ISJ 2 Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

International Socialism, Summer 1983

Kieran Allen

Ireland: Southern Workers and the National Question

(Summer 1983)

First published in International Socialism Journal 2 : 20, Summer 1983, pp. 120–131.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

When, during last year’s elections to Prior’s assembly, 35% of the anti-Unionist population voted for Sinn Fein, British commentators fell over themselves in searching for an ‘explanation’ as to why a sizeable majority should commit themselves to supporting an armed struggle. The ‘emotional aftermath of the H Block Campaign’; the clumsy tactics of Prior himself; the abstentionist policy of the SDLP have all been pointed to as explaining this fantastic aberration. Yet the truth is much simpler. A growing section of Catholic workers are showing their total determination to rid themselves of the dominance of the Northern state by whatever means. That state has offered them nothing but bigotry, repression and the dole queues. Further, it is a state that is clearly recognised as irreformable.

Yet despite their determination to rid themselves of the sectarian state, the anti-Unionists of the North are a minority – without the hold on any of the levers of power. When there is a disproportionately higher number unemployed, when those who are working are scattered in predominantly loyalist factories, there is little possibility that their actions alone can break that state. Neither does the armed struggle itself offer a way out of the dilemma. Although the famous leaked document of the intelligence chief Glover asserted that the British Army could never militarily defeat the Provisional IRA, it is equally true in reverse. Republican leaders now talk of 20 years protracted war.

The key to the solution of the national question lies in the hands of Southern workers. This is recognised by the British ruling class. Their willingness to attempt a reform of the Northern state and their refusal (to date) to fully back a move towards a returned Stormont when the reforming road was blocked, was dictated by an interest in maintaining capitalist stability in the south. The vital issue for socialists and anti-imperialists in Ireland is therefore under what conditions and programme will Southern workers decisively intervene in the conflict.

In the late sixties there was considerable optimism among both-socialists and republicans that the struggle in the North against Stormont would eventually spill over into an all-Ireland struggle against British imperialism. The formula seemed relatively straightforward. The North was oppressed politically and militarily by Britain. The South suffered from the same oppression, but in an economic form. Yet with the exception of the mobilisation after the shooting of 13 civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday and the smaller, but in many ways more significant, support for the H Block hunger strike – it has not happened. Furthermore, in both those cases, Southern workers were demonstrating their sympathy and solidarity rather than making connections with the economic imperialism which dominates in the South.

One of the material foundations for the stability of the South has been the extensive industrialisation programme pursued by the Southern regime over the last two decades. Alongside it has emerged a new reformist force in the Southern labour movement – the Workers’ Party – which combines an acceptance of partition with support for the introduction of the multinationals. [1] Although they are not yet seen by the mass of workers as anti-republican, their growth in influence can only deepen the isolation of the Southern labour movement from the Northern struggle.

If that isolation is to be broken, it is important that a realistic analysis is put forward on the relationship of Southern capitalism to British imperialism and the world economy. For that relationship must play some part in the shaping of workers’ consciousness to the Northern Struggle. The earlier optimism was based on a definite but little examined view of Southern capitalism.

To put it in a nutshell, those who believed that the revolutionary process in Ireland would result from the ‘spill-over’ of the Northern struggle also regarded the South as a neo-colony of Britain. There was supposed to be a direct material connection between the form capitalism or imperialism took in the South and the presence of the British army in the North, and that material connection in turn was thought sufficient to generate a nationalist or republican consciousness among Southern workers that did away with the need to raise expressly socialist arguments on why they, as workers, should take up the National question. Recent developments, though, have undercut the basis of such arguments.
 

Britain’s declining share

When the Southern economy was opened up in the early sixties to foreign capital British imperialism was the major force to take advantage of it. Its traditional ties with the South; its involvement in the food processing and banking sectors; the common currency; the abundance of cheap labour in the South and the decline in the rate of profit in Britain itself- all made the South an attractive spot for the export of capital. Investment projects were established to take advantage of both Ireland’s home market and also as a-base for the re-export of goods to Britain itself. The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement of 1966 – which created a customs union between both countries – reflected these developments. The Southern economy was firmly linked in with Britain’s, both in terms of trade and export of capital.

In 1967, for example, 67% of Irish exports were sold in Britain. Between 1960 and 1969 there were 350 overseas projects established in the South. 40% of them were British; 25% were American; 20% German and 5% were Dutch. [2] Nevertheless, British investments in the South tended to be concentrated in the traditional sectors. Its level of technology and capital intensity were low. Thus, even in the sixties, although Britain had £29 million invested in its 150 projects, American investors had planted £28 million in their 80 projects. [3] Despite its dominance of the Southern economy, the signs of its decline were already there.

