The Republican Socialist Tradition and the Pursuit of Armed Struggle
Peter Urban, International Republican Socialist Network
The extent to which statements of the Irish Republican Socialist Party have made reference to the influence of Thomas `Ta' Power in the years since the Irish National Liberation Army's declaration of a cease-fire in August 1998 has been so great that it may well dwarf even evocation of that of the party's founding chairperson, Seamus Costello, or the charismatic leader Gino Gallagher, whose leadership was instrumental in saving the party from extinction in the dark days following the attacks by the IPLO. It is therefore noteworthy that a motion advanced by a member of the IRSP's Ard Comhairle and the leader of the Republican Socialist Youth Movement advanced at the party's Ard Fheis in December 2006 that Ta Power's proposed reorganization of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement be fully implemented went down to defeat.
In the further light of recent statements of the IRSP's de facto leader, Gerry Ruddy, which counterpoised the suggestions for renewal of the armed struggle with the need to focus all attention on the class war, as though the two were mutually exclusive, however, suggests that the time is long past due for a thorough-going look at the traditional relationship within the tendency of republican socialism between the pursuit of a workers' republic and the execution of an armed strategy.
The Traditional Position of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement
When preparing to join the IRSP in 1981, one of the questions I asked of the party's leadership was what the relationship between the membership of IRSP and INLA was. The cautiously worded reply served to guide myself and other comrades through the decades that followed. I was told that, it is expected that a volunteer of the INLA would, by embracing the guiding principles of republican socialism, understand the need to look to the IRSP to provide political leadership to the movement as a whole and that, conversely, a member of the IRSP guided by those same principles would necessarily understand the need to pursue the struggle in Ireland in arms. When I responded with the question, "so, there is no division?" I received assurance that I'd understood the message intended.
This understanding was borne out through experience and a growing understanding of the movement's history. For example, I learned that, despite the People's Liberation Army formation adopted to combat attacks on the new movement by the Official Irish Republican Army having caused confusion among a number of later historians, the reality is that on the same day the IRSP was founded in 1974, an almost unanimous meeting of the same activists who participated in that founding congress reconvened to found the INLA. In fact, a amusing story is told regarding the departure of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey a year after the movement's founding, which claims that Bernadette had received information about the secret existence of the INLA and confronted the other members of the IRSP's Ard Comhairle during a meeting, demanding to know who among them was also in the INLA. As the story goes, when everyone in the room except herself raised their hand in response, Bernadette made her decision to resign from the party. So, it came as little surprise when each Easter when the roll of honour was read out of those who'd died within the ranks of the IRSP, the party's first two chairpersons and many of its leading members over the years were included on the list.
Especially in the light of recent IRSP statements concerning the possibility of forging a Broad Front with other republicans, it is important that it be remembered that support for the armed struggle was a litmus test requirement for participation in a Broad Front as originally advanced by the IRSP at the time of its founding. In fact, even seven years later at the height of a renewed Broad Front campaign during the 1981 hunger strike, the IRSP stressed that defense of the struggle in arms was a requirement for any organisation with which it might enter into a Broad Front alliance.
The Experience of North American IRSP Members
The tiny handful of IRSP members in North America during the 1980s and early 1990s accepted this principle of unity between political and armed struggle as being equally applicable to themselves and while prudence calls for not going into details (and were I asked by anyone engaged in law enforcement, I know that my memory of those details would surely be lost completely) the reality is that North American members of the IRSP are known to have participated in laundering money from an INLA robbery while in Ireland, distracting members of the Special Branch to assist other comrades, carrying out a number of meetings with representatives of the Libyan government and two members even visiting Libya on behalf of both sections of the IRSM, providing material support to the INLA, and engaging in threats of physical violence against supporters of the IPLO when it became necessary. Moreover, especially in the period between 1986 and 1992, North American IRSP members met with the INLA while in Ireland at least as frequently as they met with members of the IRSP.
While the repercussions suffered by North American IRSP members as a result of this principle of organizational unity paled in comparison to their Irish comrades, it is nonetheless true that North American IRSP members were harassed by the Garda in Ireland, held under the PTA in Britain, detained by the police in France, briefly jailed in the United States, and otherwise suffered investigation, harassment, and threat from the intelligence agencies of the imperialists.
In opposition to the norm within the North American Left, most of those North Americans who had been members of the IRSP in the 1980s and early 1990s own guns and know how to use them. Comrades in the San Francisco Bay Area have even made trips to the desert in order to practice their shooting skills. Tactically, it would be inappropriate for these activists to engage in armed struggle within the context of North America, but given the fact that members of the political Right are known to be well-armed and recognizing that the ruling bourgeoisie have the arms of both the military and various policing entities at their disposal, failure to ensure some access to arms by working class revolutionaries is nothing short of suicidal.
Dual Membership and the Ta Power Document
This principle of dual membership has deep roots in both the traditions of Irish republican socialism and international socialism and a compelling logic to support it. Moreover, implementation of Ta Power's proposals would absolutely require such circumstances to exist. The reason for this is the principle of political vetting which arose from Power's proposal, which was to have been adopted by the INLA at the close of the 1980s/start of the 1990s, but which apparently was abandoned some time thereafter. This policy called for the INLA to restrict its pool of potential recruits to existing members of the IRSP, with at least two year's standing, who had demonstrated their understanding of the party's political line. The advantages of such a policy for a movement such as the IRSM is clear, as it ensures an armed cadre who will fully understand the political implications of their actions.
With the decline of the tradition of dual membership, changes in the direction of the IRSP were adopted that can be seen to have had an adverse affect on internal democracy within the party. The leadership of the IRSP is, according to its constitution, and traditionally lies with the Ard Comhairle, elected at each Ard Fheis. However, in the mid-1990s an executive was created and empowered to direct the movement. Because this executive was intended to provide direction for the movement as a whole, the Ard Comhairle was given the right to co-opt members for the executive from outside its own ranks, in order to ensure that the leadership of the INLA was adequately represented. After the creation of this executive, however, a motion was put before an IRSP Ard Fheis in 2000 that would have reduced the size of the executive, which was soundly rejected. However, like too many measures approved or defeated at an IRSP Ard Fheis in recent years, the decision of the party's membership was later ignored and the size of the executive was reduced, providing a mere handful of leading members of the movement with the power to set policy for the movement as a whole.
Among various examples that could be given of the problems inherent in this situation was the situation in 2003, when the INLA in North Belfast was pressured by the community to take action against a young thug engaged in endless anti-social acts. Despite the North Belfast INLA issuing a statement taking responsibility for the action and explaining the forces that compelled them to act, a statement from the IRSM's executive followed shortly thereafter condemning the action. No reason was provided for the executive acting without the full Ard Comhairle having had the opportunity to discuss the matter, but the views of the Ard Comhairle were rendered moot by the executive statement. What was especially striking in this instance was the fact that it contradicted the long-held position of the IRSP not to publicly criticize an action taken by a republican paramilitary body, so as not to lend weight to the black propaganda of the bourgeois media. In fact, in this case it actually exceeded the level of criticism undertaken by the bourgeois media, who had found it so difficult to locate members of the local community prepared to speak out against the action (beyond the boy's mother), they had been forced to mute their criticism.
