Left Archive: Ireland’s victory means Britain’s defeat’, Revolutionary Communist Tendency, 1980.

To download the above file please click on the following link: RCT IRL VICT

This document, no 7 in the Revolutionary Communist Pamphlets series and published in 1980, was produced by the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, a precursor of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a split from the Revolutionary Communist Group which had emerged from the International Socialists. Other documents in the Archive from the RCP and the RCT can be found here and here.

This document takes a forceful approach to the situation in Northern Ireland. It argues:

This pamphlet is our response to the deadlock in Ireland. The success of any British solution depends on the defeat of the national liberation movement. The opposite is also true: Ireland’s victory means Britain’s defeat. The left’s middle way – a British scheme to bring peace and progress to Ireland – is an illusion which can only give credibility to whatever solution the government finally devises. Our object is to win the support of the British working class for the struggle of the Irish people. The labour movement is their most powerful ally in the struggle for national independence. This steaks demands more than stirring workers’ sympathies for the Irish. It means winning their active support for the defeat of the British state.

The document presents a rather brief overview of the roots and causes of the conflict, both political and armed. It also in answer to ‘Irish Questions’, including ‘What about the Protestants?’ – accepts that ‘The Protestant community in the six counties is solidly loyal to British imperialism’ and also argues in response to the question ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloodbath?’ that ‘we accept that given the determination of Britain to impose its will on Ireland this will mean death and bloodshed’.

It addresses the central slogan used by the RCT in relation to Ireland as follows:

The slogan ‘Bring the War to Britain’ is ambiguous. On the one hand it is a call to make the Irish War an issue in the British labour movement. We are fully in favour of raising our opposition to Britain’s war in Ireland and discussing and debating the political problems it gives rise to widely in trade unions and labour movement organisation. Nobody on the left disagrees with us on this. On the other hand the slogan also implies support for a violent attack on the British state – not only in the Six Counties – but in Britain itself. This is what the left cannot accept: Its rejecting of this slogan signals its abandonment of revolutionary working class politics.