Get your own Free Home PageMany of the left-wing groups who argue for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland do so because they believe in the principle of 'national self-determination' in opposition to imperialism. The RCP, in the '“What We Fight For' statement which appeared in every issue of its newspaper, the next step, declares that it supports 'Irish self-determination'. The slogan of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) is 'self-determination for the Irish people as a whole'. The Troops Out Movement defines 'self-determination' as the 'right of people within a nation to determine their own political, social and economic affairs free from external control'.
By promoting this so-called 'right' left-wing groups such as the RCP and TOM give credence to two dangerous myths.
First, to speak of 'the nation' or 'the people' as if these are homogeneous entities flies in the face of the reality that capitalist society is divided into mutually antagonistic classes. 'The people as a whole' have never determined their own 'political, social and economic affairs'. In every country, political, social and economic policies are drawn up by, and in the interests of, the ruling class. What is presented as being for the good of the nation is purely for the benefit of the bosses. Any ideology which denies this is so, is a barrier which must be broken down if the working class is to assert its own independent class interests.
Even the titles of TOM’s own publications - such as In Whose Name? and Without Consent - with their central argument that 'Britain is pursuing a war in Ireland without a political mandate to do so from its own people' tell us that the object which TOM seeks to win for Ireland doesn’t even exist in Britain. By agitating for the 'right of self-determination' TOM encourages workers to waste their efforts in chasing something which cannot be achieved.
Secondly, it is an illusion to suggest that a nation such as Ireland - or to be more precise, the ruling class within a united Ireland - could determine its affairs 'free from external control'. The rulers of any newly 'independent' nation-state immediately find themselves having to come to terms with a worldwide economic system dominated by powerful blocs and integrated on a global scale. Their room for manoeuvre within this framework is extremely limited.
In the twentieth century the typical outcome of national liberation struggles has been one or other of two scenarios. Either the imperialist power relinquished direct political control but continues to exert its domination at an economic level; or the client state frees itself entirely from the domination of one imperialist bloc only by switching to the all-embracing grip of a rival bloc. In neither of these instances does even a 'successful' national liberation struggle result in any real independence for the local capitalists; nor is there any weakening of imperialism as a whole.
Any supporter of 'Irish self-determination' who believes that 'national liberation' is possible in any meaningful sense within modern capitalism should look at the history of the south of Ireland since it achieved 'independence' in 1922.
The separation of the Irish Free State from the rest of Britain did nothing to alter the two states’ economic relationship, in which Ireland exported agricultural produce to Britain, and Britain sold manufactured goods to Ireland. At no time before the Second World War did Ireland send less than 90% of its total exports to British markets. And, as the south was so dependent on 'free trade’, it could not risk placing the sorts of tariffs on imported manufactured goods which might have encouraged growth in its own feeble industrial sector.
In the early 1930s de Valera’s Fianna Fail party came to power determined to free Ireland from British domination through a policy of economic nationalism. They believed that Ireland could become, "a self-contained unit, providing all the necessities of living in adequate quantities for the people residing in this island at the moment and probably for a much larger number".
Predictably, however, the protectionist policies which were implemented in pursuit of this drew retaliation from the south’s economic competitors. It didn't help either that the policy of economic nationalism was set in motion in the midst of a global economic depression. The gap between the cost of imports and the income earned from exports widened greatly to Ireland’s disadvantage. This constant trade deficit drained the nation’s foreign currency reserves which further weakened Irish capital’s standing in the world market. Also, even extensive state intervention in the economy, intended to stimulate Irish owned domestic manufacturing, could not provide sufficient capital to build up industries capable of competing against Ireland’s far more advanced rivals on the world market.
Between 1931-39 the average income per head in Ireland dropped from nearly two thirds of what it was in Britain, to just under half. 'The Irish people' showed just how much say they had in 'determining their own affairs' by deserting 'their nation' in droves: more than 300,000 people emigrated during the period 1936-51, followed by a further 400,000 over the next ten years to 1961. It was only this massive export of 'surplus’ population which kept standards of living for those who stayed behind from declining even more steeply.
By the late 1950s the dream of economic self- sufficiency had been exposed as an unattainable illusion. Protectionist policies were abandoned and the south set about wooing investment by foreign capital. Ever since then, as had been the case beforehand too, the south of Ireland has been completely bound up with the fortunes of the world market, and no more able to escape from the inevitable booms and slumps of the global economy than any other nation state.
We would be stretching our argument beyond credibility, however, if we gave the impression that the supporters of a united Ireland are fine idealists whose best intentions would sadly be frustrated by the economic dictates of world capitalism. Of course Sinn Fein and the IRA say (as every other national liberation movement has said - before coming to power) that the working class would be better off in its 'Thirty Two County Socialist Republic'. But whereas for us socialism means the complete abolition of money, wage labour, the market system and the state, Sinn Fein’s so-called 'socialism' amounts to nothing more than a mixture of state capitalism and self-managed (i.e. self-exploited) agricultural co-operatives which has never been of any benefit to the working class whenever or wherever such measures have been implemented in the past.
If Sinn Fein’s economic programme leaves everything to be desired, its stance on many social issues is equally unattractive. In February 1992, amidst all furore which followed the Irish Attorney General’s initial decision to prevent a 14 year old rape victim from travelling to England to have an abortion, Sinn Fein’s annual conference endorsed a women’s policy document which stated: 'We accept the need for abortion only where a woman’s life is at risk or in grave danger.'
It’s not just the long-term aims the IRA is fighting for which make it an enemy of the working class. There’s also the IRA's present -day role in policing Catholic communities in Northern Ireland.
