ACTIVIST AND DRAMATIST, BECAUSE OF HER PROTESTS AGAINST THE CONTINUING USE OF SHANNON AIRPORT BY THE US MILITARY IN COLLUSION WITH SUCCESSIVE IRISH GOVERNMENT IN VIOLATION OF OUR NEUTRAL STATUS.
When the civil rights movement began in 1968 in the Six Counties, the general attitude in Britain, on the street and even in much of the media, was supportive of the campaigners. This was reinforced by the majority of the Irish community there, an estimated average of 10% of the population of most British main cities. The Irish were the largest ethnic minority in Britain and the longest-established, constantly renewed by high emigration since the Great Hunger of 1845-1849 (although seasonal and other migration had been a pattern long before that).
In the Six Counties, the sectarian police force were unable to vanquish the resistance and “liberated areas” emerged. The British imperialist ruling class could no longer tolerate this state of affairs and sent in its Army to “restore order” and also to “clear the no-go areas”. As the Provisional IRA (mostly), later also the INLA, entered the struggle against the British Army in the Six Counties, the mood in Britain began to shift somewhat. After all, a British soldier dead meant a British family mourning, whilst the same did not apply at all with an RUC or B-Special killed (however they might think of themselves as “British”). But still the Irish community in Britain held the line in solidarity with the support of large sections of the British Left (many of whom happened to be Irish or of Irish descent as well). Regular demonstrations were held, as well as pickets and public meetings. People wrote leaflets and letters. Solidarity delegations were sent. MPs were lobbied to ask questions in the House of Commons, which some did.
The introduction of Internment without trial in the Six Counties in 1971 was strongly protested, as was the Ballymurphy Massacre by the Paras that same year. The Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972 led to protests in many areas of Britain, including solidarity strikes on building sites and a huge demonstration in London — as the head of the wide packed march passed Trafalgar Square on its way to Downing Street, the end of it was still leaving Hyde Park Corner, where it had begun some time earlier, about 3 kilometres away. When the lines of police in Whitheall stopped those leading the march from presenting thirteen “coffins” to No.10 Downing Street, the residence of the Prime Minister, some of the “coffins” were thrown at the police and a riot began. Nor was it the only riot — an earlier march had tried to break through the heavy police cordon in front of Northern Ireland House at Green Park, a couple of mounted police had been knocked off their horses and the demonstration had ended with protesters being chased through Green Park by police on foot and in vehicles.
Protests even made it into the House of Commons as in 1970 when an Irishman called Roche threw a tear gas cannister in among MPs to make them aware of the tons of CS gas being pumped into the Bogside and other areas by the RUC (later by the British Army too), while in 1972, after Bloody Sunday, then People’s Democracy MP Bernadette Devlin (now McAlliskey and no longer an MP) walked up to the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, and slapped him in the face.
The IRA bombing campaign in Britain in particular impacted negatively to some extent on sympathy for the Irish struggle but solidarity from the Irish community, along with large elements in the British Left was still strong, despite some potentially lethal explosions such as postal pillar box bombs and the Post Office Tower bombing in 1971, which luckily did not cause any injuries. All that was to change in 1974.
The Birmingham Pub Bombing
In October and November 1974, the Guildford and Woolwich Pub Bombings killed six soldiers and two civilians whilst a further sixty-five people were injured (mostly in the Guildford explosion, where five of the dead had been). The pubs had been in regular use by personnel of the British Army but were also used by a number of civilians.
In between those two bombings, another two bombs exploded in completely civilian bars in Birmingham, killing 21 and injuring 182. It stunned the Irish community and the friendly British Left. The media of course went to town with “Bastards!” being used as a headline for the first time by a British tabloid, over a photograph of the atrocity. At first no-one claimed the Birmingham bombing and then it was denied by the IRA, who up to then had a very reliable record with regard to taking ownership of events (which could not be said of the Royal Ulster Constabulary or of the British Army). Some kind of “black operation” was the suspicion of many. As we know now and as some in the IRA admitted quite some time later, it had been an IRA bomb and the person whose responsibility it had been to telephone the warning, in a time long before mobile phones, had found a number of out-of-order public telephone kiosks and the warning had been too late.
Up to then, the Midlands IRA unit or units had been exploding bombs at targets without injury to civilians when one of their volunteers, James McDade, was killed in a premature explosion while planting a bomb at a telephone exchange in Coventry. His remains were prepared for return to Ireland and burial in his native Belfast. McDade had been well known in the Birmingham Irish community and through much of the Midlands as a talented GAA (Gaelic sports) player and was popular as a singer with a tenor voice. Eddie Caughey, of the Birmingham branch of Provisional Sinn Féin (later the party closed down all branches outside Ireland), was among others accompanying the coffin on McDade’s last journey. Another group of people set off from Britain to attend the funeral, including five Irishmen from the Six Counties resident in Birmingham, catching a train to connect with the ferry at Heysham.
Coincidentally, the Birmingham group arrived for the Heysham ferry the same evening as the Birmingham bombs exploded, although they were unaware of this. The five men were taken from the ferry at Heysham by police and interrogated, later beaten up by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad and threatened with guns and dogs, four of them forced to confess to things they had not done; they were then were charged with multiple murder along with another Irishman from the Six Counties who had seen them off at the New Street Birmingham train station. They six men were taken to Winson Green prison where they received another savage beating from screws so that when they turned up in court all were bruised and battered. One screw witness many years later was reported to have said that he had not participated and found the brutality sickening (he may have been the inspiration for the scene in the H-Blocks 2008 film “Hunger” directed by McQueen, where a screw hides away from the other screws in riot gear as they go in to beat the “blanket men”).
The six Birmingham Irish were found guilty in a travesty of a trial and became “the Birmingham Six”. Another three, at least one of whom was an IRA volunteer and probably the organiser of the bombings, were convicted on charges relating to explosives and received nine years’ jail.
The Birmingham Six in 1974 — innocent but Irish in Britain — sixteen years in prison, twenty-six before compensated. No state employee has ever been convicted for this deliberate injustice.
Subsequent appeals and prosecutions by the Birmingham Six of officers for assault etc. were all dismissed or ruled out of order by the state judicial system. Individuals in the Irish community, such as Sr. Sarah Clarke, began to campaign for them. In 1976, Fr.s Raymond Murray and Denis Faul in the Six Counties published their booklet The Birmingham Framework: Six innocent men framed for the Birmingham Bombings. In 1981 the newly-formed Irish in Britain Representation Group became the first wide Irish community organisation in Britain to take up their case and made representations on behalf of the Six, including to the Irish Embassy in London (“The Birmingham who?” asked the Ambassador at the time, according to some IBRG who participated in the delegation).
In 1985 after repeated lobbying by the Birmingham Six Campaign, the IBRG and individuals, World In Action (Granada, ITV) made the first programme throwing doubt on the guilt of the Six. A year later, Chris Mullins (a researcher for the World in Action programme and later an MP and a Government Minister) published his book declaring their innocence. Campaigning continued in Britain and in Ireland.
But it was not until 1991, SIXTEEN YEARS after their unjust conviction, that they were finally released, their convictions quashed. The lives of many of them were ruined — marriages had broken up, livelihoods were gone, some never recovered from the trauma. It was not until ANOTHER TEN YEARS before they were awarded financial compensation.
Not one judge, one police officer or one prison officer was ever convicted of assault or perversion of the cause of justice. The British forensic scientist whose “evidence” and “expertise” were used to sway the jury to convict the Birmingham Six, Frank Skuse, suffered a blow to his professional reputation but that was all.
The impression is often given that the Birmingham Six jury was blinded by expert forensic evidence and/or that it could not be known then that the evidence was wrong. But it is also often forgotten that Skuse’s “evidence” contained contradictions suggesting interference and that his forensic conclusions were contested at the trial by those of another forensic practitioner, Dr Hugh Kenneth Black FRIC, the former HM Chief Inspector of Explosives, Home Office. The judge chose to believe Skuse and to sway the jury in that direction. Part of the judgement of the Court of Appeal that freed them in 1991 was that “Dr. Skuse’s conclusion was wrong, and demonstrably wrong, judged even by the state of forensic science in 1974.”
The Guildford and Woolwich Pub Bombings
In 1977, the “Balcolme Street” IRA unit (so named because of the address where they were trapped and besieged before capture) informed the authorities through their trial lawyers that they were responsible for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings. This was an unprecedented step for the IRA but their claim was denied by the State. The Home Office accepted in a memorandum at some point later that the Guildford Four were “probably not terrorists” but thought there was not enough to justify their release. Eventually falsified police notes were found by an investigating police detective and they were used as a reason to throw doubt on the whole case against the Four and they walked free in 1989. They had spent fifteen years in British jails and the father of one, Gerry Conlon, had died in prison.
The Guildford Four around the time of their arrest in 1974. Three of them were Irish in Britain but although obviously not anything like IRA, were framed and jailed. No state employee has ever paid for this crime against them or the other Irish framed prisoners.Giuseppe Conlon, who came to London to help his son Gerry when he heard of his wrongful arrest for the Guildford Pub Bombings. Incredibly, he was also convicted, along with the Maguire Seven — all innocent, but Irish in Britain. Giuseppe Conlon died in prison before the Maguire Seven were finally found “not guilty” on appeal.
The Maguire Seven had to wait another two years before their convictions were quashed in 1991, so that they spent 17 years in British jails. The court accepted that members of the London Metropolitan Police beat some of them into confessing to the crimes as well as withholding information that would have cleared them (this last was also a feature of the Guildford Four case).
In 2005, Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, apologised to the surviving ten and to relatives of all the eleven for their “ordeal and injustice”. The British media, which had played a key role in creating the public atmosphere in which huge injustices could be and were done, never apologised nor even reviewed their procedures and guidelines and in fact even after their release, one British tabloid had to pay out libel compensation for suggesting that some of the framed prisoners were guilty but had got off on some kind of technicality. And again, not one forensic expert, not one Judge or state Minister was ever charged; some detectives were eventually charged with perjury but were never tried, nor were they ever charged with assault — not to mention torture.
The Prevention of Terrorism (sic) Act 1974
Back at the time when those bombings occurred, a legal measure of huge importance was being planned: at the end of November 1974, the Prevention of Terrorism Act was rushed through British Parliament. The PTA superseded the regulations requiring the police to charge a suspect within 48 hours and to bring them before a judge as early as possible or to release them on bail. The PTA legislation permitted holding of “suspects” for 5 days without charge and without access to lawyers, visitors or their own doctor; it also permitted stopping and questioning and searching without need to establish a reason and house raids and searches. Later this power was extended to seven days.
Finally, it permitted exclusion from Britain and deportation to the Six Counties (even though that was classed as part of the United Kingdom and therefore constituted internal exile), without any need to charge or show evidence of wrongdoing. One victim of such banning for a number of years was Brendan McGill, Provisional Sinn Féin organiser in Britain at the time (but who joined Republican Sinn Féin in 1986; deceased in 2011); he was banned from Britain despite having been a resident for 21 years and had his home, family and a shop in London.
Inside the Mulberry Bush, one of two target pubs in Birmingham in which 21 people were killed and 182 injured by two failed-warning IRA bombs in 1974. The horror helped disarm people ideologically and prepared the public, including the Irish diaspora, for the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and a campaign of terror against the Irish community in Britain.
It was clear to observers that the Act had been already in preparation; the shocking Birmingham explosion a few weeks earlier provided the right atmosphere for its introduction. Eddie Caughey, the Birmingham-based Irish Republican who had accompanied the remains of IRA volunteer James Mc Dade to Belfast, became the first person to be detained and questioned under the PTA but that was to happen to thousands in the decades to follow, nearly every one of them Irish. According to the West Midlands PTA Research & Welfare Association (set up by Midlands activists of the IBRG), 7,192 people were detained under the PTA between 1974 and 1992. Only 629 of these (8.7%) were subsequently charged with any offence and most of those were totally unrelated to any “terrorist” acts. Even when charges came under the Act they were only such charges as being a member of a proscribed organisation, assisting a proscribed organisation etc; one such conviction was of a young man for having pro-IRA posters and a badge in his possession.
Again according to the West Midlands organisation, 86,000 people each year between 1987 and 1990 were ‘examined’ for more than an hour at British ports and airports under the PTA. The watchdog organisation admits that these are only recorded stops and also did not include anyone stopped at a port or airport for less than an hour.
It only happened to me once: travelling alone from London home to Dublin on holiday with my daughter of seven years, I was taken aside by Special Branch at Heathrow and questioned as to my London address, occupation, destination in Ireland, length of stay and purpose in travelling to Dublin. The questioning was not heavy and probably lasted less than ten or fifteen minutes and, unlike many others, I was not made to miss my plane. But it was really frightening to know that I could be taken in for up to seven days and the overarching apprehension was about what would happen to my daughter. Those days it was not unusual for people, as did I, to make arrangements if they were not going to be met upon arrival, to telephone a friend or family each side, so that in the absence of such, enquiries could be initiated with the police.
“PTA Telephone Trees” were established and those who volunteered for service on them might receive a phone call in the early hours of the morning to say that this or that person had been arrested, or was missing, and to begin making phone calls to other people on the “tree” and/or to a named police station. The purpose of the calls was not only to gather possible information (the police often denied the presence of someone known to be in their cells) but also to make the police aware that their detainees had friends outside who were making enquiries.
It was a testament perhaps to the level of fear engendered that although Irish solidarity pickets were taking place in various places, including of course London, it was not until the early 1990s that a picket was first placed on Paddington Green Police station, the usual destination of people detained under the PTA in London. “The Lubyanka of the Irish Community”, with its sixteen windowless underground cells, too hot in summer and too cold in winter, with a 7-day incommunicado detention period, was frightening enough but had developed a terror mystique.
It was a Kilburn-based British Left group (but with high Irish membership and which had been expelled from the Troops Out Movement) which placed the first pickets on Paddington Green and some time later the Saoirse campaign and the Wolfe Tone Society (Provisional SF support group in London) did so too. These symbolic acts helped to somewhat erode the terror of the place but the overall atmosphere had been dispelled by the mobilisations in solidarity with the Hunger Strikers a decade earlier.
Spokespersons of the Irish community and some others repeatedly warned the British Left, social-democratic and liberal sections of society that if they allowed the PTA to be used temporarily against the Irish community, it would become permanent; and if they allowed it against the Irish community it would be used against others later. In 1991, an article published by conservative British newspaper The Telegraph complained that the police were using “anti-terror” legislation against people who were clearly political protesters; the article cited 1,000 anti-war demonstrators including an 11-year-old child at Aldermaston and 600 protesters at a Labour Party Conference, including an 84-year-old man, all of whom had been questioned under “anti-terror” legislation (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3620110/The-police-must-end-their-abuse-of-anti-terror-legislation.html?fb). Since then, Muslim communities have also complained about the way in which “anti-terror” is used against them, in violation of their civil and human rights.
Repressive legislation labelled “anti-terror” in Britain since the 1970s began with the PTA and detention for five days, then for seven; subsequent legislation authorised it for 14 days; an attempt was made to extend it to three months on police recommendation but failed in Parliament; however the Terrorism Act 2006 authorises 28 days detention without charge.
Not “miscarriages of justice” but exercise in mass intimidation
The convictions and jailing of innocent Irish people were not “miscarriages of justice” but rather an exercise in the mass intimidation and coercion of the Irish community in Britain by the British state. The jailing of six innocent men for murder in 1975, who would have been hung were the death sentence for murder still on the statutes, was part of a campaign of terror against the Irish community in Britain which included the Prevention of Terrorism (sic) Act in 1974 and the convictions of Judith Ward (1974), the Maguire Seven (1975) and Guildford Four (1975).
As remarked earlier, the Irish community in Britain was the largest and longest-established ethnic minority in Britain; it was and had long been a source of solidarity to the struggle in Ireland. It had also contributed significantly to the British Left and the struggle for socialism in the past: Bronterre O’Brien and Feargus O’Connor were renowned leaders of the Chartists in the 1840s and 1850s, TheRed Flag was written by Jim Connell in 1889, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists was written by Robert Tressell (real name Noonan) in 1914, the Irish were to the fore in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 and so on.
Artist’s illustration of Chartist demonstration in Britain. The largest-ever popular political movement of the working class in Britain, two of its leaders were Irish.
The British police had a long hostile relationship with the Irish diaspora, both because of the social position and conditions of the majority of the Irish community but also due to the Irish diaspora’s support for the struggle “back home”. Scotland Yard set up “The Irish Special Branch” to gather intelligence on pro-Fenian activity in the Irish communities in the cities in British cities during the later 19th Century — it was later renamed simply “the Special Branch”, as they are (politely) known today in Britain, the Six Counties and in the Twenty-Six.
Irish communities could be insular in some places and Irish “ghettos” existed: among “The Rookeries” in London (several areas around the city centre) and Wapping, “Little Ireland” in Manchester and so on. But the community also had a high impact on the British working class, particularly in England and in Scotland but also in Wales (the SW Miners’ Federation originally featured Connolly’s image on their banner, alongside those of Lenin and Kier Hardie). The Irish community were ideally placed to call for solidarity for the anti-imperialist struggle in the Six Counties and to counter British media disinformation and censorship. In most places, Irish worked alongside British workers, married among them, followed sports teams and also played sports with them. In many places they also lived in the same streets or housing blocks.
The British ruling class realised the potential of the Irish diaspora in Britain even if the Provisionals seemed not to. When ordinary repression — surveillance, questioning, agents provocateurs, spies and informers, arrests and occasional police charges into demonstrations, along with a hostile media campaign — did not work, something stronger was needed. Very repressive legislation, a high level of arrests, thousands of detentions and jailing of 18 (there were a few other cases too) innocent people in four different high-visibility trials might work instead. Especially if allied to some atrocity with which most Irish people could not agree, so that they felt morally undermined too. For a while, with the combination of the Birmingham Pub Bombing, the framing for murder of innocents and the Prevention of Terrorism, largely this approach did work, with most of the Left running for cover and most of the Irish community keeping their heads down.
Many, many people in the Irish community in Britain knew for certain that the Maguire Seven, Guildford Four and Judith Ward were not IRA and could not be: the Guildford Four were living in a squat, taking drugs and engaging in petty crime and Judith Ward had been mentally ill and had accosted police to claim responsibility for a bombing. The Maguire Seven were a family including two minors, a family friend and a relative, Giuseppe, who had travelled over from the Six Counties to support his son Gerry of the Guildford Four. The feeling that the Birmingham Six were innocent too quickly gained momentum. But for the British authorities, it was actually GOOD that the Irish community knew they were innocent because, if innocent people can go to jail for murder, everyone is vulnerable and the only possible way to safety would be to keep one’s head down and one’s mouth shut.
This was the period in which the Troops Out Movement (TOM), initially founded to bring Irish solidarity into the broad British society, the Left and trade unions, largely abandoned that task and began instead to concentrate on the Irish community. In that pool were now swimming Irish Republican political activists, the IBRG, TOM, some British Left and, in some places the Connolly Association.
One of many Hunger Strikers solidarity march in Britain 1981. The effort to save the ten brought the Irish and some of the British Left out on to the streets, effectively breaking the terror grip of the Prevention of Terrorism (sic) Act and the jailing in separate murder trials of an innocent score of Irish people.
It was the Hunger Strikes of 1981 that broke the stranglehold of repression and fear on the Irish community and brought them out on to the streets again, in solidarity with prisoners and trying to save the Hunger Strikers’ lives. And after a columnist in The Irish Post noted that Bobby Sands had died during the AGM of the Federation of Irish Societies in Britain and not one word from the top table had marked his passing, not even in condolences to Sands’ family, it also led to the founding of the Irish in Britain Representation Group, a broad organisation campaigning on a wide range of issues, from anti-Irish racism in the media to framed Irish prisoners, from a fair share of resources from local authorities to self-determination for the Irish people in Ireland.
Irish solidarity work enjoyed a resurgence for the next decade and longer but external influences began to affect the work and divisions arose as the long road to the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland began to pull and push against different elements in the solidarity movement in Britain. But that’s another story.
Noviembre de 2012 (ligeramente revisado enero 2014)
(Originalmente in inglés y traducido por
Miguel Huertas)
PRESENTACIÓN
La pregunta de cómo una nación sería capaz de derrotar a una potencia imperialista o colonial más fuerte que ha invadido su territorio ha ocupado la mente de muchos revolucionarios – principalmente demócratas patriotas (en Irlanda, “republicanos”) y socialistas. La Historia mundial nos muestra algunas victorias en esta lucha, como la de los vietnamitas contra EEUU. No obstante, también muestra victorias parciales, en las que el poder colonial fue forzado a retirarse pero los nuevos gobernantes del país entregan la independencia que ya tenían en sus manos y se convierten en clientes del antiguo poder colonial o en una nueva potencia imperialista.
La historia de la lucha por el socialismo y la de liberación nacional, separada pero conectada de numerosas maneras, nos a entregado muchos ejemplos de los que extraer lecciones generales que puedan ser aplicadas a las luchas de la misma naturaleza en el presente, el pasado, y el futuro.
VIETNAM
Los vietnamitas tenían a los franceses prácticamente derrotados cuando fueron invadidos por los japoneses, quienes al perder la Segunda Guerra Mundial tuvieron que devolver la mitad del territorio a los franceses, que a su vez se lo entregaron a EEUU, la nueva superpotencia imperialista que había emergido de la Guerra.