Were the type of political vetting for the INLA envisioned by the Ta Power's document in place, however, the need for such an executive body would have been nullified. Instead, as had been the case within the IRSP since its founding, election of leading members of the INLA to the party's Ard Comhairle would have been the natural outcome of the leadership skills such comrades could be anticipated to display. In fact, despite such vetting being in place, the reality has been that leading members of the INLA have continued to be part of the party's Ard Comhairle, which raises serious questions about what justification has been provided for the cooptation process adopted by the party. Certainly a case could be made that the actual manner in which the executive has functioned has chiefly been to create a small circle of Belfast members of the executive with extraordinary powers never provided for by the party's constitution and ill-suited to ensuring the full flowering of internal democracy within the IRSP.
Fund Raising
At the IRSP Ard Fheis in 1984 it was still the habit of the IRSP to provide the membership with an accounting of the party's finances, a practice that has been notably absent since the resumption of Ard Fheisanna in the late 1990s. I well remember the Treasurer's report from that Ard Fheis, given by Ray Collins, because amidst various meager sums reportedly received was one entry of £25,000 from an `anonymous donor.' In response to the obvious wonder I displayed at hearing about this anonymous generosity, several comrades quietly whispered to me that this was how such reports described the financial support provided by the INLA to the party. Likewise, when the Belfast office of the IRSP was virtually destroyed by an arson attack, it was the INLA that provided the funds necessary to ensure it was promptly rebuilt.
Such a financial relationship between the movement's underground wing and its legal, political wing is an important one and the provision of such financial support is a task that volunteers of the INLA should view as both fundamental to their reason for existence and a source of pride. Immersed, as they too commonly are these days, in the pious nonsense of bourgeois liberal moralising, some in the Left may find this an odd statement. However, the fact remains that the working class remains the sole creators of wealth under capitalism and the accumulation of this wealth in the hands of the capitalist class is accomplished through the expropriation of the surplus value generated by our class's expenditure of its labour power. Put more simply, the wealth our class creates is stolen from us by the system of capitalism and to reverse that process in a manner that funds the revolutionary movement of the working class is not something to be ashamed by, but a noble means of helping to restore some measure of justice to the social equation.
To `expropriate the expropriators' was how Marx defined the objective of the working class revolution and to do so incrementally during the course of the liberation struggle possesses a clear and compelling logic that is difficult to challenge, except through appeals to the morality of the bourgeoisie, rather than reliance on the interests of working people serving as one's guide. While discussing the relevance of bourgeois morality to the question of armed struggle, let us pause to quote Earl Ford and William Foster, one of the leading figures in the development of the American communist movement, in their work on syndicalism. Substituting the word "socialist" or "syndicalist," the position taken provides guidance for republican socialists today:
"In his choice of weapons to fight his capitalist enemies, the Syndicalist is no more careful to select those that are `fair', `just', or `civilized' than is a householder attacked in the night by a burglar. He knows he is engaged in a life and death struggle with an absolutely lawless and unscrupulous enemy, and, considers his tactics only from the standpoint of their effectiveness. With him the end justifies the means. Whether his tactics be `legal' and `moral' or not, does not concern him, so long as they are effective."
The Fundamentals
As illustrated, the history of the IRSM demonstrates a long tradition of a thorough integration of both wings of the movement into the
whole, but history is not sufficient to argue for continuation of the relationship in the same manner. What does provide support for this position, however, are two fundamental positions taken by the IRSP historically, which are at odds with recent positions expressed by the party. The first of these is without a doubt the most fundamental, in that it can be called the defining perspective of the republican socialist tendency: that the struggle for national liberation and the struggle for socialism in Ireland are inseparable. At multiple times over the course of the last ten years of the IRSP's existence, this basic formulation of the republican socialist analysis in Ireland has also been stated as `the national liberation struggle is but an aspect of the class struggle'. If this is true, how is it possible for the leading spokesperson of the IRSP to set the national liberation struggle and the class struggle in opposition to one-another, as though they were polar opposites? Yet consider the statement below recently made by Gerry Ruddy of the IRSP's Ard Comhairle:
"We are very clear that republicanism has suffered a defeat. The war is over and those who have, any lingering thoughts on re-commencing with a view to victory are deluded. Class struggle is the only option. Those who ignore the class question and stand alone on their "republican principles" stand condemned to remain in splendid isolation. We now live in different times and the old certainties now no longer hold. We all on the left need to forget our petty differences and become relevant to the lives of the working classes in Ireland while keeping alive our vision of socialism.
"The IRSP has always said that the class and national question cannot be separated. Of course we do want to build bridges with other republicans and have positive proposals to put forward to build bridges. We, in the spirit of the broad front policy first advocated by our founder Seamus Costello, will work with progressive forces on working class issues. That and that alone is the way forward for progressives from the labour, socialist and republican traditions."
The obvious contradictions in this statement are jarring. The IRSP says that the class and national question cannot be separated, but the war for national liberation has been defeated and cannot be renewed. Class struggle is the only option, but somehow this will have to be waged without recourse to the use of arms. The original position of the IRSP was clear and defensible: the national liberation struggle and the class struggle are inseparable; but this recent statement contributes nothing but confusion. The reality of the party's traditional analysis makes plain that the national liberation struggle cannot be abandoned, because it is inseparably a part of the struggle for socialism in Ireland. Moreover, it is absurd to declare the use of arms to be forever at an end, if one intends to wage the class struggle to its victorious conclusion. The ruling class has never ceded its ownership of the means of production without a fight and any party that hopes to successfully confront their resistance with tactics of civil disobedience alone is a party leading the working class into a cul de sac of bloody repression. Clearly, if the national liberation struggle and the class struggle are inseparable, it will eventually be necessary to wrest control of the nation out of the hands of the imperialists and neo-colonialist now governing the island of Ireland, if the fight for socialism is to be won.
The other fundamental argument to be advanced meshes perfectly with that just stated. It is the long-standing position of the IRSP that the pursuit of the armed struggle is not a matter of principle, but a question of tactics. This was, in fact, one of the key arguments advanced in support of the INLA's cease-fire in August 1998 and it has been a consistently held position of the IRSP throughout its history. If the use of arms is a tactical question, however, how is it possible for the IRSP to declare that it must be abandoned now and forever? Clearly, the tactical needs of future social circumstances cannot be identified at present, so why have numerous IRSP statements since 1998 declared `the war to be over' now and forever? The simple answer is that these recent statements represent a major departure from traditional republican socialist analysis. Moreover, if the course of recent events is seen as a validation of the traditional republican socialist analysis, as we believe it has been, then the perspective advanced in these recent IRSP statements can be summed up in a single word: WRONG.
So, how are we to make sense of Gerry Ruddy's recent statement embracing the primacy of the class struggle with its simultaneous condemnation of recourse to the tactic of armed struggle? The seeming contradiction is resolved when it is understood what Ruddy means by "class struggle". When he uses this phrase, he is not referring to the violent overthrow of the capitalist system of production by the working masses in order to create a new social order from the ashes of the old. Instead, Mr. Ruddy is calling for those activists formerly engaged in revolutionary pursuit of the national liberation struggle to turn their attentions to trade union activism and diving headlong into the swamp of reformist electoral politics. For despite the lesson being taught by history time-and-time-again that reformism cannot win the liberation of the working class, this well-worn strategy never seems to lose its appeal. This is due to the fact, that any working class party that seeks to function over the long haul within the confines of the capitalist system must either endure endless persecution or ultimately abandon its revolutionary program. Why so many well-meaning revolutionary activists would strive to avoid the former is easily understood. Unfortunately, regardless of how attractive that option is, it does nothing to alter the fact that the latter is a strategy that is inherently doomed to failure.
