Ireland and the British Left
Peter Urban, Class War, 15 Jan 2010
The decision of Socialist Appeal UK to republish an article, Nation or Class?, by Gerry Ruddy, until recently was a leading member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, further illustrates the problems confronted by the socialist within the Irish republican community. Chief among these problems and best illustrated here are the attempts by the British Left to use Irish revolutionaries as vehicles to facilitate their incessant sectarian bickering, but this is the least of their crimes in relation to the Irish revolutionaries.
In the First International, during Marx and Engels day, Irish socialists confronted social-imperialist attitudes from reformist leaders of the British Left, advanced then as now in the name of ‘internationalism’. Engels baited the British Left leaders of his day to demonstrate their internationalism by supporting a move of the capitol of the UK to Dublin, knowing well that their ‘internationalism’ extended only as far as London. Socialist Appeal’s former guru Ted Grant wrote in an essay in 1966, “…that unity of the Irish workers North and South can only be obtained by conducting the struggle on a class basis for an IrishSocialistRepublic, in indissoluble unity with the British workers in their struggle for a British democratic SocialistRepublic.” Irish republican socialists today hear various versions of such sentiments from British Left parties, again in the name of ‘internationalism’; yet these same groupings’ ‘internationalism’ rarely extends even to the European Union. Now as then, their ‘internationalism’ extends just far enough to retain the components of the UK and not one iota further.
While some parties of the British Left appear chiefly made up of university lecturers, Irish republican socialist activists are drawn from the working class, almost without exception. Traditionally, they forged their political analysis in the heat of struggle and through their experience of the contradictions of imperialism and capitalism, only far too often to confront sneering condescension from the British Leftists. At the best of times, this attitude takes the form of a patronizing, but benign, paternalism. At its worst, it shows a sickening sense of superiority from sections of the British Left, who appear to feel it falls to them to bring a ‘sophisticated analysis’ to the poor unfortunates in the colonies. Gerry Ruddy summoned up such an image when he spoke at an IMT conference in Spain some years ago and— despite being the IRSP’s political secretary, which had repeatedly passed resolutions reasserting the party’s reliance on Marxism in shaping its analysis, over the course of decades— declared to the conference that “some of us in the IRSP are even Marxists”, no doubt while tugging his fore-lock.
An aspect of this latter problem are those within the British Left who incessantly tell Irish republican socialists that they must unite the Protestant and Catholic working class of the six counties, ignoring the real experience of those activists, who have ever accepted revolutionaries from either community, and the ground-breaking analysis of Seamus Costello, who noted the inherently reactionary nature of loyalism and asserted the inability of Irish revolutionaries to make common cause with Protestant workers until they have abandoned that ideology. Likewise, the British Left has too often seized upon every opportunity to demonstrate their respectability by condemning the struggle in arms, forgetting both Engels comments that the British working class benefited from the Irish preparedness to introduce gunpowder into their tactics and the insistence of the Third International that all member parties maintain an underground armed section.
The decision of Socialist Appeal UK to republish an article, Nation or Class?, by Gerry Ruddy, until recently was a leading member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, further illustrates the problems confronted by the socialist within the Irish republican community. Chief among these problems and best illustrated here are the attempts by the British Left to use Irish revolutionaries as vehicles to facilitate their incessant sectarian bickering, but this is the least of their crimes in relation to the Irish revolutionaries.
In the First International, during Marx and Engels day, Irish socialists confronted social-imperialist attitudes from reformist leaders of the British Left, advanced then as now in the name of ‘internationalism’. Engels baited the British Left leaders of his day to demonstrate their internationalism by supporting a move of the capitol of the UK to Dublin, knowing well that their ‘internationalism’ extended only as far as London. Socialist Appeal’s former guru Ted Grant wrote in an essay in 1966, “…that unity of the Irish workers North and South can only be obtained by conducting the struggle on a class basis for an IrishSocialistRepublic, in indissoluble unity with the British workers in their struggle for a British democratic SocialistRepublic.” Irish republican socialists today hear various versions of such sentiments from British Left parties, again in the name of ‘internationalism’; yet these same groupings’ ‘internationalism’ rarely extends even to the European Union. Now as then, their ‘internationalism’ extends just far enough to retain the components of the UK and not one iota further.
While some parties of the British Left appear chiefly made up of university lecturers, Irish republican socialist activists are drawn from the working class, almost without exception. Traditionally, they forged their political analysis in the heat of struggle and through their experience of the contradictions of imperialism and capitalism, only far too often to confront sneering condescension from the British Leftists. At the best of times, this attitude takes the form of a patronizing, but benign, paternalism. At its worst, it shows a sickening sense of superiority from sections of the British Left, who appear to feel it falls to them to bring a ‘sophisticated analysis’ to the poor unfortunates in the colonies. Gerry Ruddy summoned up such an image when he spoke at an IMT conference in Spain some years ago and— despite being the IRSP’s political secretary, which had repeatedly passed resolutions reasserting the party’s reliance on Marxism in shaping its analysis, over the course of decades— declared to the conference that “some of us in the IRSP are even Marxists”, no doubt while tugging his fore-lock.
An aspect of this latter problem are those within the British Left who incessantly tell Irish republican socialists that they must unite the Protestant and Catholic working class of the six counties, ignoring the real experience of those activists, who have ever accepted revolutionaries from either community, and the ground-breaking analysis of Seamus Costello, who noted the inherently reactionary nature of loyalism and asserted the inability of Irish revolutionaries to make common cause with Protestant workers until they have abandoned that ideology. Likewise, the British Left has too often seized upon every opportunity to demonstrate their respectability by condemning the struggle in arms, forgetting both Engels comments that the British working class benefited from the Irish preparedness to introduce gunpowder into their tactics and the insistence of the Third International that all member parties maintain an underground armed section.