The seventies saw a much more rapid acceleration of this trend. There were two fundamental factors involved. In the first place the cumulative effects of the failure of British capitalism to invest took its toll most sharply in the seventies. The concentration of world

capital has increasingly been in the United States, Japan and West Germany. Britain’s level of productivity (some 40% below Germany); its share of the world export trade (26% in 1950 declining to 9% in 1975); its periodic balance of payments crises, were all clear signs of its decline. [4] The changes reflect an overall tendency for ‘British capitalism to become converted into a servicing centre in the world system’. [5] Although one symptom of that role has been the continued export of capital abroad to get a higher rate of return than at home, the nature of its investments in the South in traditional and declining sectors did not guarantee such a return.

The second major development was that in 1973 Ireland joined the EEC as its most underdeveloped member. As a result it became a useful staging post to enable capital, particularly from America and Japan, to get around the EEC tariffs. American capital flooded into the South, building factories simply to finish off the final stages of assembly before shipping its goods on for export to the EEC. On top of that the government was offering the highest state subsidies to foreign capital – up to 60% grants, effectively zero rate of profits tax, cheap leases on industrial premises and full freedom to repatriate profits. Thirdly Southern Ireland had an abundance of cheap labour – which although not as attractive as Korea or Brazil, was still placed inside the EEC markets.

By the end of the seventies there were $2 billion invested directly in manufacturing in the South. [6] It was the highest per capita investment of US capital in Europe. The annual figures for planned investment which the IDA produces each year show the pattern of American dominance since 1973. [7] They also show Britain’s decline into near-insignificance when it comes to investment in manufacturing:

The motor of the Southern economy – its manufacturing base – has become increasingly less dominated by British capital. The result was that Southern workers were no longer confronting an aspect of British imperialism at the point of production from which they could draw direct connections to their presence in the North. But there was also more involved than simply a change in the source of foreign capital.
 

Integration into the world economy

Historically, the Southern economy has been determined by Britain’s. In the nineteenth century, a change in food patterns on the British mainland could throw the Irish countryside into chaos. Right into the twentieth century a slump on the mainland was doubly felt in the satellite. In present day terms, those who continue to argue that the South is a neo-colony of Britain have often put it in the following simple formula: ‘when Britain sneezes, Ireland catches double pneumonia’. [9] But today it couldn’t be further from the truth. The long term decline in Britain has not been matched – still less amplified – in Southern Ireland. Rather, the South has shown, until recently, a record growth in the levels of investment and productivity. The cycles of Southern capitalism and its recent slump are increasingly dictated by those of the world economy rather than simply its linkage into a declining British economy.

The specific contradictions it shows are similar to those of other peripheral counties which attempt to over-expand their industrial base by massive borrowings in order not to fall behind in the race for accumulation of capital. Having broken into the world economy, it can no longer stand still. Just as Poland, Mexico, Turkey and Brazil have all borrowed massively from the world banks in order to fuel further investment programmes, so too has Southern Ireland-if to a lesser extent. By doing so it makes its own marginal contribution to the world-wide crisis of over-production and inflation and so helps to choke the boom that it had hoped would eventually materialise to solve its crisis.

It is precisely because it is no longer a direct neo-colony of Britain that nationalist response to the crisis has been rendered more Utopian. ‘Stop the million spent on border security’ is a valid political demand but it won’t do anything to solve the crisis of borrowing. ‘Nationalisation of the banks’ is a measure which every socialist supports – but in itself it will not free the resources to enable Ireland to develop independently of the world economy. ‘Import controls’ and ‘withdrawal from the EEC are merely attempts to erect signposts back to a protectionist economy that failed even for capitalism.

The integration of Southern capitalism into the world economy by no means implies a direct ‘break’ from its ties to Britain. Substantial sections of traditional capital on the South still look to the British mainlands or exports and flows of capital. Nevertheless, the tendency is to look for greener pastures. In the sixties exports to Britain accounted for 70% of the South’s total. Today it has declined to 47%. [10] The break with sterling and the entry into the EMS implied an ambition – to diversify – even though the effective devaluation against sterling has temporarily made the British market more accessible. The aim of the multinationals was not the carving out of the profitable sectors of the home market and the displacement of the native capitalist class. Rather Southern Ireland was to be used as a staging post for penetrating other markets; with an abundance of cheap labour and a structure of the subsidies were geared to encouraging exports. It is for that reason that there was no significant nationalist opposition from within the native ruling class. Their own patch was under no threat.

