Dissidents: Lines of continuity and discontinuity… August 14, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
Reading the Sunday Business Post the week before last there was an overview of the announcement that various ‘dissident’ Republican groups have united to form a ‘new’ IRA. Peter Geoghegan who wrote the overview makes some interesting points, but it’s worth noting a couple of aspects to the announcement that are of interest.
For a start the group Óglaigh na hÉireann hasn’t joined. This according to the SBP ‘has been linked with the RNU’. Nor, perhaps more predictably, has CIRA. Those who have are the former ‘Real IRA’ and Republican Action Against Drugs as well as what is described as ‘a loose collection of independent republican groups’.
And their statement notes that ‘they have come together within a unified structure, under a single leadership, subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army’.
One can only presume they mean by that the structure and constitution of what was formerly PIRA. It’s interesting though that unlike PIRA there’s no clear political expression equivalent to Sinn Féin. And this in a sense is somewhat unprecedented in the longer historical period, albeit effectively a continuation of the status quo in the last decade or so.
There are other aspects of this which are worth considering. Arguably the current period has been one of the more pacific in terms of the history of the island across the past century. Indeed, and it is perhaps somewhat dubious to conduct this exercise, it is possible to chart cycles of activity across that period. 1956-8, 1969 onwards and so on. If so then if one takes the GFA/BA as being a near enough de facto end of one campaign (albeit a ragged and inconclusive one) then fourteen years later we’ve seen a considerable length of time pass.
Also there’s the issue of legitimation. I was recently rereading Deadly Divisions, the history of the INLA, and it struck me that a core problem for that group was the somewhat hazy legitimacy that underpinned it. That’s not to say it had none, in the way that such things are calculated, but regarding itself as a new group rather than a lineal descendant of the IRA (of whatever form) it had, of necessity, to legitimise itself from itself rather than being able to draw upon a longer tradition. While not wishing to overstate this, after all if in a quarter of a century this ‘new’ IRA was the single flag bearer of that name then that would have a degree of impact, it is not without significance. I’m always reminded of the way in which right up to the hunger strikes, and even after in more isolated instances, there was a loyalty on the part of some who might have been expected to go with PIRA and PSF to the OIRA being representative of the ‘Army’. Organisation cohesiveness, self-perception and so forth all flow from such loyalty.
But in a context where there are a plethora of competing organisations all of which styles themselves in some form or fashion as successors, or continuations, of the IRA, such legitimation is harder to determine. And even were they all to merge, something that on the face of it given the history and divisions between them seems all but impossible, it is quite possible that the historical discontinuity (so to speak) would tell against them.
But in a way all that is to suppose that the purpose of the exercise is a simple PIRA redux for the 21st century. And that simply may not be the case and may not even be possible.
In some ways the constraints on dissidents are even greater, albeit the security situation has eased, than they were in previous generations. Few would doubt that there has been massive penetration of those groups by the security forces. Geoghegan notes that ‘since 2009, security forces have intercepted increasing numbers of dissident operations, a sign that activity is on the rise but also that groups have been more successfully infiltrated.’ And the knock on effect is as he further notes ‘rumours that several senior figures are paid informers have been rife in republican circles in recent months’. The problem with the latter, from a dissident perspective, is not whether they are true or not but that they discredit and delegitimise their activities. But the broader point is that given the dissidents operate at a vastly smaller level than PIRA such issues achieve a prominence they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Geoghegan talks to Jon Tonge of Liverpool University, who makes the basic point that, ‘there would have to be some horrendous mistake by the security forces for the dissidents to gain widespread support’. And that in a sense is that. It’s almost impossible to determine what sort of mistake could single handed bring about such a state change, indeed one would think that the very structural elements of the processes that have led to where the situation is today are predicated on avoiding precisely that.
Tonge concludes by saying that ‘the formation of a new grouping is more about keeping the flame alive for a lot of dissidents. the dissidents themsevels do not believe that they can get the British out of Northern Ireland. What they do thin they can do is to stop Northern Ireland from becoming normal’.
That’s a fascinating analysis, not merely because it points to the limitations of dissident Republicanism in terms of what can be achieved, but also in relation to the very subjectivity of what can be described as ‘normal’. In some respects the North will never be ‘normal’ if by ‘normal’ one attempts to map on the broad societal experience of the South or Britain onto it. Societal divisions are too distinctive for that to be the case. The question is whether that distinctiveness can be worked around in a way that produces meaningful outcomes, political societal and economic.
Good piece.
“And the knock on effect is as he further notes ‘rumours that several senior figures are paid informers have been rife in republican circles in recent months’ ” This is definitely an issue, to the extent that some of those supposedly heading up these groups, and in particular in RAAD, and ÓnH, are under suspicion. Whether thats accurate or not is in some ways immaterial, the overall effect is that it creates doubt suspicion, and limits capacity.
Think Tonge is spot on that poin at the end. Its sober and sensible points like that which are lamentably absent from Henry McDonald’s pieces in the Guardian, which are unhelpfully grim and even alarmist. He consistently paints a picture of the north as being on the verge of another conflagration, not that there isnt a threat from these groups, but I dont see what purpose is achieved by totally exaggerating this.
Following the statement by the “new IRA” I wrote about the importance of “legitimacy” within Republican circles and the failure of those outside them to appreciate its impact. The survival of the Continuity IRA as a coherent organisation was in large part based upon a legitimist claim and support from traditional US and European sources through that claim. The recent criminalisation of the organisation, its perceived irrelevancy with the emergence of the Real IRA and various other smaller groups, and rife factionalisation has devalued that claim.
The reluctance to move away from the title “Irish Republican Army” is a fascinating one. It is far more than just an “internationally recognised brand image”, though that plays a part too. It is a title with nearly a century-and-a-half worth of history (its first public use was in the First Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866, though it slightly pre-dates that). By comparison “Óglaigh na hÉireann” is less than than a century old. And in Republican circles history gives legitimacy, linear descent bestows authority.
Interesting too that for an Irish Republican and Nationalist organisation it is the English-language title that is of importance not one in Irish. Why not Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann? Instead the new movement tries a grab for IRA alone.
Óglaigh na hÉireann (or rather the main group using that title) has made no claim to the name IRA. Yet even they can’t get the Irish abbreviation of their name right. Its ÓnahÉ not ONH or ONE. So much for cultural nationalism
I agree that a renewed armed struggle would require a convergence of events to give it impetus. 2012 is not 1968/69. There is no perfect storm on the horizon. But there is bad weather ahead. The current imprisonment without trial of several leading Republicans, at least one with considerable support from within Sinn Féin’s own constituency, the prison protests by Resistance Republicans of various factions (which has grown and increased in violence and counter-violence), civil unrest in Nationalist areas, growing hostility towards a heavy-handed PSNI (which is now perceived as filling up again with ex-RUC veterans), increased concerns about the lack of progress on the Reunification project, resentment of Unionist actions in recent months (whether it is Poots with his anti-Irish tweets or Orange Order bands marching in circles outside Catholic Churches), all these things and many, many more are slowly raising the temperature.
Unfortunately it wouldn’t take all that much to ignite a storm and I think people need to re-engage before that happens. Not afterwards.
“Interesting too that for an Irish Republican and Nationalist organisation it is the English-language title that is of importance not one in Irish. Why not Arm Poblachtach na hÉireann? Instead the new movement tries a grab for IRA alone.”
Hmmmmm. Im not sure it’d be a great idea to entitle yourself something the media would likely abbreviate as APE
True, though the correct abbreviation would be APnahÉ. Which would be fun trying to see British newspapers cope with. How many spellings are there of al-Qaeda?