Ruddy has publicly identified himself with the followers of the British Trotskyist guru Ted Grant, who once headed the Militant group. As the Irish anarchist group Attack International pointed out about Grant's group in their pamphlet The Spirit of Freedom: The War in Ireland, "They argue that `the armed struggle of a few Republican terrorists has achieved nothing positive.' They go on to lump the IRA together with the UVF, and condemn both as `sectarian
paramilitaries'. Worse still, they claim that the IRA has driven Protestant workers into the arms of the Unionists, the Orange Order and the Loyalist paramilitary groups."
Comrade Willie Gallagher of the IRSP recently said in the new Starry Plough magazine:
"It is now abundantly clear that republicanism has been shafted and that it really was a pacification process in order to negate militant republicanism. I believe we are now entering into that phase where our analysis has been proved, beyond doubt, to be the correct one and we are now entering a period where we can advance and convince others of our position."
We in the International Republican Socialist Network agree with those sentiments, but if they the analysis of the IRSM has been proven correct, then clearly this is not the time to move away from the traditional republican socialist views of the IRSM historically. Rather than claiming the national liberation struggle to be forever over, it is imperative that the IRSP reiterate the inseparable bond between that struggle and the class struggle. The INLA need not return to open warfare before circumstances make it tactically correct, but it is necessary that the IRSM stop iterating the message that the struggle in arms will never again be given tactical consideration. Moreover, it is imperative that those members of the IRSM with deep roots in its history and traditions step to the fore to direct the course the movement takes in the future. Gino Gallagher is dead, Kevin McQuillen is no longer in the IRSP, so the question must be addressed, who will provide the political education to lead a new generation of members of the IRSM? Will it be comrades of the caliber of Peadar Dubh, Willie Gallagher, Terry Harkin, Eddie McGarrigle, and Paul Little or will it be those who look to Trotskyism, Maoism, academic Marxism or other variants of the failed sectarian Left? Let there be no mistake, the hardest most unpleasant task any revolutionary is ever confronted with his entering into battle with present or former comrades. Nonetheless, the health and vitality of the IRSM remains dependent on it reclaiming the revolutionary tradition of republican socialism, if it is to avoid the slow death of a decline into pointless reformism.
The Historical Roots of the Relationship of the Political and Armed Struggles
Friedrich Engels married into a Fenian family, twice, and Marx's daughters claimed association with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, in addition to their ally on the General Council of the First International, J.P. McDonnell, the first Reporting Secretary for Ireland in the IMWA, having been a member of the underground movement. Beyond this, however, Engels applauded the Irish national liberation movement use of armed struggle for another reason; he applauded the fact that it gave the largely reformist British socialist movement of his day a `whiff of gunpowder'. That is, he specifically endorsed the example set by the Irish national liberation struggle of the need to move beyond petition and demonstrations to embrace the direct confrontation of the ruling class through armed struggle. After all, Engels had engaged in armed struggle himself during the events of 1848 and shared Marx's perspective that the working class must ultimately be prepared to win their liberation through class warfare.
Despite the tendency of many of the Leninist formations within the sectarian Left of the industrialized nations to decry armed action by the working class, while waving quotes from Lenin made against the terrorist tactics of the Narodniks of his day, the reality of the Bolshevik's views on armed struggle are a very different matter. Beyond the fact that Lenin defended the Easter Rising in Ireland and lambasted fellow socialists who'd condemned the armed rising, is the fact that the 21 conditions for admission to the Communist (Third) International included the requirement that any party seeking to join that body have both a legal and illegal (underground, armed) organisations. Without the existence of an underground, armed organisation, for example, execution of the Comintern's strategy for armed insurrection in Germany, which occurred twice within the first five years of the WeimarRepublic, would have been impossible.
For republican socialists, however, the clearest example from the past from which to learn is that provided by the greatest of all Irish Marxists, James Connolly. It is not even the historical example of Connolly first helping to forge the Irish Citizen Army as a labour militia during the great Dublin lockout of 1913 and then later transforming the ICA into an working class army that would lead by example in the streets of Dublin during the 1916 Rising that provides the greatest lesson to Irish republican socialists today; rather it is the series of articles that Connolly wrote for publication in the Workers' Republic, which were later published collectively as a pamphlet entitled Revolutionary Warfare. Through this series of articles, Connolly sought to provide a practical education in the tactics of revolutionary warfare, so as to provide them with the knowledge they would need to engage in a successful class war, by discussing the history former popular uprisings, such as those in the Austrian Tyrol, Belgium, Paris, and the Alamo and Battle of Lexington in what would later be parts of the United States.
Consideration of this contribution by Connolly immediately calls forth the question, why has the IRSP never sought to do the same within the pages of An Camcheachta/The Starry Plough? Surely the comrades of the INLA could provide valuable insights to young revolutionary activists, gained through the struggle they waged for nearly a quarter of a century. How can the IRSP have failed to understand the valuable contribution that might have been made in a discussion of how the INLA sought to use its arms in ways that advanced the politics of the movement as a whole, such as the Mt. Gabriel radar station bombing, which exposed the violation of Irish neutrality by the Dublin regime, the support provided to the Dunnes' strikers and for solidarity with Palestine by the bombings and bomb threats carried out in relation to these issues, or the propaganda value gained through the Robin Hood-like hijacking of a bread lorry and the distribution of its contents to the working poor of North Dublin? Could the IRSP see no utility to working class activists in Ireland of having the working of the mercury-tilt detonator used in the assassination of Airey Neave explained or in a discussion of how the Drop-In Well charges were placed specifically so that their detonation would blow out all of the supports for the roof, bringing it directly down on the soldiers inside? Rest assured, comrades, the agents of the ruling class and the armed fascists are already well versed in such knowledge; it is revolutionaries within the working
class who would benefit most from such lessons.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, however, of how open discussion of armed struggle and its tactics could be effectively pursued by a revolutionary party. Instead of just telling Irish workers "the war is over for all time", why not carry out a full and open discussion of why the tactic is not suited to present circumstances, along with a discussion of when, where, and how such tactics are appropriate. There would be real value in a revolutionary assessment of the history of sabotage within the sphere of industrial struggle, from the Molly McGuire's bombs to the French syndicalists' practice of "putting the machines on strike" during industrial pursuits; just as there would be value in drawing the lessons from how not only the INLA, but groups like the Red Brigades in Italy sought to support industrial action by the working class with their own armed actions. The IRSP undertook to publicly explore the problems which arose from the rise of `war lords' within the INLA in the early 1980s, would it not be equally useful to carry out a discussion of the basis for the `cell' system adopted by the INLA to provide greater security against the imperialists or to examine the merits of the INLA's alliances at various times with groups like the Angry Brigades or Action Direct? Isn't the time long past due for a public discussion of the INLA's participation in training with comrades of the PFLP or sending volunteers to fight with the MPLA in Angola?
