The People's Democracy: Old nonsense from a new quarter (1970)

Pamphlet Review from the January 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the problems confronting the Socialist movement in its efforts to bring an understanding of Socialism to the working class is the number of organisations that spread confusion about the meaning of Socialism.

In Northern Ireland, for example, apart from the N.I. Labour Party, whose particular brand of “socialism” is the difference between a Development Commission and a Development Corporation —embellished, of course, with love of the Queen and the Constitution—and even, for a period, nebulous support of the infamous Special Powers Act—and the Communist Party whose conception of “socialism” is reflected in petty demands for reform and admiration for the brutal totalitarianism of their adopted state-capitalist motherland, we have a number of peculiar “socialist” and “socialist” organisations.

There is the political ignoramous Gerry Fitt and his personal political circus, ever ready to jump on on any bandwagon of prejudice or ignorance to milk a few working class votes. His party, the “Socialist” Republican Party, is a mere anti-Unionist group that pays lip service to the more vulgar ideas of the late James Connolly—insofar as those ideas are compatible with the prejudices of their Catholic supporters; indeed, they fearlessly avoid mention of any of Connolly’s statements attacking religion and its “sacred” institutions.

These organisations render considerable service to capitalism; they help to maintain the fog of working class ignorance on which capitalism depends for its continued existence and in that they confuse the workers as to the nature of the alternative which Socialism proposes.

The tragedy is that many of the sincere and enthusiastic workers who subscribe to the fallacious reasoning of these “socialist” organisations get so involved in their complex political fetishes, and its attendant vocabulary, that they become bitter opponents of Socialism — except as it relates to their ideas of “knocking the system” or promoting their pet reform.

In Northern Ireland we are now seeing the growing claims to Socialism of the Peoples Democracy and especially in a recent pamphlet Struggle in the North by one of the leaders of that organisation, Mike Farrell.

The Peoples Democracy is an organisation made up of all types of anti- Unionist, anti-establishment elements. Generally, they are young workers and students at varying levels of discontent with various facets of the system. Particularly, they are the political hot-gospelers of the different “leftist” creeds earnestly endeavouring to inject their various, and conflicting, ideas into the movement. The ideological umbrella of the movement is “action now” and the objective is a contradiction in terms known as a “Socialist Workers’ Republic”.

If we admitted to a degree of comparison in the forces that confuse the working class in its nebulous groping towards Socialism we should undoubtedly acknowledge that the PD is head and shoulders above the Labour parties, the ‘communists’ and the Fitt circus in their partial understanding of the situation and, indeed, we do recognise the courage and earnestness of purpose which the PD has shown in its opposition to the bigots and patriots at both ends of the Northern Ireland political spectrum.

Until a short time ago, when the organisation adopted the practice of having a card-carrying membership (at a disputed “suggested” fee of four shillings—later revoked), it was a loosely knit body. In these circumstances it was difficult to indict PD on the statements made by those claiming membership of that organisation with whom we have come in contact. The re-telling of faction struggles may be precocious and the revolutionary romantics may be for amusement only. We consider it fair, however, to discuss PD within the context of Farrell’s pamphlet which is an official PD publication. The pamphlet tells, accurately enough, the facts of the recent violence in Northern Ireland and advances the case for PD.

If we allow for the imposed brevity of a short pamphlet, Farrell’s analysis of the economic background to Partition and the use of religious bigotry as an instrument of policy by the political handmaidens of capitalism in Northern Ireland in 1912 and after — in their anxiety to preserve direct access to the British market—is correct in its essentials.

Perhaps his republicanism defeats a more penetrating analysis of the motives of the Southern capitalists and their political servants in side-tracking the working class of southern Ireland into a patriotic struggle. He simply tells us that "The Home Rulers were anxious to put tariffs on British imports coming into Ireland to facilitate the development of Irish industry”. He does not tell us that Sinn Fein were similarly anxious about the affairs of the rising native capitalists—a concern expressed thus by one of their leaders Griffith:

  No possibility would be left as far as (Sinn Fein) were concerned for a syndicate of unscrupulous English capitalists to crush out the home manufacturer and the home trader (The Sinn Fein Policy, 1917)

Nor does Mr. Farrell remind us that the “Irish industry” concerned was the concrete preserve of the southern capitalist class who owed nothing to their Northern counterparts in the matter of viciousness and contempt for the working class.