Still, it is a peculiarity of revolutionary Irish Nationalism that it so often expresses itself through the language of the “Invader”. IRA, PIRA, CIRA, RIRA, INLA, IPLO, etc.
The only ones that bucked the trend that I can think of off the top of my head were Saor Uladh and Saor Éire.
Great comment, and posts too (I was away for a fortnight so I was only checking in from time to time and missed them Séamus, so apologies). It really is strange how IRA etc used English as the language. And it’s very notable looking through the literature from all the groups above how it was the language they used too. I guess it’s a reflection of the society, but still.
No probs, WBS. As always interesting and thought-provoking pieces on CLR make it a must-read for political anoraks like me
There is certainly a potential thesis or two on the phenomenon of Irish Nationalism expressing itself through the English language over the last two hundred years. I believe we might be able to blame Daniel O’Connell and his coterie for that one, not just the processes of colonisation and anglicisation (though the death toll amongst the Irish-speaking population associated with the 1740-41 famine and 1798 Rising played its part too). It was against the O’Connell brand of Irish Nationalism that the Young Irelanders coalesced when they embraced an early version of the philosophy of an Irish Ireland. Up to O’Connell’s time Irish identity was most forcefully expressed through the Irish language.
Perhaps it is to do with the English-speaking roots of Irish Republicanism (Tone, Emmet, et al)? Too much Wolfe Tone not enough Thomas Davis?
After An Gorta Mór the only time the Irish language came to the fore as a cultural force driving the political one was during the revolutionary period. Yet even then it was soon supplanted by an anglophone Irish nationalism.
During the last forty years the Máirtín Ó Cadhains have been notably absent from the heart of “the struggle”. Despite the propaganda image of the Irish language being a “Republican Trojan Horse”.
If that was true why is it not reflected in the titles, statements and language of those movements?
The schizophrenic identity crisis of post-colonial Ireland strikes yet again, even at those who most rail against it?
It has been noted here before that the one genuinely Fascist group Ireland has kept in operation, Ailteiri na hAiseirighe, was close to the language movement.
I’m pretty sure Ailtirí na hAiséirghe started out using only Irish in their publications but eventually went to English for many of them as it reached a wider audience.
The electoral material I have from them is mostly in English.
http://irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com/category/ailtiri-na-haiseirghe/
Incidentally that 1921 issue of “An t-Ógláċ The Official Organ of the Irish Volunteers” I posted yesterday had only a small section in Irish.
The use of Irish in electoral communication is fairly limited and indeed was less so in 2011 than at any election before. The generic Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour leaflets had no Irish whatsoever in them.
Surely a major factor in ‘The survival of the Continuity IRA as a coherent organisation…’ was down to the fact that they kept their heads down and did sweet fuck all while the Provos were still around?
Yes, but I was referring more to its cohesion and authority. That stems from perceptions of legitimacy through Commandant-General Tom Maguire’s imprimatur as the last surviving member of the 1938 Army Council. To outsiders it may seem fantastical but within (certain) Republican circles it carried enormous significance. In 1986, by their ideology, the Continuity Army Council became the Government of the Irish Republic (in internal exile as it were).
That had real consequences amongst North American Irish Republicans and in some Left-wing European circles. Even though I don’t accept or recognise the claim, as a Republican I understand it and the weight it carries.
Like I said, outside Republican circles this can all seem esoteric stuff, angels dancing on the head of a pin, but it has real world effects.
probably get slated for this but don’t think its just sentimental, think there is a bit of intellectualism as well involved. from a social contract point of view your essentially in a battle for the monopoly of violence with the british state. notice how insurgents in Libya or Syria also use phases like ‘legitimate government’ or phases to that effect. would presume when people sat on the PAC or the OAC also held the same ‘wacky’ views as the conto’s, that they where the true government of ireland, if they still exist maybe they still do. if you don’t think your the legitimate government then what gives you the right to give an order or the obligation to follow one from the most mundane to the most horrible of tasks.
That’s very important the point you make re social contract too shea – definitely won’t slate you on it
. It’s not just a legitimation founded on continuity and sentimentality but on the sense that this was the representation of the Irish people and an Irish state (a unitary one at that).
In a way that’s the oddity of RIRA and associated non paramilitary groups in that they seem to seek legitimation (trips to the UN etc).
WBS in the early days of the reals split was there some claim they took the ‘army’ executive with them or something on them lines. that procedures wheren’t followed in relation to a convention? haven’t heard much of it since mckevitt parted ways with them but think there was something along the lines of defending the IRA constitution. might be a bit more to there lineage thinking, maybe among their own. or maybe not.
“…and in some Left-wing European circles”
Sionnach a chara, which left-wing European circles would you be referring to here?
I would have thought that the vast majority of (relevant) left-wing parties have long since supported the peace process in a way or another?
Talking of Sinn Féin Poblachtach specifically it has (or did have) a number of supporters in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy pre-dating the mid-1980s split in the Republican movement who stayed with the Ó Brádaigh wing.
Whether they are relevant or not is another matter
Still, I did find it peculiar witnessing the presence of SFP members at a number of leftish Pan-Celtic events (cultural and otherwise) over the last two decades.
(Provisional) Sinn Féin seems to have embraced the Basques and Catalans and abandoned the old Pan-Celtic impulse. A bit of realpolitik?
And not only left-wing. There has long been a cult of Ireland amongst Fascist groups in Italy (one of the reasons for their use of a Celtic cross), including the occasional Bobby Sands commemoration, especially amongst the `Provisional’ Fascists who broke away from the more respectable elements in the 70s. A couple of years ago, the Casa [Ezra] Pound in Bolzano produced Bobby Sands cider:
http://casapoundbolzano.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/sidrosands/
@sionnach
You mean events like this? http://www.solidaritatcatalana.cat/agenda/1a-conferencia-internacional-de-nacions-sense-estat-lalguer
Anybody can find a few ultra-left German, Dutch, and Italian friends and pretend that it gives them credibility. I’d be interested to know if (you think) there are serious left-wing forces who look to people like SFP?
Interesting report from SBS in Australia, dating to last year. Some of it is questionable, especially the subtitling of Irish contributors, but at least it gets some genuine public views:
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601322/n/The-New-Troubles
‘rumours that several senior figures are paid informers have been rife in republican circles in recent months’
But when haven’t such rumours been rife? Of course British intel will infiltrate these groups, they also infiltrate groups who spend their days shouting ‘the workers united will never be defeated’ and others who cry Allahu Akbar at Friday prays. So what, it is the nature of the beast, never forget the Okrana controlled the head of the SR’s military group, and had a tout in the Bolshevik central committee, but that failed to stop the Russian revolution.
The real question, is there a space for such armed republican groups to operate in and will they move the situation forward towards a socialist republic.
Myself i cannot see enough space for an active armed struggle, although I can see why some of these groups might feel the need for an ‘officials lite’ security force. In some ways armed struggle is the easy option when measured against the endless toil and utter bordom of engaging in bourgeois politics.
‘the irish make great rebels but terrible revolutionaries’
“Also there’s the issue of legitimation. I was recently rereading Deadly Divisions, the history of the INLA, and it struck me that a core problem for that group was the somewhat hazy legitimacy that underpinned it. That’s not to say it had none, in the way that such things are calculated, but regarding itself as a new group rather than a lineal descendant of the IRA (of whatever form) it had, of necessity, to legitimise itself from itself rather than being able to draw upon a longer tradition.”
