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From International Socialism, No.68, April 1974, pp.16-18.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
BEFORE the fall of the Heath government, it was widely assumed among politicians of all parties in Britain and most in Ireland, that the crisis in ‘Ulster’ was slowly but surely coming to an end. The Tories, if they had achieved nothing else, had at least found a solution to the perennial Irish Question. The supposed solution lay in the ingenious Sunningdale Agreement, the most significant development in Anglo-Irish relations since the Partition Treaty which divided the country in 1921.
Since partition the British ruling class had been content to support the corrupt one-party police state created in the North, so long as it guaranteed the stability of imperialist interests. But in the past decade or so those interests have changed. The Northern Protestant state had become a hindrance as the Catholic southern part of Ireland, granted independence under the treaty, was inexorably drawn back into the imperialist net until British investment in the South was as high as that in the North. New structures were needed to deal with the new situation. Britain’s attempts to create them have led to the present crisis.
As far as imperialism was concerned there were two central problems in the crisis: first, to split the Orange-Unionist monolith which refused to accept changes in the set up, and secondly, to defeat the revolutionary upsurge among the Catholic masses, who, seeing the failure of reformist measures, attempted to destroy the Northern state and remove British rule.
The Sunningdale Agreement is the result of British attempts to achieve both these goals. It is an attempt to bring together middle-class Protestants and Catholics who are prepared to go along with British needs. In June last year a new Northern Assembly was elected. In December the ‘moderates’ within it, together with the Southern Irish and British governments, agreed to the Sunningdale Agreement. In January a power-sharing Executive was created in the North in which Catholics were given ministerial posts for the first time in the history of the Northern state. The Orange-Unionist monolith had been split and the mass movement against imperialism seemed to have been deflated.
But the British general election in February showed that the vast majority of Unionists do not accept the new arrangements: anti-Sunningdale Loyalists polled a clear majority of all votes cast and captured eleven of the twelve Ulster seats at Westminster. Pro-Sunningdale Unionists, led by Brian Faulkner, polled only one vote for every five given to his opponents.
In March the Provisional IRA opened a new offensive against the British army and commercial property. The effectiveness of the IRA has not been undermined in spite of Sunningdale and the electoral support for the SDLP.
These are clear indications that the Sunningdale settlement has not been as successful as its supporters had imagined. But it would be wrong to assume that because of them the agreement is going to collapse overnight as many of its opponents do.
UNIONIST opposition to Sunningdale is led by those members of the Protestant middle class who have been excluded from power to make room for Catholics. For them to retain mass support they have had to create an ideological mist to shroud the real issues. They have painted a picture of impending doom for the ‘Protestant way of life’, and have sought to interpret Sunningdale as a ‘victory for republicanism’, while in reality it is the complete reverse.
Sunningdale aims at strengthening imperialist control over Ireland – the one thing its Loyalist opponents claim to desire most of all. Their ability to retain such massive support through the propagation of myth is an indication of the strength of Orange ideology even after the material conditions which made it a useful tool for British imperialism have virtually disappeared.
It is precisely this unreal basis of the Loyalist cause that could be its undoing. While whipping up support around the promise to destroy the power-sharing arrangement, the Loyalists have in fact avoided going so far in that direction as to preclude any reversal in policy. By indulging in physical attacks on Assembly members, the Loyalists have at times forced the British to draft hundreds of armed police and troops into the Assembly to protect its supporters. Had the Loyalists kept up such activity it is difficult to see how the Assembly could have continued to function. But rather than do so, the Loyalists have always retreated at the crucial moment and resorted to ‘respectable’ opposition, going so far as to deal in issues as far removed from the power struggle as drainage schemes and social benefits for invalids.
The reason why they have not in fact shown any real willingness to destroy the Assembly is that they have nothing to offer in its place. While they have managed to convince thousands of Protestant workers to vote for them, it is increasingly unlikely that they could mobilise this electoral support into a direct frontal assault on the British state – even if they had such a perspective. The longer the Assembly continues to exist the more Protestant workers will come to see that all the predictions of impending doom are not in reality coming to pass. Few will wish to die to preserve something that is not seriously threatened.
Another factor making for relative stability in. the Protestant community is the favourable economic situation. Order books in the major Protestant-dominated industries are full, there is little Protestant unemployment, and the vacancies – estimated at 6,000 – are not likely to be filled by Catholics who lack the necessary skills and are unwilling to risk their lives by accepting jobs in Protestant strongholds. State support given to these industries in the past few years, in a conscious attempt to buy off Loyalist resistance to change, is beginning to bear fruit.
The apparent determination of the Labour government to continue with the Sunningdale Agreement, regardless of Loyalist opposition, presents the hard line leaders with a stark choice: all-out war on the British state, or yet another retreat into respectability. If their past record is anything to go by, they will opt for the latter.
