Mason’s ‘Marxists’ (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

13th March 1979

Dear Mr. Mason,

My attention has been drawn to the fact that in the Panorama programme on 12th February 1979 you made the statement that the Provisional IRA are ‘Marxist based’.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to all other political organisations, including the IRA, and would claim to be Marxist based. However, we are also opposed to violence as a political means, and take the view that a transformation to a socialist system of society can be made only by democratic means, when a majority sees the need for it and is prepared to run such a society. We are prepared to defend this position in public debate, and find it regrettable that you should have made the erroneous statement which you did, at a time when our comrades in our Irish companion party are doing all they can to dissociate themselves from the terrorism and senseless violence which are the stock-in-trade of the IRA.

I am therefore writing to challenge you to a public debate on these issues with a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, at a time and place to be agreed. I am sure you would not wish to evade the responsibility you incur in making statements of the kind you did in the programme in question.

Bill Valinas 

(General Secretary)

Reply:

29 March 1979

Dear Mr. Valinas,

Thank you for your letter of 13 March to the Secretary of State (your reference 76/10/2.4). Mr. Mason has asked me to reply on his behalf.

Mr. Mason notes that you object to a remark made in a recent Panorama programme to the effect that the Provisional IRA was ‘Marxist based'. He is sorry that you are concerned about this but he would not agree that this description is either inaccurate or other than fair comment. The Provisional Movement’s own newspapers frequently attempt to describe the violent campaign in Northern Ireland in terms of a Marxist class struggle. And remarks in a sense similar to his own have also appeared in print in England. To take only one example, Mr. Jeremy Paxman, writing in The Listener of 15 December 1977, said:

  “Although the Provisionals were founded by military-minded veterans of previous IRA campaigns they now include in their ranks a growing corps of battle-hardened young men who owe their allegiance as much to Marx as to the traditional concept of a united Ireland. Tensions between the two groups are strong, but they are united in a belief in the legitimacy of violence.”

I have also been asked to say that Mr. Mason entirely accepts the statement in your letter that both the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion party in Ireland are committed to the democratic transformation of society to a socialist system; and that both parties have been outspoken in their condemnation of terrorism such as that perpetrated by the Provisional IRA. In describing the Provisionals as ‘Marxist based’ it was never his intention to suggest that other Marxist based parties necessarily supported their aims or methods, and he does not believe that his remark would have been generally understood in that sense.

J G Pilling

Reply:

If an organisation calling itself the Society for the Elimination of Suffering consistently advanced a policy of genocide, no doubt Mr. Mason would feel justified in describing it as humanitarian. Where is his evidence that the IRA adheres to the theoretical system of Karl Marx? Apparently, it is that ‘if the Provisionals and the BBC says so, it must be true'. So much for political argument.

Editorial Committee

Blogger's Note:

See also April 1979 Socialist Standard, Belfast Diary: Mason's 'Marxists' .