Heh. That reminds me of Mark P’s comment on the relationship between Protestants, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, the Church of the East, and the Roman Catholic Church.
Much of that sort of stuff in Irish Republicanism, all the gibberish about being the de jure government of Ireland, Tom Maguire anointing the Army Council of choice, everyone claiming to be the actual, true, no really, IRA is closer to the logic of Monarchist Legitimism in France than anything else.
Nowadays, the more extreme parts about being the legitimate government and the good Commandant have faded out of Provisional and other Republican discourse, with the exception of RSF and the CIRA, but the squabbling over the rights to the initials IRA still goes on.
Does anyone know when the Provisionals dropped the stronger manifestations of this stuff?
I’ve never felt that the republican movement was actually very bothered about democratic legitimacy. Instead they seemed to take the line that, in the words of De Valera before he got into power, “the people have no right to do wrong.”
There’s always been a pretty strong vanguardist streak in the IRA and its offshoots, the idea that in every generation there are a dedicated few who see through the waffle and take action, thus redeeming the sins of the complacent majority. In fact, until they found some love at the ballot box, the attitude of republicans towards the electorate mirrored that of the Occupy people who like to describe the general population as ‘sheeple.’
|The Tom Maguire stuff is daft though it made a nice line for foreign journalists writing articles about the IRA which often included the phrase ‘hard-faced men in the back rooms of pubs.’ It’s in the realms of the theological rather than the political.
I think Seamas’s warning against complacency isn’t as far fetched as some people might think it. I’ve got a copy of the first edition of Bowyer Bell’s The Secret Army(1969) which ends with a declaration that finally the IRA seems to be a spent force and can be consigned to history. Then there’s an epilogue which says given what’s happening in the North who knows that might happen.
I am sorry to say Mark that the outer fringes of Marxist vanguards have a similar line on Apostolic descent.
You didn’t have “The Unbroken Thread” in mind, Jim?!”
I would have guessed the ‘Fourth International’ vs ‘Third International’.
Perhaps I am on my own here, but most of this stuff makes my head spin. A friend of mine was trying to explain the various republican strands to me a few weeks ago, and I became hopelessly confused after 15 minutes. This was a subject I thought I had a grasp of.
I cannot even begin to figure out the various left groupings.
I love this sort of trivia, RiD! Whether it’s the difference between Melchiorites and Mennonites, Saor Eire and Saor Uladh, Orleanists and Legitimists, or the League for a Revolutionary Communist International and the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International!
The Irish stuff, whether left groups or republican strands, doesn’t really get all that complex most of the time simply because the numbers involved are relatively small. Now trying to keep the various Communist Parties of India (Marxist Leninist) straight, on the other hand, would be a lifetimes work.
I cannot share your enthusiasm, Mark. The inter-relationships between the various republican groupings are difficult to follow at the best of times. They also, according to my friend, vary from place to place i.e. some places the OIRA/PIRA split seemingly never fully happened and so you still have a healthy dose of socialism/marxism mixed in with republicanism. In other places, there is a marked pro-SF and anti-marxism bent.
Don’t get me started on left groups. The extent of my understanding is this: SP were once Militant Labour and are Trotskyist. They now hate their former party. SWP are Trotskyist but were never part of Labour. They hate them anyway. They also consist of an endless number of front organisations. The ULA is an umbrella group, with a redundant name, comprising of parts of the two aforementioned groups, WUAG, and a few independents. Labour claim to be the left wing party that founded the state but they are really just a collection of independents who aren’t enough craic to be in Fianna Fail. The Democratic Socialist Party was Jim Kemmy. Independent Labour was Noel Brown. Tony Gregory was Tony Gregory. WP and SF have been covered above.
And B&ICO are marxists as dreamt up by Thomas Pynchon.
I may have missed a few, but I think I have the measure of a good few.
I’d be surprised if there was anywhere were the OIRA/PIRA split didn’t happen. It did take longer in some areas than others, and in a lot of areas involved people with views more in line with one side ending up on the other side through accident of geography, family, personal loyalty or friendship.
The left groups are simple enough as long as you stick to Ireland.
You know what the ULA is, roughly. Once you roughly know the distinctions between the Socialist Party and the SWP and the Workers Party and, if you are feeling a little completist, the WSM and Eirigi, you really have it covered in terms of groups you are ever likely to actually encounter as a Dublin resident. And they are all more different from each other than any of our mainstream parties are from each other.
If you actually see some other group’s name around on placards and posters and the like, you can just assume that it’s the SWP in a funny hat and you’ll be right nine times out of ten. Now telling whose commemoration is whose when it comes to Republican posters does indeed require a bit more effort.
I might pinch that excellent description of the BICO, by the way.
Use away. No copyright here.
The various splinter groups of the INLA also came up( I can only remember one – the IPLO). Both of us had imbibed a number of pints by this time. This, surprisingly, did not facilitate my education.
Yes Jim, you can certainly find something equivalent to softer forms of this kind of thinking on the left. You don’t tend to see anything similar to the sort of dementia which leads RSF (and long led PSF) to claim that their Army Council of government was the real secret squirrel government of Ireland, but you do get quite a lot of silliness nonetheless.
The claim to be “The” Fourth International, made by half a dozen rival left currents has always struck me as being much the same as the claim to be “The” IRA. You even get groups like Socialist Democracy in Ireland who don’t actually agree with their particular claimant to be the Fourth International any more on anything other than their status as the FI, and so end up in the sort of relationship to their parent body as ultra-traditionalist Catholics have to Rome. They don’t agree with anything much the new soft and liberal management say, but being out of full communion is unthinkable. And then there are all the groups out there who form Leagues/Groups/Tendencies/Committees to “Rebuild/Regenerate/Reforge” the FI.
On the more Spartoid end of things, the phrase “Revolutionary Continuity” has always struck me as having much the same metaphysical content as “Apostolic Succession”. Marx laid hands on Engels, who laid hands on Plekhanov, who laid hands on Lenin, who laid hands on Trotsky, who laid hands on Jim Cannon, who laid hands on James Robertson, who laid hands on Jan Norden, and so on ad infinitum. It overlaps with but is conceptually distinct from the kind of “our programme is the one true programme” attitude you get in similar circles, because the latter claim doesn’t rest on the same sort of historical bedrock.
This sort of stuff is almost totally lacking from the world view of the larger Irish and British left currents, give or take the dreadful title of an anthology of Ted Grant’s writings put out by Militant in the 80s. Note the lack of “Fourth” anywhere in International Socialist Tendency and Committee for a Workers International. In Trotskyist terms this represents much the same thing as the IRSP not declaring themselves to be Sinn Fein.
I’d have to say that I’m fascinated by all the little fissiparous groupuscules on the extreme left in the same way that I always find the myriad offshoots of Protestantism to be incredibly interesting. I suspect this may have something to do with my musical youth when I derived great joy from idolising obscure bands who’d brought out 500 copies of their single on their own label.
Maybe following the League of Ireland is similar, you can worry about who the lineal descendants of Cork Alberts, Drumcondra, Thurles Town, Newcastle West, Emfa et.c are.
I couldn’t agree more, Eamonn. I wasted many a good afternoon’s drinking rummaging through the boxes in the cellar of Housman’s bookshop in London, digging out old polemics between the Revolutionary Internationalist League and the Workers International League. And was just as happy finding out what exactly the issues of controversy between the Brethren Church and the Church of the Brethren are.
It is easy to lose a sense of perspective about this stuff though. There may be more Christian denominations than there are grains of sand on the beach, but in practical terms 95% of Christians belong to about ten denominations. And there may be more left wing sects in England than there are stars in heaven, but your average “civilian” is only remotely likely to encounter three of them.
