The Crisis in Ireland: A Historical Perspective.

John Heuston

The strategic importance of Ireland has always been related to the British perception that it could potentially become a base for a foreign power. This has always been a crucial consideration for the British establishment. Of all the British colonies or semicolonies, Ireland was the closest to home, having the same sensitivity to British imperialism as Central America has to US imperialism. This explains a great deal about the intensity of the conflict in Ireland. German foreign policy, particularly during the Nazi period, was to play up the national question in all its neighbouring countries: Brittany in France, Croatia/Bosnia in Yugoslavia, Slovakia in Czechoslovakia, Urkraine in the USSR and Ireland. The objective of such overtures was to offer self-government under German "protection" in order to divide and balkanise its neighbours. Those who say that Britain has no economic interest in remaining in Ireland, quoting statistics about switches in investments from north to south, miss a crucial point. As in all its colonies, Britain acted to prevent Ireland becoming a competitor economic power, in this case on its own doorstep. Britain, to use Marx’s phrase, converted Ireland into its "sheep run", adopting policies to stifle and distort its industrial development. And it was very successful. Today Ireland has a tiny population for such a large land area. It has very few large cities. Its language was almost completely suppressed. The partition of Ireland, as in other colonies (Bengal, Malaya, Hong Kong) severed the rural hinterland from its industrial metropolis of Belfast, fatally distorting and constricting the economy of Ireland. The road and rail infrastructure is undeveloped. It is a predominantly rural country, dependent economically on imperialism and still very much a semi-colony. The Dublin government is a lackey of London and Washington. And Britain has every interest in perpetuating this situation. Historically, there have been two distinct approaches within the British establishment to dealing with the resistance to British rule. The Foreign Office and the external intelligence service , MI6, has tended to favour a policy of co-option of the republican movement, corrupting and buying it off, through initiatives similar to the present "peace process". The Home Office, the internal security services, MI5 and Police Special Branch, on the other hand, have tended to favour the opposite policy towards republicanism: repression aimed at crushing the resistance. There is clearly a tension between the two approaches. The Unionists within Ireland are a constant source of pressure for more repression and the Dublin government a restraining influence. The whole decolonisation process since the Second World War may be seen as the second policy (repression) becoming untenable as the resistance in the colonies, spurred on by the expansion of Stalinism, grew to a point where it could no longer be suppressed. Co-option of the national bourgeoisie became an essential means of restoring stability.

Ireland was the prototype for decolonalisation. The agrarian movement of the nineteenth century, led by the Land League, became so powerful as a mobilising threat, that it could not be contained by brute force alone. The British decided to concede on the land question in order to stabilise a situation which was getting out of hand. The Anglo-Irish landlords were expropriated, and the land was divided among the Irish peasantry in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This took a good deal of the wind out of the sails of the nationalist movement. The powerful combination of rural discontent and a combative trades union movement in Belfast and Dublin was ended. The centre of gravity of the anti-imperialist struggle shifted to the Dublin metropolis in the run-up to World War I.

The failure of the 1916 Easter Rising may be attributed, largely, to this stabilisation policy on the land question. The Rising did not achieve a resonance in the countryside, and it collapsed. The intensification of the conflict with the British after the First World War was, to a significant degree, a direct result of the shockwaves of the October Revolution. The concession of Home Rule by the British was a direct product of the heightened perception of threat from below brought about by the revolutionary mood prevailing in much of Europe in the post World War I period. The co-option of the southern national bourgeoisie once again stabilised the situation, after it crushed the resistance to partition in the civil war, until the 1968 events sparked the latest round of intense conflict. The 1968 events may be seen as part of the same process taking place during the post-war decolonisation process, which was itself stimulated by the vast expansion of the degenerated workers’ States after the Second World War. This was also reflected in the struggle of the black civil rights movement in the US, which preceded the Irish troubles, and the 1968 events in France, which paralleled it. A generation of the downtrodden, internationally, wanted its share of the wealth generated by the post-war boom, just at the point where it was beginning to falter.