Los vietnamitas, en un país que es más pequeño que el Estado de Virginia, combatieron contra EEUU durante otros veinte años, sufriendo tremendos daños y finalmente derrotándoles. Estados Unidos contaba con el ejército mejor equipado del mundo, con la economía más poderosa y una tecnología en constante desarrollo, con una gran población de la que movilizar soldados y un gran presupuesto militar. Y aun así los vietnamitas vencieron.
Guerrilleras vietnamitas — las fuerzas guerilleras y el Ejército Norte Vietnames juntos derrotaron a la gran superpotencia los EEUU.
Por supuesto que estaban luchando por su tierra natal, por supuesto que eran valientes, inteligentes y se adaptaban. Pero esas virtudes, por sí solas, podrían no haber sido suficientes. Tenían otros factores a su favor. Ya tenían liberado la mitad del país (Vietnam del Norte), y EEUU no podía invadir ese territorio sin arriesgarse a que China o incluso la Unión Soviética entrasen en conflicto directo con ellos. Esa parte del país permaneció durante muchos años como una retaguardia segura para los vietnamitas que combatían en las filas de la guerrilla del Viet Cong, y para los soldados regulares del Ejército de Vietnam del Norte, de quienes podían conseguir armas y otros materiales.
En el área de las relaciones internacionales, los vietnamitas tenían el respaldo de la República Popular de China, que podía aprovisionar les con armas y equipo.
En política internacional, todas las fuerzas anti-imperialistas les apoyaron, aislando a EE.UU. políticamente. Ese hecho, combinado con la tasa de mortalidad de los soldados estadounidenses junto con la progresiva radicalización de la juventud, creó un poderoso movimiento contra la guerra imperialista dentro de los propios Estados Unidos que jugó un papel importante minando la moral del personal militar de EEUU destinado en Vietnam.
Un movimiento potente de oposición a la Guerra de Vietnam dentro del mismo EE.UU.
Los vietnamitas también tenían el apoyo del régimen laosiano y de potentes fuerzas anti-imperialistas en Camboya, quienes proporcionaban pertrechos y rutas de escape alternativas para la guerrilla vietnamita.
El territorio de Vietnam es montañoso, con valles y planicies cubiertas de junglas y arboledas de bambú o con “pasto elefante”, una hierba de altura superior a una persona. Escondía perfectamente a la guerrilla y a unidades regulares del ejército.
Tanque de las fuerzas de liberación vietnamitas rompe la puerta de la Embajada de los EE.UU. en Saigon tras las fuerzas de liberación tomar la ciudad desde el régimen títere de EE.UU. después de que las fuerzas estadounidenses se fueron
Y, quizá crucialmente, el monopolio capitalista de EE.UU. podía permitirse perder la parte sur del Vietnam – no estaba integrado en su territorio, ni siquiera en su “patio trasero” (como suelen pensar de América Latina). La pérdida les costó prestigio, algo importante para una superpotencia mundial, así como moral en su propio país. Su clase dominante estaba decidida a no perder, y combatieron duramente para ganar, pero las consecuencias políticas y las bajas eran tan elevadas que otro sector de esa clase optaba por abandonar. Ése es el verdadero motivo del escándalo Watergate y de la acusación del presidente Nixon.
IRLANDA
Irlanda ya no es un país boscoso, y tiene muchas más zonas urbanizadas que Vietnam; no tiene una zona liberada que le sirva de apoyo (el Estado de los 26 condados o “República de Irlanda” es hostil a cualquier movimiento anti-imperialista en su territorio), ni tiene países vecinos que quieran prestar ayuda o hacer la vista gorda ante el uso de su territorio. Tampoco tiene un buen proveedor de armamento (en realidad, el único fue brevemente la Libia de Gadafi). Además, no sólo Irlanda es considerada el “patio trasero” de Gran Bretaña, sino que la isla entera ha sido considerada como un parte integral del “Reino Unido”, la base del monopolio capitalista británico.
Pero ha habido y hay otros factores que el movimiento anti-imperialista irlandés puede usar en su favor, que serán examinados aquí en el contexto de las luchas anti-imperialistas del país en el último siglo.
Primero sería útil echar un vistazo a un breve resumen histórico de las luchas irlandesas contra el colonialismo y el imperialismo pero, por ser caso que el lector ya conocía bien esa historia, lo hemos puesto en apéndice al final.
¿Cuáles fueron las opciones de las fuerzas irlandesas de liberación nacional en algunos momentos del siglo pasado?
Siempre es más fácil juzgar a los actores y las acciones del pasado, pero es necesario hacerlo para permitir que las acciones pasadas nos enseñen a la hora de llevar a cabo las acciones del presente y del futuro. Las examinadas aquí son las opciones, elecciones, y consecuencias, del
Alzamiento de Pascua de 1916,
y la Guerra guerrillera de La Independencia de 1919-1921
y la guerra de 30 años 1971-1998.
El Alzamiento de Pascuas 1916
En 1914 había empezado la Primera Guerra Mundial imperialista, y para 1915 la escala de la matanza era enorme. Los socialistas revolucionarios (en oposición a los partidos socialdemócratas que habían elegido apoyar a sus burguesías nacionales), querían una insurrección que detuviera la carnicería y también brindara una oportunidad a la revolución socialista – en este sector se encontraban James Connolly y el Partido Socialista Republicano Irlandés, que colocaron en la azotea del edificio de su sindicato una enorme pancarta que rezaba: ¡NI REY NI KAISER!
También 1914 era un año después de que el Sindicato Irlandés de Transportes y Trabajadores Generales, una escisión de un sindicato británico, tratase de romper el cierre patronal de Dublín durante ocho meses. Durante ese cierre patronal, el sindicato había formado su propia milicia –el Ejército Ciudadano Irlandés– para defenderse de los violentos ataques de la policía, y tal organización continuó existiendo pese al fin del cierre patronal.
Los nacionalistas revolucionarios demócratas, es decir republicanos, también vieron la oportunidad de luchar por la libertad mientras el ocupante colonial-imperialista estaba luchando contra otras potencias imperialistas. También pensaron que aquellas naciones que hubiesen ganado su independencia o al menos demostrado con fuerza su deseo de ser independientes verían su derecho de autodeterminación ratificado por las potencias emergentes tras la Guerra.
Los nacionalistas constitucionales, por otro lado, la mayoría se apresuraron a mostrar su apoyo por sus amos coloniales y, en el caso de Irlanda, reclutaron a sus compañeros para que se unieran a la carnicería de los campos de batalla.
En Irlanda, la sociedad secreta revolucionaria Hermandad Republicana Irlandesa y las organizaciones de los Voluntarios Irlandeses (que los anteriores controlaban tras la escisión de los Voluntarios Nacionales Irlandeses, de cual muchos se unieron al ejército británico), junto con la organización de mujeres Cumann na mBan y la organización juvenil Na Fianna Éireann, unieron sus fuerzas a la del Ejército Ciudadano (según Lenin, dicen: “El primer Ejército Rojo de Europa”) en una insurrección armada contra el dominio británico. Principalmente tuvo lugar en Dublín en 1916 y duró una semana. Después de que los rebeldes se rindieran ante las superiores fuerzas británicas, la mayoría fueron enviados a campos de concentración junto con otros que fueron arrestados y condenados sin juicio. Casi todos los líderes del Alzamiento fueron ejecutados por pelotones de fusilamiento.
Planes para el Alzamiento
Hubo ciertos elementos en el plan del Alzamiento que merece la pena considerar. La insurrección había sido planeada en secreto, no sólo de cara a las autoridades, sino también de cara a ciertos líderes de los Voluntarios Irlandeses, incluido su comandante. Estaba planeado para ser una insurrección a nivel nacional, y también se había contado con que la Alemania Imperial, en guerra con el Imperio Británico, aprovisionara al levantamiento con armas y municiones.
La primera parte del plan en fallar fue la dificultad de encontrarse, por cambio de destino, con el buque alemán para coger las armas y llevarlas a tierra firme, y su posterior descubrimiento por parte de los británicos, resultando en la captura de la tripulación (después de hundir el barco) y de Roger Casement, el agente de los Voluntarios Irlandeses que viajaba con ellos.
Lo segundo en desmoronarse fue el secretismo interno y que, cuando el comandante de los Voluntarios Irlandeses supo del Alzamiento y del fracaso al obtener las armas alemanas, canceló las “ marchas y maniobras ” planeadas para el Domingo de Pascua, que eran el código para la movilización de los rebeldes. El Alzamiento comenzó en el Lunes de Pascua, pero tan sólo con un millar de hombres y mujeres movilizados en Dublín, muchos menos efectivos en los condados Meath, Galway y Wexford y sin comunicación entre esas fuerzas a excepción del mensajero, un proceso que tardaba días.
En Dublín, las fuerzas rebeldes fueron desplegadas débilmente y no fueron capaces de tomar ciertos edificios importantes, como el Castillo de Dublín, sede del poder colonial desde la invasión de los normandos (que además tenía en su interior a los dos oficiales británicos más importantes destinados en Irlanda), y el Trinity College, que establecía el canon para la altura de los edificios y desde cuya azotea los francotiradores británicos hostigaban a los insurgentes, matando a algunos de ellos (a parecer, la toma de este edificio no era parte del plan original).
El plan original del Alzamiento ha sido analizado por varias autoridades –algunas de ellas militares, y se ha debatido sobre él largo y tendido.
Sin embargo, una movilización de efectivos que puede ser cancelada o muy debilitada por una sola persona, que además no es parte del plan pero puede suponerse que se enterará tarde o temprano, es una debilidad monumental. Si tal acuerdo es contemplado, al menos se debe tener un plan alternativo en caso de que esa persona decida echar abajo la operación, y que cuente además con líneas de comunicación rápida entre las diversas unidades que se quieren movilizar.
Otra debilidad del plan es no haber bloqueado el río Liffey (por ejemplo, hundiendo barcos en él), lo que permitió a un acorazado británico navegar cauce arriba y bombardear la ciudad. Se dice que James Connolly, comandante del Ejército Ciudadano, había pensado que los británicos no llegarían a los extremos de destruir propiedades capitalistas. Esto no fue finalmente un factor fundamental, pues los británicos emplearon también otros cañones para atacar Dublín… pero podría haberlo sido.
También parece que no hubo planes para la destrucción de puentes o vías de ferrocarril, probablemente debido a que se había contado con esas vías de comunicación en el plan original de movilización de los insurgentes.
¿Podría haber sucedido?
Pero incluso contando con estos elementos y con una supuesta movilización total de efectivos, ¿qué probabilidades de éxito tenía el Alzamiento? Irlanda es una isla, y la superioridad naval de las fuerzas británicas hubiese permitido que desembarcasen tropas a voluntad en prácticamente cualquier lugar, aunque es cierto que en ese momento el Imperio Británico estaba combatiendo a otras potencias imperialistas y había comprometido la mayor parte de sus efectivos en esa lucha. Pero, ¿es probable que estuviesen dispuestos a sacrificar una posesión tan cercana a su tierra natal, que es una parte misma del Reino Unido, y además tan cerca de su flanco occidental? ¿No es más probable que hubiesen decidido perder un territorio más alejado?
Lo más seguro es que, en el caso de haberse dado un alzamiento exitoso en la mayor parte de Irlanda, los británicos hubiesen respondido con el desembarco de tropas en varios lugares del territorio y, aunque sin duda tras cruentos combates, hubiesen tomado todas las ciudades controladas por los insurgentes. Hubiesen salido victoriosos porque eran superiores numéricamente, en armamento, en entrenamiento, y en poder naval y aéreo (de los cuales los insurgentes carecían por completo), y porque hubiesen estado combatiendo en una guerra convencional en la cual estos elementos son cruciales.
Después, se hubiesen desplazado de esas ciudades insurgentes al medio rural de los alrededores para eliminar a las unidades rebeldes aún en activo. En ese tipo de operaciones hubiesen tenido el apoyo de la policía y las fuerzas armadas cuartelizadas allí que no hubiesen sido capturadas por los insurgentes, y de las milicias lealistas (de número substancial en la parte norte del país). El control británico de los mares hubiese prevenido que los insurgentes irlandeses se beneficiasen de cualquier ayuda extranjera.
El coste para los británicos hubiese sido elevado: tanto en la ventaja que hubiesen tenido sus enemigos en la guerra como en consecuencias políticas y quizá en la moral de sus propias tropas. ¿Pero quién puede dudar que se hubiesen arriesgado a todo ello?
La calle O’Connell (entonces la de Sackville) desde el Puente mirando hacia el noreste. La destrucción por bombardeo del centro de una mayor ciudad del Reino Unido (como lo era entonces) muestra la determinación por los británicos de aplastar el Alzamiento.
Incluso podrían simplemente haber tomado las ciudades en manos de los insurgentes y haber asegurado que el norte del país permanecía leal hasta después de la guerra, y entonces haberse ocupado de los insurgentes que quedasen con más tranquilidad.
Lo que realmente ocurrió, como sabemos, fue que el Alzamiento fue derrotado en una semana, se declaró la ley marcial, los principales líderes fueron ejecutados, y se produjeron subsiguientes redadaspor todo el país, así como arrestos e prisión sin juicio.
La Guerra de la Independencia y el alejamiento de los objetivos marcados
Tres años más tarde, los nacionalistas revolucionarios volvieron a la lucha armada, esta vez sin milicias obreras ni un liderazgo socialista efectivo como aliados, y comenzaron una estrategia de lucha política combinada después con ataques de guerrilla en zonas rurales que pronto se extendieron a ciertas zonas urbanas (principalmente las ciudades de Dublín y de Cork).
La lucha política movilizó a miles de personas y también resultó en una mayoría absoluta en Irlanda de su partido en las elecciones generales (en Reino Unido, del que Irlanda era parte). La lucha en Irlanda y la respuesta británica estaba generando mucho interés y comentarios críticos en círculos políticos, intelectuales y artísticos de la propia Gran Bretaña. Además, por el mundo, muchos revolucionarios, socialistas y nacionalistas, estaban obteniendo inspiración de esa lucha anti colonial tan feroz, que tenía lugar tan cerca de Inglaterra, dentro del propio Reino Unido.
El desmantelamiento por parte de las fuerzas nacionalistas, mediante amenazas y acciones armadas, de la red de control de la policía colonial británica, que consecuentemente también desmanteló la mayoría del servicio de Inteligencia de contra insurrección, llevó a los británicos a formar dos nuevos cuerpos especiales que ayudasen a combatir la insurrección irlandesa. Estas dos fuerzas se ganaron a pulso una siniestra reputación, no sólo entre los nacionalistas sino también entre los lealistas pro-británicos.
Estas fuerzas especiales de paramilitares policiales recurrieron cada vez más y más a la tortura, el asesinato y el incendio provocado pero, no obstante, en ciertas zonas de Irlanda como Dublín, Kerry y Cork, tuvieron que ser reforzados con soldados británicos regulares dado que no eran capaces de combatir de forma efectiva a los insurgentes, que se volvían más confiados, más decididos y más experimentados cada semana que pasaba.
Sin embargo, dos años después del comienzo de la guerra de guerrillas, una mayoría dentro del liderazgo del movimiento nacionalista revolucionario apostó por la partición del país, con cierta independencia para una de las partes, siempre dentro de la Mancomunidad Británica de Naciones (Commonwealth).
Se ha debatido mucho acerca de los eventos que condujeron a este momento. Se suele decir que el Primer Ministro británico Lloyd George chantajeó a la delegación diplomática irlandesa con la amenaza de “una guerra terrible y total” si no aceptaban el acuerdo. La delegación fue forzada a responder a la propuesta sin tener la posibilidad de consultar a sus camaradas.
Algunos dicen que el Presidente del partido político nacionalista, Éamonn de Valera, envió a un delegado sin experiencia política, Michael Collins, sabiendo que acabaría aceptando un mal trato, del cual De Valera pudiese distanciarse.
Michael Collins, encargado del abastecimiento de las guerrillas, dijo posteriormente que les quedaban sólo unos pocos cargadores más para cada combatiente, y que el IRA, el ejército guerrillero, no podría combatir en el tipo de guerra con la que amenazaba Lloyd George. También dijo que ese Tratado era un paso adelante en la total independencia de Irlanda en un futuro próximo.
Ninguna de esas razones me parecen convincentes.
¿Cómo pudo el liderazgo de un movimiento en el punto álgido de su éxito derrumbarse de ese modo?
Desde luego, los británicos amenazaban con una guerra más dura, pero ya habían hecho amenazas antes, y el pueblo irlandés las había enfrentado sin miedo. Si el IRA se encontraba en tal difícil situación con respecto a las municiones (no estoy seguro de que exista ninguna prueba de ello aparte de la afirmación de Collins), hubiese sido una razón válida para reducir la actividad militar, no para retirarse y aceptar un Tratado cuando estaban tan cerca de conseguir aquello por lo que estaban luchando. El IRA era, después de todo, una guerrilla de combatientes voluntarios, la mayoría de ellos a tiempo parcial. Podría haberse retirado de las operaciones ofensivas y muchos de sus luchadores haberse mezclado con la población o, de ser necesario, haberse “dado a la fuga”.
Si la situación de los suministros militares de los nacionalistas irlandeses era tan terrible de cara al mejor equipo y experiencia de los soldados británicos, ¿realmente es eso lo único a tener en cuenta? Un ejército necesita más que armas y municiones para ir a la guerra, sino que hay otros factores que afectan a su habilidad y efectividad.
La situación precaria de los británicos
En 1919, al final de la Guerra, los británicos, aunque eran la parte victoriosa, estaban en una situación precaria. Durante la misma guerra había habido graves motines en el ejército (durante los cuales los oficiales y suboficiales habían muerto a manos de sus soldados), y cuando los soldados fueron desmovilizados de vuelta a la vida civil y sus viejas condiciones de vida, había una extendida insatisfacción. Las huelgas en la industria habían sido prohibidas durante la Guerra (aunque algunas se habían producido igualmente), y un movimiento de huela estaba ahora en marcha.
En 1918 y nuevamente en 1919, la policía se puso en huelga. También en 1919, los trabajadores del ferrocarril hicieron huelga, al igual que otros sectores, en una oleada que se llevaba organizando desde el año anterior. En 1918 las huelgas ya habían costado 6 millones en días laborales. Esta cifra se elevó a 35 millones de pérdidas en 1919, con una suma diaria de aproximadamente cien mil trabajadores en huelga.
Glasgow presenció en 1921 una huelga con piquetes de 6.000 personas que combatieron a la policía. La unidad local del ejército británico fue encerrada en sus cuarteles por sus propios oficiales, y unidades especiales armadas con ametralladoras, tanques y un obús, fueron movilizadas desde otras partes del país.
James Wolfe, en su trabajo ‘Motines en las Fuerzas Armadas Estados Unidienses y Británicas en el siglo XX’(Mutiny in United States and British Armed forces in the Twentieth Centuryhttp://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=8271&pc=9), incluye los títulos de los siguientes capítulos:
Trabajadores pasan un tranvía rompehuelgas volcado en Hackney, Londres NE, durante la Huelga General 1926. Por muchas partes, los bienes viajaron a través de Gran Bretaña con la autorización de los trabajadores o bajo escolta de protección policial o militar.
4.2 Los motines en el ejército en Enero/Febrero de 1919
4.3 El motín de ‘Val de Lievre’.
4.4 Tres motines en la Royal Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Real), Enero de 1919.
4.5 Motines en la Marina Real — Rusia, Febrero a Junio de 1919.
4.6 Los motines navales de 1919.
4.7 Disturbios de desmovilización 1918/1919.
4.8 Los disturbios del campamento de Kinmel Park 1919
4.9 “No es un país para héroes” – los disturbios de los veteranos en Luton.
4.10 El descontento en curso –Mediados de 1919 a Fin de Año.
El Gobierno británico temía que su policía fuese insuficiente a la hora de reprimir a los trabajadores, y preocupado sobre la confianza en su ejército si era usado de esa manera.
Ya se habían producido manifestaciones, disturbios y motines en las Fuerzas Armadas acerca de los retrasos en la desmovilización (y también en protesta al ser enviados a combatir la Revolución Bolchevique en Rusia).
Los demás lugares del Imperio Británico eran también inestables. Los árabes estaban enfurecidos ante la negativa británica de darle la libertad, tal y como habían prometido, a cambio de combatir a los turcos, y las rebeliones estallarían y se continuarían a lo largo de los siguientes años.
Los británicos también se estaban enfrentando al descontento en Palestina al estar re ubicando allí a judíos que habían comprado tierra árabe. Una rebelión contra los británicos tuvo lugar en Mesopotamia (actual Iraq) en 1918 y de nuevo en 1919. La Tercera Guerra Afgana se produjo en 1919; Ghandi y sus seguidores comenzaron su campaña de desobediencia civil en 1919 mientras que en la región Malabar de la India se levantó en armas contra el dominio británico en 1921.
Comunicados secretos (pero ahora accesibles) entre Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, y el Jefe del Estado Mayor de las Fuerzas Armadas Británicas revelan serias preocupaciones acerca de la capacidad y disposición de sus soldados a la hora de reprimir futuras insurrecciones y acciones en la industria en Gran Bretaña e incluso, si los soldados en servicio activo demandaban su desmovilización, si tendrían suficientes soldados a lo largo del Imperio para enfrentarse a las tareas que tendrían que enfrentar.
Los nacionalistas revolucionarios irlandeses estaban en una posición muy fuerte para continuar su lucha hasta ganar su independencia, e incluso para ser catalizadores de una revolución socialista en Gran Bretaña y la muerte del Imperio. Pero retrocedieron, dándole al Imperio el respiro que necesitaba para ocuparse de las ascuas de rebelión en otros lugares y para prepararse para el enfrentamiento con los militantes sindicalistas británicos durante la Huelga General de 1926.