I like to go into Housmans and take a fistful of those left wing pamphlets and magazines which were once sold in Compendium, Collets etc. but now don’t have any other shop in London, or the world probably. It’s like going through the non-league fanzines in Sportspages back in the day. I read the magazines and envy the belief of the faithful.
There are still a few other left wing bookshops around, but most of them survive because they are backed by a particular organisation (in Ireland, of course, Connolly Books is run by the CPI and Solidarity Books is run by the WSM). Most will still carry a selection of material from other organisations, but they tend to lack the wild ecumenism of the now almost entirely departed independent left bookshops.
Discovering Compendium in Camden as a teenager was like stepping into another world. A world full of revolutionary parties and world spanning communist organisations and anarchist cells, almost all of which took themselves and their interminable disputes with each other extremely seriously. And to a teenager with no contact with these groups outside of racks of rival papers it wasn’t immediately apparent that many of these groups consisted of perhaps six slightly strange men. I went to the CPGB (Weekly Worker) Communist University that year and was slightly perturbed to find out that the twenty or so people at the session I turned up were almost the entire membership.
Nowadays, because of the lack of outlets and the general decline of print publications, most of this sort of sectariana is more likely to be found on the internet. But unfortunately, when some sense of the scale, genealogy and peculiarities of the group in question is just a google away, the documents seem to lack the same mystery and grandeur.
Couldn’t you argue that Troops Out may have actually had some effect on Sinn Fein at least to the extent of the party using rhetoric which stressed socialism more than nationalism when dealing with its British supporters. It’s fair to point out that they’d have taken the opposite tack completely with Noraid I suppose.
But there might well have been some influx of ideas from the British Left to Sinn Fein. According to Ed Moloney’s book on the IRA Phil Shimeld, formerly of the IMG, was an influential figure in Sinn Fein when Adams and his supporters wrested the leadership from the O Bradaigh faction. Does anyone know if Shimeld really was an influential figure?
I used to go up to Camden for the day, intending to do all kinds of wild and groovy things and end up spending several hours in Compendium which, pamphlets aside, was a magnificent bookshop. Then there was the sheer strangeness of Collets, which offered the same kind of material, having a big shop a few yards from Oxford Street. It was all part of a left wing British culture which will never come again, in my mind it’s of a piece with folk clubs where legendary sixties troubadours played to four people and eighty empty chairs, the films of Ken McMullen, Peter Watkins and Chris Petit and the Plutonium Blondes section of the NME. I preferred the dingier London of those days to the current shiny model to be honest.
This clip from Ken McMullen’s Zina somehow seems to sum up that culture and that moment. Nobody will ever make anything like this again.
Or this.
Or this, more’s the pity.
Just as an aside: fissiparous. What an absolutely brilliant word!
Carry on…
@Michael,
Ailtirí na hAiséirghe made much of its commitment to the Irish language but it was as meaningful (or meaningless) as the commitments given by any other political party of the time. Or since. The Irish-speaking communities in terms of their politics are as diverse as wider Irish society, expressing attitudes from left to right.
Though it should be noted that politically active Irish-speakers have tended to veer centre-left or left, in part because speaking Irish was so long a fundamentally anti-establishment or subversive thing to do.
My father, an Irish speaker, used to observe that Irish speakers were disproportionately represented both on the left and on the socially conservative right. These polar opposites often shared common ground on republicanism.
On one occasion in the seventies when he gave his name in Irish, as he tended to do for linguistic rather than political reasons, to a guard at a routine checkpoint he was told, ‘Don’t start that nonsense now. Give us your real name and there won’t be any trouble.’ Which I think was not an unusual attitude among the pillars of the state towards the first official language in those years.
Breandan O hEithir in, I think, Over The Bar, tells of introducing a man from the Connemara Gaeltacht and a member of the IRA to each other. The IRA man couldn’t believe the Irish speaker wasn’t a republican, the man from Connemara couldn’t believe the republican had no Irish.
I used to enjoy the moments years ago when someone would ask Gerry Adams a question in Irish at an SF press conference and he would, in a slightly panicky way, direct the query towards Bairbre De Brun.
This idea that the Irish language is inextricably linked with republicanism, (I’m using the term here to denote republicanism as used to denote support of the armed struggle gone by, most citizens of the state are presumably republicans in the classic sense) has provided a handy justification for the Department of Education’s disgraceful under-funding of Gaelscoileanna over the past few years. There’s a real nudge nudge wink wink ‘they’re all Provos you know’ thing going on when the controversy is written about in the papers. The phrase ‘fellow travellers’ is lurking there in the background.
Conversely I send my own kids to a Gaelscoil and have met people who think I’m doing this to make some republican point. And I recall back in the day being told that I was ‘a self-hating Irishman’ because I’d expressed a doubt as to whether Enniskillen or some other such act of genius necessarily advanced the cause of Irish freedom even though I loved Irish traditional music, the GAA and the Irish language while my accuser’s knowledge of these things was almost non-existent.
The problem, I think, arises out of the common fallacy whereby it’s presumed that if you know someone’s attitude towards one thing you can then extrapolate their attitude towards everything else. It saves the time you might have had to spend on thought.
It’s even funnier when it’s an English Trot who assumes you must be at least a sneaking regarder re the Provos, simply because you’re an Irish socialist, and then denounces you for lack of anti-imperialist zeal when you introduce some nuance into the argument.
Sadly, back in the day, in some British left wing circles, support for PIRA was almost a test of how serious and committed you were in your anti-imperialism.
Yes discussions on Ireland over at Socialist Unity are a fascinating real time experiment in cognitive dissonance.
It’s not so much their total ignorance of the realities of Irish politics north and south, you expect that from most British people, it’s the way they will start out being the loudest defenders of so called Irish “self-determination” and then arrogantly dismiss the opinions of actual Irish people if their views are contradictory.
The funniest instance of this was a Sinn Fein public meeting on re-unification held at TUC headquarters in London a few years back. The Socialist Party sent a few people down, myself included, to give out leaflets and take part in the discussions. There was a full panoply of left groups outside as well, ranging from the SWP, CBP, through to the Sparts and the CPGB-ML.
There was 6 of us from the SP, 3 from the North and 3 from the South. As far as I could tell we were the only group with Irish people giving out leaflets. A Sinn Fein steward from Dublin was wandering around outside and heard us talking, he came over for a chat. There was a bit of political banter but we mostly were talking about GAA season so far.
Next thing some guy from the Troops Out Movement marches over and starts denouncing the Socialist Party for being pro-Unionist and then in the plumiest English accent you ever heard turns to the Sinn Fein steward and loudly orders him to remove the Socialist Party from the venue.
The look of utter bemusement on the face of the Shinner was something to behold!
“The look of utter bemusement on the face of the Shinner was something to behold!”
Not sure why, the shinner’s are past masters at doing just that.
Sorry Neil, I just could not resist it
Mick
I’ve had a few of those conversations alright.
My personal favourite was being told by a very earnest member of the Revolutionary Communist Group that the RCG felt that doubly oppressed Irish immigrants to Britain, like me, had a particular leadership role to play in the British revolution! Then when she discovered that I wasn’t actually all that keen on the IRA she decided that I was a dangerous Quisling.
You even get a bit of it from British SWPers sometimes, particularly those who were around in the 80s and haven’t really kept up to date with the changed line of their Irish group.