With the decline in militancy of the Loyalist para-military groups – the UDA has virtually collapsed due to internal factionalism and corruption, and the UVF has adopted a new political stance – the only real prospect for armed loyalist reaction seems to lie in the assassination campaign against Catholics. While this is causing problems for the security forces, it is politically directionless, and cannot in itself defeat Sunningdale.
THE PARALLEL aim of imperialism, to defeat mass Catholic resistance to the state by incorporating Catholic representatives into it, has also borne fruit, but still presents problems.
The possibility of reforming the Northern state has for the first time become accepted by masses of Catholic workers with the entry of the Catholic SDLP into power sharing, gaining the important ministries of Commerce, Social Services, Housing, and Community Relations. The promised reforms include: an end to internment and repressive laws, reform of the Orange-dominated police force, a Council of Ireland, linking the Northern and Southern regimes and providing, according to the SDLP, a first step to a United Ireland. They have also promised an end to discrimination and second-class citizenship, full employment, a massive house-building programme, parity of wages with Britain, and the ‘best social services in Europe’.
But so far all of this remains at the level of promises. None of the goods has yet been produced. While the SDLP promised their supporters an end to repression, the Loyalists have been promised an end to the IRA. The more the SDLP present the Irish Council as a move towards a United Ireland, the more the Loyalists oppose it.
To make the idea of an all-Ireland Council more acceptable to the Unionists the Southern regime promised a massive clampdown on the IRA south of the border. So far they have been unable to fulfil their promise and as a result the Unionists are unwilling finally to ratify Sunningdale, for fear that to do so would result in an even greater shift towards the anti-Sunningdale camp from their supporters. Already eight out of Faulkner’s 17 Assembly Party members have publicly voiced their doubts about the Council of Ireland. Some have suggested that the deal should be renegotiated.
The regime in the South has been preparing for some time now to step up repression against militant republicans. The army has been taking over a number of police functions and the strength of both forces is at its highest for the past 20 years. Special courts already exist for dealing with political ‘offenders’. When the Law Commissioners, set up under the Sunningdale pact, produce their report around Easter, the Southern government will feel freer to carry out its part in the bargain. Loyalist resistance to the Council will be further undermined.
In the North itself the IRA have taken advantage of the relative reduction in repression in recent months (necessary to enable the SDLP to sell the deal) to recover from setbacks inflicted last year. The result has been a massive increase in the armed campaign in the weeks since the election. So far the British have been reluctant to meet the demands of the Unionists for a further clamp down on the Catholic ghettoes. Instead they have increased check points in an attempt to frustrate the IRA rather than to destroy them.
The recent mass search in the mixed Ormeau Road area does not seem to have been conducted on the same lines as previous searches: there was no physical violence aimed at the inhabitants. Instead of mass arrests, the army has taken to relying on informers, of whom there are many more now that a political, as opposed to a military ‘solution’ has been offered.
Catholic support for the IRA has been further undermined by the economic promises of the new Assembly. A new government factory is under construction in the Catholic area of West Belfast, which has the highest unemployment figure in the North. Courtaulds are carrying out a £25 million expansion in Deny. A number of industries have moved into the Catholic area at Newry. Direct state spending through Enterprise Ulster and the Local Economic Development Units is claimed to have reduced unemployment by 10,000 in the past couple of years. The Assembly has promised 20,000 new houses each year.
The British state, in spite of its own economic crises, has greatly increased the volume of funds pumped into the North. Whether or not this can be maintained in the long term remains to be seen, but the short term effect has undoubtedly been to increase the strength of reformism among the Catholic masses. These promises, coupled with the war-weariness after four years of uninterrupted struggle, have all served to reduce the agitation on the streets for an end to repression, especially now that repression is more selective.
The Labour government has suggested that it may legalise Provisional Sinn Fein – a move which might be aimed at splitting the movement into those who might seek a truce and those who are prepared to go on fighting. It seems to have been more or less accepted now that the IRA cannot be defeated militarily, and that greater efforts will have to be put into increasing its isolation from the Catholic population.
IN THE IMMEDIATE future there is little prospect for a major breakthrough from either the Loyalist or Republican opponents of Sunningdale. The most that either can hope for is to force concessions from imperialism. In this situation the British ruling class will continue in its attempts to play one off against the other.
The Loyalists are still concentrating their efforts on winning a majority in the Assembly – of destroying Faulkner’s already slender base. They still look for a constitutional victory, but are unlikely to win it.