Así, los partidarios del Tratado volvieron sus armas contra aquellos que habían sido sus camaradas en una cruel Guerra Civil que comenzó en 1922. El nuevo Estado ejecutaba a los prisioneros del IRA (incluso a algunos sin juicio) y la represión continuó con dureza incluso cuando ya habían derrotado al IRA en la Guerra Civil.
Si los nacionalistas revolucionarios irlandeses no tenían conocimiento de todos los problemas a los que se enfrentaba el Imperio Británico, sí que conocían muchos de ellos. La huelga de hambre en 1920 de McSwiney, el Alcalde de Cork, había captado la atención internacional, y los nacionalistas indios se habían puesto en contacto con la familia de McSwiney. La presencia de enormes comunidades de trabajadores irlandeses en Gran Bretaña, de Londres a Glasgow, daban la oportunidad de mantenerse al día de los conflictos industriales, incluso si a los nacionalistas irlandeses no les importaba establecer lazos de unión con los sindicalistas británicos. Sylvia Pankhurst, de una importante familia de sufragistas y una revolucionaria comunista, publicaba cartas en ‘El Trabajador Irlandés’ (The Irish Worker), el periódico del Sindicato Irlandés de Transportes y Trabajadores Generales (IT&GWU- Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union).
La presencia de un número importante de irlandeses todavía dentro del ejército británico también era una fuente de información.
Dibujo de la Lucha contra el Tratado de 1921, representa a Irlanda siendo coaccionado por Michael Collins, en representación del Ejército del Estado Libre, junto con la Iglesia Católica, al servicio del imperialismo británico
La mayoría de los líderes del movimiento nacionalista revolucionario irlandés tenían un trasfondo pequeño-burgués y no tenían un programa de expropiación de industriales y grandes terratenientes. No buscaban representar los intereses del pueblo trabajador irlandés, e incluso algunas veces le demostraron hostilidad, impidiendo que campesinos sin tierra se estableciesen en grandes fincas y se dividiesen después el terreno. Históricamente, la pequeña burguesía se ha mostrado incapaz de compaginar una revolución con sus propios intereses como clase, y en Irlanda era inevitable que los nacionalistas acabasen siguiendo los intereses de la burguesía irlandesa. Los socialistas irlandeses eran demasiado pocos y débiles como para ofrecer un bando alternativo. La burguesía irlandesa había sido revolucionaria por última vez en 1798, y no iba a cambiar en ese momento. Originalmente, junto a una Iglesia Católica con la que tenían muchos intereses en común, se habían negado a apoyar al nacionalismo revolucionario pero decidieron unir fuerzas con él cuando vieron que había una posibilidad de mejorar su posición, y también cuando parecía que la derrota de los británicos era inminente.
Ante estas evidentes posibilidades es difícil evitar la conclusión de que el sector del nacionalismo revolucionario irlandés que optó por el Tratado ofrecido por Lloyd George, lo hizo debido a que lo preferían a las alternativas. Prefirieron rendirse a cambio de un solo pedazo en lugar de luchar por todo el pastel. Y la burguesía irlandesa se beneficiaría del Tratado, a diferencia de la mayoría del pueblo irlandés. Las frase de James Connolly que decía que la clase obrera era la “incorruptible heredera”
Las tropas del nuevo gobierno irlandés usan cañón prestado por los británicos para bombardear la sede republicana en los Four Courts (Cuatro Juzgados) en 1922, iniciando la Guerra Civil.
de la lucha irlandesa por la libertad tuvo un corolario: que la burguesía irlandesa siempre comprometería la lucha. También es posible que la alternativa que la burguesía nacionalista temía no era tanto la “guerra terrible y total” británica, sino la posibilidad de una revolución social en la que perderían todos sus privilegios.
El siguiente reto al Imperio por parte del nacionalismo revolucionario no ocurriría hasta cincuenta años más tarde, y tendría lugar principalmente en los Seis Condados ocupados.
La guerra de treinta años en los Seis Condados
El IRA no tuvo mucho éxito en la serie de cortas campañas que llevaron a cabo durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial o durante los años cincuenta. El Sinn Féin, su partido político, sufrió una importante escisión durante los años treinta, y la nueva organización, Fianna Fáil, que optó por un camino puramente constitucionalista, pronto se convirtió en uno de los principales partidos burgueses del nuevo Estado irlandés. Este partido estuvo en el poder durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y sintió que su posición de neutralidad sería debilitada por la actividad del IRA contra los británicos. Llevó a cabo redadas contra sus propios camaradas, encarceló a cientos de ellos en unas condiciones penosas, les propinó palizas en las que algunos murieron, así como ejecutó a muchos otros.
El Sinn Féin se reformó en los sesenta, revocó su prohibición de posturas comunistas y aparentemente comenzó a desarrollar un punto de vista socialista; también comenzó a preocuparse por asuntos sociales dentro del Estado irlandés y realizó agitación sobre cuestiones como la vivienda. Además, llevó a cabo campañas de desobediencia civil y de traspaso de la propiedad privada de terratenientes extranjeros que poseían viviendas, tierras y ríos sobre suelo irlandés.
En los Seis Condados, el partido contribuyó a la organización del movimiento de protesta por los derechos civiles, pero pronto éste les sobrepasó. Después de que la policía arrasase esas áreas y matase a tiros a un miembro de la comunidad (irónicamente, una persona de la localidad que era soldado británico y que estaba de vacaciones), las comunidades católicas de Derry y Falls Road (Belfast) levantaron barricadas para impedir el paso de la policía, y en Derry fueron capaces de defender las con éxito contra los repetidos ataques de la policía paramilitar, sus reservas a tiempo parcial, y de las turbas lealistas.
Escisión!
Entonces, cuando necesitaron armas, los republicanos del norte descubrieron que el liderazgo en Dublín había dispuesto de ellas (supuestamente las había vendido a un grupo armado galés), y que lo único que tenían para defender sus zonas era un puñado de armas (y sólo una de las cuales era automática). Esto llevó a una escisión en el partido y en el IRA, llamándose las nuevas organizaciones Sinn Féin Provisional e IRA Provisional. La organización original añadió la palabra “Oficial” tanto a su ala política como a su grupo armado. Los escindidos rápidamente pasaron a ser conocidos como “los provisionales” (o “Provos” o “Provies”). Más tarde los Oficiales pasaron a ser conocidos como “los Pegajosos” (o “Stickies”), debido a una desafortunada innovación que les llevó a hacer sus propios lirios de pascua (flor que simboliza el Alzamiento de Pascua de 1916) con papel y pegamento en la parte de atrás (los otros siguieron sujetando con pin, como antes).
Los Provisionales no tenían tolerancia para el socialismo. Muchos de ellos sentían que había sido la ideología socialista la que les había llevado a estar prácticamente desarmados cuando sus zonas estaban bajo ataque. Reiteraron la clásica queja de los soldados sobre “demasiada política”. Además, entre sus dirigentes no había pocos católicos de ideología conservadora. En su frente internacional, más bien escaso, Fred Burns O’Brien, un estadounidense de origen irlandés y republicano pero también sionista, durante un tiempo publicó en el periódico de Sinn Féin An Phoblacht una columna en la que de vez en cuando ensalzaba el ejemplo sionista. Una carta de protesta de un lector que expresaba que los aliados naturales de los irlandeses eran los palestinos y no los sionistas no fue publicada, y O’Brien continuó escribiendo su columna en An Phoblacht durante algún tiempo más.
Los Provisionales se enfrentaron con el Ejército Británico cuando fue enviado a apoyar al Estado colonial contra los levantamientos populares cuando la policía colonial se mostró incapaz de reprimirlos. Pronto estuvieron combatiendo fundamentalmente con los soldados del Ejército Británico, la policía armada colonial, y los escuadrones de la muerte clandestinos de ambas unidades. Además, aunque en menor medida, también combatieron con los paramilitares lealistas, que mayoritariamente concentraban sus ataques de forma aleatoria en personas de origen católico.
Nuevo liderazgo de los Provisionales
Gradualmente, una nueva hornada de dirigentes comenzó a formarse entre las filas de los Provisionales. Los viejos dirigentes habían quedado desacreditados, Mac Stiofáin por ser capturado con papeles incriminatorios, y después empezar una huelga de hambre hasta la muerte que abandonó al poco de empezar. El liderazgo de Ó Brádaigh perdió cierta credibilidad debido a su declaración de que, primero 1972 y después 1973, iba a ser Bliain an Bhua, el Año de la Victoria (por supuesto, ninguno lo fue). También bajo su liderazgo se produjo el alto fuego y tregua de 1975, de los cuales los Provos no sacaron beneficio alguno cuando los británicos rompieron la tregua y atacaron medidas aún más represivas que las anteriores; además, los posibles beneficios propagandísticos no estaban preparados y no se produjeron. “Moss” Twomey, Jefe del Estado Mayor del IRA y uno de los líderes originales de los Provisionales, no apoyó la tregua pero fue cesado de su cargo debido a su arresto en 1977 por parte de la Garda (Policía) en los 26 Condados.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh y Gerry Adams, conferencia de solidaridad de Londres 1983. Adams derrocó a Ó Brádaigh del liderazgo de los Provos. Ó Brádaigh era dos veces comandante del IRA entre 1958 y 1962, presidente del Sinn Fein Provisional 1970-1983 y del Sinn Fein Republicano 1987-2009.
El nuevo liderazgo, sobre el cual existe la extendida creencia de que Gerry Adams era el personaje principal, junto con un grupo de militantes afines, tomó el control del IRA y del Sinn Féin; el encuentro anual de delegados del partido en 1986 vio cómo Ó Brádaigh y muchos de sus seguidores (lo que no incluía a Twomey) se marchaban para formar poco después el Republican Sinn Féin (desde entonces ligado al IRA de la Continuidad).
El IRA Provisional (y por un tiempo, el INLA, otra escisión del IRA Oficial), combatió en una guerra terrible contra un ejército imperialista moderno con sofisticados sistemas de vigilancia, contra la policía colón británica armada y contra los paramilitares lealistas, controlados por la policía británica y por los servicios de inteligencia militares.
Infligieron un gran número de bajas entre las fuerzas coloniales, pero también sufrieron muchas bajas ellos mismos. Cientos de ellos fueron encarcelados durante grandes periodos de tiempo, y entonces las prisiones mismas se convirtieron también en áreas de lucha.
El área de operaciones de los grupos republicanos estaba prácticamente confinada a los Seis Condados. El Sinn Féin Provisional organizó y llevó a cabo una serie de campañas en los 26 Condados, pero principalmente concentrados en lograr el apoyo para la lucha que se llevaba a cabo en el norte.
El Sinn Féin Provisional no trabajó de forma seria con el movimiento sindical, y cuando uno de sus miembros del Ard-Choiste (Comité Ejecutivo Nacional), Phil Flynn, era un alto cargo sindicalista, tomó parte en lograr un acuerdo de pacto social con el gobierno irlandés con el resultado que el movimiento sindical no fuese una amenaza real para los planes del capitalismo irlandés de ahí en adelante.
Buscando alianzas dentro de Irlanda, el Sinn Féin Provisional (antes y después de la escisión) realizó movimientos de confluencia hacia el ala “republicana” del Fianna Fáil.
El Sinn Féin Provisional no tomó parte en la lucha por la legalización de los preservativos y la píldora anti-conceptiva.Cuando se produjo el referéndum constitucional sobre el aborto, el Sinn Féin Provisional se mostró en contra, mientras que en el del divorcio respondió con evasivas. Cuando se produjo el referéndum acerca de entregar la nacionalidad a los hijos de inmigrantes que hubiesen nacido en Irlanda, su postura era a favor, pero no hicieron ninguna campaña al respecto, concentrándose en su lugar en promover el Acuerdo del Viernes Santo y discutiendo por la retención de las Cláusulas Constitucionales 2 y 3 (aquellas que reivindicaban para toda Irlanda). En otras palabras, en cuatro principales áreas de los derechos civiles, o se tomaron el bando equivocado o fallaron a la hora de movilizarse. Es notable que, en esas ocasiones, el Sinn Féin Provisional se posicionara a la derecha del Partido Laborista irlandés, de línea socialdemócrata.
El Sinn Féin Provisional tampoco se organizó en torno al asunto del desempleo y su consiguiente emigración, un problema que afectaba principalmente a la juventud de todas las capas sociales de Irlanda.
De hecho, el único problema social en el que actuaron con decisión fue en el tráfico de drogas. Aun así, incluso en ese caso, su punto de vista moralista les hacía tratar a todas las drogas igual, excepto por supuesto el alcohol, que vendían en sus clubs y al que ponían un impuesto ilegal en sus áreas, y el tabaco, con el que hacían contrabando a través de la frontera. Su solución al problema de la droga era intimidar a los camellos y conducirles fuera de las áreas donde se llevaban a cabo estas campañas. No obstante, hay persistentes rumores de que cobraban un impuesto a estos camellos en otras áreas como una de sus formas de financiación.
No era de esperar que la mayoría de la gente de los 26 Condados, privados de cualquier referente relativo a las cuestiones económicas y sociales que les afectaban, pudiese ser movilizada exclusivamente acerca de problemas que afectaban tan sólo a una pequeña parte de la población irlandesa, que además vivía bajo otra administración.
El apoyo popular de los Provisionales comenzó a menguar en los 26 Condados, ayudado por la hostilidad de su burguesía, sus medios de comunicación, y su entramado político, mientras que en los Seis Condados ocupados comenzó a calar la fatiga provocada por la guerra.
Fue la lucha de los presos políticos republicanos (principalmente hombres a veces pero con bastante actividad por las presas republicanas), dentro de las cárceles y de sus compañeros y compañeras en el exterior, en principio organizada principalmente por mujeres, la que inspiró nueva vida al movimiento republicano, particularmente en los Seis Condados. Primero la “protesta de la manta”, después la renuncia al aseo, y principalmente la “protesta sucia”, llevaron a la huelga de hambre de 1980. Fue seguida poco después por otra huelga de hambre, esta en 1981, que culminó con la muerte de diez prisioneros republicanos, siete del IRA Provisional y tres del INLA.
La lucha de estos prisioneros y la campaña de quienes les apoyaban galvanizó la comunidad nacionalista de los Seis Condados, y reactivó el movimiento Provisional. Esto también llevó a una exitosa intervención electoral en ambos lados de la frontera, con representación parlamentaria en ambas administraciones.
Trayectoria reformista
De ahí en adelante se puede observar una trayectoria reformista en los Provisionales, ligada a una guerra de guerrillas diseñada para presionar a los británicos y para mejorar la posición negociadora de los Provisionales. En 1998 los Provisionales firman el Acuerdo de Viernes Santo que ganó un apoyo mayoritario con un gran margen en un referéndum en los 26 Condados, y una mayoría raspada en las elecciones de los Seis Condados. De este modo, el Sinn Féin Provisional se convirtió electoralmente en el partido político dominante en la comunidad nacionalista y la segunda fuerza en el conjunto de los Seis Condados.
La estrategia electoral llevó a la primera escisión notable de la organización, de la cual rugió en el 1986 el Sinn Féin Republicano, que ha sido en numerosas ocasiones relacionado con el IRA de la Continuidad, que apareció en escena poco después. En el 1997 se produjo otra escisión de los Provos, de la que se formó el Movimiento por la Soberanía de los 32 Condados (32CSM), ligado normalmente al IRA Auténtico. El 32CSM se escindió después, y los herederos de tal escisión se encuentran en la Red Republicana para la Unidad (RNU). Después de la firma del Acuerdo de Viernes Santo en 1998, un conjunto de personas que dejaron el Sinn Féin (y algunos el IRA) Provisional formaron la organización éirígí (“Alzáos”). Todas estas organizaciones se oponen al Acuerdo de Viernes Santo, al igual que otros pequeños grupos. Todas se declaran socialistas, pero ninguna de ellas está construyendo bases en los sindicatos o en las instituciones educativas, y poco es el trabajo sobre cuestiones sociales y de vivienda en las comunidades.
En las elecciones del 2011 en los 26 Condados (el Estado Irlandés), el partido gobernante, Fianna Fáil, vio duramente reducido su número de votos, debido a una letanía de escándalos financiero-políticos combinados con la crisis financiera del sistema capitalista, durante la cual el gobierno pagó a los especuladores del Banco Anglo-Irlandés con dinero público. Sus jóvenes compañeros de coalición, el Partido Verde, vio su representación completamente eliminada.
El triunfador fue el otro partido burgués, Fine Gael, en coalición con los socialdemócratas del Partido Laborista irlandés. Estos esencialmente continuaron aplicando las políticas de sus predecesores. El Sinn Féin obtuvo 14 escaños, otros 14 fueron para independientes (la mayoría de izquierda), y otros cuatro para dos grupos trotskistas.
La respuesta del Sinn Féin a la crisis ha sido hacer un llamamiento a la inversión interior y la creación de empleo, proclamando que había “una mejor manera, una manera más justa” de manejar la economía. Se han opuesto a los recortes en los 26 Condados (mientras los llevaban a cabo en los Seis) pero no han apoyado la campaña de negarse a registrarse o pagar el Impuesto sobre los Hogares (un nuevo impuesto). Esta fue la mayor campaña de desobediencia civil en la historia del estado y fue un éxito, pero el impuesto fue sustituido por otro, el Impuesto de Bienes Inmuebles, con el Departamento de Ingresos responsable de recoger el impuesto.
Manifestación en Dublín, 13 Abril 2013, que forma parte de la campaña de desobediencia civil contra Los Impuestos del Hogar y del Agua, campaña que no apoyaba el Sinn Féin
En sus formas de organizarse, su énfasis en las elecciones, sus eslóganes, y su respuesta ante una campaña de desobediencia civil, el comportamiento del Sinn Féin en los 26 Condados se enmarca completamente dentro de la línea de un partido socialdemócrata burgués, con la distinción de que al contrario que muchos partidos socialdemócratas, no tiene historia o fuerza dentro del movimiento sindical. Su estrategia parece ser la de formar su propio espectáculo electoral para entrar en un gobierno de coalición con alguno de los partidos de la burguesía en algún momento del futuro.
La trayectoria de los Provisionales de sus inicios hasta el presente puede resumirse en la resistencia anti-imperialista en la colonia (la parte más pequeña del país), intentos de ganar el partido nacionalista burgués del sur (o al menos algún sector del mismo) para su bando, reformismo electoralista con presión militar hasta las negociaciones, después un completo reformismo electoralista en ambos lados de la frontera con participación en el gobierno capitalista e imperialista de la colonia.
La posible alternativa revolucionaria
Había una posible y viable alternativa. En los 26 Condados, hubiese significado movilizar a las masas populares en torno a los problemas sociales y económicos a los que se enfrentaban: desempleo, emigración, escasez de viviendas, falta de desarrollo, erosión de las zonas de habla gaélica, etc. Hubiese significado enfrentarse al capitalismo dominante, a sus partidos políticos, y a su Estado en sus políticas neo coloniales, escándalos, exención de impuestos, derroche de los recursos naturales y sus bases productivas… Para ello, el movimiento de resistencia podría haber construido sus bases en las comunidades, estudiantes y, de forma crucial, entre la clase obrera, organizándose dentro y a través del movimiento sindical, enfrentándose a los líderes socialdemócratas de los sindicatos y luchando contra su ideología y práctica del “pacto social” con la burguesía.
También hubiese significado organizar y liderar a la población en la defensa de sus derechos sociales: divorcio, métodos contraconceptivos, aborto, derechos LGTB, derechos de ciudadanía para inmigrantes, etc. Por supuesto, tres de estos cuatro temas hubiesen significado un conflicto abierto con la Iglesia Católica.
Entonces, la Iglesia misma hubiese tenido que ser atacada para exponer su larga historia de abusos.
En los Seis Condados, la resistencia nacionalista podría haber sido construida en el seno de movimientos populares combativos, siguiendo el modelo de apoyo a los “Hombres de la Manta” y las huelgas de hambre. Estas bases podrían haber sido movilizadas en torno a las políticas sectarias, la represión, el Ejército Británico, vivienda, desempleo, educación, e incluso en el movimiento sindical. Debido a que la comunidad católica sufría desproporcionadamente el desempleo, y la mayoría de los puestos de trabajo estaban reservados para la población protestante, el movimiento sindical hubiese sido el frente con más dificultad a la hora de progresar, pero aún así había posibilidades.
Tales campañas requerirían una disminución, y probablemente una re-dirección, de las acciones militares por parte del movimiento de resistencia. Las campañas electorales podrían haber tenido lugar, pero con el único objetivo de apoyar las luchas populares y de representarlas en las instituciones, no colaborar con éstas o formar parte del Estado.
Había posibilidades y opciones, para una resistencia viable y para la preparación de la revolución social en ambas partes del país, pero no para el movimiento republicano irlandés con su ideología dominante. Un proceso así hubiese requerido una ideología revolucionaria basada en la organización de la clase trabajadora como motor y fuerza dirigente de un movimiento revolucionario.
La mayor parte del republicanismo irlandés nunca ha estado cerca de seguir ese camino, y parece dificíl ver que lo estará.
Aliados en el exterior
Una nación pequeña, con una población total menor que la de Londres, necesita ayuda si quiere enfrentarse al poder del Imperio Británico y su fuerza militar. El republicanismo irlandés siempre ha tenido esto en cuenta, y en 1798 miraron hacia la Francia revolucionaria, en el siglo XVIII a los EEUU, en la primera parte del siglo XX a la Alemania Imperial, y después de nuevo a la EEUU.