In fairness to British left wingers before they get caricatured altogether, they weren’t all working from a basis of ignorance. Liz Curtis’s Ireland: The Propaganda War is a terrific book about media coverage of the North, published by Pluto Books back in the eighties. Nobody over here wrote anything as good on the subject.
And if Living Marxism’s coverage of the conflict was somewhat starry-eyed about the Provos it was a lot less ludicrous than the mainstream coverage which suggested the essential problem was an incipient psychopathy among Northern Catholics.
We’re probably on somewhat shaky ground slagging off people who weren’t Irish for taking an interest in the North given the amount of left wing solidarity campaigns with struggles on foreign shores in this country.
Liz Curtis’ book is indeed very useful, as is Rolston and Miller’s War and Words on much the same subject.
I can’t however agree that Living Marxism’s general coverage of Ireland was much of an advance on even the stupidest mainstream take. It tended to simply invert the idiocies, which may have been refreshing in a sense but wasn’t particularly useful.
I don’t think anyone is slagging off British people for taking an interest in Ireland. The issue is the tendency of some on the British left to declare their “solidarity” with Ireland when what they actually meant was their “solidarity” with a romanticised vision of one particular Irish faction, and their bewilderment when confronted with Irish leftists who didn’t share that vision.
I think a lot of the madder stories about the British far left and Ireland come from tiny groups that just picked the Irish war as a way to mark themselves out from all the others and accuse them of being soft on imperialism (that was certainly the case with the RCG and Living Marxism). If it hadn’t been Ireland it would have been something else. I’d be curious to know what the Provos themselves made of it all, I’d be surprised if they took it very seriously – surely the only people on the British Left whose opinions they cared about would have been the likes of Ken Livingstone, people who might actually be in a position to do something (there’s a Magill interview with Gerry Adams from just after the 1983 election where he says that Livingstone had recently assured him the Labour Left was going to come out on top in the inner-party battle and change Labour’s Irish policy; didn’t quite work out like that, as we know).
I’ve been involved in a couple of the Irish-based solidarity campaigns (Palestine and Colombia) and they both take a fairly sober and sensible approach to the guerrilla movements in those countries; the IPSC don’t align themselves with either Fateh or Hamas (going down that road of picking a faction in Palestine to support would be mad), and the Colombia group doesn’t really have anything to do with the FARC or the ELN, they just work with trade unionists and other social organisations. It probably helps that both groups have a healthy number of Palestinians and Colombians involved, along with Irish people who’ve actually been to those countries.
Don’t know too much about the other campaigns knocking about, but I believe the Kurdish group is mostly made up of Kurds. I don’t think the model of building a solidarity campaign around links with one group, which is what the Troops Out Movement effectively did with the Provos, is very common nowadays.
Of the small British groups with a particularly noisy and aggressive line on Ireland, the one which seems to have been taken most seriously by Irish Republicans was Red Action, at least to the extent that one person done for an IRA bombing was a prominent Red Action member.
The most important British group with that sort of “Ooh, Aah, up the Ra” line on Ireland was, no doubt, the International Marxist Group. But yes, from the point of view of the Provisionals, friendly elements on the Labour Left were of much greater real world significance than any of the revolutionary sects.
@NeilCaff
If that’s the meeting I’m thinking of, there were people from Clann na hÉireann handing out leaflets opposing the extradition of Sean Garland. English and Irish people in fact.
@Garibaldy Could well be so. I’m not saying other left groups in London don’t have Irish members (I know Irish people who are members of the SWP, CPB and Workers Power) just that I didn’t recognise any on the day.
@ EamonnCork – “This idea that the Irish language is inextricably linked with republicanism…”
You should’ve seen the Gaeltacht I went to one summer, Colaiste na bhFiann in Rosmuc in Galway, they did everything short of actually swearing you into the Fianna. We didn’t walk from the house to the school, we marched in formation. Before classes, we’d be drawn up in the yard in buionna (spelling may be dodgy, think it measn battalion in Irish, definitely not ranganna anyway). The class NCOs would have to roar out “Buionn i gcomhar is in eagar”, then there’d be the school anthem and the national anthem and the raising of the two flags. Wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t secret small arms drill as well for those who’d prefer it to the evening ceili.
That particular college was famous for it though. Also notorious for being very strict about the speaking in English, There was a no doubt apocryphal story of a lad being sent home for saying ‘ouch’ after he got stung by a bee.
My father taught in one of the other Irish colleges down here and I went to another one for a few years. There was nothing even remotely nationalistic going on. One of his fellow teachers was a man who I knew, because he was a friend of my dad’s, had very strong republican views but he never mentioned them in class. The only Irish-English conflict we were interested in was the question of whether U-2 were better than Echo and the Bunnymen.
Hah hah, that’s a coincidence Dr. Nightdub, I went to Colaiste Chamuis which was IIRC a considerably less militant split from C na bhFiann. Though we did the anthem etc.
EC, CnaCamuis was much like that. A full sentence of Irish and you were sent home. And they meant it. This led to intricate work arounds, but in fairness my oral Irish is fairly good to this day, though my written Irish is poor.
Full disclosure. I went to Colaiste Chonnacht, my father taught in the home of our great inter college volleyball rivals Colaiste Lurgan. Had the time of my life.
Was Colaiste Chamuis a sister college of Colaiste Shartre?
@dilettante,
In terms of those in Europe who sympathise with SFP I’m not sure I can offer much of an opinion on their status, be it ultra-left or serious left (by serious I presume you are referring to electoral strength?). There are groups like Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori, the Kommunistische Initiative and others but all seem to be very minor parties or pressure groups. Which would be historically consistent.
‘It’s interesting though that unlike PIRA there’s no clear political expression equivalent to Sinn Féin. And this in a sense is somewhat unprecedented in the longer historical period, albeit effectively a continuation of the status quo in the last decade or so.’
I’ve forgotten most of the details of Republican history involved, but I think this was also the case for most of the 1920s.
Or to be more precise, for most of the 1920s, as far as I recall, Sinn Féin and the IRA were to some extent at odds with each other despite sharing a broad political outlook, and IRA members were, if I’m not mistaken, actually forbidden from joining Sinn Féin until they effected a reconciliation.
That’s very true re the relationship in the 20s, it was certainly – fractious. But… SF as an entity existed and in a sort of relationship with the IRA (or at least as a reference point) and as a kind of expression of what the IRA sought (again, however fractious in practice the relationship was – and very is part of the answer to that) whereas now I don’t think there’s an equivalent political party (RSF seems to me not to fit the bill for various reasons, not least of which is size).
The Tom Maguire stuff is daft though it made a nice line for foreign journalists writing articles about the IRA which often included the phrase ‘hard-faced men in the back rooms of pubs.’
EamonnCork is spot on here, the way the media wrote about those ‘hard faced men in the back rooms of pubs’ is worth a thread on its own.
@neilcaff That view of `Irish self-determination’, which seems to have no idea of Ireland’s internal, or class, politics, or even a clue that Ireland might have politics beyond thinking up ways to get the Brits out, strikes me as a mirror of this sort of rubbish:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/09/northernireland.northernireland
@eamonncork The trouble is that I don’t think they were taking an interest in the North or in Ireland, generally. They were taking an interest in something they could use to demonstrate their credentials as anti-imperialists, even in the case of their own empire.
In fairness, you’re right that they should not all be caricatured, but there was some dreadful self-delusion going on: a caricature is an exaggeration, rather than a lie.
I was being critical of myself really Michael and my own tendency to resent any comment on Ireland made in the kind of English accent which makes me think of someone directing a jarvey to take the next right turn back to the big house.