The IRSP, despite the many monument installations and memorials to fallen comrades it has carried out to reassure members of the INLA that they are respected has far too often given the impression through its statements that the entire war of national liberation struggle was without value ultimately and there is more than a small display of embarrassment, if not shame, over the heroic actions of the INLA between 1974 and 1998. This embarrassment was manifested in the denunciation of the INLA's policing action in North Belfast in 2003, just as it was manifested in the failure to challenge head-on the black propaganda that tarred comrade Dessie O Hare with the label of `torturer'. How many Irish workers lose the tips of a couple of fingers, if not far more, to the machines of industry and the demands of employment each year? All they get is a bit of a disability settlement and the expectation that they get back to work and noone ever accuses their employers of torture in the workplace; noone is found crying crocodile tears over their `horrifying disfigurement'. But, when the son of the richest man in Ireland loses a couple of fingertips in the course of an action being carried out in support of the national liberation and class struggle in Ireland—though that person, while trained as a dentist has so much money he need never do a day's work in his life—the party representing the most advanced consciousness of the Irish working class feels it must hide its face in shame? Let me be the first to suggest that we shed no tears for the fleeting discomfort that we may be forced to inflict on members of the class that exploit us daily, as we have more than enough misery with the ranks of our own class due to the callous violence of the capitalists to keep us fully occupied.
A Word on `Policing'
In the statement quoted above from Gerry Ruddy, he later goes on to make plain the much reiterated position of the IRSP in recent years that there is no place for the republican and republican socialist paramilitaries to provide the traditional role they'd carried out from time-to-time of policing the nationalist communities against exploitation by anti-social hoodlums. It is understood that such activity can at times play a divisive role with the community and that some republican paramilitaries have used this as a justification to attacks their political rivals within the community. It is also understood that such activity may expose volunteers of the INLA to counter-violence or arrest and that it diverts attention away that could be better focused on the national liberation or class struggle. It is even understood that the INLA playing such a role may have a negative impact on the development of community democracy and a sense of self-empowerment by residents of the nationalist community. The only thing that is not understood is why, when the IRSP keeps stating this is not the role of the INLA, does the INLA keep involving itself in the policing of the illicit drug trade within the nationalist community of the six counties, and even within the working class communities in the 26 counties, where the compulsion for such policing is far less clear-cut?
In Dublin, Belfast, Derry, and beyond, even following the cease-fire declared in 1998, the INLA has continued to engage in activity that clearly falls within the definition of `community policing' in opposition to those involved in the illegal drug trade. This is a seeming contradiction that appears to cry out to the IRSP for some kind of an explanation. Because, to speak frankly, it is very hard to believe that there is more misery resulting in the working class communities of Ireland as a result of kids high on Ecstasy than is likely to result on a regular basis as a result of quite legal alcohol abuse within that same community. Others are entitled to their own perspective on the matter, but given the choice between somebody on Ecstasy stroking my arm for 90 minutes and smiling like an idiot while I'm standing in a pub or some belligerent drunk attempting to punch me in the same pub, I'm gonna have to say that the former strikes me as the lesser social evil. Even when the trade involves heroin, it must be remembered that the nationalist community in the six counties has seen a skyrocketing increase in youth suicide in recent years, which provides eloquent testimony to the experience of despair in the wake of the GFA. Just as Marx commented that socialists were ill-advised to directly combat religious belief within the working class, so long as religion provides the affect of an `opiate' against the perpetual suffering of our class under capitalism, so too might socialists recognize that when working class youth find themselves in such personal torment as is offered to them by the contemporary reality of the six counties, it is small surprise that some of them will seek the comfort of genuine opiates, when the balm of the religious `opiate' is no longer sufficient.
The reason why the IRSP should speak to this contradiction between their expressed desire to see the INLA not involved in community policing and their cheerleading when the INLA involves itself precisely in that activity when drug sales are involved, is—to be frank—because the very fact of this glaring contradiction gives the impression that the IRSM is simply involved in the pursuit of bourgeois respectability. The bourgeois media constantly lies in attempts to portray the INLA as being itself engaged in drug dealing, so the INLA counters by ripping off a large sum of money and drugs from a local drug dealer and handing the drugs over to the Catholic Church (and keeping the cash, which we agree is a good idea) as if to prove `it ain't so'. The reality is, however, that the bourgeois media isn't thwarted in its lying campaign and has even been known to use these actions by the INLA as `evidence' of drug turf wars; so what is really gained? If the IRSM wants to take a stand in support of social sobriety, a first step might be discouraging comrades from getting pissed in public with too much regularity, but if one thinks its wrong for the INLA to respond to repeated requests from within the community to defend them against a social menace, then one might take a serious look at why its fine for INLA volunteers to risk their lives and their freedom to stop a given drug dealer; until another arises to fill the gap left by his departure, that is. Beyond this, one might ask whether there are far more useful activities for INLA volunteers to be engaged in. Because if the IRSM is prepared to take on the risks inherent in their participating in efforts to chase out drug dealers, shouldn't it be prepared to take those same risks for the far greater objectives of liquidating members of loyalist death squads, providing support to other revolutionary actions by the working class, from anti-war protests at Shannon, to the struggle against Shell in the West, to support for strike actions?
Do working class kids getting high really do more harm to our class than exploitation in the workplace and social deprivation in our communities? Or does fighting the former just get better mention in the bourgeois media and greater acceptance from the bourgeois state than fighting the latter?
Conclusion
While in the past the IRSN has been accused of advocating that comrades in Ireland undertake the risks of a renewed armed struggle, nothing could be further from reality. In the wake of the GFA's pacification process, it is clear that objective circumstances do not presently favor the use of the tactic of armed struggle. However, the task of national liberation in Ireland remains inseparable from the struggle for the liberation of the Irish working class and it is therefore counterproductive for the IRSM to continue to advance propaganda that argues that armed struggle has no place in the ongoing fight of Irish workers for their liberation. The IRSM remains the representatives of the most advanced consciousness of the Irish working class and the principle of remaining politically multi-tendencied remains sound. However, the membership of the IRSP and INLA must decide whether its interests lie in continued association with the political perspectives of Ted Grant's followers or other tendencies of the sectarian Left or whether they are better served by returning forcefully to the now validated revolutionary analysis that guided the movement throughout most of its history.
While this decision is being undertaken politically, it is imperative that the INLA adopt a process of political vetting envisioned by the Ta Power's document, so as to ensure that there are no volunteers within its ranks who have not already demonstrated their grasp of the politics of the IRSP and their willingness to engage in the political struggles of Irish workers. Moreover, the INLA must resist any pressure to abandon its arms or restrict its existence to the confines of the six counties. The INLA is not merely a safeguard against potentional loyalist pogroms in the six counties, it is the armed wing of the revolutionary movement of the Irish working class. Short of a full returned to an armed struggle for national liberation it can play a vital role in the defense of revolutionary political activists, the material support of the political movement of the Irish working class, and should explore the question of whether other opportunities for the successful use of the tactic of armed struggle exist within present circumstances.
(Part II of this series will examine the question of armed struggle in the context of other nations wherein a republican socialist analysis is best suited to the circumstances of the working class.)