As in all national struggles, the working class were being used by the economically dominant class to win victories for their masters. True, the workers did not see the struggle in that light, indeed a few may, like Mr. Farrell and the PD, have subscribed to indefinite concepts of an equalitarian society, but because they lacked understanding of the nature of capitalism and the only alternative to that system, Socialism, they were easy prey for the chauvinistic smokescreen of those whose real purpose was their stake in the exploitation of the working class in southern Ireland.

Mr. Farrell agrees that the basis of discrimination is the economic system, capitalism. If this is so, and the World Socialist Party has continually advanced this view, if capitalism causes discrimination, is it not futile to lead the working class into a struggle against discrimination on the assumption that it can be ended within capitalism? Is it not dangerous folly to lead the workers into such a struggle, which inevitably means taking sides and creating the climate for fratricidal strife within the working class?

On the whole question of discrimination, however, Farrell is on shifting ground. Rightly he tells us that the privileges allegedly enjoyed by the Protestant workers are largely illusionary and the few examples that he gives devastates argument to the contrary. This is the line of approach which the WSP has continually put on the question of discrimination. Later, however, we find the pamphlet rebuking those “moderates” who ". . . fail to understand that by REMOVING discrimination in jobs and housing they are removing a buffer which has shielded the Protestant workers from the worst effects of the economic situation" (our emphasis). The error is repeated when we are told that the apparatus of discrimination is being dismantled—despite the fact that what Farrell admits to be its cause, the economic system, remains!

Long before October 1968 the WSP was arguing that discrimination in Northern Ireland was on class and not religious lines. We pointed out that Catholic members of the capitalist class had no problems in the matter of jobs and houses and that they enjoyed the same multiple voting rights as their Protestant counterparts. Protestant members of the working class, on the other hand, faced the same problems as their Catholic class brethren. True, some political flunkeys in the lower echelon of Unionism were ‘rewarded’ with a house or job which, because they were members of the working class they needed—the fact that their need, by some odious order of capitalist priorities, was less pressing than someone else is simply an indictment of the class system that makes such priorities necessary. The very limited extent of such “privilege” is amply demonstrated by Farrell’s striking examples of squalor and misery in the most vociferously “loyal” of all the Protestant areas. Thus, in the exclusively Protestant Shankill Road area of Belfast 96 per cent of the “homes” have no hot water, bath or wash-hand basin and have only an outside toilet. In the 83 per cent Protestant Ballymena Rural Council area 55 per cent of the houses have no toilet of any kind and 47 per cent no running water. We would venture to suggest that if similar statistics are available for other Protestant areas, such as Sandy Row and Ballymacarret, they would be equally evident of misery and squalor.

Of course Unionist leaders, while publicly disavowing the practice, quietly nourish the notion among their Protestant supporters that they enjoy real privileges and when bodies like the Civil Rights Association and the PD approach the question on the same premise they merely help to concretise the fiction and, hence, the fears of Protestant members of the working class. Inevitably the struggle “against discrimination” becomes a sectarian-orientated clash between Catholic and Protestant workers on the relative claims of each for jobs and housing. So, in fact, the CRA and the PD, insofar as they equated religion to class, played the Unionist Party’s game and gave vicious teeth to the tiger of Unionist bigotry.

Farrell advances Lenin’s failed “imperialist” thesis and wrongly ascribes the plight of the workers in Ireland to British imperialism rather than capitalism.

Farrell pledges PD to support of the struggle for an Irish "Socialist Workers' Republic” without in any way indicating what is meant by “Socialist”. It could be that closer scrutiny of the meaning of the term is deliberately avoided in order to facilitate unity among the factions and potential factions within PD or, equally likely, it could be the misuse of the term to indicate national state capitalism. Whatever Farrell means by Socialist—and he insists that only “genuine Socialists” can win the Protestant workers—he appears to feel that the Catholic workers are closer to it than the Protestants. For example, in the struggle leading up to its achievement, he tells us:

  There is another way. Pressure must be maintained to make sure the reforms are implemented, but as they are, Catholic workers will realise that they are largely hollow and don’t solve the problems of unemployment and homeless families. At the same time Protestant workers must have it explained to them that the reason for the shortage is not the Catholics but the economic system (our emphasis)

Farrell tells us that there is “no point in trying to trick the Protestants” but surely the above not only exposes his notions on the relative proximity of Catholic and Protestant workers to what he deems to be Socialism but, also, that PD’s programme of immediate reforms are calculated to trick workers of all denominations and none. On the one hand, PD brings workers out on the streets in support of reforms; now they tell us the Catholics will “realise” these reforms are “hollow” and don’t affect their basic problems and Protestants will have it “explained” that the real problem is the economic system. Oh, the perils of “leadership”!