Con una excepción, estas eran alianzas temporales y legítimas, pese a que las tormentas impidieron que la Armada de la Francia republicana atracase en Bantry en 1796 y la fuerza que pudo desembarcar en 1798 era demasiado pequeña y llegaba demasiado tarde como para marcar la diferencia, o pese a que el envío de armas por parte de Alemania en 1916 fuese interceptado y que en 1919 no estuviesen en posición de ayudar.
En los Estados Unidos
La excepción mencionada son los EEUU, que al menos desde 1866 en adelante no iba a apoyar a Irlanda en contra el Imperio Británico. La evidencia que permite concluir esto es la invasión feniana de Canadá en ese año, en la que un destacamento de veteranos irlandeses de la Guerra Civil Americana cruzó la frontera con Canadá (entonces colonia británica) apoyados con una fuerza aún mayor esperando en territorio estadounidense. En ese momento, EEUU estaba en una situación contradictoria con Gran Bretaña debido al apoyo reciente de ésta a la Confederación (el “Sur”). Aun así, EEUU cerró la frontera con Canadá, separando a la vanguardia feniana de la fuerza principal y arrestando a un buen número de fenianos (Hermandad Feniano Irlandés).
Hasta 1898, la política estadounidense había sido de imperialismo “interno”: la derrota de las tribus autóctonas y el re-poblamiento de sus tierras con colonos blancos que serían arrastrados bajo la hegemonía de EEUU. La Guerra Estados Unidos-México en 1848, debida a la anexión de Texas por parte de EEUU, tal vez podría ser citada como guerra imperialista, pero había una gran cantidad de población de origen estadounidense en ese territorio, y EEUU simplemente podría haber considerado parte de su territorio.
Pero en 1898, EEUU entró en guerra con el Imperio Español y se anexionó Puerto Rico, invadiendo también Cuba y Filipinas.
Una vez EE.UU. se hubo consolidado como una potencia imperialista a escala mundial, estaba interesado en reemplazar la influencia y el poder francés y británico con el suyo propio, primeramente en el continente Americano y tierras adyacentes, y después en Asia y Oriente Medio (por último en África). Pero no estaba interesado en la eliminación completa de estas potencias imperialistas, sino que más bien estaba encantado de dominar el mundo con Francia y Gran Bretaña como socios menores. Sobre arrebatarles colonias, sólo lo hubiese ocurrido para dominar tal territorio en su lugar. Era muy inocente por parte de los Provisionales creer que podrían apartar a EE.UU. de sus intereses imperialistas, por muy potente que fuese su grupo de presión americano-irlandés.
A medida que la guerra de los Provisionales contra Gran Bretaña en los setenta no mostraba signos de acabar pronto, empezaron a desarrollar relaciones de hermandad con otras organizaciones de liberación en varias partes del mundo, como el Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Vasco, Al Fatah, o el Consejo Nacional Africano (ANC). La relación con Al Fatah no se pretendía desarrollar a un gran nivel, especialmente durante las dos primeras décadas de la guerra irlandesa, debido a que los Provisionales no querían perder el apoyo del lobby burgués americano-irlandés y esperaban cierta ayuda de la Casa Blanca.
Los Acuerdos de Oslo 1993; el presidente EE.UU demócrata Clinton supervisa el acuerdo entre el Presidente de los sionistas israelí Rabin, y Arafat, líder de la OLP. Debido a este acuerdo, la organización Al Fatah, del que Arafat era el líder, perdió su apoyo mayoritario entre los palestinos en los Territorios Ocupados, que posteriormente fue a Hamas.
Después de la actuación de Al Fatah en las negociaciones de Oslo y el “proceso de paz” palestino, la organización comenzó a perder el apoyo de la mayoría del pueblo palestino, y en los territorios ocupados fue reemplazada por Hamás.
El proceso en Sudáfrica parecía haber dado buenos resultados con un gobierno de la mayoría negra, pero con
Policía sudafricana del gobierno del CAN ejecutó a 34 mineros en un día de huelga contra la empresa Anglo American Platinum en Marikana. Unos diez mas habían muerto en días anteriores.
el paso de los años esa “victoria” ha demostrado estar hueca incluso para las personas más ingenuas, especialmente en las últimas semanas, con la masacre de los mineros en huelga por parte de la policía sudafricana enviada por el Consejo Nacional Africano.
El movimiento de liberación nacional vasca está actualmente en su propio proceso de “paz” que muestra muchos signos de ir en la misma dirección que el proceso irlandés y otros que buscan lograr o han logrado la estabilidad temporal del imperialismo.
Dentro de la Gran Bretaña
Dentro de la propia Gran Bretaña había otro lugar en el que encontrar aliados para el movimiento en Irlanda. El Sinn Féin Provisional había cerrado todas sus filiales allí en los setenta, pero mantenía relaciones abiertas con la izquierda anti-imperialista británica y con el ala izquierda del Partido Laborista, de carácter socialdemócrata.
Con la iniciativa Time To Go (“Es la hora de irse”) de los ochenta, intentó unirles, pero esa alianza se fragmentó debido al comportamiento manipulador y carente de principios del sector del Partido Laborista, encabezado por la parlamentaria Clare Short y por John McDonnell (ahora también parlamentario). La Time To Go acabó con tan sólo unos pocos burócratas del Partido Laborista, apoyados tanto por los trotskistas del SWP (Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores) como por el Partido Comunista de Gran Bretaña y, debido sobre todo a este último, de la pequeña Asociación Connolly de la comunidad irlandesa.
Pero perdieron el apoyo primero de la Campaña contra los Registros al Desnudo, seguido del Grupo de Representación Irlandesa en Gran Bretaña, y finalmente del Movimiento Tropas Fuera. Los Provisionales se mantuvieron al margen de estas peleas, pero de facto promocionaron la campaña Time To Go en Gran Bretaña. Se convocó una gran manifestación en Londres, en la que participaron organizaciones normalmente apartadas de la escena de solidaridad irlandesa, pero poco más salió de esa campaña.
Después, los Provisionales fundaron la amplia campaña Saoirse (“Libertad”) para construir la solidaridad con los prisioneros y prisioneras del republicanismo irlandés, pero redujeron su sección británica cuando comenzó a crecer en tamaño y actividad fuera de su control. La reemplazaron más tarde por Fuascailt (“Liberación”), una campaña más pequeña que también concluyeron al pedir a sus miembros que se uniesen a la Sociedad Wolfe Tone (organización partidaria del Sinn Féin).
El Movimiento Tropas Fuera comenzó a acercarse de nuevo a los Provisionales en el Comité por la Retirada Británica (originalmente un amplio comité que planeaba la conmemoración de la masacre del Domingo Sangriento en Derry), y toda la escena de solidaridad irlandesa comenzó a ser cada vez más pequeña, estando su mayor parte bajo control Provisional, con grupos republicanos más pequeños, y activistas y pequeños grupos no influidos por los Provisionales.
Las conmemoraciones anuales de las Huelgas de Hambre en Gran Bretaña se volvieron problemáticas desde que los Provisionales dejaron claro (sin dejarlo nunca por escrito) que no enviarían ponentes a ninguna conmemoración a la que fuesen ponentes de IRSP (Partido Republicano Socialista Irlandés, ligado al INLA). Como tres de los diez mártires de tales huelgas eran afines al IRSP, ponía a la organización de dichas conmemoraciones en una posición muy difícil. O cedían ante la exclusión y censura por parte de los Provisionales, o se oponían a ello y no tenían ponente del mayor de los grupos republicanos.
Durante la mayor parte de esas décadas, los Provisionales (y en menor medida el INLA, después también en IRA Auténtico –Real IRA– y en una ocasión el IRA Oficial) llevaron a cabo campañas de bombas en Inglaterra. Cierto número de las detonaciones del IRA, algunas por error y otras (en apariencia) deliberadas, mataron civiles. Una de esas explosiones, en 1974, aparentemente previo aviso fallido, mató e hirió a un buen número de civiles en Birmingham. Esto dio al Estado británico la legitimidad para aprobar el Acta de Prevención del Terrorismo, la cual facilitó la represión a gran escala de la comunidad irlandesa. Esto, combinado con las falsas acusaciones y condenas de los Seis de Birmingham, los Cuatro de Guildford, los Siete de Maguire y Judith Ward, junto con la campaña mediática británica, creó en la comunidad irlandesa una atmósfera de miedo e intimidación. Eso llevó a un grave parón de la solidaridad a la causa irlandesa hasta que las huelgas de hambre de 1981 galvanizaron la comunidad irlandesa y a partes de la izquierda británica.
La intención del IRA con su campaña de bombas parecía ser disminuir el apoyo de la clase dirigente británica por la guerra y aterrorizar al público para que presionara a su gobierno para retirarse de Irlanda. Sin embargo, estaba claro desde mediados de los setenta, si no antes, que el Estado británico estaba preparado invertir una gran cantidad de recursos financieros, militares, políticos, y judiciales para combatir en Irlanda.
Claramente, mantenerse ocupando los Seis Condados tenía gran importancia para la clase dominante británica más allá de la comprensión de la militancia republicana (y tal falta de comprensión parece mantenerse en el espectro del republicanismo irlandés hasta hoy en día).
Las masas británicas ya habían demostrado su deseo de que se retiraran las tropas de Irlanda en sondeos de opinión públicos. La campaña de bombas no hizo nada para aportar, sino que más bien creó un clima en el que la opinión pública toleraba el abuso de los derechos de la población irlandesa y su represión en Gran Bretaña, junto con la tolerancia de facto de la represión en los Seis Condados, incluyendo asesinatos por parte del Estado.
El Acta de Prevención del Terrorismo 1974 tenía como objetivo específico la comunidad irlandesa porque era la comunidad con más en juego a la hora de oponerse a lo que estaba ocurriendo en los Seis Condados y porque tenían acceso a los hechos, con lo que podían informar a sus amigos británicos, compañeros y compañeras de trabajo, etc.
A pesar de la falta de progreso en sus objetivos y a pesar de su efecto contraproducente, las campañas con bombas del IRA continuaron en Gran Bretaña esporádicamente hasta 1996. Dos años después, el Acuerdo del Viernes Santo marcó el final de cualquier posibilidad para los Provisionales de seguir con las explosiones, aunque otros grupos republicanos “disidentes” podrían hacer uso de esa misma táctica en el futuro.
De nuevo, había alternativas revolucionarias.
Si los Provisionales se hubiesen esforzado en la construcción de alianzas y la movilización, especialmente en ligarse a movimientos de masas sin tratar de controlarlos, el panorama de Inglaterra podría haber sido diferente.
El sector solidario de la comunidad irlandesa debería haber tenido permitido divergir en varios grupos y lealtades políticas pero siempre animado a formar un gran frente de solidaridad con la causa irlandesa de la retirada británica, con el mismo tipo apoyo amplio hacia los prisioneros y prisioneras republicanas. La comunidad irlandesa constituía alrededor del 10% de la población de las ciudades británicas, y suponía una enorme fuente potencial de solidaridad e información a través de sus enlaces sociales y con el sindicalismo, lo cual hubiese podido minar y sobrepasar la censura y propaganda de los medios de comunicación británicos.
Al mismo tiempo, la resistencia en Irlanda debería haber forjado conexiones con la clase obrera británica: quienes les explotan son a su vez opresores del pueblo irlandés. Estas conexiones deberían haber priorizado militantes y grupos revolucionarios por encima de socialdemócratas burocráticos y, de nuevo, mucho de esto podría haber sido realizado a través de la diáspora irlandesa (de aplastante mayoría obrera).
También se podrían haber construido alianzas con las comunidades asiáticas, afro-caribeñas, africanas, etc de Gran Bretaña, unas comunidades sujetas al racismo y a ataques xenófobos en Gran Bretaña y cuyas tierras natales están siendo exprimidas por el imperialismo británico.
Nada de esto hubiese sido fácil, pero a largo plazo podría haber sido mucho más productivo, y una serie de alianzas progresivas habrían significado la masificación de la solidaridad con la causa irlandesa en lugar de lo contrario.
Sin embargo, los provos (y también un caso común dentro de republicanismo irlandés) prefirieron oscilar entre las acciones militares tales como las bombas por un lado, y propuestas reformistas por el otro. Aquellos que fanfarronean de su grado de compromiso con las campañas militares y sus mártires, marginalizando la importancia de activistas solidarios, finalmente acabaron en la administración del Estado colonialjunto a los unionistas y colaborando con la policía colonial británica. A lo largo del proceso, rindieron el estatus de preso político por el cual tantas personas habían luchado y diez de ellas habían muerto en una huelga de hambre.
Conclusión
Stormont Building, sede del gobierno colonial británico en Irlanda desde 1932, excepto durante los años de gobierno directo de Gran Bretaña. Sinn Féin han pasado de la campaña revolucionaria para su abolición y para que la Gran Bretaña salga de Irlanda a formar parte del gobierno colonial, el Ejecutivo de Irlanda del Norte.
Una lucha militar en una pequeña parte de la isla nunca iba a tener la oportunidad de derrotar al imperialismo británico. Además, era necesaria la lucha de masas social y política en toda Irlanda, o al menos en gran parte de ella, para impedir que fuese confinada a una parte del pueblo irlandés, y finalmente contenida.
También eran necesarias alianzas internacionales de carácter revolucionario, no alianzas que pudiesen restringir y minar las demandas de la revolución irlandesa.
Además, alianzas con fuerzas revolucionarias en Gran Bretaña también hubiesen sido fundamentales y, en particular, una relación simbiótica de la lucha revolucionaria en cada país, alimentándose de las fuerzas compartidas pero sin depender la una de la otra.
Si en el momento en que Gran Bretaña ha enviado o considera enviar fuerzas armadas de represión a Irlanda, la clase dominante británica se enfrenta con estallidos revolucionarios en su tierra y en el extranjero, hubiese restringido considerablemente su habilidad para desplegar las tropas mientras al mismo tiempo detona el colapso de la moral y quizá el comienzo de motines entre sus propias Fuerzas Armadas.
Es posible derrotar al imperialismo británico, pero no con las políticas y métodos del movimiento republicano irlandés. Lo que se necesita es un movimiento socialista revolucionario de carácter obrero, que movilice a la población trabajadora irlandesa en torno a los problemas que los afectan de forma directa, practicando la solidaridad internacionalista y creando progresivamente tanto alianzas anti-imperialistas temporales como alianzas permanentes revolucionarias y de clase.
Por desgracia, tal movimiento u organización no existe en Irlanda en este momento.
(La versión dirigida a los irlandeses terminó con la siguiente pregunta: “¿No deberíamos construirla?”)
Deire-Fómhair/ Octubre 2012 (ligeramente revisado en enero 2014).
APÉNDICE
BREVE HISTORIA DE LA LUCHA DEL PUEBLO DE IRLANDA CONTRA EL COLONIALISMO INGLÉS Y IMPERIALISMO BRITÁNICO
En el siglo XII, Irlanda estaba parcialmente conquistada y colonizada por los normandos, que habían invadido y colonizado Inglaterra y Gales cien años antes. Los gobernantes normandos de Inglaterra habían llegado a acuerdos con los gobernantes sajones previos (que a su vez habían sido invasores y colonos de ciertas partes de la Bretaña celta), y comenzaron a llamarse “ingleses” (en gaélico se siguieron refiriendo a ellos de la misma manera que a sus predecesores, como Sacsannaigh, esto es: sajones; y en irlandés moderno aún se sigue haciendo: Sasannaigh).
Las contradicciones se desarrollaron entre estos ingleses y los colonizadores normandos originales de Irlanda,
Normandos de Gales invadieron Irlanda en 1169 y establecieron una colonia. Habían conquistado Inglaterra en 1066. Con el tiempo se convirtieron en “Ingléses”, y extendieron su control hasta que gobernaron toda Irlanda.
a quienes los ingleses se referían como “viejos ingleses” (o, en ocasiones, como “ingleses degenerados”) y los irlandeses como Gall-Ghael (“irlandeses extranjeros”).
Los colonizadores normandos originales se habían mezclado con los nativos (excepto en la ciudad fortificada de Dublín y alrededores), aprendido gaélico irlandés, y adoptado muchas de sus costumbres, así como establecido alianzas mixtas. La exportación a Irlanda de la Reforma en la Iglesia de Enrique VIII e Isabel I, desde mediados del siglo XV a mediados del XVI, junto con las guerras del Parlamento contra sus reyes – Carlos I a principios del XVII y más tarde en ese mismo siglo, la liderada por Guillermo III contra Jacobo II – transformaron a los irlandeses descendientes de normandos en aliados irrevocables de los celtas nativos, y posteriormente ambos grupos de fundieron.
Las sucesivas plantaciones (colonizaciones masivas), dejaron muchas partes de Irlanda ocupadas por comunidades de un origen étnico diferente, de otra adscripción religiosa a la de los nativos, que hablaban otra lengua y ocupaban las mejores tierras, de las que habían sido expulsados los irlandeses. Sin embargo, los colonos continuaban siendo una minoría y eventualmente tuvieron que llegar a ciertos acuerdos con los nativos. Al mismo tiempo, estaba emergiendo una burguesía colonial (similar proceso estaba ocurriendo en lo que después serían los Estados Unidos de América) que veía sus intereses como diferentes en muchas maneras a los de Inglaterra y, como muchos de ellos eran presbiterianos, a los de la Iglesia anglicana (la Iglesia del Estado inglés) establecida en Irlanda. Estas contradicciones crecieron y se mezclaron con ideologías republicanas y anti monárquicas y, envalentonado por la rebelión de los colonos americanos (muchos de ellos presbiterianos) y la Revolución Francesa, un sector de esta burguesía irlandesa (de origen británico) se unió a los irlandeses nativos hacia el final del siglo XVIII y se declararon en rebelión abierta contra el dominio británico.
Notables de los Irlandeses Unidos, el primer movimiento republicano en Irlanda, sobre todo dirigido por los presbiterianos. Después de la derrota de su insurrección de 1798, la comunidad presbiteriana quedó bajo el control ideológicos de la Orden de Orange y el lealismo británico, que es donde se ha mantenido hasta nuestros días.
Las rebeliones republicanas de 1798 (las tres mayores en el noreste, sudeste y oeste de Irlanda) no tuvieron éxito, pero muchos de los que permanecieron en Irlanda se consideraron en lo sucesivo como un solo pueblo, los irlandeses, siendo mayoría pero no todos de fe católica.
La excepción más notable se dio en ciertas partes de Úlster, donde en las consecuencias de la derrota de la rebelión del ’98, la Orden de Orange controló socialmente y más tarde dominio ideológicamente la gran mayoría de la enorme comunidad presbiteriana de allí. Las alianzas políticas de la mayoría de los presbiterianos de allí desde entonces al presente han permanecido fieles a la Monarquía Británica y su Estado. Como sus colonos en Irlanda, siempre se esforzaron por mantener Irlanda para la Corona Británica y a ellos mismos en ascendencia y, al principio del siglo XX, cuando ya no pudieron seguir haciéndolo, trataron de mantener la esquina de Irlanda donde eran más numerosos a salvo para Gran Bretaña y para sí mismos, sojuzgando a los irlandeses nativos bajo su dominio mediante la opresión sectaria y la discriminación en el empleo, vivienda, administración, política y ley.
Sin embargo, antes de esto, al principio del siglo XIX, los irlandeses (ahora una mezcla de nativos con normandos e ingleses asentados) del movimiento de la “Joven Irlanda” habían comenzado a preparar una nueva rebelión republicana. Pero la tragedia de la Gran Hambruna intervino: inanición, hambre, enfermedades y emigración masiva pusieron fuera de juego a la gran rebelión. Años más tarde, otra rebelión a gran escala fue detenida cuando las cuidadosas preparaciones de los Fenianos fueron echadas por tierra con un ataque preventivo de la policía y el ejército británico.
A medida que el final del siglo XIX se aproximaba, los irlandeses volvían a reafirmar su independentismo nacionalista, mediante medios de reforma parlamentaria, agitación agraria (más tarde también con luchas industriales), y preparativos para una insurrección armada. Mientras los Estados europeos y de más allá estaban atrapados en la Primera Guerra Mundial imperialista, los irlandeses se alzaron en una corta y fallida rebelión (Alzamiento de Pascua de 1916) que sin embargo fue seguida por una cruenta guerra de guerrillas (Guerra de la Independencia Irlandesa) en varias zonas de Irlanda.
En 1921 los británicos negociaron un acuerdo que les dejaba ocupando seis de los 32 condados de Irlanda, lo que llevó a la Guerra Civil Irlandesa en 1922 entre el recién nacido Estado irlandés y la mayoría de los anteriores rebeldes, que fueron derrotados.
El nuevo Estado irlandés estaba controlado por los representantes políticos y burocráticos de la burguesía nativa, que continuaba bajo la influencia económica y financiera de la potencia colonial, que también mantenía los seis condados bajo la administración local de la burguesía anglicana y presbiteriana con el control social de los lealistas de la Orden de Orange, y dominando a una minoría católica mediante la policía y el ejército.
El órgano de control social en los 26 condados era la Iglesia católica, conservadora y pro-capitalista.
Ningún gran cambió ocurrió hasta finales de la década de 1960, cuando la agitación comenzó por los derechos civiles en los Seis Condados, oponiéndose a la discriminación contra la minoría católica (casi todos descendientes de irlandeses y normando-irlandeses). A medida que la campaña por los derechos civiles se encontraba con la violencia desatada del Estado, más tarde respaldada por tropas de Gran Bretaña, la minoría católica continuó resistiendo mientras una parte de ella se enzarzó en una feroz guerra de guerrillas tanto urbana como rural. Esto continuó durante prácticamente treinta años, hasta que un acuerdo llevó a la mayoría de las fuerzas guerrilleras a la rendición (Acuerdo de Viernes Santo, 1998).