The extent to which statements of the Irish Republican Socialist Party have made reference to the influence of Thomas `Ta' Power in the years since the Irish National Liberation Army's declaration of a cease-fire in August 1998 has been so great that it may well dwarf even evocation of that of the party's founding chairperson, Seamus Costello, or the charismatic leader Gino Gallagher, whose leadership was instrumental in saving the party from extinction in the dark days following the attacks by the IPLO. It is therefore noteworthy that a motion advanced by a member of the IRSP's Ard Comhairle and the leader of the Republican Socialist Youth Movement advanced at the party's Ard Fheis in December 2006 that Ta Power's proposed reorganization of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement be fully implemented went down to defeat.
In the further light of recent statements of the IRSP's de facto leader, Gerry Ruddy, which counterpoised the suggestions for renewal of the armed struggle with the need to focus all attention on the class war, as though the two were mutually exclusive, however, suggests that the time is long past due for a thorough-going look at the traditional relationship within the tendency of republican socialism between the pursuit of a workers' republic and the execution of an armed strategy.
The Traditional Position of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement
When preparing to join the IRSP in 1981, one of the questions I asked of the party's leadership was what the relationship between the membership of IRSP and INLA was. The cautiously worded reply served to guide myself and other comrades through the decades that followed. I was told that, it is expected that a volunteer of the INLA would, by embracing the guiding principles of republican socialism, understand the need to look to the IRSP to provide political leadership to the movement as a whole and that, conversely, a member of the IRSP guided by those same principles would necessarily understand the need to pursue the struggle in Ireland in arms. When I responded with the question, "so, there is no division?" I received assurance that I'd understood the message intended.
This understanding was borne out through experience and a growing understanding of the movement's history. For example, I learned that, despite the People's Liberation Army formation adopted to combat attacks on the new movement by the Official Irish Republican Army having caused confusion among a number of later historians, the reality is that on the same day the IRSP was founded in 1974, an almost unanimous meeting of the same activists who participated in that founding congress reconvened to found the INLA. In fact, a amusing story is told regarding the departure of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey a year after the movement's founding, which claims that Bernadette had received information about the secret existence of the INLA and confronted the other members of the IRSP's Ard Comhairle during a meeting, demanding to know who among them was also in the INLA. As the story goes, when everyone in the room except herself raised their hand in response, Bernadette made her decision to resign from the party. So, it came as little surprise when each Easter when the roll of honour was read out of those who'd died within the ranks of the IRSP, the party's first two chairpersons and many of its leading members over the years were included on the list.
Especially in the light of recent IRSP statements concerning the possibility of forging a Broad Front with other republicans, it is important that it be remembered that support for the armed struggle was a litmus test requirement for participation in a Broad Front as originally advanced by the IRSP at the time of its founding. In fact, even seven years later at the height of a renewed Broad Front campaign during the 1981 hunger strike, the IRSP stressed that defense of the struggle in arms was a requirement for any organisation with which it might enter into a Broad Front alliance.
The Experience of North American IRSP Members
The tiny handful of IRSP members in North America during the 1980s and early 1990s accepted this principle of unity between political and armed struggle as being equally applicable to themselves and while prudence calls for not going into details (and were I asked by anyone engaged in law enforcement, I know that my memory of those details would surely be lost completely) the reality is that North American members of the IRSP are known to have participated in laundering money from an INLA robbery while in Ireland, distracting members of the Special Branch to assist other comrades, carrying out a number of meetings with representatives of the Libyan government and two members even visiting Libya on behalf of both sections of the IRSM, providing material support to the INLA, and engaging in threats of physical violence against supporters of the IPLO when it became necessary. Moreover, especially in the period between 1986 and 1992, North American IRSP members met with the INLA while in Ireland at least as frequently as they met with members of the IRSP.
While the repercussions suffered by North American IRSP members as a result of this principle of organizational unity paled in comparison to their Irish comrades, it is nonetheless true that North American IRSP members were harassed by the Garda in Ireland, held under the PTA in Britain, detained by the police in France, briefly jailed in the United States, and otherwise suffered investigation, harassment, and threat from the intelligence agencies of the imperialists.
In opposition to the norm within the North American Left, most of those North Americans who had been members of the IRSP in the 1980s and early 1990s own guns and know how to use them. Comrades in the San Francisco Bay Area have even made trips to the desert in order to practice their shooting skills. Tactically, it would be inappropriate for these activists to engage in armed struggle within the context of North America, but given the fact that members of the political Right are known to be well-armed and recognizing that the ruling bourgeoisie have the arms of both the military and various policing entities at their disposal, failure to ensure some access to arms by working class revolutionaries is nothing short of suicidal.
Dual Membership and the Ta Power Document
This principle of dual membership has deep roots in both the traditions of Irish republican socialism and international socialism and a compelling logic to support it. Moreover, implementation of Ta Power's proposals would absolutely require such circumstances to exist. The reason for this is the principle of political vetting which arose from Power's proposal, which was to have been adopted by the INLA at the close of the 1980s/start of the 1990s, but which apparently was abandoned some time thereafter. This policy called for the INLA to restrict its pool of potential recruits to existing members of the IRSP, with at least two year's standing, who had demonstrated their understanding of the party's political line. The advantages of such a policy for a movement such as the IRSM is clear, as it ensures an armed cadre who will fully understand the political implications of their actions.
With the decline of the tradition of dual membership, changes in the direction of the IRSP were adopted that can be seen to have had an adverse affect on internal democracy within the party. The leadership of the IRSP is, according to its constitution, and traditionally lies with the Ard Comhairle, elected at each Ard Fheis. However, in the mid-1990s an executive was created and empowered to direct the movement. Because this executive was intended to provide direction for the movement as a whole, the Ard Comhairle was given the right to co-opt members for the executive from outside its own ranks, in order to ensure that the leadership of the INLA was adequately represented. After the creation of this executive, however, a motion was put before an IRSP Ard Fheis in 2000 that would have reduced the size of the executive, which was soundly rejected. However, like too many measures approved or defeated at an IRSP Ard Fheis in recent years, the decision of the party's membership was later ignored and the size of the executive was reduced, providing a mere handful of leading members of the movement with the power to set policy for the movement as a whole.
Among various examples that could be given of the problems inherent in this situation was the situation in 2003, when the INLA in North Belfast was pressured by the community to take action against a young thug engaged in endless anti-social acts. Despite the North Belfast INLA issuing a statement taking responsibility for the action and explaining the forces that compelled them to act, a statement from the IRSM's executive followed shortly thereafter condemning the action. No reason was provided for the executive acting without the full Ard Comhairle having had the opportunity to discuss the matter, but the views of the Ard Comhairle were rendered moot by the executive statement. What was especially striking in this instance was the fact that it contradicted the long-held position of the IRSP not to publicly criticize an action taken by a republican paramilitary body, so as not to lend weight to the black propaganda of the bourgeois media. In fact, in this case it actually exceeded the level of criticism undertaken by the bourgeois media, who had found it so difficult to locate members of the local community prepared to speak out against the action (beyond the boy's mother), they had been forced to mute their criticism.
