THE LESSONS OF A LIFE: 30 YEARS WITHOUT SEAMUS COSTELLO
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Seamus Costello by members of the Official Irish Republican Movement. It was the penultimate act in a feud between the OIRM and the Irish Republican Socialist Movement begun shortly after the IRSM was founded, when the Official IRA attempted to physically liquidate the revolutionary organization that had been formed chiefly through a split in their ranks. I occurred, however, years after the initial period of blood-shed, at a time when the IRSM had not been engaged in any military action against the OIRM for years, and at a time when Costello was gaining international recognition as one of the greatest leaders of Irish socialism since James Connolly’s death in 1916. It was a reactionary undertaking that deprived the Irish working class of the greatest leader of that generation and it had severe repercussions on the growth and development of the IRSM that would continue for the next decade and a half, if not to the present.
Seamus led the IRSM for a period of less than three years until his death, though he had already established a reputation as a republican socialist leader in the years preceding the founding of the IRSM. Though that is true, he set an example of republican socialist leadership during that period that serves as a constant reference for revolutionaries. As Muslims turn to the Haddith, the stories of the life of Mohammed for guidance, when an issue is not set forth in the Koran, to follow the path of their exemplary founder, it can be useful for republican socialists to examine the lives of their own exemplary predecessors when making their way forward. Thus the question presents itself: what are the lessons we can learn from Seamus Costello?
Electoral Politics
First and foremost of Costello’s accomplishment was his amazing success in the arena of electoral politics. The arena of electoral politics within bourgeois democracy is one that is filled with pitfalls and has served many times in the history of the socialist movement to lead parties down the road to reformism. While often an excellent means of propagandizing and focusing working class action, it can also serve to reinforce working class belief in the ability to use the capitalist state to address their own interests and it can contribute to retarding a sense of self-reliance among working people and encourage them to look to leaders rather than themselves in their fight with capitalism. Accordingly, it remains an attractive arena for socialist action, but one that must be handled with deftly and correctly if one is to avoid becoming a victim of the treacherous swamp that lies within. In this regard Costello was a master of revolutionary tactics. Whether in the Wicklow County Council, the Bray District Council, or any of several other offices that Costello campaigned for and won, Costello never approached working class voters with assurances of what he would do for them within the office. Instead, Costello consistently used such positions to empower the working class people themselves. He used his position to gain them access to chambers where they might speak for themselves; he used his office space to enable them to meet and organize, he used his advantage to gain them a wider audience for their concerns.
The great lesson to be learned from Costello regarding electoral politics is not his starting point, which was to break from the traditions of the Republican Movement and move beyond abstentionism, rather it is the manner in which he selected which seats to contend for and how he used them once he had won. To evoke Costello’s name in order to justify an argument that a republican socialist party’s validity is determined by its participation in this or that election or to argue that because a party has rejected abstentionism it is therefore compelled to contest any given election is to misconstrue the actual events of Costello’s political life. While Costello headed the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the party never contested a Dail election, never contested a Westminster election, and never contested a Stormont election. While Costello chaired the IRSP, the party never fielded a multitude of candidates; never showed any compulsion to ‘prove’ their legitimacy by contesting a given election. Costello chose elections where the IRSP could successfully fight and win, so that the party’s reputation would be enhanced, not potentially damaged by a poor showing. Even more important, the lesson to be learned from Costello’s example is that the value to be gained from winning an election is not that you might somehow legislate a socialist agenda in a capitalist governmental body, but that you use that access point into the halls of bourgeois power to teach self-empowerment to working class people; that you help to overcome their internalized sense of powerlessness against the ruling class, but encouraging their self-activity. This is a lesson of tremendous importance, far more significant than a simple justification for running on a non-abstentionist platform.
Armed Struggle
Hand in glove with the aforementioned electoral example, it is essential to recognize the lesson Costello provided regarding the struggle in arms. In contrast to both the traditional militarism of Irish republicanism and the pacifist tradition of much of the socialist Left, Costello made plain that the use of arms was not a matter of principle, but only a question of tactics. Thus, despite the Irish National Liberation Army having been established on the very same day that the IRSP was formed, its existence was not acknowledged by the IRSM until long after. This resulted in later forming a temporary body, the People’s Liberation Army, composed of INLA volunteers, as well as individual volunteers from the Provisional IRA and former OIRA volunteers not in the INLA, to serve as a defense force when the OIRA launched its initial attack against the new IRSM, to avoid acknowledging the INLA’s existence while being forced to meet armed force with an armed defense. The lesson underlying this is readily recognized, Costello recognized the absolute need for the revolutionary movement of the working class to include an armed wing, but also understood that maintaining an armed wing did not necessitate being engaged in armed action, except when such action was appropriate to circumstances.