Ahora, poco más de diez años más tarde, la organización republicana que lideró la lucha contra la ocupación británica de Irlanda se ha incorporado a la administración local de la colonia británica de los Seis Condados y está buscando formar parte de la dirección política de la neo-colonia del resto de Irlanda. El Sinn Féin tiene Ministros en el Ejecutivo del Norte de Irlanda, que es la administración local del Estado colonial británico. El Ejecutivo lleva a cabo recortes en servicios para el pueblo de los Seis Condados, como parte de la estrategia capitalista de trasladar su crisis a la clase obrera, y también reduce los salarios. También administra las fuerzas policiales locales (PSNI), que anualmente refuerza provocativas marchas lealistas que atraviesan zonas católicas enfrentándose a la oposición de la población, y lleva a cabo el acoso tanto individual como comunitario en las áreas de resistencia.
The question of how a nation defeats a stronger colonial or imperialist power which has invaded it is one that has occupied the minds of many revolutionaries – principally those of democratic patriots (in Ireland, read “Republicans”) and socialists. The history of the World shows some victories in this kind of struggle, such as that of the Vietnamese against the USA. It shows however many partial victories too, in which the colonial power was forced to withdraw but where the new rulers of the country gave up the independence within their grasp and became clients of the former colonial power or of a new imperialistic one. The history of both the struggles for socialism and for national liberation, separate but linked in a number of ways, have provided us with many examples from which to draw general lessons which should be applicable to struggles of a similar nature in the past, present and future.
VIETNAM
The Vietnamese nearly had the French colonialists beaten when they were invaded by the Japanese who, as they lost the Second World War, handed half of it back to the French, who then had to relinquish it to the USA, who emerged from the War as the main imperialist superpower.
Vietnamese guerrillas — the guerilla forces and the North Vietnamese Army together defeated the huge superpower the USA
The Vietnamese, in a country smaller than the size of the US State of Virginia, then took up the fight against the USA and fought them for twenty years, endured terrific damage and ultimately beat them. The USA had the best-armed force in the world, with the most powerful economy and constantly developing technology, with a huge population from which to draw soldiers and with a huge war budget. Yet the Vietnamese beat them.
Vietnamese liberation forces tank crashes through the gates of the US Embassy in Saigon as liberation forces take the city from the US puppet regime after US armed forces were forced to withdraw.
Of course they were fighting for their homeland, of course they were courageous, clever and adaptable. But those qualities alone might not have been enough. They had some other favourable factors. They had already liberated half their country – “North Vietnam” — and the USA could not invade that country without risking China and even the USSR coming into direct confrontation with them. That part of their country remained for many years a safe rearguard area for the Vietnamese guerilla fighters of the Viet Cong and for the regular fighters of the North Vietnamese Army, from which they could be supplied with arms and other items.
The Vietnamese also had the support of the Laotian regime and of strong anti-imperialist forces in Cambodia, which provided alternative supply and escape routes for Vietnamese fighters.
In international alliance, the Vietnamese had the People’s Republic of China, which supplied them arms and equipment. In international politics, the whole of the world’s anti-imperialist forces supported them, isolating the USA politically. That fact, allied to the mortality rate of US soldiers, along with the rising radicalisation of youth, created a powerful anti-imperialist-war movement inside the USA itself which also played a part in undermining the morale of US military personnel in Vietnam.
A powerful movement of opposition to the Vietnam War within the USA itself
The terrain of Vietnam is mountainous with valleys and plains, covered with jungle and bamboo groves or with elephant grass higher than a man. It hid guerrillas and regular army units very well.
And crucially, perhaps, the US monopoly capitalists could afford to lose “South Vietnam” – it wasn’t integral to their territory or on their border or even in their “backyard” (as they tend to think of Latin America). Losing it cost them face, a big deal for the world’s superpower, and morale at home. Their ruling class was determined not to lose and they fought very hard to win but as their political and personnel casualties mounted so high, another section wanted to cut it loose. That’s the political reason for “Watergate” and the impeachment of President Nixon.
Ireland
Ireland is no longer forested and is much more urbanised than is Vietnam; it has no friendly liberated zone (the 26 Counties or “Republic” state is hostile to any anti-imperialist movement within the country), nor does it have neighbouring states willing to assist it or at least to turn a blind eye to its territory being used in assistance. It does not now have a good supplier of weaponry (which it only really had briefly in the Libya of the late Ghadaffi). In addition, not only is Ireland in Britain’s “back yard” but it seems as though the island itself is considered as integral to the “United Kingdom”, which is the base of the British monopoly capitalists.
But there have been and are other factors which an Irish anti-imperialist movement can use to its advantage which will be examined here in the context of the anti-imperialist struggles within the country during the last century.
It would be worthwhile first to take a look at a brief summary of the history of Ireland’s struggles against colonialism and imperialism but in case the reader should already be familiar with this history, it is included as an Appendix.
What were the options of the Irish national liberation forces at various points during the last century?
It is always easier to pass judgement on the actors and actions of the past – hindsight has 20/20 vision, as the cliché says – but it is necessary to do so nevertheless, in order to allow lessons of the past to inform our actions in the present and in the future. It is the options that were available to the revolutionary forces and the choices made in the Insurrection of 1916, and the guerrilla wars of 1919 and 1971 that are being examined here, along with their consequences.
The options of the Republican movement at three historical junctures will be examined:
the 1916 Rising
the guerilla War of Independence 1919-1921
the 30 Years’ War 1971-1998
The 1916 Easter Rising
In 1914 the first great imperialist World War had begun and by 1915 the scale of the slaughter was huge. Revolutionary socialists (as opposed to the social-democratic parties who had opted to support their own national bourgeoisies) wanted insurrection in order to stop the slaughter and also as an opportunity for socialist revolution– among these were James Connolly and the Irish Socialist Republican Party, who placed on top of their trade union building a large banner reading: NEITHER KING NOR KAISER! It was also one year after the Irish Transport & General Workers’ union, a recent breakaway from a British-based trade union, had survived an eight-month struggle in which the Dublin employers tried to break it. In the course of that struggle, the union had founded its own militia – the Citizen Army—to defend themselves from the attacks of the police and the organisation continued to exist after the lockout was over.
Revolutionary national democrats, i.e. Republicans, also saw the opportunity to fight for freedom while the colonialist-imperialist occupier was fighting other imperialist powers. They also thought that those countries which had won their independence or at least strongly demonstrated their wish for national independence would have their right to self-determination recognised by the victorious Powers after the war.
Constitutional nationalists, on the other hand, for the most part scrambled to show their loyalty to their colonial masters and, in the case of Ireland, recruited their fellow countrymen to join the slaughter on the battle-fields.
In Ireland, the secret revolutionary society of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the open organisations of the Irish Volunteers (the leadership of which they controlled after splitting with the National Volunteers, many of which joined the British Army) along with the Republican women’s and youth organisations of Cumann na mBan and na Fianna Éireann, joined forces with the trade union and socialist Citizen Army (“the first Red Army in Europe”, allegedly according to Lenin) in an insurrection against British rule. It chiefly took place in Dublin in 1916 and lasted a week. After the insurrectionists surrendered to vastly superior British forces, most were sent to concentration camps, along with many others who had been swept up and interned without trial and most of the leaders were shot by firing squads.
Planning for the Rising
There were a number of elements in the plan for the uprising which are important to consider. The insurrection had been planned in secret not only from the authorities but also from some of the leadership of the Irish Volunteers including its commandant. It was intended to be a country-wide uprising. It was intended to be supplied with large amounts of arms from Imperial Germany, then at war with the British Empire.
The first part of the plan to fail was the failure, due to a change in unloading destination, to meet the German ship and bring the guns ashore and the ship’s subsequent discovery by the British, resulting in the capture of the crew (after they had scuttled the ship) and of Roger Casement, the Irish Volunteers agent who had travelled with them. The second part to go astray was the internal secrecy and when the commandant of the Irish Volunteers learned of the planned rising, along with the failure to land the guns, he canceled the order for the parades and exercises scheduled for Easter Sunday – the code description for the insurrectionary mobilisation. The Rising went ahead on Easter Monday instead, but with only about a thousand men and women mobilised in Dublin, much smaller forces in Meath, Galway and in Wexford and with no communication between the various local forces except by courier, a process taking days.
In Dublin the forces were stretched thin and failed to take some arguably important buildings, including the fortified Dublin Castle, seat of the colonial control of Ireland since the Norman invasion (which also had two of the top British officials in Ireland inside), and Trinity College, which supplied some of the canon used by the British to level buildings and from the roof of which British Army snipers were able to harass the insurgents, killing some of them (apparently taking this large building had not been part of the original plan).
The original plan for the uprising has been examined by a number of authorities – including some from a military background – and debated backwards and forwards. However, a mobilisation which can be cancelled or severely hampered by one person and that person not being part of the plan but who must be expected to learn of it is a monumental weakness. If such an arrangement is to be contemplated, one must at least put in a ‘Plan B’ in case that person attempts to disrupt the mobilisation, a plan which would include lines of speedy communication between the various units it is intended to mobilise.
Arguably another weakness in the plan was that the river Liffey had not been blocked (e.g. by sinking ships in it), which allowed a British gunboat to travel upriver and shell the city. It is said that James Connolly, commandant of the Citizen Army, had thought that the British would not destroy capitalist property. This was not ultimately a crucial factor as the British used other canons to bombard Dublin — but it could have been.
There appears to have been no plans laid for destruction of bridges or railway lines, perhaps because these were intended in the original plan for the mobilisation and communications of the insurgents.
Could it have succeeded?
But even had the plan contained these elements and the full mobilisation had gone ahead, how likely is it that the Rising would have succeeded? Ireland is an island but the British had naval superiority, allowing them to land troops anywhere they wished. It is true they were engaged in a war with other imperial powers and that they had committed most of their armed forces to that struggle. But was it likely that they would be prepared to sacrifice a possession so close to their heartland, a part of their United Kingdom indeed, and also so close to them on their western flank? Would they not sooner risk a possession further afield?
O’Connell St (then Sackvill St) from the Bridge looking north-eastwards. Destruction by bombardment of a major UK city (which it was then) shows determination of the British to crush the Rising.
The likelihood is that, in the event of a successful uprising across most of the land, the British would have responded by landing forces at various parts of the country and, after fierce fighting no doubt, taken any insurgent-held cities. They would have been successful because they had superior training, numbers, armaments, air and naval power (of which the insurgents had none) and because they would have been fighting a largely conventional war in which those elements would be crucial. Subsequently they would have moved from those cities to defeat the detachments still active in the surrounding countryside. They would have been assisted in these operations by those units of their armed forces and police stationed in the country but which had not been captured by the insurgents, and by the Loyalist militia (which was substantial) in some of the northern counties. British control of the seas would have prevented any substantial help arriving for the Irish insurgents from abroad.
The cost to the British would have been substantial: in advantage taken by their enemies in time of war, in political consequences and perhaps in morale among their own troops. But who can doubt that they would have risked all that? Even if they were only to take the Irish cities and hold the loyal northern counties until after the War, they could then deal with the remaining insurgents at greater leisure.
What actually occurred, as we know, was that the Rising was put down in a week, martial law was declared, leaders executed and countrywide raids, arrests and internment without trial followed.
The War of Independence 1919-1921 and retreat from stated objectives
Three years later, the nationalist revolutionaries returned to the armed struggle, this time without a workers’ militia or an effective socialist leadership as allies, and began a political struggle which was combined a little later with a rural guerilla war which soon spread into some urban areas (particularly the cities of Dublin and Cork). The political struggle mobilised thousands and also resulted in the majority of those elected in Ireland during the General Election (in the United Kingdom, of which Ireland was part) being of their party.
The struggle in Ireland and the British response to it was generating much interest and critical comment around the world and even in political and intellectual and artistic circles within Britain itself. In addition, many nationalist and socialist revolutionaries around the world were drawing inspiration from that fierce anti-colonial struggle so near to England, within the United Kingdom itself.
The dismantling by the nationalist forces, by threats and by armed action, of much of the control network of the colonial police force, which consequently dismantled much of their counter-insurgency intelligence service, led the British to set up two new special armed police forces to counter the Irish insurgency. Both these forces gained a very bad reputation not only among the nationalists but also among many British loyalists. The special paramilitary police forces resorted more and more to torture, murder and arson but nevertheless, in some areas of Ireland such as Dublin, Kerry and Cork, they had to be reinforced by British soldiers as they were largely not able to deal effectively with the insurgents, who were growing more resolute, experienced and confident with each passing week.
However, two years after the beginning of the guerilla war, a majority of the Irish political leadership of the nationalist revolutionary movement settled for the partition of their country with Irish independence for one part of it within the British Commonwealth.
Much discussion has taken part around the events that led to this development. We are told that British Prime Minister Lloyd George blackmailed the negotiating delegation with threats of “immediate and terrible war” if they did not agree to the terms. The delegation were forced to answer without being allowed to consult their comrades at home. Some say that the President of the nationalist political party, De Valera, sent an allegedly inexperienced politically Michael Collins to the negotiations, knowing that he would end up accepting a bad deal from which De Valera could then distance himself. Michael Collins, in charge of supplying the guerrillas with arms, stated afterwards that he had only a few rounds of ammunition left to supply each fighter and that the IRA, the guerrilla army, could not fight the war Lloyd George threatened. He also said that the deal would be a stepping stone towards the full independence of a united Ireland in the near future. None of those reasons appear convincing to me.
How could the leadership of a movement at the height of their successes cave in like that? Of course, the British were threatening a worse war, but they had made threats before and the Irish had met them without fear. If the IRA were truly in a difficult situation with regard to ammunition (and I’m not sure that there is any evidence for that apart from Collins’ own statement), that would be a valid reason for a reduction in their military operations, not for accepting a deal far short of what they had fought for. The IRA was, after all, a volunteer guerrilla army, much of it of a part-time nature. It could be withdrawn from offensive operations and most of the fighters could melt back into the population or, if necessary, go “on the run”.
If the military supply situation of the Irish nationalists was indeed dire in the face of the superior arms and military experience of Britain, was that the only factor to be taken into account? An army needs more than arms and experience in order to wage war – there are other factors which affect its ability and effectiveness.
The precariousness of the British situation
In 1919, at the end of the War, the British, although on the victorious side, were in a precarious position. During the war itself there had been a serious mutiny in the army (during which NCOs and officers had been killed by privates) and as the soldiers were demobbed into civilian life and into their old social conditions there was widespread dissatisfaction. Industrial strikes had been forbidden during the War (although some had taken place nonetheless) and a virtual strike movement was now under way.
In 1918 and again in 1919, police went on strike in Britain. Also during 1919, the railway workers went on strike and so did others in a wave that had been building up since the previous year. In 1918 strikes had already cost 6 million working days. This increased to nearly 35 million in 1919, with a daily average of 100,000 workers on strike. Glasgow in 1921 saw a strike with a picket of 60,000 and pitched battles with the police. The local unit of the British Army was detained in barracks by its officers and units from further away were sent in with machine guns, a howitzer and tanks.
Workers pass an overturned tram in London during the 1926 British General Strike. In much of the country no transport operated unless authorised by the local trade union council or under police and army escort.
4.2 The Army Mutinies of January/February 1919 4.3 The Val de Lievre Mutiny 4.4 Three Royal Air Force Mutinies January 1919 4.5 Mutiny in the Royal Marines – Russia, February to June 1919 4.6 Naval Mutinies of 1919 4.7 Demobilization Riots 1918/1919 4.8 The Kinmel Park Camp Riots 1919 4.9 No “Land Fit For Heroes” – the Ex-servicemen’s Riot in Luton 4 4.10 Ongoing Unrest – Mid-1919 to Year’s End
The British Government feared their police force would be insufficient against the British workers and was concerned about the reliability of their army if used in this way. There had already been demonstrations, riots and mutinies in the armed forces about delays in demobilisation (and also in being used against the Russian Bolshevik Revolution).
Elsewhere in the British Empire things were unstable too. The Arabs were outraged at Britain’s reneging on their promise to give them their freedom in exchange for fighting the Turks and rebellions were breaking out which would continue over the next few years. The British were also facing unrest in Palestine as they began to settle Jewish immigrants who were buying up Arab land there. An uprising took place in Mesopotamia (Iraq) against the British in 1918 and again in 1919. The Third Afghan War took place in 1919; Ghandi and his followers began their campaign of civil disobedience in 1920 while in 1921 the Malabar region of India rose up in armed revolt against British rule. Secret communiques (but now accessible) between such as Winston Churchill, Lloyd George and the Chief of Staff of the British armed forces reveal concerns about the reliability of their soldiers in the future against insurrections and industrial action in Britain and even whether, as servicemen demanded demobilisation, they would have enough soldiers left for the tasks facing them throughout the Empire.
The Irish nationalist revolutionaries in 1921were in a very strong position to continue their struggle until they had won independence and quite possibly even to be the catalyst for socialist revolution in Britain and the death of the British Empire. But they backed down and gave the Empire the breathing space it needed to deal with the various hotspots of rebellion elsewhere and to prepare for the showdown with British militant trade unionists that came with the General Strike of 1926. Instead, the Treatyites turned their guns on their erstwhile comrades in the vicious Civil War that broke out in 1922. The new state executed IRA prisoners (often without recourse to a trial) and repression continued even after it had defeated the IRA in the Civil War.
If the revolutionary Irish nationalist leaders were not aware of all the problems confronting the British Empire, they were certainly aware of many of them. The 1920 hunger strike and death of McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, had caught international attention and Indian nationalists had made contact with the McSwiney family. The presence of large Irish working class communities in Britain, from London to GlaSgow, provided ample opportunity for keeping abreast of industrial disputes, even if the Irish nationalists did not care to open links with British militant trade unionists. Sylvia Pankhurst, member of the famous English suffragette family and a revolutionary communist, had letters published in The Irish Worker, newspaper of the IT&GWU. The presence of large numbers of Irish still in the British Army was another source of ready information.
Anti-Treaty cartoon, 1921, depicts Ireland being coerced by Michael Collins, representing the Free State Army, along with the Catholic Church, in the service of British Imperialism
The revolutionary Irish nationalist leaders were mostly of petite bourgeois background and had no programme of the expropriation of the large landowners and industrialists. They did not seek to represent the interests of the Irish workers—indeed at times sections of them demonstrated a hostility to workers, preventing landless Irish rural poor seizing large estates and dividing them among themselves. Historically the petite bourgeoisie has shown itself incapable of sustaining a revolution in its own class interests and in Ireland it was inevitable that the Irish nationalists would come to follow the interests of the Irish national bourgeoisie. The Irish socialists were too few and weak to offer another pole of attraction to the petite bourgeoisie. The Irish national bourgeoisie had not been a revolutionary class since their defeat in 1798 and were not to be so now. Originally, along with the Catholic Church with which they shared many interests in common, they had declined to support the revolutionary nationalists but decided to join with them when they saw an opportunity to improve their position and also what appeared to be an imminent defeat of the British.
In the face of the evident possibilities it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the section of revolutionary Irish nationalists who opted for the deal offered by Lloyd George did so because they preferred it to the alternatives. They preferred to settle for a slice rather than fight for the whole cake. And the Irish bourgeoisie would do well out of the deal, even if the majority of the population did not. The words of James Connolly that the working class were “the incorruptible heirs” of Ireland’s fight had a corollary – that the Irish bourgeoisie would always compromise the struggle. It is also possible that the alternative the nationalists feared was not so much “immediate and terrible war” but rather a possible Irish social revolution in which they would lose their privileges.
Start of the Irish Civil War 1922: Irish Free State bombardment, with cannon on loan from the British Army, of the Republican HQ at the Four Courts, Dublin.
Another serious challenge to the Empire from Irish nationalist revolutionaries would not take place until nearly fifty years later, and it would be largely confined to the colony of the Six Counties.
The thirty years war in the Six Counties
The IRA did not have much success in a number of short campaigns during the 2nd World War or during the 1950s. Sinn Féin, its political party, suffered a major split during the 1930s and the new organisation Fianna Fáil, which adopted a constitutional path, soon became one of the two main bourgeois parties of the new state. This party was in government during the Second World War and felt that its position of neutrality would be undermined by IRA activity against the British. It carried out raids on its former comrades, interned hundreds in inhumane conditions, subjected them to beatings and even killed a few, as well as carrying out state executions.
Sinn Féin reformed itself in the 1960s, revoked its ban on communism and appeared to be developing a socialist outlook; it also concerned itself with social questions within the Irish state and agitated on the question of housing. In addition it carried out campaigns of civil disobedience and trespass around the issue of private ownership by foreign landlords of Irish housing, land and rivers.
In the Six Counties the party contributed to the organisation of the civil rights protest movement but the latter soon outgrew it. After the police there had rampaged through their area and shot a member of the community dead (ironically, a British Army soldier, home on leave), the Catholic communities of Derry and the Falls Road erected barricades to keep the police out and in Derry successfully defended them against repeated attack by the paramilitary police, by their part-time reserves and by rampaging Loyalist mobs.
Split!
Now, when they felt that they needed the weapons, the northern Republicans found that their leadership in Dublin had disposed of them (allegedly sold to a Welsh armed group) and that all that was available to defend their areas was a tiny handful of weapons and only one of them an automatic. This soon led to a split in both the political party and the IRA and the new organisations proclaimed themselves Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA. The original organisation then added the word “Official” to their party and to their armed group. The breakaways quickly became known as the Provisionals (or “Provos” or “Provies”). Later the Officials became known as “the Stickies” (due to an unfortunate innovation of theirs in producing their Easter Lillies — paper representation of the flower to commemorate the Easter Rising — with gum on the reverse).