Were the type of political vetting for the INLA envisioned by the Ta Power's document in place, however, the need for such an executive body would have been nullified. Instead, as had been the case within the IRSP since its founding, election of leading members of the INLA to the party's Ard Comhairle would have been the natural outcome of the leadership skills such comrades could be anticipated to display. In fact, despite such vetting being in place, the reality has been that leading members of the INLA have continued to be part of the party's Ard Comhairle, which raises serious questions about what justification has been provided for the cooptation process adopted by the party. Certainly a case could be made that the actual manner in which the executive has functioned has chiefly been to create a small circle of Belfast members of the executive with extraordinary powers never provided for by the party's constitution and ill-suited to ensuring the full flowering of internal democracy within the IRSP.
Fund Raising
At the IRSP Ard Fheis in 1984 it was still the habit of the IRSP to provide the membership with an accounting of the party's finances, a practice that has been notably absent since the resumption of Ard Fheisanna in the late 1990s. I well remember the Treasurer's report from that Ard Fheis, given by Ray Collins, because amidst various meager sums reportedly received was one entry of £25,000 from an `anonymous donor.' In response to the obvious wonder I displayed at hearing about this anonymous generosity, several comrades quietly whispered to me that this was how such reports described the financial support provided by the INLA to the party. Likewise, when the Belfast office of the IRSP was virtually destroyed by an arson attack, it was the INLA that provided the funds necessary to ensure it was promptly rebuilt.
Such a financial relationship between the movement's underground wing and its legal, political wing is an important one and the provision of such financial support is a task that volunteers of the INLA should view as both fundamental to their reason for existence and a source of pride. Immersed, as they too commonly are these days, in the pious nonsense of bourgeois liberal moralising, some in the Left may find this an odd statement. However, the fact remains that the working class remains the sole creators of wealth under capitalism and the accumulation of this wealth in the hands of the capitalist class is accomplished through the expropriation of the surplus value generated by our class's expenditure of its labour power. Put more simply, the wealth our class creates is stolen from us by the system of capitalism and to reverse that process in a manner that funds the revolutionary movement of the working class is not something to be ashamed by, but a noble means of helping to restore some measure of justice to the social equation.
To `expropriate the expropriators' was how Marx defined the objective of the working class revolution and to do so incrementally during the course of the liberation struggle possesses a clear and compelling logic that is difficult to challenge, except through appeals to the morality of the bourgeoisie, rather than reliance on the interests of working people serving as one's guide. While discussing the relevance of bourgeois morality to the question of armed struggle, let us pause to quote Earl Ford and William Foster, one of the leading figures in the development of the American communist movement, in their work on syndicalism. Substituting the word "socialist" or "syndicalist," the position taken provides guidance for republican socialists today:
"In his choice of weapons to fight his capitalist enemies, the Syndicalist is no more careful to select those that are `fair', `just', or `civilized' than is a householder attacked in the night by a burglar. He knows he is engaged in a life and death struggle with an absolutely lawless and unscrupulous enemy, and, considers his tactics only from the standpoint of their effectiveness. With him the end justifies the means. Whether his tactics be `legal' and `moral' or not, does not concern him, so long as they are effective."
The Fundamentals
As illustrated, the history of the IRSM demonstrates a long tradition of a thorough integration of both wings of the movement into the
whole, but history is not sufficient to argue for continuation of the relationship in the same manner. What does provide support for this position, however, are two fundamental positions taken by the IRSP historically, which are at odds with recent positions expressed by the party. The first of these is without a doubt the most fundamental, in that it can be called the defining perspective of the republican socialist tendency: that the struggle for national liberation and the struggle for socialism in Ireland are inseparable. At multiple times over the course of the last ten years of the IRSP's existence, this basic formulation of the republican socialist analysis in Ireland has also been stated as `the national liberation struggle is but an aspect of the class struggle'. If this is true, how is it possible for the leading spokesperson of the IRSP to set the national liberation struggle and the class struggle in opposition to one-another, as though they were polar opposites? Yet consider the statement below recently made by Gerry Ruddy of the IRSP's Ard Comhairle:
"We are very clear that republicanism has suffered a defeat. The war is over and those who have, any lingering thoughts on re-commencing with a view to victory are deluded. Class struggle is the only option. Those who ignore the class question and stand alone on their "republican principles" stand condemned to remain in splendid isolation. We now live in different times and the old certainties now no longer hold. We all on the left need to forget our petty differences and become relevant to the lives of the working classes in Ireland while keeping alive our vision of socialism.
"The IRSP has always said that the class and national question cannot be separated. Of course we do want to build bridges with other republicans and have positive proposals to put forward to build bridges. We, in the spirit of the broad front policy first advocated by our founder Seamus Costello, will work with progressive forces on working class issues. That and that alone is the way forward for progressives from the labour, socialist and republican traditions."
The obvious contradictions in this statement are jarring. The IRSP says that the class and national question cannot be separated, but the war for national liberation has been defeated and cannot be renewed. Class struggle is the only option, but somehow this will have to be waged without recourse to the use of arms. The original position of the IRSP was clear and defensible: the national liberation struggle and the class struggle are inseparable; but this recent statement contributes nothing but confusion. The reality of the party's traditional analysis makes plain that the national liberation struggle cannot be abandoned, because it is inseparably a part of the struggle for socialism in Ireland. Moreover, it is absurd to declare the use of arms to be forever at an end, if one intends to wage the class struggle to its victorious conclusion. The ruling class has never ceded its ownership of the means of production without a fight and any party that hopes to successfully confront their resistance with tactics of civil disobedience alone is a party leading the working class into a cul de sac of bloody repression. Clearly, if the national liberation struggle and the class struggle are inseparable, it will eventually be necessary to wrest control of the nation out of the hands of the imperialists and neo-colonialist now governing the island of Ireland, if the fight for socialism is to be won.
The other fundamental argument to be advanced meshes perfectly with that just stated. It is the long-standing position of the IRSP that the pursuit of the armed struggle is not a matter of principle, but a question of tactics. This was, in fact, one of the key arguments advanced in support of the INLA's cease-fire in August 1998 and it has been a consistently held position of the IRSP throughout its history. If the use of arms is a tactical question, however, how is it possible for the IRSP to declare that it must be abandoned now and forever? Clearly, the tactical needs of future social circumstances cannot be identified at present, so why have numerous IRSP statements since 1998 declared `the war to be over' now and forever? The simple answer is that these recent statements represent a major departure from traditional republican socialist analysis. Moreover, if the course of recent events is seen as a validation of the traditional republican socialist analysis, as we believe it has been, then the perspective advanced in these recent IRSP statements can be summed up in a single word: WRONG.
So, how are we to make sense of Gerry Ruddy's recent statement embracing the primacy of the class struggle with its simultaneous condemnation of recourse to the tactic of armed struggle? The seeming contradiction is resolved when it is understood what Ruddy means by "class struggle". When he uses this phrase, he is not referring to the violent overthrow of the capitalist system of production by the working masses in order to create a new social order from the ashes of the old. Instead, Mr. Ruddy is calling for those activists formerly engaged in revolutionary pursuit of the national liberation struggle to turn their attentions to trade union activism and diving headlong into the swamp of reformist electoral politics. For despite the lesson being taught by history time-and-time-again that reformism cannot win the liberation of the working class, this well-worn strategy never seems to lose its appeal. This is due to the fact, that any working class party that seeks to function over the long haul within the confines of the capitalist system must either endure endless persecution or ultimately abandon its revolutionary program. Why so many well-meaning revolutionary activists would strive to avoid the former is easily understood. Unfortunately, regardless of how attractive that option is, it does nothing to alter the fact that the latter is a strategy that is inherently doomed to failure.