The Broad Front
Costello’s insistence on the right of the working class to engage in armed struggle could not be clearer. For proof one need look no further than the points of unity outlined by Costello for participation in an anti-imperialist Broad Front, which specifically required acceptance of the right to armed struggle. Thus the Broad Front concept as advanced by Costello was not simply any alliance of forces around shared goals; instead it was a carefully laid out proposal for common action within a specific framework. The Broad Front concept advanced by Costello did not seek unity at any cost. It was not open to British socialist parties whose newspapers were often filled with black propaganda about the republican struggle in the six counties and denunciations of armed struggle, using misconstrued writings of Lenin about the anarchist Narodniks of Russian history. It was, in fact, chiefly a means of enabling collective action by the movements that had come out of the traditional Irish Republican Movement, so that the pursuit of a unique analysis on their parts could exist, without damaging their shared opposition to British imperialism. It was a proposal that demonstrated Costello’s advanced thinking, which was able to set aside sectarian concerns in order to confront a common enemy. It deserves all of the esteem that the phrase ‘Broad Front’ has retained in the IRSM even to the present. However, in order to fully appreciate it, it also must be acknowledged that it largely failed, due to small-minded sectarianism of the other movements to whom it was offered.
The OIRM never showed the slightest interest in the Broad Front, though it is clear from the historical record they were as much the intended audience to which it was presented, as was the PIRA. Instead the OIRM, later transformed in Sinn Fein the Workers Party, then simply the Workers Party, and later the Democratic Left, remained mired in its own sectarianism, which would lead them to such a reactionary posture that they would attempt alliances with loyalist paramilitaries before working with other Irish republicans and also led them to kill Seamus Costello. For its part, the PIRA paid lip service to the idea, but rarely actually acted in the spirit it represented. Instead, the history of relations between the IRSM and the PIRA is filled with tales of how no one from Sinn Fein would work on the Tony O Hara campaign when the INLA POW ran for the Dail as part of an H-Block ticket; how PIRA volunteers locked INLA POWs in their cells while engaged in a prison break; how Sinn Fein effectively killed the National H-Block/Armagh Committee; how PIRA prisoners engaged in unilateral talks during the hunger strikes; and so forth. In fact, only People’s Democracy ever entered into a Broad Front relationship with the IRSM in the sense that Costello defined the Broad Front. This resulted in a number of propaganda success relative to the prisoner campaigns of the 1980s, including the election of the IRSP and two PD candidates to the Belfast City Council as ‘H-Block candidates’.
The most important element of Costello’s Broad Front policy, however, is rarely mentioned, though it evokes comparison with James Connolly’s own attitude towards such alliances. This was the fact that the Broad Front concept advanced by Costello ensured the right of all participants to continue to raise their unique analysis and maintain their own propaganda within Broad Front work. It was the refusal of Sinn Fein to accept this that actually led to the failure of an attempted Broad Front with them. Just one small example of this would be that, during the hunger strike campaign, Sinn Fein bitterly complained about the IRSP creating badges of the hunger strikers’ faces ringed in blue, rather than just black and white like those Sinn Fein created. The reality was, for Sinn Fein, the Broad Front was only acceptable if the IRSP disappeared from sight within the Broad Front, so that their participation gave the appearance of swelling Sinn Fein’s numbers, without actually causing an awareness of their existence. I can speak personally to the endless battles waged in North America with supporters of the Provos just to get it acknowledged that Patsy, Kevin, and Mickey were INLA volunteers. While Seamus’s death leaves it impossible to say how he might have responded during the hunger strike, what is clear from his initial Broad Front proposal is that he fully anticipated such an approach by others in the Broad Front and specifically set out to ensure that the IRSP would not become hostage to working in a unified campaign with anyone, if the price was for the IRSP to hide its own existence or its specific political analysis. That is the lesson from Seamus Costello on the Broad Front.