There were some very honourable people on the English Left all the same. Ken Livingstone took a huge amount of stick for suggesting that it might be profitable to actually talk to Irish republicans, at a time when the British government were doing so in secret. And Death On The Rock challenged the British government in a way RTE would never have dared to.
Of course the RCP, as subsequently proved by their metamorphosis into Spiked, were a bunch of flutes but the danger of the caricature is that it tended to be used by Harris, Myers, Henry McDonald et al to dismiss even well informed opinion from England. The likes of Chris Mullin went out to bat for the Birmingham Six when most politicians here dodged the issue for fear of being labelled sneaking regarders.
Like left groups waiting for the bourgeoisie to make sufficient mistakes so do the dissident groups.There is a story of I think the foreign minister of Austro-Hungary being amused at the idea of Mr Trotsky who frequented a certain cafe becoming a significant figure.
There is an incomplete national struggle (my term). I think most would agree that there are many alienated nationalist youth and that this figure is growing because of the respectablisation of Sinn Fein.I regard the military and “political” strategy of the dissident groups as a cul de sac. But back in the day I though the Officials were so much better than the Provos.
Perhaps we need to adapt a slogan of a British left group from the 60s when Mods and Rockers had fights in I think Brighton. ‘Mods and Rockers unite and fight the cops.’
I am sure the SP and to a degree the SP would have variants on that, possibly fight capitalism rather. Bt I look at the riots in Belfast and whether we like it or not Republicanism still has a resonance.And I have to say I was surprised to be told that the dissidents are gaining traction at the last ULA conference.
Ignoring the national struggle does not mean it will ignore you.
The probably apocryphal story about the British left and the Mods and Rockers confrontations was that the Healyites supported the Rockers, as proper horny handed sons of toil, the Cliffites supported the Mods, as the latest new fashion, while the Grantites made a long winded statement calling for working class unity.
As for your main point, yes, republicanism still has a resonance amongst working class Catholics in the North. I don’t think that anyone is in favour of ignoring that or of “ignoring the national struggle”. It’s just that most of today’s left groups don’t agree with you about “the national struggle” which is a rather different thing.
If working class Catholics are alienated because they realise that their conditions are not going to be improved just because a republican party has got into power after an armed struggle, it hardly follows that more republicanism and more armed struggle is the answer.
SF haven’t sold out alienated youth because they’re not sufficiently republican, they’ve sold them out because, North of the border at least, they’re republican to the exception of everything else. Hence their ability to back up a plutocrat like Sean Quinn on the grounds that he’s ‘one of us.’
Perhaps comrades should pull back a bit before condemning and ridiculing English comrades further, never forget internationalism is an essential part of socialism and back then for some English comrades it was impossible to deny the war in the north was partially their responsibility, not least because British taxes helped finance the Orange state and thus they did what they could. It was no easy thing to be English and openly oppose what the British army was doing in the north in the 1970s and 80s, not least because the Provos had taken the war to English streets.(A massive but understandably mistake on the part of the Provos as it made any hope of building an effective solidarity movement an impossibility.)
If your an English socialist and you fail to oppose the bloodshed which is being inflicted by the British army in a part of your nation,(Which the north was then and unfortunately still is) what type of socialist are you. Not much of one I would suggest.
In truth as far as the PRM war was concerned, much of the English left failed to step up to the plate. In the early days of 69-70s the CPGB if pushed supported the Sticks, and its leadership still regarded the Provos as green fascist. There were exceptions and there were individual English volunteers in the Provos, although few would shout about it then or now, the Red Action guys were outed because they were arrested otherwise few would have known they were volunteers.
The IS/SWP position in my view was untenable, and mirrored there cop out over the USSR. The best of the English left supported the PRM because they were mainly the people doing the fighting and English comrades who took their side saw them fighting the same enemy. Some working class leftists also admired the fact the PRM rank and file and leadership was almost solidly working class and this also played a part in why they offered them solidarity.
Besides it was not for English lefties to decide which Irish organisation to anoint, that was for the Irish people engaged in struggle, just as it was for the South Africans (Incidentally Irish anti apartheid did support the ANC/MK and for much the same reason, MK was doing the fighting etc, they were far from neutral as to which SA group they supported) and back in those days the PLO solidarity group in England supported Fatah or PFLP and I have no reason to assume things were different in Ireland.
International solidarity is easy when the war taking place is in a far off land, but it is less easy when it is on your own doorstep, it is a real test of your core beliefs and I believe those English comrades who faced down the hatred which was aimed at them by their countrymen and women because they stood by the Provo corner boys and girls who fought the British State in the north, deserve respect. Hindsight is not an option when the need for solidarity is imperative.
MH.
I think those points are well made. I meant to say earlier that it was actually an easier option for English left wingers to uncritically support anti-imperialist struggles on the other side of the world where they had no dog in the fight to speak. And it required a certain amount of courage to go on Troops Out marches when you could be attacked by the National Front or similar charmers. Regardless of your views on the North, it’s a mistake I think to portray all English left wing support for republicanism as essentially frivolous.
I’d tend to agree with Eamonn McCann’s line in War and an Irish Town that in the early days of the conflict particularly it did come down to the question of whether you supported the British state or those who were fighting against it. Working Class solidarity should ideally have trumped nationalism but it didn’t work out like that as can be seen by the reception Andrew Barr and Len Murray got when they tried to talk round the UWC strikers.
It was, however, understandable that a lot of people on the Irish Left were suspicious of the PIRA given that the ideology of the repressive state they’d grown up under paid lip service to republicanism. Hence MacStiofain, Twomey and McKee may just have looked like FF style Catholic conservatives with guns. I think that’s a nuance English Leftists may not have picked up.
Intelligent and helpful post MH.
In my recollection the question on the English further left was probably less about supporting armed struggle and more about whether to support the main forces or to tack towards the like of the INLA (leaving aside the Militant/CWI for the purposes of this discussion).
Full respect for the courage of the people in putting themselves into direct opposition to the imperialist policy of their government and the jingoism promoted by the media (particularly among the working class).
But there was a romanticisation of the struggle. Some of the English friends hung on the every word of random Irish republicans in the full expectation that the socialist transformation of society in the united socialist republic was fully planned (and programmed into the every utterance of said republicans).
apart from being hated by your fellow country men which i agree its hard to break away from the pack, how did the brit security services treat there those on the british left that supported the provo’s? presume they earned their strips in that regard as well mick.
@EamonnCork,
A friend of mine was recently out walking his dog near his home when he saw a couple of lads climbing over the back wall of a neighbour’s house and running off. He rang the Garda station when he got home because there had been a spate of break-ins on the road but when he gave his name, in the Irish language, the Garda replied “Oh for feck’s sake” and hung up.
I’ve had several similar encounters with Gardaí, the last time three years ago when my car was vandalised and one of the Gardaí asked for my name. He visibly sighed and rolled his eyes when I gave it and made a great show of writing it down, asking me to spell it out. Up to that moment both Gardaí had been quite sympathetic but their manner abruptly changed.
So not much has changed.
Brutal stuff. I often wonder why Irish gets this general reaction. I mean, ‘we got it beaten into us in school,’ isn’t much of an excuse from my parents generation given that they got everything beaten into them in school. And neither is ‘what use is to you afterwards,’ which point might equally be made about geography, history, biology, poetry etc. It’s useful because it’s knowledge which should be enough for anyone unless you hew to the Ed Walsh line that the curriculum should be designed with the needs of multi-nationals in mind.
Sacred heart protect us and save us!