The Provisionals had no time for socialism. Many of them felt that socialist ideology was what had led to their being left without sufficient weapons when their areas were under attack. They reiterated the traditional soldiers’ complaint against “too much politics”. Also, they had in their leadership not a few of quite conservative Catholic ideology. On the international front, of which they had little, Fred Burns O’Brien, a US-based Irish Republican but a Zionist, for a time had a column in the Provos’ newpaper An Phoblacht, in which from time to time he extolled the example of the Zionists. A letter of protest from one reader that the natural allies of the Irish were the Palestinians and not the Zionists was not published and O’Brien continued to write in An Phoblacht for some time afterwards.
The Provos took on the British Army when it was sent in to prop up the statelet against the people’s uprising which the colonial police force seemed unable to quell. They were soon fighting primarily the soldiers of the British Army, the armed colonial police and the undercover death squads of both units. In addition, and to a much lesser extent, they were fighting the Loyalist paramilitaries, who mostly concentrated their attacks on random Catholics.
New leadership of the Provisionals
Gradually a new leadership began to form within the ranks of the Provisionals. The old one had become somewhat discredited – Mac Stiofáin for getting caught with incriminating papers, then starting a hunger strike to the death which he later abandoned. Ó Brádaigh’s leadership lost some credibility for their loudly proclaiming that 1972 and then 1974 would be Bliain an Bhua, the Year of Victory (which of course neither was). Also his leadership had held the ceasefire and truce of 1975, from which no advantage to the Provos could be seen, as the British reneged on the truce and brought in even more repressive measures; also the possible propaganda benefits were not prepared for and naturally did not materialise. “Moss” Twomey, Chief of Staff of the IRA and one of the original leaders of the Provisionals, had not supported the truce but was removed from his position due to his 1977 arrest by the Gardaí in the 26 Counties.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (left) was ousted by Gerry Adams (right) from the Provos’ leadership, both seen here at an Irish solidarity conference in London 1983. Ó Brádaigh was twice chief of staff of the IRA between 1958 and 1962, president of Provisional Sinn Fein from 1970 to 1983 and of Republican Sinn Fein from 1987 to 2009,
The new leadership, of which Gerry Adams is widely believed to have been the principal actor, with a group around him took effective control of the IRA and of Sinn Féin and the party’s annual delegate meeting in 1986witnessed a walkout by Ó Brádaigh and most of his supporters (which did not include Twomey) who then went on to form Republican Sinn Féin (often since linked to the Continuity IRA).
The Provisional IRA (and for awhile, INLA, another split from the Official IRA) fought on in a hard war against a modern imperialist army and armed police force with their sophisticated surveillance systems and their Loyalist paramilitaries, managed by British police and army intelligence agencies. Armed Republicans inflicted heavy casualties on the colonial forces and themselves took many casualties. Hundreds of them went to prison for long terms of imprisonment and the prisons became area of hard struggle too.The area of operations of the Republican groups was almost exclusively confined to the Six Counties. Provisional Sinn Féin organised and ran campaigns throughout the Twenty-Six Counties but mostly focused on garnering support for the fight in the Six.
PSF did not do any serious work among the trade union movement and when one of their Ard-Choiste (National Executive) members, Phil Flynn, was a senior union official, he took part in reaching social partnership agreements with the Irish government that were to eliminate the trade union movement as any element of real resistance to the plans of Irish capitalists from then onwards to the present day.
In seeking alliances within Ireland, it was to the “Republican” margin of the bourgeois Fianna Fáil party that PSF, both before and after the split, made their major overtures.
PSF took no part in the struggle for the legalisation of condoms and the anti-conception pill. When the constitutional referendum on abortion was held, PSF were opposed and in the referendum on divorce, they equivocated. When the referendum on the nationality status of immigrants’ children born in Ireland was held, they pronounced themselves in favour of full citizenship but failed to campaign on the issue, restricting themselves instead to their local government election campaign. In other words, in four major areas of civil rights, they either took the wrong side or failed to mobilise. It was notable that on these occasions, PSF stood to the right of the social-democratic Irish Labour Party.
PSF also failed to organise around the issue of unemployment and of its resulting emigration, a huge drain of young people which affected most social classes in Ireland. In fact, the only one of the social issues in which they acted with any resolution was in the campaign against drug dealing. However, even there, their moralistic outlook treated all drugs as the same, with the exception of alcohol of course, which they sold in their clubs and which they illegally “taxed” in their areas, and of tobacco, which, in the form of cigarettes, they smuggled across the Border. Their solution to the drug problem was to intimidate drug merchants and to drive them out of the areas where campaigns were active. However, rumours persist that they actually “taxed” drug merchants in many other areas as one of their sources of revenue.
It was not to be expected that the majority of people in the Twenty-Six Counties, deprived of any leadership on any of the economic and most of the social issues that affected them, could be mobilised exclusively on the issues affecting a small part of the Irish population under another administration. Popular support for the Provisionals began to wane in the Twenty-Six Counties, aided by a hostile bourgeoisie, their media and political establishment, while in the Six Counties, war-weariness began to set in.
It was the struggle of the Republican political prisoners, largely male, inside the jails and their supporters outside, initially largely organised by their female relatives, which breathed new life into the Republican movement, particularly in the Six Counties. First the “blanket protest”, then the “no-wash” and finally the “dirty protest” led to the hunger-strike of 1980. This was followed shortly by another hunger-strike in 1981 culminating in the death of ten Republican prisoners, seven of Provisional IRA and three INLA.
The struggle of the prisoners and the campaigning of their supporters galvanised the nationalist community in the Six Counties and re-animated the Provisional movement. It also led to a successful Republican electoral intervention on both sides of the border, with a parliamentary representative elected in both administrations.
Reformist trajectory
From then onwards a reformist electoral trajectory is perceivable among the Provisionals, linked to a guerilla war that is designed to pressure the British and to be used to improve the Provisionals’ bargaining position. In 1998 the Provisionals signed the Good Friday Agreement which then won majority support by a large margin in a Twenty-Six Counties referendum and a slim majority in Six-County elections. Subsequently Provisional Sinn Féin became the dominant political party in the nationalist community and electorally second force overall in the Six Counties.
The electoral strategy led to the organisation’s first notable split, from which arose in 1986 Republican Sinn Féin, which has often been linked to the Continuity IRA which appeared on the scene soon afterwards. In 1997 another split took place from which was formed the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, usually linked to the Real IRA. The 32 CSM itself later split and the heirs of that split are to be found in the Republican Network for Unity. After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement 1n 1998, a number of people who left SF and the Provisional IRA went on to form the organisation éirigí (“rise up”). All of these are opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, as are a few smaller groups.
In the 2011 general election in the Twenty-Six Counties, the ruling Fianna Fáil party was hugely reduced, due to a litany of financial-political scandals combined with the capitalist financial crisis, in which the government paid the speculators of the Anglo-Irish bank with public money. Their junior coalition partners, the Green Party, were totally wiped out. The victors were the next major bourgeois party, Fine Gael, in coalition with the social-democratic Labour Party. These essentially continued the policies of their predecessors. Sinn Féin won 14 seats, along with 14 Independents (mostly left-wing) and four from two Trotskyist groups.
The response of Sinn Féin to the financial crisis has been to call for inward-investment and job-creation while saying that “there is a better, fairer way” of managing the economy. They have opposed cuts in the Twenty-Six Counties (while implementing them in the Six) but did not support the campaign to refuse to register for, or to pay the Household Tax (a new tax). This was the biggest campaign of civil disobedience in the history of the state and was successful; however the tax was replaced by another, the Property Tax, with the Revenue Department responsible for collecting payment.
Dublin demonstration, 13 April 2013, part of a campaign against the Household & Water Taxes, the biggest civil disobedience campaign in the history of the State, which Sinn Féin did not support.
In their ways of organising, the electoral emphasis, their slogans and their response to a militant civil disobedience campaign, the behaviour of Sinn Féin in the Twenty-Six Counties is totally in line with that of a bourgeois, social-democratic party, with the distinction that unlike most social-democratic parties it has no history or strength in the trade union movement. Their strategy would seem to be to build up their electoral performance in order to go into coalition government with one of the other bourgeois political parties at some point in the future.
The trajectory of the Provisionals from beginning to the present can then by summed up as armed anti-imperialist resistance in the colony, the smallest part of the country, attempts to win the southern nationalist bourgeois party (or sections of it) on to their side, electoral reformism with military pressure until negotiations, then total electoral reformism on both sides of the Border with participation in colonialist and capitalist government in the colony.
The possible revolutionary alternative
There was a possible and viable alternative. In the Twenty-Six Counties, that would have meant mobilising the mass of people on the social and economic issues confronting them: unemployment, emigration, housing shortage, lack of development, erosion of the Irish-speaking areas. It would have meant confronting the ruling capitalists, their political parties and the state on their comprador and neo-colonial policies, scandals, tax breaks, give-away of natural resources and production bases. For that, the resistance movement could have built bases among communities, students and crucially, workers, organising in and across the trade union movement, taking on the social-democratic trade union leaders on their own ground and fighting their ideology and practice of “social partnership” with the bourgeoisie.
It would also have meant organising and leading people in defence of civil and social rights – contraception, divorce, abortion, gay rights, citizenship rights for immigrants. Of course, the first four of those issues would have meant open conflict with the Catholic Church.
Then the Church itself would have needed to be attacked and exposed on the massive practice and history of abuse.
In the Six Counties, the nationalist communal resistance could have been built into large popular movement struggles, on the model of the support for the “Blanket Men” and the hunger-strikers. Such bases could have mobilised around issues of sectarian policing and repression, British army repression, housing, unemployment, education and even in the trade union movement. As the Catholic community in the Six Counties suffered hugely and disproportionately from unemployment, and as the Protestant community had the lion’s share of jobs, the trade union movement would have been the most difficult area in which to progress but nevertheless there were possibilities there.
Such campaigns required possibly a scaling down and certainly an attendant re-direction of military actions by the resistance movement. The electoral campaigns still could have taken place but with the objective only of supporting these popular struggles and to representing them in the institutions, not to colloborate with the institutions or to become part of them.
There were possibilities, options, for viable resistance and preparation for revolution in both parts of the country. But not for the Irish Republican movement, with its dominant ideology. It required a revolutionary socialist ideology based on the organising of the working class as the motor and leading power of a revolutionary movement. No major part of Irish Republicanism has ever come close to following that path and the indications are that it never will.
Allies abroad
A small nation with a total population of far less than that of London is going to need help to take on an imperial power of Britain’s size and armed strength. Irish Republicans have always recognised this and in 1798 looked to revolutionary France, in the 1800s to the USA, to imperial Germany in the very early part of the 20th Century and again to the USA later.
With one exception, these were legitimate temporary alliances, although Republican France’s armada was prevented by gales from landing in Bantry in 1796 and the force that landed in Mayo in 1798 came too late and was too small to make a decisive difference. Also one landing of German arms failed in 1916 and they were in no position to help in 1919.
In the USA
The exception was the USA, which from 1866 onwards at least was clearly not going to help the Irish against England and the British Empire. The conclusive evidence of that was the occasion of the Fenian invasion of Canada that year, when a detachment of Irish veterans of the American Civil War crossed into Canada (then a British colony) with an even larger force waiting in reserve just across the river in US territory. At that time the US had a sharp contradiction with England because of the latter’s support for the Confederacy. Nevertheless, the USA closed the border with Canada, leaving the Fenian advance party cut off from their main force; they also arrested a number of the Fenians.
Until 1898, US policy had been concentrated on “internal imperialism”, the defeat of the indigenous tribes and the settling of large tracts of their lands by white people, who were then to be drawn into the hegemony of the United States. The US-Mexico War of 1846, arising from the US’s annexation of Texas, could be cited as an imperialist war but the territory contained a large population of US Americans and the US could have considered it part of its natural territory. But in 1898, the USA went to war with Spain and invaded and annexed Puerto Rico, invading also Cuba and the Philippines.
Once the USA itself became an imperial power on the world stage, it was interested in displacing and replacing the dominant British and French power and influence with its own, firstly on the American continent and outlying lands, then in Asia and in the Middle East (later in Africa). But it was not interested in the complete elimination of either the British and the French imperialists and was happy to rule the world with them as minor partners. As for depriving them of colonies, that would be only when the US could control them instead. For the Provisionals to believe that they could sway the US from its imperial interests, no matter how powerful their Irish-American lobby, was incredibly naive.
As the war the Provisionals were waging against Britain in the 1970s showed no sign of ending soon, they began to develop fraternal relations with some other liberation organisations around the world such as the Basque liberation movement, Al Fatah and the ANC. The relationship with Al Fatah was not likely to be developed to a high level, especially not during the first two decades of the Irish war – because the Provisionals did not want to lose the support of their bourgeois Irish American lobby and were counting on help from the White House.
1993, US Democrat President Clinton oversees agreement on the Oslo Accords between President of the Israeli Zionists Rabin and Arafat, leader of the PLO. Because of this agreement, the Al Fatah organisation, of which Arafat was leader, lost its majority support among the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories which subsequently went to Hamas.
After Al Fatah’s performance in the Oslo negotiations, the Palestinian ‘peace process’, the organisation began to lose the support of the majority of Palestinians, and was replaced in the occupied territories by Hamas.
South African police of the ANC government executed 34 miners in one day for striking against Anglo-American Platinum mine at Marikana in August 2013. A further ten had been killed over the previous couple of days.
The South African process seemed to yield some good results with black majority rule but how hollow that victory was has been revealed over the years and even to the naive, especially with the recent massacre of striking miners by South African police sent by the ANC government.
The Basque liberation movement is currently in a ‘peace’ process of its own which shows many signs of going in the same direction as the Irish process and others which have achieved or sought to achieve temporary stability for imperialism.
In Britain
Inside Britain was another possible area for the Irish to cultivate allies. Provisional Sinn Féin had closed all its branches there during the 1970s but kept relations open with some groups such as the Troops Out Movement and formed its own support group, the Wolfe Tone Society, active in London only.
Thereafter, the Provisionals veered between seeking an alliance with the Irish community, with the British anti-imperialist Left and with the Left wing of the social-democratic Labour Party. With the Time To Go initiative of the 1980s, it was hoped to bind all these together but the alliance fragmented due to the manipulative and unprincipled behaviour of the interested section of the Left of the Labour Party, headed by Clare Short MP and John Mc Donnell (now also an MP). Time To Go ended up with only a handful of Labour Party left bureaucrats, supported by the trostkyist SWP and the Communist Party of Great Britain and, due in part to the latter, the small Connolly Association from the Irish community.
But they lost the support first of the Stop Strip Searches Campaign, next of the Irish in Britain Representation Group and finally of the Troops Out Movement. The Provisionals stayed out of the fight but in effect endorsed the Time To Go campaign in Britain. One big London demonstration was convened in which organisations not usually seen on the Irish solidarity scene participated but little more was seen of the campaign.
Subsequently the Provisionals founded the broad campaign Saoirse to build solidarity with Irish Republican prisoners but folded the British section up when it began to grow in size, activity and out of its control. They replaced it later with Fuascailt, a smaller campaign which they soon wound up also, asking all its members to join their Wolfe Tone Society.
The Troops Out Movement began to get closer to the Provisionals again in the Committee for British Withdrawal (originally a broad planning committee for the commemoration of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry) and the whole Irish solidarity scene in Britain became smaller and smaller, mostly under the Provisionals’ control, with smaller Republican groups and some independent activists and groups not unduly influenced by the Provisonals.
Annual commemorations of the Hunger Strikers in Britain had become problematic once the Provos made it clear (without ever putting it in writing) that they would not send a speaker to any commmemoration to which an IRSP speaker was also to be invited. Since three of the ten martyrs had IRSP allegiance, this placed commemoration committees in a difficult position. They either had to collude in the exclusion and censorship being carried out by the Provisionals, or stand against it and receive no speakers from the main Republican organisation of that time.
During most of these decades, the Provisionals (and to a lesser degree INLA and later the Real IRA, with on one occasion the OIRA) also ran bombing campaigns in England. A number of IRA explosions, some through error and some apparently deliberately, killed civilians. One of these explosions in 1974, with apparently a failed warning, killed and maimed a large number of civilians in Birmingham. This gave the British state the excuse and climate to rush through the Prevention of Terrorism (sic) Act which facilitated wide-scale repression of the Irish community. That, combined with the framing of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and Judith Ward, along with a British media campaign, created in the Irish community an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. That in turn led to a huge drop in Irish solidarity activity until the Hunger Strikes of 1981 galvanized the Irish community and some British Left into action again.
The IRA’s intention with the bombing campaign seemed to be to wear down the British establishment’s support for the war and to terrorise the British public into pressurising their government to withdraw from Ireland. It seemed pretty clear however by the mid-1970s if not even earlier that the British state was prepared to invest a considerable amount of financial, military, political and judicial capital into fighting its war in Ireland. Clearly remaining in occupation and control of the Six Counties had an importance for the British ruling class above and beyond that which the Republicans understood (and this lack of understanding seemingly continues across the Irish Republican spectrum right up to the present day).
The British public had already demonstrated in published results of opinion polls its wish to see the British troops withdrawn from Ireland. The bombing campaign did nothing to add to that and only helped create a climate of public opinion that tolerated abuses of Irish people’s civil rights and their repression in Britain, along with a de facto toleration of repression, including state assassinations, in the Six Counties.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act specifically targeted the Irish community because it was the community with the biggest stake in opposing what was happening in the Six Counties and which had access to the facts with which to inform their British friends, workmates etc.
Despite lack of success in their apparent objectives and despite also their counter-productive effects, IRA bombing campaigns in Britain continued sporadically right up until 1996. Two years later the Good Friday Agreement marked the end of any possibility of the Provisionals exploding any further bombs although other ‘dissident’ Republican groups may return to these in the future.
Again, there were revolutionary alternatives.
If the Provisionals had given their work of building alliances some consistent impetus and concentrated it on mobilising work, especially in liaison with broad movements without attempting to control them, the picture in England could have been very different.
The Irish community solidarity sector should have been allowed to diverge into various groupings and political loyalties but encouraged to form a broad Irish solidarity front for British withdrawal with the same kind of broad support for Republican prisoners. The Irish community constituted an average of 10% of the population of British cities and was an enormous potential source of direct solidarity and also of information through their social and trade union links which could bypass and undermine British media propaganda and censorship.
At the same time, the resistance in Ireland should have forged links with the British working class — their exploiters were the oppressors of the Irish. Those links should have prioritised grassroots and revolutionary groups rather than social-democratic bureaucrats and again, much of this could have been done through the Irish diaspora (which was overwhelmingly working class in nature).
Alliances could also have been built with the Asian, Afro-Caribbean, African etc. diasporas in Britain, communities subject to racism and racist attacks in Britain and whose homelands were being exploited by British imperialism.
None of this would have been easy but would have, in the long run, been a much more productive and progressive series of alliances and would have meant the broadening of the Irish solidarity base rather than its contraction.
However, the Provos, as often the case with Irish Republicanism, preferred to oscillate between military actions like bombing on the one hand and reformist overtures on the other. Those who boasted of the extent of their commitment to the war against British imperialism by pointing to their military campaign and martyrs, marginalising the efforts of solidarity activists, finally ended up in joint administration of the British colony alongiside Unionists and colluding with the British colonial police force. Along the way, they surrendered the political prisoner status for which so many had fought and ten prisoners had died.
Conclusion:
Stormont Building, seat of the British colonial government in Ireland since 1932 except during years of direct rule from Britain. Sinn Fein have gone from revolutionary campaigning for its abolition and Britain getting out of Ireland to being part of the colonial government, the Northern Ireland Executive.
A military struggle in a small part of the island was never going to defeat British imperialism. What was also needed was a social and political mass struggle across the whole or at least most parts of Ireland, so that it could not be confined to one part or one section of the Irish people and so eventually contained. What were needed in addition were revolutionary alliances internationally, not alliances that would restrict and undermine the demands of the Irish revolution.
In addition, alliances with revolutionary forces across Britain were also needed and, in particular, a symbiotic relationship of the revolutionary struggle in each country feeding into the other without dependence by either. If at the moment when Britain has already sent or seriously considers sending armed forces of repression to Ireland, their British ruling class is simultaneously faced with revolutionary upsurges at home and abroad, that will certainly restrict their ability to deploy troops while at the same triggering collapse of morale and probably mutinies in their own armed forces.
It is possible to defeat British imperialism but not with the methods and politics of Irish Republicanism. What is needed is a revolutionary workers’ socialist movement, mobilising Irish working people wherever possible on the issues directly affecting them, practising revolutionary internationalist solidarity and making progressive temporary anti-imperialist and permanent revolutionary class alliances.
Unfortunately no such movement or even party exists in Ireland at this moment. Should we not build one?
APPENDIX – Brief overview of the history of colonisation of Ireland and of resistance
Norman invasion and colonisation
In the 12th Century Ireland was partially conquered and part-colonised by Normans who had invaded and colonised England and Wales a hundred years earlier. The Norman rulers of England had reached an accommodation with the previous Saxon rulers (themselves originally also invaders and colonisers of parts of Celtic Britain) and became known as “the English” (the Gaels referred to them in the same way as to their predecessors, as “Sacsannaigh”, i.e. “Saxons” and, in modern Irish, still do: “Sasannaigh”).