Loyalists
Costello has long been acknowledged for his analysis on the loyalist community of the six counties and there is a lesson to be learned in his ability to articulate this analysis without being goaded into counterproductive tactics or a counterrevolutionary milieu by sections of the British Left. Costello’s position was simple and forthright: absolutely no religious sectarianism will be allowed within the IRSM and no alliance of any kind with loyalists is possible. Those who believe that position to be self-contradictory are in denial about the nature of Loyalism, which Costello understood well. Loyalism is a reactionary ideology with the Protestant working class. It is, of its very essence, pro-imperialist, pro-monarchial, and anti-republican. As such, there is no basis for cooperation between revolutionary socialists and loyalists, even when the latter sometimes focus on the actual class interests of their community. Because, even during those brief moments when genuine concerns of working people are put forward, they remain mired in the false consciousness that gives rise to support for British imperialism and sectarian hatred of Catholic members of their class. What Costello taught us was that the demand by sections of the British Left and others that republican socialists must accommodate the views of loyalist workers are reactionary and all such attempts at socialist organizing in Ireland have been shown by history to result in failure.
Anyone who cares to look will find the history of socialist struggle in Ireland in the 20th century littered with the corpses of parties who decided that they must overcome the sectarian divide as their first step to building a revolutionary movement. The idea is by no means new and it has been tried over and over and over and every time it has been tried, it has failed, beyond a matter of months during which some form of unity could be maintained. What Costello understood, was just what Connolly had predicted if Ireland was partitioned—that it would result in a “carnival of reaction” and that one of the most unpleasant clowns in the carnival is the false consciousness of Loyalism that it promotes within the ranks of Protestant working people. Thus, Costello argued, the way forward for all Irish workers—Protestant, Catholic, atheist, Wiccan, Moslem, or Hindu— was to set about to create a 32-county Irish workers’ republic, because the continued existence of the border between the six and 26 county statelets would be the basis for this reactionary ideology being maintained.
Revolutionaries from the Protestant community were never discriminated against within the ranks of the IRSM. Indeed, Ronnie Bunting, remains one of the most respected leaders of the INLA in its history and his widow, Suzanne Bunting, was almost single-handedly responsible for keeping the IRSP alive during its darkest period (along with the RSPOWs and North American supporters), despite both being drawn from the Protestant community. Moreover, the IRSP has consistently opposed the meddling of Catholic clergy in social matters, calling for divorce rights, abortion rights, and secular education throughout the island of Ireland. Even with the present decade the IRSP has had members of its Ard Comhairle drawn for the six county’s Protestant community. As such, it has consistently made plain that workers from the community are welcome to join in the struggle for socialism as fully respected comrades within the IRSM. The lesson we must learn from Costello—especially now, as the same fatal errors of the past are beginning to be replayed—is that one wins over workers from the Protestant community on the basis of the class consciousness, just as one wins members from the working class of the Catholic community. Irish Republicanism’s greatest founders were members of the Protestant community. There is nothing ‘Catholic’ about Irish republicanism and certainly nothing of the kind about republican socialism. Revolutionary workers will be drawn from all the communities of Ireland to a correct revolutionary analysis, as they themselves gain class-consciousness. Until they become class conscious, however, no worker belongs in a socialist party. The very concept of organizing as a socialist party makes plain that its membership must be class-conscious, if the party is to be a vehicle for combating capitalist oppression and a worker cannot be both class-conscious and pro-imperialist.
Legacy
To pay respect to the memory of Seamus Costello, it is essential that we learn from the unique contribution that Seamus made to the struggle for socialism in Ireland. While many will seek to wrap themselves in the mantle of Seamus Costello to add prestige to whatever position they may choose to advance, I think there is far more to be gained by examining the reality of Seamus’s life and political leadership than by claim to be his ‘true heir’. Revolutionary leaders are not statues to be gazed upon with awe, nor are their names embodied with the magic power to confer revolutionary legitimacy. They are real life women and men who made their way in the course of working class struggle and capitalist oppression with sufficient success to gain attention and hold it.
They are not always right, such that we can simply obey their words and guarantee our own success. Just as an example, there is a story told of how, when abortion rights were first debated within the IRSP, Seamus concluded a speech opposing abortion with the impassioned question: who are we to take a human life? In light of the ‘Boy General’s’ long history within republican paramilitary groups, his final words quickly brought the assembled comrades around him to gales of laughter and, when he realized the irony of his own statement, Seamus laughed as well. The IRSP adopted a position in support of a woman’s right to choose abortion that day and I’d like to think that Seamus learned something about why his views on the subject were not appropriate to a revolutionary socialist. So, I would not recommend that anyone look to Seamus Costello concerning this question of the basis democratic rights of working-women, but his error on this issue does not alter the fact that Seamus Costello remains a towering figure of Irish revolutionary socialism and international republican socialist analysis. His words and his example have much to teach us, but to understand what they have to teach, we cannot divorce them from the circumstances they arose in, the conditions they were intended to address, and the reality that they were honed in the course of battle, where speed and agility sometimes mean more than deep deliberation.