Don’t get me started on Ed Walsh…
“Besides it was not for English lefties to decide which Irish organisation to anoint …”
That’s the point: a number of us have been on the receiving end of a denunciation from English lefties, because we have not `anoint’ whatever organization they have decided we should.
Actually Mick’s ability to declare that it wasn’t for English lefties to decide which organisation to support just two sentences after declaring the the best of the English left supported the Provos is an almost perfect encapsulation of the attitude we were mocking above.
What a great thread. Starting with the dissidents or the resistance republicans as An Sionnach Fionn christens them. Then on to left splinters, the British left and Ireland, and the Irish language and attitudes thereto.
There is room for a hundred theses on attitudes of Irish people (including Gardaí) to the Irish language.
Spare a thought for me – a Gaeilgeoir (and like a good internationalist a lover of all languages!) with my name officially and legally in Irish since I was registered at a week old. From the mid-eighties till recently enough a two nations stickie Provo hater who, every time I introduced myself to someone new and explained or spelled out my name to them, thought “Now they think I’m a Provo”.
Just back from South Fermanagh, Wee Marty’s handshake not gone down too well. But general view on the dissidents is that they want the army on the streets again, to take things back to the past, and actually the Securicrats are pulling the strings. There’s money and a bonus in it etc. I notice we haven’t heard about securicrats on this thread yet. Generally though I detected no overt support for dissidents. What was obvious is a desire for class politics.
LOL!
Sure with Leo Varadkar embracing his Inner Gael and apparently putting serious time into becoming fluent being mistaken for a Provo will be the least of your worries
Which makes me wonder how much the rise of the “Nouveau Gaeil” has changed the Irish-speaker/Provo myth?
It’s bizarre seeing Irish-speaking citizens condemned in one breadth for being crazy-eyed wannabe terrorists (because they speak Irish) and then in the next breadth condemned for being BMW-driving, latté-sipping, elitists (because the speak Irish).
Amongst a certain Anglophone extreme in the country Irish-speakers have now gone from the stereotype of carrying a pig under the arm to carrying an iPad instead. And both are condemned or ridiculed.
You don’t have to be mad to live here but…
That was actually for Joe. WordPress vagaries
” Actually Mick’s ability to declare that it wasn’t for English lefties to decide which organisation to support just two sentences after declaring the the best of the English left supported the Provos”
Mark P
You totally misunderstand my reasoning, since it has been mentioned, in the last paragraph or back cover of the first edition of McCann’s book, he writes the following and for me it sums up perfectly why back then, some English working class socialists instinctively gave what support they could to the PRM, it is worth quoting in full.
‘The Provos despite all their imperfections and the heavy historical impedimenta they carry into political battle, are the vanguard of the anti imperialist struggle in Ireland–this is partly because of the failures of the left. They have born the brunt of repression without wilting. If the Irish conflict could be settled by determination, by unconcern for personal aggrandisement, but an ability and willingness to fight on against overwhelming disadvantageous odds, the Provos would have won long ago. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ANTI IMPERIALIST WHO DOES NOT SUPPORT THE PROVOS AND NO SUCH THING AS A SOCIALIST WHO IS NOT AN ANTI IMPERIALIST.’
Comradely regards,
As crude and stupid an argument as McCann ever made, and he’s made a few.
I understood your argument. I just have no respect for the hypocrisy of people who mouth off about how it isn’t their place to choose between forces in another country while simultaneously advocating support for a particular force there. Make up your mind. Argue your case for Provo cheerleading if you must, but don’t accompany it with whining about being dismissed as naive or foolish by Irish socialists who don’t share your sympathies.
The Provos have gone away you know! SF 2012 are not the Provos.
Argue your case for ‘Provo cheerleading’
Mark P
You sound like a minister in one of those ghastly Irish governments who boasted of being democrats yet implemented section 31 against SF. I have already explained why some of the English left supported the Provos, it was because they were under the most ferocious attack from the UK state, that, and an element of instinctive class solidarity. What part of this do you not understand?
Far from scientific, and I’m sure this does not measure up to your own high standards, but some times political action is about how you feel, not simply what you have read in a book. If we had used your yardstick and waited until we found a group which ticked all the right boxes we would have sat out the war.
But then again that is what some folks did!
The point was groups like the Irish SWP/ whoever, whilst doing good work, did not need our solidarity because unlike the young working class volunteers of the PRM, they were not getting fitted up and fast tracked to life sentences, shot on sight or being pressurised by the British security services to become touts.(As far as I know)
Your argument reminded me of James Connolly’s words to his daughter Nora, they will never understand why I took part in the rising. (or some such) They being the leaders of the British labour movement.
Comrade please do not put ink in my pen, far from whining I tried to explain what actually went on in the 1970-80 over here as far as I experienced it, is that a crime worthy of such a hysteric reply from you? Nor did I whine about being dismissed as naive or foolish by Irish socialists who don’t share my sympathies. In truth, apart from yourself I do not feel any Irish comrades have dismissed what I wrote above as naive or foolish. As to my political sympathies, you appear to have no idea what my political sympathies are today.
Shea
The attitude of English people to the Provos insurgency, especially the working classes was far more complex than people today might think. Throughout that period opinion polls consistently supported a british withdrawal and reunification. In parts of industrial Briton, many many working class families had Irish people amongst their forbears, some going back only one generation The days when signs in pubs and guest houses said no irish or blacks as far as the irish were concerned were in the past.
There were problems though, especially after events like the Birmingham bombs, I was badly beaten after Warrenpoint/Mountbatten, but given the media wind up that was to be expected.
As to the way the security services behaved, someone could/should write a PHD on that subject, slippery is the way I would describe it. It was never in your face, that type of thing was left to the branch and local plod. I remember speaking at a public meeting with the LP MP Jeremy Corbyn in the mid 1980s, shortly after a Bomb had gone off here. (I forget where) There was a mass protest from British nazis and plod shut the meeting down, but in comparison with how the state behaves today there behaviour was comparatively liberal.
It seems to me the less the real threat is the more the state agencies and its gofers talk it up. By the way in my book Jeremy was a real star, he never wilted when it came to fighting injustice and never has.
Reply
Mick, you’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick completely
NOBODY was slagging off English lefts for doing what they perceived as anti-imperialist solidarity.
What was being mocked was their frequent dismissal of contradictory views of Irish lefts who had more lived experience of the realities of Irish politics.
If you go around with that sort of attitude I don’t care how many marches you’ve been on or if you’ve been punched in the face by skinheads for excusing pub bombings, your a numpty and you will get slagged off for it.
Simples.
A good analogy would be if I met a leftist activist from South Lebanon who wasn’t keen on Hezbollah. She didn’t support the Israeli occupation or their collaborators but never the less disagreed with Hezbollah. She has lived there all her life and knows a fair bit more about the place than me.
I’ve never been to Lebanon but hey, I’ve read Robert Fisk’s book and I’ve been on loads of marches, I can quote extended paragraphs from the speeches of Hassan Nasrallah. I even got into a heated discussion down the pub with Zionist during the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
I loudly declare that all the best socialist in Lebanon support Hezbollah and then go further to say she is in fact doesn’t really understand anti-imperialism or the national question of her own country.
Mick, having seen similar elements of the British (and Irish) left work themselves up into nearly sexual excitement at the activities of Hamas, Hezbollah etc in recent times, and having listened to them uncritically cheerlead for those groups, I really don’t need much of an explanation for the support of some elements of the British left for the Provisionals. That kind of “pick your bomber of choice” anti-imperialism is all too familiar to me already and hardly a particularly mysterious phenonomenon.