Ruddy has publicly identified himself with the followers of the British Trotskyist guru Ted Grant, who once headed the Militant group. As the Irish anarchist group Attack International pointed out about Grant's group in their pamphlet The Spirit of Freedom: The War in Ireland, "They argue that `the armed struggle of a few Republican terrorists has achieved nothing positive.' They go on to lump the IRA together with the UVF, and condemn both as `sectarian
paramilitaries'. Worse still, they claim that the IRA has driven Protestant workers into the arms of the Unionists, the Orange Order and the Loyalist paramilitary groups."
Comrade Willie Gallagher of the IRSP recently said in the new Starry Plough magazine:
"It is now abundantly clear that republicanism has been shafted and that it really was a pacification process in order to negate militant republicanism. I believe we are now entering into that phase where our analysis has been proved, beyond doubt, to be the correct one and we are now entering a period where we can advance and convince others of our position."
We in the International Republican Socialist Network agree with those sentiments, but if they the analysis of the IRSM has been proven correct, then clearly this is not the time to move away from the traditional republican socialist views of the IRSM historically. Rather than claiming the national liberation struggle to be forever over, it is imperative that the IRSP reiterate the inseparable bond between that struggle and the class struggle. The INLA need not return to open warfare before circumstances make it tactically correct, but it is necessary that the IRSM stop iterating the message that the struggle in arms will never again be given tactical consideration. Moreover, it is imperative that those members of the IRSM with deep roots in its history and traditions step to the fore to direct the course the movement takes in the future. Gino Gallagher is dead, Kevin McQuillen is no longer in the IRSP, so the question must be addressed, who will provide the political education to lead a new generation of members of the IRSM? Will it be comrades of the caliber of Peadar Dubh, Willie Gallagher, Terry Harkin, Eddie McGarrigle, and Paul Little or will it be those who look to Trotskyism, Maoism, academic Marxism or other variants of the failed sectarian Left? Let there be no mistake, the hardest most unpleasant task any revolutionary is ever confronted with his entering into battle with present or former comrades. Nonetheless, the health and vitality of the IRSM remains dependent on it reclaiming the revolutionary tradition of republican socialism, if it is to avoid the slow death of a decline into pointless reformism.
The Historical Roots of the Relationship of the Political and Armed Struggles
Friedrich Engels married into a Fenian family, twice, and Marx's daughters claimed association with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, in addition to their ally on the General Council of the First International, J.P. McDonnell, the first Reporting Secretary for Ireland in the IMWA, having been a member of the underground movement. Beyond this, however, Engels applauded the Irish national liberation movement use of armed struggle for another reason; he applauded the fact that it gave the largely reformist British socialist movement of his day a `whiff of gunpowder'. That is, he specifically endorsed the example set by the Irish national liberation struggle of the need to move beyond petition and demonstrations to embrace the direct confrontation of the ruling class through armed struggle. After all, Engels had engaged in armed struggle himself during the events of 1848 and shared Marx's perspective that the working class must ultimately be prepared to win their liberation through class warfare.
Despite the tendency of many of the Leninist formations within the sectarian Left of the industrialized nations to decry armed action by the working class, while waving quotes from Lenin made against the terrorist tactics of the Narodniks of his day, the reality of the Bolshevik's views on armed struggle are a very different matter. Beyond the fact that Lenin defended the Easter Rising in Ireland and lambasted fellow socialists who'd condemned the armed rising, is the fact that the 21 conditions for admission to the Communist (Third) International included the requirement that any party seeking to join that body have both a legal and illegal (underground, armed) organisations. Without the existence of an underground, armed organisation, for example, execution of the Comintern's strategy for armed insurrection in Germany, which occurred twice within the first five years of the WeimarRepublic, would have been impossible.
For republican socialists, however, the clearest example from the past from which to learn is that provided by the greatest of all Irish Marxists, James Connolly. It is not even the historical example of Connolly first helping to forge the Irish Citizen Army as a labour militia during the great Dublin lockout of 1913 and then later transforming the ICA into an working class army that would lead by example in the streets of Dublin during the 1916 Rising that provides the greatest lesson to Irish republican socialists today; rather it is the series of articles that Connolly wrote for publication in the Workers' Republic, which were later published collectively as a pamphlet entitled Revolutionary Warfare. Through this series of articles, Connolly sought to provide a practical education in the tactics of revolutionary warfare, so as to provide them with the knowledge they would need to engage in a successful class war, by discussing the history former popular uprisings, such as those in the Austrian Tyrol, Belgium, Paris, and the Alamo and Battle of Lexington in what would later be parts of the United States.
Consideration of this contribution by Connolly immediately calls forth the question, why has the IRSP never sought to do the same within the pages of An Camcheachta/The Starry Plough? Surely the comrades of the INLA could provide valuable insights to young revolutionary activists, gained through the struggle they waged for nearly a quarter of a century. How can the IRSP have failed to understand the valuable contribution that might have been made in a discussion of how the INLA sought to use its arms in ways that advanced the politics of the movement as a whole, such as the Mt. Gabriel radar station bombing, which exposed the violation of Irish neutrality by the Dublin regime, the support provided to the Dunnes' strikers and for solidarity with Palestine by the bombings and bomb threats carried out in relation to these issues, or the propaganda value gained through the Robin Hood-like hijacking of a bread lorry and the distribution of its contents to the working poor of North Dublin? Could the IRSP see no utility to working class activists in Ireland of having the working of the mercury-tilt detonator used in the assassination of Airey Neave explained or in a discussion of how the Drop-In Well charges were placed specifically so that their detonation would blow out all of the supports for the roof, bringing it directly down on the soldiers inside? Rest assured, comrades, the agents of the ruling class and the armed fascists are already well versed in such knowledge; it is revolutionaries within the working
class who would benefit most from such lessons.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, however, of how open discussion of armed struggle and its tactics could be effectively pursued by a revolutionary party. Instead of just telling Irish workers "the war is over for all time", why not carry out a full and open discussion of why the tactic is not suited to present circumstances, along with a discussion of when, where, and how such tactics are appropriate. There would be real value in a revolutionary assessment of the history of sabotage within the sphere of industrial struggle, from the Molly McGuire's bombs to the French syndicalists' practice of "putting the machines on strike" during industrial pursuits; just as there would be value in drawing the lessons from how not only the INLA, but groups like the Red Brigades in Italy sought to support industrial action by the working class with their own armed actions. The IRSP undertook to publicly explore the problems which arose from the rise of `war lords' within the INLA in the early 1980s, would it not be equally useful to carry out a discussion of the basis for the `cell' system adopted by the INLA to provide greater security against the imperialists or to examine the merits of the INLA's alliances at various times with groups like the Angry Brigades or Action Direct? Isn't the time long past due for a public discussion of the INLA's participation in training with comrades of the PFLP or sending volunteers to fight with the MPLA in Angola?
