Irish Republicanism is a backward political tradition that has never had anything to offer workers in Ireland but murder and misery. It is anti-socialist in that it is a nationalist doctrine whose basic premise is that the social problems facing people in Ireland arise out of the centuries-old domination of Ireland by England and cannot be solved until the last vestige of this domination (including that of the English language) has been eradicated. Historically, it differed from the other forms of Irish nationalism in having as its goal the achievement of an Irish state with no constitutional links whatsoever with England—"the Republic"—and in its commitment to using physical force to achieve this.
Military dictators
The leaders of the IRA have always regarded themselves as the only legitimate government of the island of Ireland. This preposterous claim is based on the results in Ireland of the 1918 British General Election in which the republican party, Sinn Fein, won a majority of seats in the Irish constituencies. The Sinn Fein MPs refused to go to Westminster but met instead in Dublin and declared themselves to be the parliament of the Irish Republic that had been proclaimed in Easter 1916 by a handful of suicidal maniacs who had occupied the GPO in Dublin. The Irish Volunteers, a body of armed Nationalists that had been set up a few years previously, became the army of this Irish Republic, or IRA.
British imperialism refused to accept this unilateral declaration of independence and waged a ruthless war of repression against the IRA to try to maintain Ireland as part of the British Empire. In 1921 a Treaty was signed between the Irish Republicans and the British government under which Ireland was partitioned into two parts, one of which (six counties in the North East, mainly inhabited by pro-British protestants) remained part of Britain while the remaining 26 counties were granted independence, within the Commonwealth, as the "Irish Free State".
A section of the IRA regarded this as a betrayal by those IRA leaders who had negotiated and accepted it and pledged themselves to fight on—against the government of the Free State. After less than a year the anti-Treaty IRAers had to admit defeat and went underground, refusing to accept the Free State government as the legitimate government of Ireland and instead proclaiming this to be the Army Council of the IRA.
Despite all the splits and defections since then, this remains the position of the IRA: in their vision of Cloud Cuckoo Land Ireland is a military dictatorship under the rule of their high command. The IRA's claim to be the legitimate government of Ireland would be laughable in its conceit if it didn't lead to the IRA behaving like a real state and engaging in the killing of innocent workers as well as enemy soldiers.
It is not as if the IRA's goal had any relevance. The removal of the border between the North and the South of Ireland and the establishment of a united, all-Ireland Republic would, as a mere constitutional change, make no difference whatsoever to the problems of poverty, unemployment, bad housing, pollution and the like which confront workers, North and South, in Ireland. These problems are caused by capitalism, with its minority ownership and control of productive resources and its production for profit, and will last as long as capitalism does. Re-arranging frontiers is just as irrelevant to solving these problems as changing governments.
It has to be said, however, that if the IRA or its political wing, Sinn Fein, were to emerge as the government of any united Ireland the working class there would be in for a very bad time. The IRA/Sinn Fein record of utter contempt for democracy and their propensity to use the gun to settle political disputes and problems would make them harsh task-masters.
Fortunately, apart from a few areas in the North, the workers in Ireland show no sign of wanting to go down this rocky road. In the last all-Ireland elections to be held in which the Sinn Fein contested all seats on both sides of the border—the 1989 European elections, not the 1987 British General Election—although Sinn Fein obtained 9.2 percent of the vote in the North, on an all-Ireland basis they got less than 4 per cent, an accurate reflection of their lack of support amongst workers in Ireland and a clear rejection of their claim to have any mandate to do anything whatsoever, let alone murder, bomb and kill, on behalf of people living in Ireland.
From Republicanism to Leninism
The original Sinn Fein, set up by Arthur Griffith in 1905, was frankly pro-capitalist and anti-socialist but most later Irish Republicans took up the position that such questions were irrelevant: the first thing to do was to establish an all-Ireland Republic: everything else, including the nature of society, should be subordinated to this aim. "Let's get rid of the Brits first and then we will see".
Over the years, however, some Republicans have challenged this position and, basing themselves on some of the writings of the Irish Nationalist martyr James Connolly, have argued that the "reconquest” of Ireland from British imperialism has to involve the establishment not simply of an Irish Republic but of an "Irish Workers Republic". It was through this door that the Stalinist “Communist" Party of Ireland was at one time able to win some influence over the IRA.
In 1967 Sinn Fein adopted a "Socialist Republic” (even if the emphasis was on Republic) as its aim. By this they meant the same sort of state capitalist regime as then existed in Russia and Eastern Europe. This was part of a tendency at the time for the IRA to give more and more emphasis to political agitation rather than military operations. It was in fact the leadership's proposal to go further down this road by abandoning the traditional republican policy of abstaining from the institutions of the 26-county state in the South (regarded as an illegitimate creation of British imperialism) that led the IRA to split in 1970 into the ‘officials" and the 'provisionals'. The "provos" were mainly concerned about launching a military campaign in the North but among the accusations they levelled at the “officials" was that they were “communists", "Marxists" and “atheists". Insofar as these terms were meant to indicate that the Officials supported the state-capitalist regime in Russia and wanted to see a similar regime established in Ireland, there was some truth in the allegation. After further splits, the Officials eventually emerged as the Workers Party which has had some success in rivalling the Labour Party in the Dublin area.
The transition from Republicanism to Leninism can't have been that difficult. After all, both share the same organisational principles of a self-appointed vanguard and a military-style top-down command structure. The Workers Party, which has effectively abandoned republicanism, is also active in the North where it offers itself for working class support at all elections on a straight reformist ticket, much as the old Northern Ireland Labour Party used to. But it is no more socialist than they were and insofar as it talks of socialism it means state capitalism.
The case of Gerry Adams
Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, despite its militant "anti-communism" still lays claim to the socialist label. Gerry Adams, the darling of various leftist and Trotskyist groups in Britain, has on occasions stated his aim to be a "democratic socialist Republic". Sinn Fein's concept of "socialism", however, is so vague as to be meaningless and appears to amount to no more than a brand of social reformism perfectly compatible with the social doctrines of the Catholic Church.
In any event, Sinn Fein have no right whatsoever to associate the term "socialist" with their murderous, anti-working class policies. Fortunately for us real socialists, they appear to be going through a phase in which their socialist pretensions are being played down. We only wish they would repudiate socialism in the same clear way that they have repudiated Marxism:
There is no Marxist influence within Sinn Fein. I know of no one in Sinn Fein who is a Marxist or who would be influenced by Marxism. (Gerry Adams, interview with Hibernia. 25 October 1979).
Sinn Fein, as its leadership maintains, is not a Marxist organisation, and indeed many of its members and leaders, including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are committed Catholics. (Danny Morrison, Borderline, Vol 1, No 2, 1986).
These statements would be equally true if the word "socialist” is substituted for "Marxist".
Socialism is the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole human community and appeals to wage and salary workers, wherever they happen to live or have been born, to unite to end capitalism throughout the world. As such it is incompatible with, in fact actively opposed to, all forms of nationalism, British. Irish or whatever.
Adam Buick
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