This exchange started with you complaining about people “condemning and ridiculing” English socialists for their support for the Provos. You then set out to explain their thinking, as if that was some kind of mystery to those of us who do indeed have contempt for their attitudes. It’s perfectly understandable, given their politics, why elements of the British left ended up defending the indefensible. I don’t find that particularly interesting. What I do find interesting is the arrogance which leads those same people to lecture Irish leftists on who they should be supporting, what they should be doing, who is “waging the real struggle”, who are the “best elements” of the left, etc on the basis of having read a few pamphlets and listened to some Provo speechifying. Those people were entitled to their opinions – and I’m entitled to have contempt for those opinions.
neil,
You have lost me, not sure what skin heads, chats in pubs, or going on marches have to do with what I wrote. What I am trying to explain is the responsibilities as I see them of anti imperialists in the country I live in. Unlike you I cannot go as far to call it ‘my country’ as that would imply I had some ownership of it.
As to being a numpty, well we all are at times I suppose, its no big deal.
By the way not once did I suggest members of the provos were the brightest, or the best socialist, or anything else beyond being working class, what I said was they at that time were under the most ferocious attack from the UK state, wereas other left groups were not. Are you telling me this was not so?
I’m trying to make it clear to you that for the purposes of this discussion your explanation for why English lefts might have supported the Provo’s (or the flak the got for doing so) is irrelevant. Interesting, but irrelevant.
I’ve no problem with English people, or anyone else doing solidarity work around the Irish national question. I’m not even that bothered if people draw political conclusions that leads them to support the Provo’s so long as that’s something that is debated in a political and fraternal fashion.
What you and many others on the left in Britain don’t seem to realise is that other people, while being opposed to British imperialism drew different conclusions about the Provo’s. That doesn’t mean they weren’t “the best” of the left or that they didn’t understand what was going on. It flowed from the very real problems the tactic of individual terrorism/armed struggle threw up, something any Irish person North or South with an awareness of the Troubles would be able to observe.
To simply dismiss that lived experience rather than debate it politically, which is what this debate is all about, is arrogant and not a little bit hypocritical particularly when it’s done by an English leftist who’s vastly less experience of Ireland than someone who’s lived there.
This document by Gerry Foley from the early ’70s has been linked to before on CLR:
http://www.likembe.net/Documents/The%20Test%20of%20Ireland.pdf
Some of it is very much of its time but I think there’s the kernel of a very solid argument in the parts where he polemicises against the Irish policy of the IMG. Foley argues, correctly I think, that it was necessary to distinguish between solidarity with people facing repression from the British state and support for the Provo campaign; that mass civil resistance had much greater potential to deliver results.
One difference between the North and places like South Africa, Palestine or El Salvador where guerrilla wars were being fought at the same time (or Vietnam and Algeria further back) is that the levels of state violence were much lower; without for a moment trying to minimise what was done by the state forces, or their collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, it was never on the scale of the repression and massacres that took place under apartheid or the Salvadorean junta or the Israeli occupation. Bloody Sunday was the single worst example of state violence during the whole conflict; in some of the other countries I mentioned, things like that happened every month or every week or sometimes every day.
And related to that, support for the guerrilla movements was much stronger in those places than it was in the North: the Provos were only ever supported by a minority of the nationalist population (unlike the civil resistance campaign of 1971–2, which was so overwhelmingly popular that even the SDLP had to endorse it). There were opportunities for militant but peaceful opposition to the state that simply didn’t exist in South Africa or Central America; the Provos didn’t weigh up different strategic options in the way the ANC did, their leaders always believed that armed struggle was the only way forward. Which is not to take away the responsibility from the authorities in Stormont and Westminster, who created the conditions where a lot of young men and women could be persauded that taking up arms against the state was the only realistic course.
There’s also a question of priorities, which is where I think Mick has a point: British socialists and Irish socialists had different responsibilities during the Troubles, for the British Left the main priority was to oppose what their own state was doing, from internment to the PTA to shoot-to-kill to collusion with loyalist paramilitaries; criticism of the Provos should have been a long way second. For socialists in Ireland – especially ones based in Derry or Belfast – things would have been different.
BTW, McCann has 3 different versions of War and an Irish Town, and the crucial differences can be found in the passage Mick quotes; in the first one, from 1974, he has the same sentence—”If the Irish conflict could be settled by determination, by unconcern for personal aggrandisement, but an ability and willingness to fight on against overwhelming disadvantageous odds, the Provos would have won long ago”—but goes on immediately to say ‘but that’s not enough for victory’ (or words to that effect); in the second (1980) version, he has the passage as quoted by Mick; in the third, from 1993, he goes back to the original version.
Does McCann note anywhere that he’d changed crucial parts of the political argument of the book between editions?
Not so far as I’m aware …
‘British socialists and Irish socialists had different responsibilities during the Troubles, for the British Left the main priority was to oppose what their own state was doing, from internment to the PTA to shoot-to-kill to collusion with loyalist paramilitaries; criticism of the Provos should have been a long way second. For socialists in Ireland – especially ones based in Derry or Belfast – things would have been different.’
Ed
Exactly, Thanks.
MH
There’s absolutely nothing in that paragraph you approve of so much that says support for the Provo’s is the litimus test of anti-imperialism.
How do you square that with your provocative talk about the best of the English left supporting the Provo’s or the McCann comment you put in bold?
It was perfectly possible to oppose the Provo’s and disagree with PTA, shoot to kill etc, I’m hard pressed to think of any left organisation in Britain that supported those things.
In fairness to Mick I think he’s trying to point to an attitude and an initial response without buying into it entirely. There is a distinction.
I agree with you that there was no reason people couldn’t be critical of both PIRA and PTA etc but I wonder in functional terms if those who were critical of the first tended to elide protest against the second with PIRA (a sort of inverse of the dismal Troops Out attitude described above). Not all but some.
“I’m hard pressed to think of any left organisation in Britain that supported those things.”
I’d be very surprised if there were any (far) left organisations that did, in either Britain or Ireland, except maybe BICO (although the mainstream of the British Labour Party tended to be four-square behind all kinds of repression in the North).
But there’s a difference between formally opposing something and actively campaigning against it, so it may have been the case that the lion’s share of campaigning around ‘Irish issues’ was done by socialists who did identify with the Provos. I’m not saying definitively that this was the case, my own knowledge of what was done in terms of Irish solidarity work by the British far left is pretty superficial, I’d like to see someone tackle the subject properly (surely there’s a PhD in it somewhere, if someone hasn’t already done one?).
Neil
Let me make sure I understand you correctly, your saying it was a viable option for English socialists who regarded themselves as anti imperialists to mount a campaign against shoot to kill, diplock courts on all the other repressive legislation, and wretched behaviour of the UK state in the north, whilst publicly condemning and opposing the very people who were the main targets and victims of the aforementioned legislation, etc.
Good luck with it.
Irish comrades may have been able to square that circle but their situation and responsibilities were different as Ed has pointed out, the English comrades could not in my view square that circle, it is as preposterous as all those other cop outs like unconditional but critical support or whatever the sects went in for back then.(I’m getting old I forget such silliness)
Have a nice life
MH
MH
Impossible to square the circle? Really? Is it a cop out to oppose Guantanamo, the war against terror, the occupation on Afghanistan, and also be against Al Quida and the bombing of the Twin Towers? Is that a preposterous cop out?
As far as I am aware, unlike the war in the six counties which I am discussing, none of these events took place within the borders of the UK State.
I’m off now as I am actually replying to spam, numpty that I am
Good thread, many good points made, much to think about.
MH