The IRSP, despite the many monument installations and memorials to fallen comrades it has carried out to reassure members of the INLA that they are respected has far too often given the impression through its statements that the entire war of national liberation struggle was without value ultimately and there is more than a small display of embarrassment, if not shame, over the heroic actions of the INLA between 1974 and 1998. This embarrassment was manifested in the denunciation of the INLA's policing action in North Belfast in 2003, just as it was manifested in the failure to challenge head-on the black propaganda that tarred comrade Dessie O Hare with the label of `torturer'. How many Irish workers lose the tips of a couple of fingers, if not far more, to the machines of industry and the demands of employment each year? All they get is a bit of a disability settlement and the expectation that they get back to work and noone ever accuses their employers of torture in the workplace; noone is found crying crocodile tears over their `horrifying disfigurement'. But, when the son of the richest man in Ireland loses a couple of fingertips in the course of an action being carried out in support of the national liberation and class struggle in Ireland—though that person, while trained as a dentist has so much money he need never do a day's work in his life—the party representing the most advanced consciousness of the Irish working class feels it must hide its face in shame? Let me be the first to suggest that we shed no tears for the fleeting discomfort that we may be forced to inflict on members of the class that exploit us daily, as we have more than enough misery with the ranks of our own class due to the callous violence of the capitalists to keep us fully occupied.
A Word on `Policing'
In the statement quoted above from Gerry Ruddy, he later goes on to make plain the much reiterated position of the IRSP in recent years that there is no place for the republican and republican socialist paramilitaries to provide the traditional role they'd carried out from time-to-time of policing the nationalist communities against exploitation by anti-social hoodlums. It is understood that such activity can at times play a divisive role with the community and that some republican paramilitaries have used this as a justification to attacks their political rivals within the community. It is also understood that such activity may expose volunteers of the INLA to counter-violence or arrest and that it diverts attention away that could be better focused on the national liberation or class struggle. It is even understood that the INLA playing such a role may have a negative impact on the development of community democracy and a sense of self-empowerment by residents of the nationalist community. The only thing that is not understood is why, when the IRSP keeps stating this is not the role of the INLA, does the INLA keep involving itself in the policing of the illicit drug trade within the nationalist community of the six counties, and even within the working class communities in the 26 counties, where the compulsion for such policing is far less clear-cut?
In Dublin, Belfast, Derry, and beyond, even following the cease-fire declared in 1998, the INLA has continued to engage in activity that clearly falls within the definition of `community policing' in opposition to those involved in the illegal drug trade. This is a seeming contradiction that appears to cry out to the IRSP for some kind of an explanation. Because, to speak frankly, it is very hard to believe that there is more misery resulting in the working class communities of Ireland as a result of kids high on Ecstasy than is likely to result on a regular basis as a result of quite legal alcohol abuse within that same community. Others are entitled to their own perspective on the matter, but given the choice between somebody on Ecstasy stroking my arm for 90 minutes and smiling like an idiot while I'm standing in a pub or some belligerent drunk attempting to punch me in the same pub, I'm gonna have to say that the former strikes me as the lesser social evil. Even when the trade involves heroin, it must be remembered that the nationalist community in the six counties has seen a skyrocketing increase in youth suicide in recent years, which provides eloquent testimony to the experience of despair in the wake of the GFA. Just as Marx commented that socialists were ill-advised to directly combat religious belief within the working class, so long as religion provides the affect of an `opiate' against the perpetual suffering of our class under capitalism, so too might socialists recognize that when working class youth find themselves in such personal torment as is offered to them by the contemporary reality of the six counties, it is small surprise that some of them will seek the comfort of genuine opiates, when the balm of the religious `opiate' is no longer sufficient.
The reason why the IRSP should speak to this contradiction between their expressed desire to see the INLA not involved in community policing and their cheerleading when the INLA involves itself precisely in that activity when drug sales are involved, is—to be frank—because the very fact of this glaring contradiction gives the impression that the IRSM is simply involved in the pursuit of bourgeois respectability. The bourgeois media constantly lies in attempts to portray the INLA as being itself engaged in drug dealing, so the INLA counters by ripping off a large sum of money and drugs from a local drug dealer and handing the drugs over to the Catholic Church (and keeping the cash, which we agree is a good idea) as if to prove `it ain't so'. The reality is, however, that the bourgeois media isn't thwarted in its lying campaign and has even been known to use these actions by the INLA as `evidence' of drug turf wars; so what is really gained? If the IRSM wants to take a stand in support of social sobriety, a first step might be discouraging comrades from getting pissed in public with too much regularity, but if one thinks its wrong for the INLA to respond to repeated requests from within the community to defend them against a social menace, then one might take a serious look at why its fine for INLA volunteers to risk their lives and their freedom to stop a given drug dealer; until another arises to fill the gap left by his departure, that is. Beyond this, one might ask whether there are far more useful activities for INLA volunteers to be engaged in. Because if the IRSM is prepared to take on the risks inherent in their participating in efforts to chase out drug dealers, shouldn't it be prepared to take those same risks for the far greater objectives of liquidating members of loyalist death squads, providing support to other revolutionary actions by the working class, from anti-war protests at Shannon, to the struggle against Shell in the West, to support for strike actions?
Do working class kids getting high really do more harm to our class than exploitation in the workplace and social deprivation in our communities? Or does fighting the former just get better mention in the bourgeois media and greater acceptance from the bourgeois state than fighting the latter?
Conclusion
While in the past the IRSN has been accused of advocating that comrades in Ireland undertake the risks of a renewed armed struggle, nothing could be further from reality. In the wake of the GFA's pacification process, it is clear that objective circumstances do not presently favor the use of the tactic of armed struggle. However, the task of national liberation in Ireland remains inseparable from the struggle for the liberation of the Irish working class and it is therefore counterproductive for the IRSM to continue to advance propaganda that argues that armed struggle has no place in the ongoing fight of Irish workers for their liberation. The IRSM remains the representatives of the most advanced consciousness of the Irish working class and the principle of remaining politically multi-tendencied remains sound. However, the membership of the IRSP and INLA must decide whether its interests lie in continued association with the political perspectives of Ted Grant's followers or other tendencies of the sectarian Left or whether they are better served by returning forcefully to the now validated revolutionary analysis that guided the movement throughout most of its history.
While this decision is being undertaken politically, it is imperative that the INLA adopt a process of political vetting envisioned by the Ta Power's document, so as to ensure that there are no volunteers within its ranks who have not already demonstrated their grasp of the politics of the IRSP and their willingness to engage in the political struggles of Irish workers. Moreover, the INLA must resist any pressure to abandon its arms or restrict its existence to the confines of the six counties. The INLA is not merely a safeguard against potentional loyalist pogroms in the six counties, it is the armed wing of the revolutionary movement of the Irish working class. Short of a full returned to an armed struggle for national liberation it can play a vital role in the defense of revolutionary political activists, the material support of the political movement of the Irish working class, and should explore the question of whether other opportunities for the successful use of the tactic of armed struggle exist within present circumstances.
(Part II of this series will examine the question of armed struggle in the context of other nations wherein a republican socialist analysis is best suited to the circumstances of the working class.)