The Peace Process

The framework for the present "peace process" is that of the post-1989 collapse of Stalinism. A similar process has been underway in all the "hotspots" of the world: Palestine, South Africa, Central America etc. The perceived decline of the Communist "threat" since 1989, has allowed Western imperialism more leverage to impose its "solutions" on oppressed nations and peoples. At the same time, the supposed unviability of the communist alternative in the Eastern bloc, perceived by the national liberation movements, has strengthened the pragmatic factions within these movements. No viable alternative to capitalism seems apparent to them and they have seen no other possibility but to sue for peace, getting as good a deal as possible. The previous efforts in relation to the peace process pursued by the Major administration were scuppered by its parliamentary dependence on the Ulster Unionists in the latter half of its period of office. Any moves towards peace talks were thwarted by the necessity to rely on the votes of the Unionists to preserve the Major government’s tenuous majority. The IRA ceasefire was ended and the bombing campaigns was resumed, ending any hope of "progress" towards a settlement. The election of a Labour Government in Britain, with a large majority in the House of Commons, has ended the stranglehold of the Unionists over the peace process. It has led to a new initiative to push it forward. Sinn Fein reaped the electoral benefits of having been seen to be the most consistent force for continuing the peace process, which was obstructed by others. They reaped the benefit of their association with the IRA ceasefire, for which many Irish people were thankful after so many years of living on their nerves through a quarter of a century of strife. Having won the moral high ground, they escaped blame for the resumption of the bombing campaign. In the General Election, two Sinn Fein MPs were elected to the House of Commons. Sinn Fein increased its vote by 10.000 throughout northern Ireland. It got a very respectable 14,000 votes in West Tyrone and over 11,000 votes in each of the three seats of Newry/ Armagh, Fermanagh and Foyle. This success was followed by Sinn Fein’s first breakthrough in the south when it got an MP elected to the Dail in a border county. This was followed in turn by success in the local elections. Sinn Fein increased its vote by 5% increasing its seats by 23. Sinn Fein is now the joint biggest party on Belfast City Council, ending the longstanding Unionist majority.

During the peace process, one of the most outspoken opponents of the rightward lurch by Sinn Fein, has been the former independent nationalist MP for Mid-Ulster, Bernadette McAliskey, who subsequently joined Sinn Fein. She has toured Britain criticising Sinn Fein for allowing itself to become embroiled in the peace process, arguing that it can only lead to disaster. "When they get to the negotiating table, Sinn Fein will be on the menu and it will be devoured, she argues. At the same time she does not advocate a return to the bombing campaign. Instead she puts forward a movementist perspective in which the anti-imperialist struggle should be pursued by single issue campaigns and sectional movements. At one such meeting in Manchester, last year I asked her what was her alternative strategy to both the peace process and a resumption of the bombing campaign. Her reply was to mobilise people through women’s issues, social and class issues etc; but she stopped short at drawing the conclusion that a party was necessary. Since then, she has publicly opposed the resumption of the bombing campaign on the one hand and also continued to criticise Sinn Fein leaders for continuing with the peace process. "Dying for a united Ireland was one thing, when that was the aim. But why continue to send our young men to their deaths merely for the sake of more elbow room at the negotiating table?", she was reported to have said by the British press. McAliskey is a formidable woman, and she is a very articulate speaker, who must have antagonised Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein many times during the recent period, although she is much respected as a person. The British establishment are aware that she could become a rallying point for discontent within Sinn Fein. It came as no surprise, then, that the British establishment decided to strike back at her in a particularly vicious, personal and underhand way, by fitting-up her daughter, Roisin McAliskey, on a ludicrous charge of having been involved in a bombing incident in Germany. Roisin was pregnant when she was arrested and had to go through the agonising ordeal of her first pregnancy, in ill health, in a British jail. She was only released a few hours before giving birth, only to be taken back into custody later. There have been protests throughout Britain on this issue. The present peace process can only lead to an unjust settlement, which will not be a lasting peace. Partition and discrimination against catholics will not be ended while imperialism and the capitalist system remain. A lasting peace can only be achieved through ending injustice and oppression. No justice, no peace!