No reform could be more hollow than the solution of our problem proposed by the PD and Farrell and blessed by the holy name of the patron saint of Irish reformers, James Connolly. As we have noted, that solution is an Irish “Socialist” Workers’ Republic.

Capitalism is a world wide system in which the social labour of the world’s workers is harnessed to the profit-making activities of the capitalists through the medium of the wages-money system.

Socialism, the only alternative to capitalism, is a world-wide system which will avail of the wealth-producing techniques of social labour in order to produce the wealth required in a system of social distribution in terms of "from each in accordance with his mental or physical ability; to each in accordance with his needs”. Since social class is determined by the relationship in which people stand to the means of wealth production, and since in Socialism, all will stand in the same relation to these means, classes, including the working class, must obviously disappear—hence the expression “Socialist Workers’ Republic” is, as we say, a contradiction in terms. The sort of contradiction, indeed, that results from a lack of understanding not only of Socialism but of capitalism too.

It is not possible for one country alone to leap forward into Socialism in a capitalist world. Even if we follow the fanciful thinking of PD to the extent of allowing their hypothesis that the “Irish people” could organise “Irish” industry in the “National” interest, even if we don’t press the point that wage- labour and capital are two sides of the same relation, the absurdity of the proposition becomes immediately obvious. The “Socialist Workers’ Republic” would have to carry on production of commodities (wealth produced for sale and profit); that would require the import of raw materials from the capitalist world and would require the export of its produce to pay for such imports. Obviously, therefore, the mood of capitalism would have more control over its republicans.

Richard Montague

Which Way for the PD? (1969)

From the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the police brutality in Derry on the night of October 5, a group of Belfast university students met and set up a militant civil rights body, the People's Democracy. In the recent election PD put up eleven candidates and did surprisingly well, nearly winning a seat from the Nationalists. As a new movement, without any clear aims or theory, PD is wide open to two dangers: evolution into a reform party or take-over by those who would put the clock back by leading them into the dead-end of Republicanism.

No-one, least of of all socialists, can object to PD’s professed aim of a genuine democracy in which all the people would have a free and equal say in the conduct of political, economic, and social affairs. That, more or less, is our aim too. But we say it can be achieved only on the basis of the common ownership of the means of life. For as long as the means by which society must live belong to a class there will be the exploitation, oppression, and social inequality that frustrate democratic control today.

The class ownership of the means of production and their use to make profits is the basis of modern, capitalist society. It means there are two opposed classes: those who own and those who because they don't own must work for those who do. Mere democratic reform that leaves untouched this class basis of society is not nearly enough.

We are not really surprised that many who want a new and better society should tend to steer clear of the word ‘socialism’. We ourselves are only too painfully aware of what it means to many people—the oppressive regimes of East Europe, the discredited Labour parties, the swindle of nationalisation. The World Socialist Party has always tried to keep alive the real meaning of Socialism as a democratic world community based on the common ownership of the means of life where the one aim of production will be to satisfy human needs. With the end of class ownership everybody will be socially equal and free to take part in the running of social affairs. The oppressive government machine, which is needed only to maintain ‘law and order' in class society, will be dismantled and replaced by the democratic administration of industry. With common ownership and production for use, the barriers to abundance will have been removed so that society can rapidly go over to “from each his best, to each his need”. People will work as best they are able and then take from the common store whatever they need. This is Socialism.

Dangerous course
Because full democracy can be achieved only through Socialism it is futile to separate the pursuit of the one from the pursuit of the other. To fight for democracy alone, as PD does, could mean the achievement of neither Socialism nor democracy. Efforts should be concentrated on the struggle for Socialism.

Of course ‘one man, one vote’ is a desirable, though, minor, democratic reform (since it already applies in Stormont and Westminster elections and even without it workers still make up the vast majority of the electors). Of course socialists are against the Special Powers Act—we have ourselves been victims of police intimidation. But in adding social reforms— an emergency housing drive, rural co-operatives, direct state investment, non-sectarian comprehensive education — to its programme PD has embarked on an even more dangerous course than struggling for democracy alone. It has taken the first step towards becoming just another reform party. A new, non-sectarian radical party is indeed what some civil rights leaders, and even some Unionists, would like to see emerge out of the current agitation. But many in PD arc anxious to avoid this.