In conclusion, in seeking to learn from the example of Seamus Costello, it is not enough to call for a Broad Front; you must know what those words meant and what they resulted in. It is not sufficient to call for participation in elections; it is essential that such a call not have the end result of reifying the system of bourgeois democracy we are attempting to overthrow. Moreover, it is criminal to evoke Seamus’s name in order to defend positions in support of cooperation with loyalists or in association with pronouncements that the use of armed struggle has no place among Irish republican socialists. It is not necessary that Irish republican socialists hold to an unvarying roadmap first drafted by Seamus Costello, but when they choose to deviate from it, they should be mindful that they are making a departure and certain that circumstances exist that necessitate such a turn. The capitalist Social Democratic Party of Germany still lays claim to the name of Karl Marx, as does the Communist Party of China despite its juggernaut capitalist economy and sweatshop-oppressed workers. Sinn Fein, back in about 1992, even tried to claim Seamus Costello’s legacy, when they thought they’d put the final nails in the casket of the IRSM, but paying lip-service is not the same as paying attention and when one has the opportunity to learn from the example of a person like Seamus Costello, paying attention brings far greater rewards.
A Moment’s Reflection on Gino Gallagher
In my opinion, the IRSM has only once ever again brought forth a leader of the caliber of Seamus Costello and like Seamus Costello, he only really led the IRSM for three years. From roughly 1994 until his assassination in 1997, Gino Gallagher led the IRSM back from the brink of an abyss into which it had nearly fallen and returned to it its pride and sense of purpose. How strange it is that Seamus should have led the IRSM beginning in 1974 and been assassinated in 1977 and that Gino led it from 1994 and been assassinated in 1997. As a member of the IRSM who struggled to help the movement regain the ‘golden years’ it had known under Costello, I remember well the sense of renewed hope that Gino Gallagher gave the IRSM and am still moved by the sorrow that came with the news that he’d been killed. Though it turned out to be misdirected, my chest swelled with pride when I heard how INLA volunteers in Belfast had stormed Sinn Fein’s office on the Falls Road, thinking the PIRA to have been responsible—it reminded me of the bravery the IRSM had demonstrated in standing up to Provo attempts to coercion in my early days with the movement. We were ‘Irps’ again and we weren’t afraid of anyone, not British troops, Irish cops, or bourgeois Irish republicans. We were ‘Irps’ again and there was a price to pay for harm done to one of our comrades, just as the INLA exacted a price from the OIRA volunteer who killed Seamus Costello and later exacted a price from the traitors who had killed Gino Gallagher. We were ‘Irps’ again and we were leading the Way Forward!
I didn’t have the opportunity to get to know Gino during the few years that he led the IRSM, but I am glad to have carried out correspondence with him during his time as a POW and was touched to have also corresponded with his family and to have been remembered with a memorial card for Gino when he died, from his mother. Gino had been one of the few RSPOWs to make a point of thanking the IRSCNA for our program to send books to the prisoners each year (a practice we still continue within the International Republican Socialist Network). Gino several times employed a favorite quote that I knew he’d obtained from a book on German Communism in the 1910s and ‘20s we’d provided that, “revolutionaries are just dead men on leave”. Each time he employed those words it validated the effort we’d made in supplying books in an attempt to turn the prisons in “universities of the revolution”, just as Costello always referred to his time in the Curragh as his ‘university days’.
Gino Gallagher possessed the charisma as a leader that we’d heard about Seamus possessing. He was capable of leading, while encouraging the development of a collective leadership. He was unbowed in his defense of the right of the working class to defend its interests in arms and was undaunted by raising the wrath of the Provos by maintaining an independent strategy and analysis. When others had lost their will and left the IRSM to pursue an easier path, he stepped into the void and raised a beaten movement once more to its feet. I am sorry not to have known Seamus Costello, though his example has long served to guide me and I am proud to have known Gino Gallagher and remain inspired by his example.