Normans from Wales invaded Ireland in 1169 and established a colony. They had conquered England in 1066. Over time they became “the English” and extended their control until they ruled the whole of Ireland.
Contradictions developed between these English and the original Norman colonisers of Ireland, those to whom the English referred as “Old English” (or, at times, “degenerate English”) and whom the Irish came to call “Gall-Ghael” (“Foreign Irish”).
The original Norman colonisers had, except in and near the fortified town of Dublin, intermarried with the native Irish, learned to speak Irish and adopted many of their customs, and developed mixed allegiances. The exporting to Ireland of the Reformation of the Christian church in England under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in the mid-15th to mid-16th Centuries, along with the wars of Parliament against their kings – Charles I in the mid-17th Century and later that century, headed by William III against James II — turned the Irish of Norman descent into irrevocable alliance with the native Gaels and subsequently they merged with them.
Plantations, further colonisation
Successive plantations (mass colonisations) left many parts of Ireland occupied by communities of a different ethnic background, of another religious persuasion to that of the natives, speaking a different language and occupying the best lands, from which the native Irish had been driven. However, the colonists were still in a minority and eventually also had to come to some kind of terms with the natives. At the same time, a colonial bourgeoisie was arising (as it did in what was to become the United States of America) which saw its interests in many ways as distinct from those of England and, for some of them such as Presbyterians, even from the Anglican Church (the English state church) established in Ireland. These contradictions matured and merged with republican and anti-monarchical ideology and, encouraged by the rebellion of the American colonists (many of them of Ulster Presbyterian stock) and by the French Revolution, a section of this new Irish bourgeoisie (of British origin) joined with the native Irish towards the end of the 18th Century and came out in open rebellion against British rule.
Republican uprisings
The Republican uprisings of 1798 (three major ones in one year in the north-east, south-east and west of Ireland) were unsuccessful but most of those who remained in Ireland were henceforth to see themselves as essentially one people, the Irish, mostly but not all of the Catholic faith. The notable exception was in parts of Ulster, where in the aftermath of the defeat of the rising there in ’98, the Orange Order had gained social control and later ideological sway over the majority of the large Presbyterian community there. The political allegiance of the majority of the Presbyterians from then to the present day remained towards the British Monarch and state. As its colonists in Ireland they strove to keep Ireland for the British Crown and themselves in ascendancy and, in the early part of the 20th Century, when they could no longer do that, to keep the corner of Ireland where they had the greatest concentration safe for Britain and for themselves, subjugating the native Irish within their domain to sectarian oppression and discrimination in employment, housing, administration, policing and law.
Notables of the United Irishmen, the first Republican movement in Ireland, mostly led by Presbyterians. After the defeat of its 1798 insurrection, the Presbyterian community came under the idealogical control of the Orange Order and British Loyalism, which is where it has remained to this day.
However, earlier than that, back in the middle and late 19th Century, the Irish (now a mixture of Gael with Norman and English settler stock), under the “Young Irelanders”, had begun to prepare for Republican rebellion once again. But the calamity of the Great Hunger at the middle of the century intervened. Starvation, hunger, disease and mass emigration put off large-scale rebellion. Another large scale rebellion was averted a score of years later as the Fenians’ careful preparations were brought to nought by a pre-emptive strike of the British military and police.
As the end of the 19th Century approached, the Irish were again asserting an independent nationhood, through parliamentary reformist means, agrarian agitation (and later through industrial struggles too) and preparations for armed insurrection. While the states of Europe and further afield were locked in the First imperialist World War in the early 20th Century, the Irish rose in short and unsuccessful rebellion which however was followed by an intense guerilla war in various parts of Ireland.
The 1921 Treaty and the 1998 Anglo-Ireland Agreement
In 1921 the British negotiated an agreement which left them in occupation of six out of Ireland’s 32 Counties and caused a Civil War in 1922 between the fledgling Irish state and the majority of the previous insurgents, in which the latter were defeated. The new Irish state was managed by the political and bureaucratic representatives of the native bourgeoisie who remained basically under the economic and financial influence of the former colonial power, which maintained also its Six Counties colony under the local administration of the Presbyterian and Anglican bourgeoisie with social control of Loyalists by the Orange Order and control of the Catholic minority by police and military. The organ for social control in the 26 Counties was the Catholic Church, conservative and pro-capitalist.
No great change occurred until the late 1960s when agitation began for civil rights in the Six Counties, opposing discrimination against the Catholic minority (for the most part, descendants of the native Irish and Norman-Irish). As the campaign of protest and civil disobedience was met with the full violence of the statelet, later backed by troops from Britain, the Catholic minority continued communal resistance while a part of it engaged in a fierce urban and rural guerilla war. This lasted nearly thirty years, until a deal was struck (the Good Friday Agreement 1998) and most of the guerilla forces stood down.
Now, little over ten years later, the Republican organisation which led the fight against the British occupation of Ireland has become incorporated into the local administration of the British colony of the Six Counties and is seeking to become part of the political management of its neo-colony in the rest of Ireland. Sinn Féin has Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive, that is the local administration of the British colonial statelet. The NIE implements cuts in services for the people in the Six Counties, as part of the capitalists passing their financial crisis on to the working class, also holding down wages. It manages the local police force which annually forces provocative Loyalist marches through Catholic areas against the opposition of the local people and carries out communal and individual harassment in areas of resistance.
An interview with Dominic McGlinchey was recently published by Connla Young of the Irish News on Friday 24 January 2014 and Anthony McIntyre published a longer version of it in his blog, The Pensive Quill (http://thepensivequill.am/2014/01/dominic-mcglinchey-interview-saying.html). Scrolling through the dozens of comments on the interview in the blog, it seems that most readers agreed with McGlinchey’s observations which, if the commentators are following McIntyre, would probably not be too surprising.
Nevertheless, there is at the moment an atmosphere of reflection in much of the Irish Republican movement. Among the questions being asked are whether continuing (or restarting, according to one’s definition) armed struggle is the way (or part of the way) forward in the struggle against British colonialism in Ireland. Reflection is overdue in this movement and at this time and it is most welcome. However, I believe that the question being asked is the wrong one. It seems to me that the questions being asked and which have been asked in the Republican movement often are the wrong questions, which is why British imperialism continues to be able to defeat us.
A more useful question might be: Why did British imperialism succeed in defeating the Republican movement in the recent 30 Years’ War? The usual reply to this is “Our leaders betrayed us” or, from those who were not in PSF or in PIRA at the time of the “Peace Process” and the Good Friday Agreement (which most of their present critics were, it is well to remember), “the Shinners sold us out”. But such replies only give rise to other questions, such as Why did your leaders betray you and how was it you let them do it? Or Why did “the Shinners” sell you out and why were they able to do so?
Another frequent response to the failure to succeed in struggle (and not just in Ireland, believe me!) is The media were against us. I do not intend to discuss that response here other than to say that when revolutionaries expect the media of their enemies to treat them well, or when they feel that the success of their endeavours depends on such favourable treatment by their enemies, then we have lost already!
Having posed what I believe to be more fundamental questions, I will attempt to answer them. British imperialism was not only able to defeat the Republican movement in the 30 years war but, in the long run, was guaranteed to defeat it, for the following reasons:
The Republican struggle was concentrated on an area consisting of a fifth of the country and in which a large section of the population was under the hegemony of Unionism
The Republican struggle held no reason to the mass of people in the rest of the country to contribute to the struggle other than solidarity with Catholics in the Six Counties and a vague promise of a better future under Republicanism
The Republican movement valued its hegemony so much that it strangled what it considered competition
The Republican movement usually sought allies in the wrong quarters.
There is a fifth reason, which I will discuss later.
So, let me now elaborate on these reasons.
1. The Republican struggle was concentrated on an area consisting of a fifth of the country and in which a large section of the population was under the hegemony of Unionism.
If we stand back a bit and look at the struggle with that in mind, it is obvious that defeat could only be inevitable.The only thing that should surprise us is how long it took to be defeated, which is a tribute to the militancy, courage, resolution and endurance of the “Nationalist” people and of the Republican movement.
The Republican struggle was waged in the Six Counties because that’s where an allied but different struggle broke out, that of Civil Rights. The Six Counties was a colonial statelet with fascist laws and blatant discrimination against a huge minority, the “Catholic” or “Nationalist” community. Many in that community had no permission to vote while some from the majority community, the “Protestants” or “Unionist”, had two votes each. Electoral boundaries were artificially drawn to give Unionists a majority in areas where they were actually in a minority. Housing and jobs and institutions of higher learning went mostly to Unionists. The British flag was everywhere and the Irish tricolour was banned. The state had a whole set of emergency legislation which it often enacted, even to ban historical commemorations or meetings. The police force was Unionist, armed and sectarian and their part-time reserve, also armed, was if anything worse. (I am not unaware that a number of those things are still true, by the way).
The campaign for civil rights for the “Nationalists” and for a democratisation of the Six County statelet was repressed by the state which led to ongoing confrontation between the sectarian colonial police force, including its reserves and supported by civilian Loyalist zealots, and the campaign. Some areas became totally blocked to state access and so successful was the resistance of the people that, despite huge amounts of tear gas, numerous baton charges and some firing of live rounds, the statelet’s forces could no longer cope and its master, the British state, sent in its troops.
From that moment onwards the stage was set for struggle directly between the Republican movement and British colonialism, backed by the armed forces of British imperialism. And given the history of all those entities and the stakes being played for, it was inevitable that a significant part of that struggle would be an armed one. But while the Republican movement made the mistake of prioritising that aspect overall, British imperialism did not; despite many mistakes, it always kept the long view in mind and prioritised the political struggle while, at the same time, resolutely pursuing its armed repression and response.
So, the Republican movement had no say in where the struggle broke out, which was at the point in Ireland where the fracture line was deepest, and at a time of an increasingly militant and growing youth and student movement, at a time when much of the world was looking at and learning from the struggles of the black civil rights movement in the USA and the resistance of the Vietnamese to the US military invasion and war (there were other influential struggles too but those were the ones that probably most impacted on the consciousness of the Irish at the time). And the Republicans were right, both by the logic of their history and in absolute terms, to engage in that struggle in the Six Counties. But they didn’t have to ensure that the focus of the struggle stayed there.
2. The Republican movement held out no reason to the mass of people in the rest of the country to contribute to the struggle other than solidarity with Catholics in the Six Counties and a vague promise of a better future under Republicanism
What they could have done, should have done, had to do if they were going to win, was to extend the struggle to the rest of the country, i.e. to the area of the Irish state, the 26 Counties. To some extent they tried to do so, but mainly on the basis of solidarity with the Six Counties alone. The immediate issues impacting on the mass of the population of the 26 Counties were not addressed. The Republican movement did not mobilise around those.
Prior to the split in its ranks, Sinn Féin had organised around some of those.
Logo of the Dublin Housing Action Committee which agitated and took direct action on housing issues in Dublin. Sinn Féin had a strong presence in the campaign which survived the first split (out of which came Provisional SF) but did not survive long after the second split, out of which came the IRSP.
It had organised and contributed to struggles around housing, including occupations of empty houses and buildings. It had also organised trespass protests around foreign and private ownership of land, rivers and beaches, along with some industrial resistance actions. It had in fact taken on the Archbishop of Dublin http://comeheretome.com/2013/09/23/1970s-protests-to-open-merrion-square-park-to-the-public/
When the split came, most of the more socialistically-inclined stayed with the parent organisation, now named the “Officials” (later to be known as the “Stickies” or “Sticks”) while most of the others went with the new organisation, the “Provisionals” (whose armed wing later became known as the “Provos” or “Provies”). When the “Stickies” split again not long afterwards, the emerging IRSP did take up a socialist position on many questions social, economic and political, as well as engaging in armed struggle against British imperialism. This trajectory was brought to a halt due partly to state repression and partly to internal strife on a number of issues and in fact a number of its founders left very early on due to the primacy being given to military consideration (or to the military wing) in the decision-making of the political party. Over time the internal strife degenerated further into mortal feuds and including criminal gangs. And that left the Provisionals with total hegemony over the anti-imperialist Republican movement.
Housing, unemployment, emigration
The Provisionals, if they wished to extend the struggle to the 26 Counties, had no shortage of social, economic, political and cultural issues they could have taken on. Shortage of affordable housing continued to be a serious issue in Ireland throughout the three decades of the war, as did emigration for most of it (this issue also impacted on almost every social class in Ireland, both sides of the Border). Unemployment, the main cause of emigration, was also a serious issue right up to the boom in the economy of the Irish state in the 1990s and impacted particularly heavily on rural communities which suffered depopulation, especially of the young. Addressing this issue could have given rise to struggles over decentralisation and promotion of local economies as well as confronting the nature of the neo-colonial state and its bourgeoisie.
Gaeltacht and language rights
The Gaeltacht areas suffered equally from emigration but that also impacted on the viability of these reserves of the Irish language; in addition neither they nor the Irish-speaking community beyond had radio or TV services in their language, no independent Irish language weekly newspaper, or even a bilingual one (to say nothing of a daily); nor had they any access to most services through Irish from state bodies, not to speak of private ones (Radio na Gaeltachta, TG4 and Gaeltacht status for Ráth Cairn in Meath all came about later as a result of agitation and civil disobedience campaigns).
Trade union movement
The 26 Counties, for a non-industrial nation with high emigration, had strong traditions of trade union membership and solidarity. During the 1970s these began to be subverted and “social partnership” became the norm, led by the trade union federation ICTU and two of its largest constituent unions, SIPTU and IMPACT, and encouraged by elements in the Labour Party and in Fianna Fáil. Provisional SF could have become active within the trade unions in opposition to “social partnership”, thereby not only giving leadership on a viable trade union policy to thousands of workers but also at least disrupting a trajectory leading to the present impotency and immobilisation of the trade union movement in the face of sustained attacks by the state and private capitalist companies. Instead, Phil Flynn, senior official of his trade union and a member of the SF Ard-Choiste (Executive Council), was an active supporter of that same “social partnership” (he is now a businessman).
Social rights – contraception, divorce, abortion, sexuality
The 26-County state was under heavy Catholic Church control which had a huge impact on social issues. Homosexuality, birth control, divorce and abortion were all illegal – contraceptive devices were not freely available in the state until 1993. The Republican movement, if it could have overcome its own prejudices and dominant ideology, could have campaigned for the people to have access to birth control, divorce and abortion. It did nothing about birth control, gave no leadership on the right to divorce and opposed the freedom to choose abortion (the exception was the IRSP). It gave no leadership on homosexual rights and it was a huge shock to the Provisionals when two of their H-Block prisoners “came out” as gay. The movement eventually supported the decriminalisation of homosexuality and PSF also supports the right to gay marriage now but they can hardly be said to have campaigned for gay rights. These battles were led, fought and many won, by others – civil rights, feminist, gay, socialist and social-democratic organisations and campaigns. Some Republicans took part in these campaigns but they were a minority of their movement and the movement did not lead.
The Catholic Church
In taking up these issues of fertility control, sexual rights and divorce, without even considering abortion, the Republican movement would have had to oppose the Catholic Church – at least its hierarchy. (It would also have had to confront the Presbyterian churches in the Six Counties but here I am discussing what the Republican movement could have done to extend the struggle throughout the 26 Counties). Whether because of the ideology of its leadership, its prejudices or its reluctance to alienate its more conservative support, it is clear that the movement has never been prepared to confront that institution. This is all the more surprising when one considers that since the birth of Irish Republicanism, the Catholic Church hierarchy has been its determined enemy, along with most of its clergy. Indeed, the Catholic Church hierarchy has been a supporter of British colonialism until when in the very late stages of the War of Independence, it switched its allegiance, along with the Irish capitalist nationalists, into an alliance with elements of the Republican movement leadership at that time.
The reluctance to take on the Catholic Church on such social issues, discussed earlier, also made it unlikely that the Republican movement would challenge the Church on its control of education in the Irish state or even on the physical, mental and sexual abuse and exploitation being committed by individual clergy and going on in institutions run by the Church. Though such abuse only became the subject of open discussion through a series of public scandals beginning around the late 1980s, it is impossible to believe that large numbers of people in Irish society, including members of political parties, were not aware of it from an earlier time. So it is reasonable to assume that the Republican movement leaderships were aware of abuse by the Church though not, perhaps, of the scale and its intensity.
Gender
The failure of the Republican movement to take on some of those issues also impacted on its view of gender and its role within society.
Irish feminist conference poster, Dublin 1971.
Much of the Republican movement reflected the general society’s view that the role of married women was essentially as home-builders. In organisation, despite the presence of some very able and strong female activists, overall the movement tended to see women as auxiliaries to Republican men in politics and in war. The fact that women had played a huge role in the struggle through centuries in Ireland and at times a pivotal one was not something of which the Republican movement seemed aware.
It is shocking now to realise that as late as the 1960s and 1970s under Irish law, that the property of a woman became her husband’s upon marriage but not vice versa; that women had to have their husband’s signature on hire purchase agreements and that women had to retire from the civil service, including as teachers, as soon as they married.
As a result of the cultural-idealogical limitations of the Irish Republican movement it was not able to play a leading role in the liberation of women nor to significantly contribute to it in Irish society; as half or more of the population are usually women this failure was a serious limitation to spreading the struggle throughout the 26 Counties.
Intellectual freedom was a ground on which the Republican movement could also have challenged the 26 County state, which would have won it more allies among the intelligentsia and cultural avant-garde. Intellectual freedom after all had been both a slogan and a battle ground for Republicanism in England, France and in Ireland in the past. But taking up that issue would also have meant taking on the Catholic Church and the Republican movement confined itself to only two areas, those of historical research and theory and of news coverage, not in order to defend intellectual or academic freedom but to defend its version of history from the colonial apologia of Irish revisionist historians, and to demand accurate reporting of events in the war. But the Republican movement did not promote the alternative revisionism or re-examination and interpretation of history which was really needed, such as critical examination of the failure of consecutive Republican campaigns, nor research into and promotion of the role of women in progressive Irish politics (and not just in the Republican movement), the role of the working class in Irish history, the role of religious dissenters (particularly in developing Republicanism), the role of the Irish diaspora elsewhere and the role of immigration to Ireland, or the development/ underdevelopment of the capitalist class in Ireland. Nor did it defend accuracy and lack of censorship except where such militated in its own sectional favour and its own newspapers practised censorship continuously.
Neo-colonial economy
The nature of the neo-colonial state was such that it opened itself to monopoly capitalist penetration from abroad at minimal cost to investors (something which has not changed in the least) and native capitalist concerns were regularly bought out by these foreign capitalists. Also, some native industries were downgraded or wiped out as a result of neglect or deliberate undermining. Sinn Féin prior to the split had done some work on this and although some work continued to be done by Provisional Sinn Féin after the split, it was not an area given any great importance in organisational priorities.
Drugs
There was one important social issue in which the Provisionals became involved in the 26 Counties and this was to do with drugs. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, heroin consumption, particularly in urban working class areas, assumed almost epidemic proportions. A number of individuals and organisations became involved around this issue and one significant campaign arising from it was the community-based Concerned Parents Against Drugs. The Provisionals became heavily involved in local groups of CPAD. Largely ignorant about addiction issues, as would have been the rule in Irish society at the time, but very concerned about the effect on their communities, the focus of CPAD was in driving out drug-dealers from their areas.
These campaigns had some positive effects but also many negative ones, including not dealing with the fundamental issue of addiction or misuse nor the social conditions that encouraged them. The Provisionals had their own drinking clubs and “taxed” ‘Nationalist’ pubs in the 6 Counties and they also ran cigarette smuggling operations to raise funds for their organisation. Yet alcohol and tobacco consumption are the biggest threats to health in Ireland (and in most of the world, according to the World Health Organisation) and the negative social and health effects of alcohol far exceeded even those of heroin addiction at the time. In addition, the Provisionals tended to view all illegal drugs in the same light, for example punishing consumers and dealers of cannabis and amphetamines along with those of heroin and, later, cocaine. Evidence is now coming to light also that in some areas, the Provisionals even “taxed” drug dealers. Some CPAD activists (including prominent SF member Rose Dugdale) have also criticised the degree to which the Provisionals became involved within CPAD and undermined community control of the campaigns. The state also found this a good excuse to crack down on CPAD, expending more police energy on repressing the campaign than on upholding their laws regarding drugs.
Immigration and equal rights
As the boom in the economy continued, Ireland began, for the first time in centuries, to attract substantial immigration. Some of that was of returning Irish and some of it the “return” of the children of the diaspora. But a large part of it was also Chinese, Eastern European and African in origin. Equal rights for these migrants of course became an issue but the Provisionals, despite their anti-racist policies, did not mobilise around these issues. Part of the Bunreacht, the Constitutions of the state, declared that “It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish Nation. That is also the entitlement of all persons otherwise qualified in accordance with law to be citizens of Ireland.” This meant that migrants’ children, if born in Ireland, had a right to Irish citizenship. Reactionary and populist politicians and media created some controversy around this, fuelled also by some racist concerns abroad that Ireland might provide some kind of tunnel for people of non-EU background to flood into “fortress Europe”. Both main bourgeois Irish political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, supported an amendment to the Bunreacht removing the right to nationality by birth. This was opposed by a number of political parties, including Sinn Féin and the Irish Labour Party.
The referendum on the amendment took place during the Irish local government elections of 2004. The campaign against the amendment was weak but in Dublin I witnessed posters advertising some public meetings against it which were organised by the Trotskyists and by the Labour Party but saw none organised by any Irish Republican organisation. Sinn Féin, which was heavily committed to its own local government election campaign, ironically with an election slogan “Sinn Féin, for a nation of equals”, did not even mention the referendum in its Dublin leaflets. Disturbing as their lack of leadership on the issue was, I was even more shocked to have rationalised to me by one of their election campaign organisers that to focus on the referendum would have distracted from their election campaign and might even have lost them votes.