The recent Provisional upsurge, while impressive, is only a quantitative change in direction, not a qualitative one. The movement is still dominated by the politics of the Catholic petit bourgeoisie which has meant that while a great many Catholic workers still have a basic sympathy and admiration for the IRA, in political terms they have given their support to the SDLP. Hundreds of Catholic workers through the past few years have been drawn into armed struggle, and thousands more have given it practical support in a basic, gut response to British military repression; but the political programme of the Provisional is so far removed from the every day needs and struggles of these workers that the massive developments in political awareness have not been harnessed and led in a genuinely revolutionary direction. The SDLP has been able to fill the political vacuum.
The Provisional have consistently refused to raise working-class demands and have failed to develop any serious challenge to the Southern ruling class which could convince Protestant workers in the North that they stand for something other than an extension of the existing Southern regime to the North, and which could have maintained and developed the struggles of the Catholic workers.
The Officials have put most of then-efforts in recent months into electioneering on reformist demands. They are still pledged to creating a ‘truly’ democratic Six County state as the ‘first step towards a republic and socialism. They naively assume that working-class unity will come through secret negotiations with the leadership of the Protestant para-military organisations, coupled with agitation on local community problems, such as the proposed new Belfast Ring Road, rather than through the development of militant class struggles on central issues confronting workers in which links between workers North and South could be forged.
Typical of the Officials’ approach are the recent discussions which they held with the leadership of the ultra-loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF does not represent the objective interests of the Protestant workers in the North. It is a product of the sectarian divisions within the working class, and, whatever utterances it makes on its desire for a ‘political’ solution, it still stands for the retention of British domination. In so far as it does speak for workers, it speaks of Protestant workers, first as Protestants and Loyalists and only second as workers.
After the discussions, the UVF denied that they had taken place, and went on to denounce the ‘socialism’ of the Officials. It is only when socialists can begin to talk to Loyalist workers as workers, and not as Loyalists, that the Protestant supremacist and pro-imperialist leaders of these workers can be isolated. But such a dialogue will only materialise hi common struggles. Secret talks in back rooms will not build working-class unity. It is a dangerous illusion to imagine that it will.
Both the Provisional and the Officials have expressed varying degrees of agreement with the proposals put forward by the Loyalist leader, Desmond Boal. Boal however represents the desires of the displaced sections of the Protestant middle class to maintain some degree of power under the changed needs of imperialism. His plans are in no way a challenge to imperialism, and in no way offer any way forward for the working class, Protestant or Catholic. The apparent willingness of the Republicans to even consider Boal seriously is a further indication of the confusion among the leadership of both wings.
The struggle against the Northern State (as opposed to attempts to reform it) is an essential part of the fight for working-class unity. Such unity is vital for the victory of socialism, the only alternative to imperialism. The continuing existence of the Northern state, in whatever form, reinforces the pro-imperialism of Protestant workers. For this reason it is essential that workers in Britain recognise the absolute legitimacy of the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland. The working class has every right to resist imperialist attacks, and to fight for the overthrow of British rule. Republicans in Ireland are fighting against the same class which exploits and oppresses British workers.
But while recognising the legitimacy of the struggle against imperialist rule in the North of Ireland, it is also necessary to be aware of the limitations of the struggle in its present form. The Northern state will not be destroyed by the Catholic minority, and increasingly a minority of the minority, fighting alone. The active assistance of at least a section of the Protestant working class is needed. The only hope for a breakthrough in a direction which can seriously threaten imperialist rule by , leading towards such working-class unity lies in the development of the class struggle.
As the Socialist Workers’ Movement’s programme on the National Question puts it:
‘Southern workers are the catalyst in overcoming Protestant workers’ fears of Irish unity and independence. Their struggle for socialism can show clearly that they are not simply more militant nationalists, but are determined to completely transform Irish society by achieving working class power. This is something Loyalist workers can relate to as workers.’
Alongside, and in conjunction with the ongoing class struggle, Irish socialists must continue in their propaganda and agitation to oppose all other aspects of imperialist rule – against repression and for the release of all political prisoners and for the withdrawal of all British troops. The struggle on such issues is an essential part of challenging the Northern state, but unless it is integrated into the struggle for socialism, it will be frustrated.
In both these areas socialists in Britain have an important role to play. On the one hand links must be built between militant rank and file workers in Ireland and Britain, who in many cases confront the same employers in struggle.
At the same time socialists in Britain must continue in their agitation for the withdrawal of British troops, pointing out that their presence, whatever role they may undertake at any given moment, is not aimed at bringing peace, but at re-enforcing imperialist domination and exploitation, which in the future, as in the past, can only be ensured by the continuing use of repression and violence against the whole Irish working class.
In spite of the setbacks imperialist plans have suffered with the Loyalist election victory and the renewal of the IRA campaign, the British government and its allies in Ireland are all pledged to continue with the Sunningdale policy. Sunningdale cannot solve the problems in Northern Ireland but it was not really designed to do so. It cannot end sectarianism; it cannot bring ‘normal’ democracy. The army will remain on the streets, and violence will continue.
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