Today Irish workers are left without these towering leaders to guide them and must draw upon themselves to chart the way forward. It will not be an easy task and errors will be made, but it is not possible to await another leader of their caliber. The fight must go on. As the Irish working class attempts to make its way, however, the examples of Seamus Costello and Gino Gallagher can still provide assistance, but only if we do more than simply evoke their names. There are lessons for revolutionaries to gain from the legacy of these two republican socialists and they should not be forgotten.
Peter Urban
International Republican Socialist Network
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Seamus led the IRSM for a period of less than three years until his death, though he had already established a reputation as a republican socialist leader in the years preceding the founding of the IRSM. Though that is true, he set an example of republican socialist leadership during that period that serves as a constant reference for revolutionaries. As Muslims turn to the Haddith, the stories of the life of Mohammed for guidance, when an issue is not set forth in the Koran, to follow the path of their exemplary founder, it can be useful for republican socialists to examine the lives of their own exemplary predecessors when making their way forward. Thus the question presents itself: what are the lessons we can learn from Seamus Costello?
Electoral Politics
First and foremost of Costello’s accomplishment was his amazing success in the arena of electoral politics. The arena of electoral politics within bourgeois democracy is one that is filled with pitfalls and has served many times in the history of the socialist movement to lead parties down the road to reformism. While often an excellent means of propagandizing and focusing working class action, it can also serve to reinforce working class belief in the ability to use the capitalist state to address their own interests and it can contribute to retarding a sense of self-reliance among working people and encourage them to look to leaders rather than themselves in their fight with capitalism. Accordingly, it remains an attractive arena for socialist action, but one that must be handled with deftly and correctly if one is to avoid becoming a victim of the treacherous swamp that lies within. In this regard Costello was a master of revolutionary tactics. Whether in the Wicklow County Council, the Bray District Council, or any of several other offices that Costello campaigned for and won, Costello never approached working class voters with assurances of what he would do for them within the office. Instead, Costello consistently used such positions to empower the working class people themselves. He used his position to gain them access to chambers where they might speak for themselves; he used his office space to enable them to meet and organize, he used his advantage to gain them a wider audience for their concerns.
The great lesson to be learned from Costello regarding electoral politics is not his starting point, which was to break from the traditions of the Republican Movement and move beyond abstentionism, rather it is the manner in which he selected which seats to contend for and how he used them once he had won. To evoke Costello’s name in order to justify an argument that a republican socialist party’s validity is determined by its participation in this or that election or to argue that because a party has rejected abstentionism it is therefore compelled to contest any given election is to misconstrue the actual events of Costello’s political life. While Costello headed the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the party never contested a Dail election, never contested a Westminster election, and never contested a Stormont election. While Costello chaired the IRSP, the party never fielded a multitude of candidates; never showed any compulsion to ‘prove’ their legitimacy by contesting a given election. Costello chose elections where the IRSP could successfully fight and win, so that the party’s reputation would be enhanced, not potentially damaged by a poor showing. Even more important, the lesson to be learned from Costello’s example is that the value to be gained from winning an election is not that you might somehow legislate a socialist agenda in a capitalist governmental body, but that you use that access point into the halls of bourgeois power to teach self-empowerment to working class people; that you help to overcome their internalized sense of powerlessness against the ruling class, but encouraging their self-activity. This is a lesson of tremendous importance, far more significant than a simple justification for running on a non-abstentionist platform.
Armed Struggle
Hand in glove with the aforementioned electoral example, it is essential to recognize the lesson Costello provided regarding the struggle in arms. In contrast to both the traditional militarism of Irish republicanism and the pacifist tradition of much of the socialist Left, Costello made plain that the use of arms was not a matter of principle, but only a question of tactics. Thus, despite the Irish National Liberation Army having been established on the very same day that the IRSP was formed, its existence was not acknowledged by the IRSM until long after. This resulted in later forming a temporary body, the People’s Liberation Army, composed of INLA volunteers, as well as individual volunteers from the Provisional IRA and former OIRA volunteers not in the INLA, to serve as a defense force when the OIRA launched its initial attack against the new IRSM, to avoid acknowledging the INLA’s existence while being forced to meet armed force with an armed defense. The lesson underlying this is readily recognized, Costello recognized the absolute need for the revolutionary movement of the working class to include an armed wing, but also understood that maintaining an armed wing did not necessitate being engaged in armed action, except when such action was appropriate to circumstances.