They argue that the way to do this is to build up their movement as a militant opposition outside parliament and imply that it is contesting elections and getting into parliament that leads to reformism. This is why PD was so apologetic about contesting the recent elections. This was, they said, only a tactic to keep civil rights in the public eye; PD had no wish to win any seats (they nearly failed in that aim!). But there was no need to apologise. It is not from contesting elections, but from advocating reforms, that the danger comes.

Power of the vote
People who have been beaten and bullied by the police should have a good idea of the nature of the state machine as a coercive instrument for maintaining ‘order’. At present, its main job is to keep the private property basis of modern society though the RUC is also used by the Unionists to crush any threat to their link with Britain. The state, for whatever purpose it is used, is nothing but an organisation of armed men. In Northern Ireland, as in Britain and Eire, it is controlled by a cabinet responsible to an elected parliament. The RUC takes its orders from the Home Affairs Minister. The Special Powers Act is on the statute book only because at one time a majority of MPs voted for it and it will be repealed only when the MPs vote against it. Again, the Public Order Act will be strengthened only if the newly-elected MPs vote for the proposed amendments. Parliament, which makes the laws the police enforce, is a body those who want to reform capitalism, let alone replace it by Socialism, must capture. A socialist majority outside parliament, using their votes to elect a socialist majority inside parliament, could use political power to institute the common ownership of the means of production. That in fact is WSP policy and we have ourselves had candidates in the past.

So, it’s not elections in themselves that are dangerous. Far from it. It is vitally important that those who want to change society should take part in elections. The danger comes from fighting for reforms of capitalism, outside as well as inside parliament.

Socialism, as a democratic community based on the voluntary co-operation of its members, can be set up and run only by people who are fully aware of its implications. It can be set up only when a majority understand and want it. Support built up for reforms cannot be turned into support for Socialism, for most of those who want the reforms will have illusions about what present-day society can offer. They will assume that all that is needed is the will to do something—end the housing scandal, stop unemployment — and that implementing this is just a simple administrative matter. Capitalism, however, is not a rationally-organised community, but a class society subject to its own economic laws. Because it is based on the profit motive and on the exclusion of the workers from ownership it cannot be made to serve human needs and can never solve the housing or health or education or employment problems of the workers. Capitalism is a class system that can work only one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of the class that lives off profits.

PD is in error in campaigning for democracy apart from Socialism but is even more in error in campaigning for reforms as well.

We would, however, commend PD for declaring that they “regard the border as irrelevant”. Since, up to now, the Border has been the great dividing issue in Northern Ireland politics this is a great advance. The Border was put up in 1921 as a tariff barrier between the British market, to which the big industrialists of the North wanted free access, and the Irish Home market, which the small businessmen of the South wanted to protect from British competition. Stripped of all emotion a tariff barrier, whose removal would make no difference to the workers’ problems, is all the Border has ever been. The WSP pioneered this view declaring in our 1949 Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Ireland:

  The removal of 'the Border’ will not remove one social evil from which the working class suffer; and so, it is obviously not a problem which concerns the working class.

Unfortunately, the two rival sections of the Irish owning class, whose vital interests were at stake, were able to rally behind them the workers whose interests were not affected at all. In order to prevent their incorporation behind the tariff barriers of a Home Rule Ireland the industrialists of the North deliberately stirred up religious animosity between Protestants and Catholics. Now, especially since the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement of 1966, the split has to a certain extent been healed and the Northern industrialists (and titled landowners!) are embarrassed by the Protestant extremism which not so long age they did so much to encourage.

The legacy of the split between the two sections of the Irish owning class has been the Nationalist/Unionist split among the workers of Northern Ireland, a split which does not and never did have any meaning from their point of view. Unionism was the ideology of the Northern industrialists and Nationalism (and Republicanism) the ideology if the up-and-coming Southern businessmen. It is high time both were discarded by the working class and replaced by unity for Socialism.