Summary so far
In the above text I have tried to make the case firstly that a struggle in essence confined to such a small area as the Six Counties, with a large population under hostile ideological hegemony (or even without that factor, come to that), was bound to lose in the long run.
I have stated that although the struggle naturally enough took off in a large way in that small area, it need not have been confined to it. In support of this thesis I have tried to show the many areas of struggle that were open to development by a revolutionary movement in the rest of Ireland and for which favourable conditions existed. I have also endeavoured to show that, with the exception of a problematic campaign around drugs, they were not taken up by the movement and, in some cases, have discussed in passing the reasons for this failure.
I wish now to go on to discuss the next reason for the failure of the struggle.
3. The Republican movement valued its hegemony so much that it strangled what it considered competition
There is something to be said for the theory that for a revolutionary organisation, wielding hegemony is actually a necessity and that to neglect to build and defend that hegemony is a derogation of responsibility. Yes, well, there is something to be said against that theory too.
It is certainly necessary for a revolutionary anti-imperialist movement to maintain a high level of dominance for anti-imperialist ideology and organisation in society, if it is to succeed in overthrowing imperialism. That would be the case anywhere, one would imagine and certainly Ireland neither is nor was an exception. But the Republican movement did not have the only brand of anti-imperialist ideology and even within Republican ideology the Provisionals were not its sole proprietors.
However, the Republican organisations have in general acted as if they were the sole proprietors of the truth and certainly the Provisionals were a prime example of this. Not only that, but they also acted as if they were the only ones who could be trusted to lead any aspect of the struggle. What an irony that turned out to be! Of course this attitude is by no means confined to the Provisionals or to Republican organisations but is sadly to be found throughout the Left also.
Whenever a movement arose around an area which the Republican movement considered their preserve, unless they could control it, they squashed it. I have three examples in mind. The first was the H-Blocks campaign, which was started by mostly female relatives of the prisoners. This campaign grew and gained a lot of support especially in the Six Counties, of course, but also in the Twenty-Six. Bernadette McAlliskey (nee Devlin) has written about how the movement was taken over by the Provisionals and so have others. The potential for a popular political prisoner solidarity movement, anti-imperialist in character, was lost and instead was converted into an election machine which the Provisionals themselves, in their version of the history of the Hunger Strikes, claim was the beginning of their development of the “Peace Process” which led to the Good Friday Agreement.
The Irish diaspora in Britain and some British Left took to the streets to support the Hunger Strikers. In doing so they defied the campaign of state terror with the jailing of a score of innocent Irish people on murder charges and the reign of the 1974 “Prevention of Terrorism” and a hostile media campaign.
The second example was how Sinn Féin impacted on Irish solidarity events in Britain. The Irish community in Britain had been terrorised by the operation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974) and the jailing for murder in a number of different trials in one year of a score of innocent people from the Irish community in England. The community had also been shocked by the killing of civilians in a number of Republican bombings. Attendance at Irish solidarity events decreased hugely. But the hunger strikes in 1981 brought the Irish out again on to the streets, defying the terror campaign of the state and media. Some of the British Left responded too.
After the deaths of the ten martyrs, annual Hunger Strike commemorations became common and even at other solidarity events, the Hunger Strikers formed an important part of the symbolism and discourse. When Irish solidarity activists organised events to which they invited speakers from the movement in Ireland, the message was coming back that PSF would not send a speaker if the IRSP was also invited to send one. This was never put in writing but it was made quite clear to the organisers.
This placed organisers of Irish solidarity events in a dilemma. It was important for them to have speakers from the struggle in Ireland but they did not want to have to choose which organisation to support, much less agree to exclude the trend which had contributed three of the ten hunger striker martyrs. On the other hand, nor did they want to end up with the absence of a speaker from the Republican organisation with majority support in Ireland.
The problem was exacerbated in the case of demonstrations when Republican marching flute bands from Scotland, which had become so much a part of Irish solidarity demonstrations, began to also say that they could not attend a demonstration with an IRSP speaker or if there were no SF speaker. Some of them may well have been taking this position from loyalty to SF but there was another possible reason which weighed heavily with them. Some of them explained to me that if they fell out with PSF, they would not get invitations to play at marches organised by the Provisionals in the Six Counties. Attendance at such events was of tremendous psychological importance to their members.
One successful Hunger Strike commemoration march in North London, the organising committee of which I was a part, after long arguments, went ahead with a rally platform which included among the speakers one from the IRSP. Provisional SF had been invited to send a speaker but had declined, giving some excuse. Some of the members of the organising committee were so disheartened by that absence that an attempt to organise a repeat demonstration the following year had to be abandoned. Organisers of similar events became mentally exhausted through similar arguments and some events which had been successful in terms of numbers and areas where they had taken place were also not repeated, or were not repeated a third time – this was the case with the Terence McSwiney Commemoration march in Brixton.
My third and last example is the Saoirse campaign in England. Soon after the 1994 IRA ceasefire, the Provisionals started a political campaign in solidarity with political prisoners, with a green ribbon, broad in membership, allowing many to join and become involved who were not necessarily aligned to the Provisionals as well as those who were. In Britain it quickly pulled in others who had not yet become active on the issues as well as those who had. The Saoirse campaign grew quickly in London, where I was working and politically active at the time. The agenda of an organisational meeting would include discussion of Saoirse’s most recent public activity, the planning of the next one, discussion on letters being sent to Republican prisoners and their replies, updates on the situations in the prisons and at large, and planning of social/fund-raising events. The meetings were lively and a place where innovative ideas were not only put forward but often accepted and acted upon.
After the Canary Wharf bombing in February 1996, the word was relayed to us that Sinn Féin wished to close down the Saoirse campaign. The official rationale was that the campaign was inappropriate now that the ceasefire was over and the war back on. Many of us disagreed: war or ceasefire, the prisoners were of continuing concern and the Saoirse campaign was lively and growing. Inside the solidarity movement, another rationale started to be rumoured, that Sinn Féin had expressed concern at “the penetration and takeover of Saoirse in Britain by Red Action,” a British-based socialist organisation.
Red Action originated among SWP dissidents who organised themselves to fight the growing fascist movement in Britain. Since British fascists often targeted Irish solidarity demonstrations and meetings, it was natural that an anti-fascist organisation should find itself in action around Irish solidarity events but also many of Red Action’s leaders and members were Irish or of Irish descent and they had a natural sympathy for Irish solidarity as well as a according it a certain ideological importance.
With the creation of the Saoirse campaign it was natural that Red Action should become involved. However, at organisational meetings of the North London committee, there were only two or three Red Action present out of an attendance of between 15 to 20 people. In South London, where my branch was, there were none at all.
What became clear to me and to some others was that Sinn Féin wanted to close down the campaign not because it was inappropriate in terms of the stage of struggle, or because it was being taken over by some other group or that it was doing anything wrong in terms of Irish solidarity – it was simply that the organisation was so lively and attracting so much support that SF could no longer control it. Eventually, despite resistance, they managed to disband it.
When the “peace process” was back on again, SF’s support organisation in London, the Wolfe Tone Society, whose leaders had at first opposed the closing down of the Saoirse campaign, called people together to launch a new campaign, a replacement of Saoirse which they called Fuascailt. Hardly surprisingly, the gathering to launch the new organisation was much smaller than had been the Saoirse support – the disbanding experience had been so alienating to some that they never joined Fuascailt and some I never saw on the Irish solidarity scene again. Fuascailt didn’t grow much and it was evident that the WTS were keeping a pretty tight control on it. Initiatives which they did not approve of, or which were suggested by those who were known to be against the “peace process”, were voted down or, if they won majority support, were sabotaged in a number of ways. It was not a great surprise to some of us when the WTS proposed a motion coming from the Provisionals that Fuascailt should be closed down and its membership transferred to the WTS. The motion was carried by a large majority.
The net result of all this manoeuvring was that SF’s London support group increased a little in size but a much larger broad, vibrant and growing Irish solidarity organisation ceased to exist.
4. The Republican movement usually sought allies in the wrong quarters.
The Republican movement has, since the creation of the Fenians, looked to the Irish diaspora in the United States for support. But the diaspora is not homogeneous – it has class and political divisions. Increasingly the Republican movement came to seek the political support of the bourgeois section of the Irish diaspora, especially within the upper echelons of the Democratic Party, who had sympathies for Irish national aspirations but who were also capitalists and supporters of US Imperialism.
These were the opposite of those long pickets standing outside the British Embassy in New York, described by musician (of Black ’47 fame) and author Larry Kirwan as “the Tribe”. This orientation increasingly tied the Republican movement to reactionary politicians and impacted negatively on their ability to unite effectively with anti-imperialists around the world, most of whom were fighting US imperialism directly or indirectly. In fact, one of the regular contributors to An Phoblacht in the early days, a PSF weekly newspaper, was Fred Burns O’Brien, based in the US and a supporter of Israeli Zionism (which at times found expression in his articles).
Gerry Adams and Sen. Edward Kennedy, Irish-American millionaire politician of the US Democrat Party
The alliance with the Irish-American Democrat politicians was not only a reactionary alliance but a very naive one for the PSF – US imperialism needed the support of British imperialism for its wars abroad, both in terms of military alliance but also in cajoling and bullying support in the EU and in the UN. The US was never going to force its junior partner to take a serious loss unless US Imperialism itself was going to get some major gain from it (as it had done in the Middle East after the Suez Crisis).
In the Irish state, PSF looked first to the “Republican wing” of Fianna Fáil. This party, it must be remembered, despite its origins in a split from Sinn Féin in the 1930s, had become the preferred party of the Irish neo-colonial bourgeoisie, having been in power for more years than its competitor, Fine Gael. Appealing to such conservative elements meant keeping PSF policies conservative too and not challenging the basis or social reality of the 26-County state.
In Britain initially PSF appealed to the Irish diaspora there, making no distinction between minor Irish construction and publican capitalists one the one hand and working class Irish (who were the vast majority of the diaspora) on the other. They also initially cooperated to an extent with British Left solidarity organisations such as the Troops Out Movement but were very uncomfortable with the revolutionary socialist rhetoric of many on the British Left.
After PSF closed down all their cumainn (branches) in Britain, they had to become more involved with British socialist organisations and with TOM (Troops Out Movement). The latter over time and especially during state repression of the Irish community became less of an Irish solidarity voice in British society, its original raison d’etre and instead increasingly became another organisation fishing in the Irish community pool, along with Irish republicans, Irish community activists and specific campaigns such as the Anti-Strip Searches campaign.
These were healthy alliances in general for the Republican movement but increasingly TOM came to accept the diktat of PSF while the Republican movement ignored the needs of the Irish community, concentrating on its military campaigns in Britain on the one hand and, on the other, on reformist “solidarity” campaigns. The “Time To Go” campaign in Britain was the epitome of that, in which PSF asked people in Britain for troop withdrawal from Ireland, not on the basis of the British ruling class being a common enemy of the British workers, nor even just of internationalist solidarity, but on the basis that less military expenditure would lead to increased investment in social provision in Britain.
In Britain, PSF could find no potential ally in a political constituency to match that of the US Democrats or Fianna Fáil. The Labour Party had been the very party that sent the troops to support the sectarian Six County state against the civil rights uprising and had brought in the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Britain (and jailed a score of innocent Irish people on murder charges). But the Labour Party had some Trotskyist and radical Left groups within it and in promoting its Time To Go campaign, PSF appealed to these and to individual politicians such as Clare Short, Ken Livingstone and John McDonnell.
The opportunist manoeuvring of Short and McDonnell in particular, along with their small Trotskyist and radical Labour cliques, eventually left the TTG campaign with a huge presence on paper and one big demonstration, but no real substance and no real change in British politics. All the Irish community and Irish solidarity organisations left the organising committee, with the exception of the Connolly Association, a group closely related to the waning Communist Party of Great Britain. TTG was also supported on the British Left, as well as by trotskyists and radicals on the fringes of the Labour Party, by the Socialist Workers’ Party, to the extent that whenever one saw a TTG poster on the streets it was next to one of the SWP’s, obviously put up in the same postering operation by supporters of the party.
The Irish diaspora in Britain was very large and overwhelmingly working class. It had a huge potential for mobilising Irish solidarity and for breaking through media disinformation to their British workmates, neighbours and partners. But it also had its own needs. PSF never respected those needs and disregarded them in favour of bombings on the one hand and reactionary alliances on the other. Nor was PSF interested in revolutionary alliance with the British working class to which the Irish community held at least one of the keys (the only SF representative in Britain I ever heard promote something of the sort, Derek Highstead, was not long in his post before he was found dead under his tipper truck in 1976 with no witnesses to say what happened).
Summary of the above
I have stated that the Republican movement in general and PSF in particular did not tolerate what it considered competition and deliberately squashed and eliminated any campaign or movement it viewed in those terms.
I have also stated that in general, the Republican movement and PSF in particular has preferred reactionary alliances to revolutionary ones.
I have tried to show how reliance on such alliances helped drive PSF in increasingly reformist directions and away from the potential of revolutionary alliance internationally and, particularly in Britain, the possibility of developing a class-based revolutionary alliance with the potential not only of increasing Irish solidarity presence in British society but also of destabilising the rule of the British capitalist class. I have also tried to illustrate how the PSF ‘need’ to control their arena and to eliminate whatever they consider competition led to decreasing and restricted solidarity movements and the elimination of popular movements which would have had the potential to spread the struggle wider, to bring new forces to it and to increase solidarity for the struggle in the Six Counties.
And now …..
Up to now, I may have kept some Republicans still with me or at least keeping an open mind while they think about what I’ve been saying. With what I am about to say now I risk switching the last of these off and yet I think it needs to be said. This is the fifth reason I have been keeping until last but it provides the key to understanding why the Republican movement in general and PSF in particular made all these “mistakes” and why the movement in general continues to make them. And unless this is confronted, the movement will keep on making these errors forever, oscillating between militarism and reformism and never organising popular revolt; it will never defeat imperialism, to say nothing of achieving the socialism to which, in their statements, all Republican organisations currently aspire.
5. The Republican struggle was led by a bourgeois ideology although most of its membership was working class.
All these “mistakes” and “omissions” made the defeat of the struggle inevitable but they did not come about through the stupidity or ignorance of the leaders of the Republican movement. They came about because from their class viewpoint, by and large they could not act otherwise. They never sought to overthrow the Irish state but instead to come to some sort of a deal with it in the future. That is why they did not mobilise on the many economic, cultural and social issues which were available. They did seek to overthrow the Six County statelet and to expel British colonialism, but in time realised not only that they would not get any help from the Irish state to do that but that it would oppose them all the way. They could only overthrow the Six County statelet by overthrowing the Twenty-Six County state also, which was never their intention. Once they realised that, a deal with British imperialism and the ending of the war was inevitable.
The Republican movement leadership may have had its own prejudices and religious beliefs which would make confrontation with the Catholic Church difficult but the more fundamental reason for the failure to take it on was simply that the Catholic Church was (and still is) part of the Twenty-Six County state.
And the Republican leadership could not build and maintain genuinely socialist and anti-imperialist alliances because some day in their vision of the future they would be running a capitalist Ireland and be part of the capitalist-imperialist world network, which was the same reason they built reactionary alliances instead. The Republican movement had a bourgeois ideology and a petite-bourgeois leadership with aspirations to become big bourgeois. And unless Irish Republicans learn to recognise this and to combat it, they will always be the footsoldiers and prisoners in a war which their leadership will ensure that they cannot win.
Republicanism, anti-monarchical anti-feudal in outlook, developed as an ideology of a rising capitalist class but a class which also had to recruit other subject classes to fight for it, since the capitalist class itself was neither numerous nor powerful enough on its own to displace the monarchy and aristocracy. This is the meaning of the recruitment of
The Levellers were a democratic English republican movement with a strong representation in the Parliamentary New Model Army. After their mutiny at Bamford, Oxfordshire, Oliver Cromwell broke an agreement with them and attacked at night, killing several. These three above were taken prisoner, held in the church at Burford and then shot dead.
people like the Levellers to the English Civil War of Parliament against the English King in 1649 and the later trials, expulsions, executions and murders of those Levellers (for seeking a fuller democracy and refusing to be sent to suppress the Irish). It explains the recruitment of the poor sans cullottes to the French Revolution of 1789 under slogans of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, and in 1871, the drowning in blood of the revolutionary socialist Paris Commune. It is why republican and revolutionary France could send troops to suppress the black slaves in Haiti who, taking French revolutionary slogans to heart, had risen in the first successful modern slave uprising in history. It is why republican and revolutionary American colonists could have black slaves and make war on the native American Indians. It is why bourgeois republicans in the Popular Front government of the Spanish state did not set free its “Spanish Sahara” colony (now Western Sahara) despite it being one of the staging posts for the fascist-military uprising that began the Spanish Civil War.
Republicanism per se, despite things often said to the contrary in Irish Republican circles, is no natural ally of socialism. However, in Ireland in particular, there have been many attempts to marry the two political trends. James Connolly called the first socialist party he founded (1896) the “Irish Socialist Republican Party” and the Republican Congress (1934) tried to combine both socialism and republicanism. Sinn Féin before the split developed a socialist rhetoric and drew inspiration from socialist countries and in recent decades all Irish Republican parties lay claim to being socialist. The IRSP put forward a socialist rhetoric upon its formation and later formally adopted marxism-leninism. But the two trends of socialism and republicanism do not automatically go together.
Socialism, the real thing as opposed to social democracy, is a revolutionary ideology of the working class. It seeks to put the working class in control. It is not for “the people”, whether of Ireland or of anywhere else, but for the working class. In the process of its revolution, the working class cannot help but liberate “the people”: the peasant from being a virtual slave to landlord and big farmer; the small business people from exploiting their families and long hours and constantly being broken by bigger businesses; the monopoly capitalists from being parasites exploiting others and using their families to build their empires (whether they and their families want that liberation or not). All this the working class will do under socialism while liberating workers from being wage-slaves, educated only to the necessary level to carry out their roles as producers and exploited throughout their working lives. For the first time in the history of class struggle, a majority class will come to power.
The working class cannot achieve socialism without social revolution and its main enemy in this is of course the class of its exploiters, the capitalist class, those who stand most to lose. The Irish capitalist class however is two capitalist classes, the colonial bourgeoisie in the Six Counties, descendants of British colonialists, and the neo-colonial bourgeoisie in the Twenty-Six, the “native” capitalist class that developed under direct British rule and after “independence”. And both of these have a relationship, each different but of dependency nevertheless, to imperialism — British, US and EU. The Irish working class, in order to free itself, has to oppose imperialism and colonialism in Ireland.
The Irish bourgeoisie and sections of the middle class, the petit-bourgeoisie, have gained and can gain from their relationship with imperialism and colonialism – they have become administrators and agents in the selling of the country, its resources and labour. But the working class can never gain anything from compromising with imperialism and colonialism, as it will always be the loser. “The working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the struggle for Irish freedom”, said James Connolly or, to put it another way, the ONLY inheritors who can be trusted to carry through the struggle. In order to carry out that responsibility, it must be the leader of the national revolution. While it can make temporary alliances with other classes, it must have its own organisation to the fore with its own ideology and its own clear demands. It cannot have vague demands like “control of the resources by the people” or “real democracy and accountability” while having not a word to say about what it will do with Irish and foreign capitalism.
Among the first steps of any socialist revolution must be not only the setting up of workers’ councils to make decisions and to mobilise resources, but to nationalise all major capitalist concerns without crippling the economy with compensation to the former “owners”. If Irish natural resources “belong to the people” then they must be nationalised immediately. And if land “belongs to the people”, the workers will take it immediately for food production, cheap social housing or other projects. If the seas “belong to the people” then the workers will develop them for sustainable food and power production and defend them from incursion. Universities will become not only places for academic exploration but also training places in the skills and technology that a developing Irish economy will need – and open to all free of charge. The working class will also have to completely tear down the structures of the capitalist state and decide what structures of its own to construct to serve society. And if socialists intend to do all this, how can they mobilise the working class without telling them their programme and allowing them to see that vision of society, so that it becomes the vision of the class, its own conscious mission?
If the Irish Republican movement ever comes to truly incorporate socialism into its ethos, it will need to incorporate it into its policy too. And it will need not only to recruit overwhelmingly among the working class as it does now, but to give the class its view of itself as the leading component, the motive force of the Irish revolution, not for “Ireland” but for the class itself!
If the Irish Republican movement comes to do all that, then it will truly be socialist. But it will be a very different movement and the process will make many in the current movement uncomfortable. On the other hand, we will truly be on the way, for the first time in centuries, to the defeat of colonialism and imperialism in Ireland.
I have said that much of the current discussion in the Republican movement is centring on the wrong question – the questions I have asked are I think the fundamental ones to ask at this time. But I am also aware that at some point the question of armed aspect to the struggle will need to be addressed. I am clear that by and large this is not the time for armed struggle. However, I am also clear that at some point capitalism and imperialism will pose the question for us much more forcibly. No ruling class has ever stepped down from power willingly or without, if it had the capacity to do so, unleashing violence on those who would overthrow it. Nor has any imperial or colonial power relinquished control of its colony without first trying to violently suppress the national liberation movement. And no class or liberation movement that has been unable to meet that armed violence with an adequate armed resistance has succeeded either. History tells us that is true and it doesn’t care whether we like it or not.
rebelbreeze 