The Broad Front
Costello’s insistence on the right of the working class to engage in armed struggle could not be clearer. For proof one need look no further than the points of unity outlined by Costello for participation in an anti-imperialist Broad Front, which specifically required acceptance of the right to armed struggle. Thus the Broad Front concept as advanced by Costello was not simply any alliance of forces around shared goals; instead it was a carefully laid out proposal for common action within a specific framework. The Broad Front concept advanced by Costello did not seek unity at any cost. It was not open to British socialist parties whose newspapers were often filled with black propaganda about the republican struggle in the six counties and denunciations of armed struggle, using misconstrued writings of Lenin about the anarchist Narodniks of Russian history. It was, in fact, chiefly a means of enabling collective action by the movements that had come out of the traditional Irish Republican Movement, so that the pursuit of a unique analysis on their parts could exist, without damaging their shared opposition to British imperialism. It was a proposal that demonstrated Costello’s advanced thinking, which was able to set aside sectarian concerns in order to confront a common enemy. It deserves all of the esteem that the phrase ‘Broad Front’ has retained in the IRSM even to the present. However, in order to fully appreciate it, it also must be acknowledged that it largely failed, due to small-minded sectarianism of the other movements to whom it was offered.
The OIRM never showed the slightest interest in the Broad Front, though it is clear from the historical record they were as much the intended audience to which it was presented, as was the PIRA. Instead the OIRM, later transformed in Sinn Fein the Workers Party, then simply the Workers Party, and later the Democratic Left, remained mired in its own sectarianism, which would lead them to such a reactionary posture that they would attempt alliances with loyalist paramilitaries before working with other Irish republicans and also led them to kill Seamus Costello. For its part, the PIRA paid lip service to the idea, but rarely actually acted in the spirit it represented. Instead, the history of relations between the IRSM and the PIRA is filled with tales of how no one from Sinn Fein would work on the Tony O Hara campaign when the INLA POW ran for the Dail as part of an H-Block ticket; how PIRA volunteers locked INLA POWs in their cells while engaged in a prison break; how Sinn Fein effectively killed the National H-Block/Armagh Committee; how PIRA prisoners engaged in unilateral talks during the hunger strikes; and so forth. In fact, only People’s Democracy ever entered into a Broad Front relationship with the IRSM in the sense that Costello defined the Broad Front. This resulted in a number of propaganda success relative to the prisoner campaigns of the 1980s, including the election of the IRSP and two PD candidates to the Belfast City Council as ‘H-Block candidates’.
The most important element of Costello’s Broad Front policy, however, is rarely mentioned, though it evokes comparison with James Connolly’s own attitude towards such alliances. This was the fact that the Broad Front concept advanced by Costello ensured the right of all participants to continue to raise their unique analysis and maintain their own propaganda within Broad Front work. It was the refusal of Sinn Fein to accept this that actually led to the failure of an attempted Broad Front with them. Just one small example of this would be that, during the hunger strike campaign, Sinn Fein bitterly complained about the IRSP creating badges of the hunger strikers’ faces ringed in blue, rather than just black and white like those Sinn Fein created. The reality was, for Sinn Fein, the Broad Front was only acceptable if the IRSP disappeared from sight within the Broad Front, so that their participation gave the appearance of swelling Sinn Fein’s numbers, without actually causing an awareness of their existence. I can speak personally to the endless battles waged in North America with supporters of the Provos just to get it acknowledged that Patsy, Kevin, and Mickey were INLA volunteers. While Seamus’s death leaves it impossible to say how he might have responded during the hunger strike, what is clear from his initial Broad Front proposal is that he fully anticipated such an approach by others in the Broad Front and specifically set out to ensure that the IRSP would not become hostage to working in a unified campaign with anyone, if the price was for the IRSP to hide its own existence or its specific political analysis. That is the lesson from Seamus Costello on the Broad Front.
Loyalists
Costello has long been acknowledged for his analysis on the loyalist community of the six counties and there is a lesson to be learned in his ability to articulate this analysis without being goaded into counterproductive tactics or a counterrevolutionary milieu by sections of the British Left. Costello’s position was simple and forthright: absolutely no religious sectarianism will be allowed within the IRSM and no alliance of any kind with loyalists is possible. Those who believe that position to be self-contradictory are in denial about the nature of Loyalism, which Costello understood well. Loyalism is a reactionary ideology with the Protestant working class. It is, of its very essence, pro-imperialist, pro-monarchial, and anti-republican. As such, there is no basis for cooperation between revolutionary socialists and loyalists, even when the latter sometimes focus on the actual class interests of their community. Because, even during those brief moments when genuine concerns of working people are put forward, they remain mired in the false consciousness that gives rise to support for British imperialism and sectarian hatred of Catholic members of their class. What Costello taught us was that the demand by sections of the British Left and others that republican socialists must accommodate the views of loyalist workers are reactionary and all such attempts at socialist organizing in Ireland have been shown by history to result in failure.