Adam Buick

The Great Non-Event (1969)

From the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now the tumult and the shouting, real and phoney, has died; the news-hounds have gone to re-live the scene elsewhere; the successful candidates breathe affably from the upholstery of the Members’ Lounge; the tickman regains a place of prominence in the workers’ troubles . . . it’s all over! Tragically, most of those who played parts, especially the voters who gave point to the exercise, knew precious little of what it was all about.

Captain O’Neill and his supporters perhaps come nearest to an appreciation of the situation. They have inherited a state and a party which emerged from the power struggles of Irish capitalism in the 20s fully clothed in the trappings of bigotry and intolerance. The material conditions of capitalism which then needed that bigotry and intolerance have changed, and continue to change rapidly as capitalism in Eire acquires a political maturity in keeping with its rapid post-war economic development.

The situation does not only allow for, but in fact demands, a de-escalation of all the old fictions if the new circumstances are to yield their obvious economic advantages in cross-border trade and the like. The Stormont parliament, with its parish-pump status, need not be an impediment. Indeed, all the leading political spokesmen in the South agree that a future ’united Ireland’ will allow Stormont the retention of its present powers.

This is the main factor that has determined the O’Neill Wing of Unionism on a more moderate course just as, ironically, it has caused a complete political about face among leading Northern Irish Nationalists — who are today as vociferous in their demands for “British standards for Northern Ireland” as they were yesterday in wanting to break the British connection! These people, ably abetted by the Labour Party and the large ’non-political' but pro-O’Neill group of businessmen who make up the New Ulster Movement (formed to support O’Neill candidates in the recent elections) represent ’responsible’—in the capitalist sense—political opinion.

But yesterday’s slogans and red herrings still have many thousands of active supporters, mainly (tragically) among the most impoverished sections of the working class. These are the people whom successive generations of ’responsible’ Unionist politicians brought up on the slogans “Home Rule is Rome Rule” and “Catholics are Disloyal”. In the fierce pace of change they have been slow to adjust and are easy prey to the ignorant slobberings of the firebrand Paisley. Their movement, insofar as it accepts the present social order, is capitalist, but it serves no need of capitalism today and can continue for only a time on the bitter slogans of yesterday. Assuredly, as opportunities for hooliganism and violence get less, it will atrophy and pass into history.

This leaves the various movements for civil rights that rapidly appeared and coalesced into an effective political weapon within the last two years. These groups were forged largely by the younger workers in the schools and university, in the factories and on the dole. More intelligent in ambition and political direction than previous movements born locally from frustration, political humbug, and fear, they were nevertheless hamstrung from the outset by their failure to get beneath the surface of the political events and institutions against which they militated and to appreciate that their real enemy was not Unionism or Nationalism, sectarianism or discrimination, but the system of class ownership that brings these things into being throughout the whole world of capitalism.

If we allowed a degree of comparison we should say that undoubtedly the Peoples Democracy movement, emanating largely from Belfast’s Queen’s University, came nearer to an appreciation of the situation than did the Civil Rights Association or the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee, and it is, incidentally, worthy of note that while some of the better known civil rights leaders obviously used their position to get into parliament, the PD contested, with distinction and courage, eleven constituencies without regard for the religion and politics traditionally popular in such constituencies, and with a policy that surrendered nothing to traditional conservatism.

Richard Montague

Party News (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite police 'protection' and a rival Paisleyite meeting, Belfast branch of the World Socialist Party of Ireland held their May Day meeting on Sunday May 4. The Paisleyites said they were holding a religious service nearby to protest about a political meeting on a Sunday, but their meeting turned out to be political too with attacks on Harold Wilson and talk of Ulster's 'great Protestant leader,' then in jail. Despite having loudspeaker equipment they gave up before the Socialist meeting closed.

The previous day, WSP members had distributed socialist literature at the Labour and trade union march. Among the other leaflets handed out was one from the People's Democracy headed Workers' Civil Rights which seemed to advocate the extension of contracting-out to trade unions in Northern Ireland, where (quite reasonably) those who want to pay the political levy to the Labour Party have to say:

The 1927 Trades Disputes Act was never repealed in Northern Ireland. This meant that Trade Union funds cannot be donated to the Labour Party unless a worker 'contracts in'. In Great Britain, Trade Union Funds can be used to affiliate to the Labour Party unless the worker 'contracts out'.

Perhaps the Northern Ireland Labour Party is short of cash and is using its members in PD to whitewash the undemocratic contracting-out swindle.