According to an article which appeared in the Guardian on 22 October 1990, the IRA had so far that year carried out 89 punishment shootings (a bullet in the ankles, knees, wrists or the base of the spine) and 56 beatings (prolonged assaults with iron bars or baseball bats producing multiple injuries). In addition it had also ordered another 20 or 30 'offenders' to get out of Northern Ireland - or else face the consequences. Since then 'expulsion orders' have been on the increase and by February 1992 they were said to be running at 3 a week (i.e. 150 a year).
Recently the IRA has also developed less thuggish ways of policing the Catholic communities, such as manipulating the courts and social services into administering what are in effect custodial sentences. Youths who it has been made clear are under threat of punishment by the IRA are given 'place of safety 'orders by the magistrates courts for their own protection and have to serve their time in young offenders centres until the IRA decides that it is safe for them to return to their home.
We ourselves see nothing wrong with working class communities organising themselves to take direct action against anti-social elements such as drug pushers or burglars who rob from working class people’s houses. Some of the 'petty criminals' dealt with by the IRA may well fall into this category and deserve some sort of punishment - then again, you could say the same about some of the people punished by the ruling class's legal system. The point is that a lot of them don’t deserve it. There’s nothing necessarily 'anti-social' about, for example, people who steal from shops - yet they too fall foul of the swift, brutal, self-appointed policing of the IRA.
Many of the victims of IRA punishments are joyriders. The police are reluctant to respond to reports of stolen vehicles for fear of IRA ambushes and booby trap bombs. The IRA steps into this vacuum and takes action against joyriders under the guise of 'reluctantly responding to community pressure.' In this way the IRA takes credit for clearing up a mess which it has largely contributed to creating in the first place!
Once again though we must look not at the IRA’s targets so much as it s reasons for attacking them. The IRA’s main reason for carrying out punishments is to reinforce its rule over the territory it controls. People are encouraged to contact the 'Republican movement' if they are concerned about crime, rather than calling the police (or doing something about it themselves). The less the RUC enters the Catholic ghettos, the better the IRA likes it, since it gives their members greater freedom to go about their activities. Anyone who, even inadvertently, fouls up an IRA operation by calling the police into a Catholic area instantly turns themselves into an informer and faces the ultimate penalty: death.
The IRA’s so-called 'popular justice' may be an alternative within the Catholic communities to the policing carried out by the RUC, but only in the same sense that the Labour Party is an alternative to the Tories: it is not qualitatively different. This conclusion - that there is nothing to choose between being policed by the IRA or by the RUC - is one that has been voiced within the Catholic community itself: “When you have Sinn Fein and the IRA talking about human rights abuses in the likes of Castlereagh [the RUC interrogation centre], its sickening for them to dish out summary so-called justice like this”.
We might also point out that at the same time as it is going around crippling petty thieves and teenage joyriders, the IRA itself is raising funds through all sorts of rackets which, far from being petty, net it an income amounting, according to one estimate, to around £10 million a year. But then again,the whole of capitalism is based on robbery, it’s just that the ruling class decides what sorts are legal and what sorts are not.
While both the IRA’s present actions and the goals it is fighting for mark it out in our eyes as an anti-working class organisation, speculation about what a united Ireland governed by Sinn Fein would be like is largely academic - because it’s highly unlikely to come about. Although high-ranking British military officers have admitted on many occasions that they are never likely to be able to wipe out the IRA completely, the British state can still just about manage to sustain the political, social and economic costs of containing the impact of the 'Troubles' at a tolerable level.
There is no way that any Dublin government could cope in the same way with 900,000 hostile Protestants in the north of a united Ireland. Even the IRA doesn’t expect that the Protestants would integrate themselves happily into a 32 County Republic, and has to concede lamely that 'They are a tiny national minority who must be given guarantees within any united Ireland' - which is about as plausible as arguing that if the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland was given 'guarantees' by the British state the IRA would agree to the continuation of British rule in the north. This is the main reason, then, why British troops remain in Northern Ireland: to prevent an escalation of the 'Troubles' which would plunge Ireland into chaos, thus threatening NATO’s strategic interests and British, U.S. and EEC economic interests.
So, we do not foresee any change in the constitutional set-up in Northern Ireland in the near future. Nor are there many signs - at the moment- of any resurgence in the currently very low level of the class struggle there. The two communities, Catholic and Protestant - seem to be pitted against each other every bit as much as the ruling class wants them to be, since there is every advantage for British capitalists in maintaining the policy of 'divide and rule' which keeps workers’ living standards in Northern Ireland so much lower than in the rest of Britain.
This isn’t to say that these divisions couldn’t be overcome in the course of massive class struggle, but where this mass struggle will come from is hard to foresee. At present, the fear once expressed by some members of the ruling class, that 'If we lose in Belfast, we may have to fight in Brixton or Birmingham' - in other words, that the struggle in Northern Ireland could be the spark which ignites the flames of insurrection on the mainland - seems less well-founded than the prospect of a working class revolution which spreads from the Republic, Britain and the rest of Europe. But this doesn’t mean that the prospects for the class struggle in Northern Ireland can be written off. The inherent instability and unpredictability of capitalism, and the impossibility of eradicating the class struggle altogether, means that we can never predict for certain where or when the next upsurge in working class struggle will occur.
Until this happens, no doubt the war in Northern Ireland will drag on. But we should be in no doubts about what sort of war it is. The fact that thousands of Protestant workers have sided with the British state and its Loyalist appendages or that thousands of Catholic workers give their support to Sinn Fein and the IRA does not alter the capitalist nature of the conflict. The ruling class - or those who aspire to become the ruling class - have always been able to rope the working class into fighting their battles for them. Our attitude to the situation in Northern Ireland may not find much of an echo among workers there at present, but for genuine revolutionaries there can be no alternative to calling for a united working class struggle against both sides! Got any comments, want to know more, then email us at
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