Anyone who cares to look will find the history of socialist struggle in Ireland in the 20th century littered with the corpses of parties who decided that they must overcome the sectarian divide as their first step to building a revolutionary movement. The idea is by no means new and it has been tried over and over and over and every time it has been tried, it has failed, beyond a matter of months during which some form of unity could be maintained. What Costello understood, was just what Connolly had predicted if Ireland was partitioned—that it would result in a “carnival of reaction” and that one of the most unpleasant clowns in the carnival is the false consciousness of Loyalism that it promotes within the ranks of Protestant working people. Thus, Costello argued, the way forward for all Irish workers—Protestant, Catholic, atheist, Wiccan, Moslem, or Hindu— was to set about to create a 32-county Irish workers’ republic, because the continued existence of the border between the six and 26 county statelets would be the basis for this reactionary ideology being maintained.
Revolutionaries from the Protestant community were never discriminated against within the ranks of the IRSM. Indeed, Ronnie Bunting, remains one of the most respected leaders of the INLA in its history and his widow, Suzanne Bunting, was almost single-handedly responsible for keeping the IRSP alive during its darkest period (along with the RSPOWs and North American supporters), despite both being drawn from the Protestant community. Moreover, the IRSP has consistently opposed the meddling of Catholic clergy in social matters, calling for divorce rights, abortion rights, and secular education throughout the island of Ireland. Even with the present decade the IRSP has had members of its Ard Comhairle drawn for the six county’s Protestant community. As such, it has consistently made plain that workers from the community are welcome to join in the struggle for socialism as fully respected comrades within the IRSM. The lesson we must learn from Costello—especially now, as the same fatal errors of the past are beginning to be replayed—is that one wins over workers from the Protestant community on the basis of the class consciousness, just as one wins members from the working class of the Catholic community. Irish Republicanism’s greatest founders were members of the Protestant community. There is nothing ‘Catholic’ about Irish republicanism and certainly nothing of the kind about republican socialism. Revolutionary workers will be drawn from all the communities of Ireland to a correct revolutionary analysis, as they themselves gain class-consciousness. Until they become class conscious, however, no worker belongs in a socialist party. The very concept of organizing as a socialist party makes plain that its membership must be class-conscious, if the party is to be a vehicle for combating capitalist oppression and a worker cannot be both class-conscious and pro-imperialist.
Legacy
To pay respect to the memory of Seamus Costello, it is essential that we learn from the unique contribution that Seamus made to the struggle for socialism in Ireland. While many will seek to wrap themselves in the mantle of Seamus Costello to add prestige to whatever position they may choose to advance, I think there is far more to be gained by examining the reality of Seamus’s life and political leadership than by claim to be his ‘true heir’. Revolutionary leaders are not statues to be gazed upon with awe, nor are their names embodied with the magic power to confer revolutionary legitimacy. They are real life women and men who made their way in the course of working class struggle and capitalist oppression with sufficient success to gain attention and hold it.
They are not always right, such that we can simply obey their words and guarantee our own success. Just as an example, there is a story told of how, when abortion rights were first debated within the IRSP, Seamus concluded a speech opposing abortion with the impassioned question: who are we to take a human life? In light of the ‘Boy General’s’ long history within republican paramilitary groups, his final words quickly brought the assembled comrades around him to gales of laughter and, when he realized the irony of his own statement, Seamus laughed as well. The IRSP adopted a position in support of a woman’s right to choose abortion that day and I’d like to think that Seamus learned something about why his views on the subject were not appropriate to a revolutionary socialist. So, I would not recommend that anyone look to Seamus Costello concerning this question of the basis democratic rights of working-women, but his error on this issue does not alter the fact that Seamus Costello remains a towering figure of Irish revolutionary socialism and international republican socialist analysis. His words and his example have much to teach us, but to understand what they have to teach, we cannot divorce them from the circumstances they arose in, the conditions they were intended to address, and the reality that they were honed in the course of battle, where speed and agility sometimes mean more than deep deliberation.
In conclusion, in seeking to learn from the example of Seamus Costello, it is not enough to call for a Broad Front; you must know what those words meant and what they resulted in. It is not sufficient to call for participation in elections; it is essential that such a call not have the end result of reifying the system of bourgeois democracy we are attempting to overthrow. Moreover, it is criminal to evoke Seamus’s name in order to defend positions in support of cooperation with loyalists or in association with pronouncements that the use of armed struggle has no place among Irish republican socialists. It is not necessary that Irish republican socialists hold to an unvarying roadmap first drafted by Seamus Costello, but when they choose to deviate from it, they should be mindful that they are making a departure and certain that circumstances exist that necessitate such a turn. The capitalist Social Democratic Party of Germany still lays claim to the name of Karl Marx, as does the Communist Party of China despite its juggernaut capitalist economy and sweatshop-oppressed workers. Sinn Fein, back in about 1992, even tried to claim Seamus Costello’s legacy, when they thought they’d put the final nails in the casket of the IRSM, but paying lip-service is not the same as paying attention and when one has the opportunity to learn from the example of a person like Seamus Costello, paying attention brings far greater rewards.
A Moment’s Reflection on Gino Gallagher
In my opinion, the IRSM has only once ever again brought forth a leader of the caliber of Seamus Costello and like Seamus Costello, he only really led the IRSM for three years. From roughly 1994 until his assassination in 1997, Gino Gallagher led the IRSM back from the brink of an abyss into which it had nearly fallen and returned to it its pride and sense of purpose. How strange it is that Seamus should have led the IRSM beginning in 1974 and been assassinated in 1977 and that Gino led it from 1994 and been assassinated in 1997. As a member of the IRSM who struggled to help the movement regain the ‘golden years’ it had known under Costello, I remember well the sense of renewed hope that Gino Gallagher gave the IRSM and am still moved by the sorrow that came with the news that he’d been killed. Though it turned out to be misdirected, my chest swelled with pride when I heard how INLA volunteers in Belfast had stormed Sinn Fein’s office on the Falls Road, thinking the PIRA to have been responsible—it reminded me of the bravery the IRSM had demonstrated in standing up to Provo attempts to coercion in my early days with the movement. We were ‘Irps’ again and we weren’t afraid of anyone, not British troops, Irish cops, or bourgeois Irish republicans. We were ‘Irps’ again and there was a price to pay for harm done to one of our comrades, just as the INLA exacted a price from the OIRA volunteer who killed Seamus Costello and later exacted a price from the traitors who had killed Gino Gallagher. We were ‘Irps’ again and we were leading the Way Forward!
I didn’t have the opportunity to get to know Gino during the few years that he led the IRSM, but I am glad to have carried out correspondence with him during his time as a POW and was touched to have also corresponded with his family and to have been remembered with a memorial card for Gino when he died, from his mother. Gino had been one of the few RSPOWs to make a point of thanking the IRSCNA for our program to send books to the prisoners each year (a practice we still continue within the International Republican Socialist Network). Gino several times employed a favorite quote that I knew he’d obtained from a book on German Communism in the 1910s and ‘20s we’d provided that, “revolutionaries are just dead men on leave”. Each time he employed those words it validated the effort we’d made in supplying books in an attempt to turn the prisons in “universities of the revolution”, just as Costello always referred to his time in the Curragh as his ‘university days’.
Gino Gallagher possessed the charisma as a leader that we’d heard about Seamus possessing. He was capable of leading, while encouraging the development of a collective leadership. He was unbowed in his defense of the right of the working class to defend its interests in arms and was undaunted by raising the wrath of the Provos by maintaining an independent strategy and analysis. When others had lost their will and left the IRSM to pursue an easier path, he stepped into the void and raised a beaten movement once more to its feet. I am sorry not to have known Seamus Costello, though his example has long served to guide me and I am proud to have known Gino Gallagher and remain inspired by his example.
Today Irish workers are left without these towering leaders to guide them and must draw upon themselves to chart the way forward. It will not be an easy task and errors will be made, but it is not possible to await another leader of their caliber. The fight must go on. As the Irish working class attempts to make its way, however, the examples of Seamus Costello and Gino Gallagher can still provide assistance, but only if we do more than simply evoke their names. There are lessons for revolutionaries to gain from the legacy of these two republican socialists and they should not be forgotten.
Peter Urban
International Republican Socialist Network
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