In fact, quite the reverse was the case. Foreign capital was to create a variety of openings and opportunities that would, rather than leading to the decimation of native capital give it a new lease of life. Furthermore, native capital was to expand by means of direct state subsidies as much, and more so, than the multinationals. Take the two major industrial leaders of native Southern capitalism. Jefferson Smurfit and Cement Roadstone were established in the Thirties during the De Valera protectionist era. Both managed to corner and win a near monopoly of the home market. But it was only the starting of the industrialisation programme in the sixties that created massive opportunities for cement and packaging. Since then their board rooms have been opened to foreign capital and they have managed to expand in Europe and America.

However both companies are exceptional. They are leading representatives of the Southern Irish capitalist class who to some extent have broken into the world market. The real basis of the expansion of native capital was elsewhere. Small scale industry established around the crevices of foreign capital has been the dominant feature. Since 1973 there have been 1,300 indigenous companies created. They are predominantly small and lack the resources to consolidate themselves or break into the world market independently. 70% of them are employing 30 workers or less. They export only 30% of their production compared with 75% for foreign-owned industry in Ireland. [11]

The expansion of native Irish capital has not, however, been confined to investment in small manufacturing units. Dusty Miller, one of the new breed of Irish bosses and chairman of the speculative concern Carbury Oil and Gas perceptively remarked: ‘The effect of the investment pattern has been to create independent circulations of money largely unrelated to each other with private [Irish] capital going into non-productive and service investments and state tax money going into the production sector.’

’Largely unrelated’ is more than a slight exaggeration. The condition under which native capital has expanded has been determined by the industrialisation programmed spearheaded by the multinationals. The historic weakness of native capital has inclined it to those projects that guarantee quick returns. Property investment and the development of services to feed into the industrial programme have offered these opportunities. It has been the deliberate policy of the Irish state to foster this expansion of native capital. Native Irish capital has received 40% of all the IDA grants – even though its employment record has been abysmal.

This expansion has, however, been of particular importance in harmonising the interests of foreign capital and the needs of local capital and its political system. The political managers of this new capitalism in Ireland have been drawn from the mass of small time capitalists, strengthened through their association with the multinationals and that strata of society that look to them. It is they who are peculiarly suited to express the interests of capitalism in general in the South. They staff the higher echelons of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and provide the ‘leadership’ at local level through a variety of official and semi-official bodies. They also give the political system in the South its peculiarly populist and conservative twist. Their interests are not exactly the same as those of the multinationals. Their more ideological exponents such as John Kelly (FG) and Des O’Malley (FF) have on occasions warned against the dangers of ‘over-dependence’ on foreign capital. Yet they also know that the interests of the multi-nationals coincide exactly with their own for the simple reason that it offers them the only viable means of survival.

There used to be (and in some circles still is) a popular theory on the Irish left that native capitalism was too weak to be trusted with full control of its own house. The local ruling class were regarded as mere puppets of Britain. The logic was either that there was little point taking up the economic struggles against the native weaklings or that they would simply disappear as part of a republican upsurge. Britain’s role as a caretaker for world imperialism, it was argued, was linked with its dominance of the North and would ensure the possibility that Southern workers would move against the Northern state on a ‘progressive nationalist’ basis.

The truth is somewhat different. The widening of the base of Southern capitalism and the strengthening of its more dynamic elements means that its political representatives are perfectly capable of managing their own little patch on behalf of the international club. There is no need for a caretaker when the owner and the lodger are at home. The Southern state is perfectly reliable from a capitalist point of view. They will initiate wage cuts and repression because their own interests dictate rather than because of the whisperings of British civil servants. Their nationalist traditions and the occasional outburst against Britain (eg on the Falklands) are an ideological bonus.

The face of capitalism that Southern workers confront is therefore less a British one. The Southern economy is less integrated into Britain’s than it was under the protectionist era of the fifties. The share that Britain takes of the super profits – a 30% return on the rate of profit in the boom times – has drastically declined. The growth of the Irish capitalist class and their political representatives makes them more than trustworthy from an international capitalist point of view. As a result it is a mistake to regard Britain as the caretaker for the interests of imperialism in the area.
 

The Stages Theory

The terrain of the class struggle has therefore changed dramatically over the last twenty years in the South. Yet few attempts have been made to analyse these developments. However they have important implications for the manner in which the struggle against the Northern state can be connected up with the class struggles of Southern workers.

The theoretical orthodoxy of the Irish left on the national question has been the stages theory. Held by a wide spectrum from the Stalinist left to the republicans, its proponents argue that the Northern state must be destroyed before there can be any progress to socialism and that Ireland must be rid of imperialism first before the struggle against capitalism can begin. Put simply, the fight is for a United Ireland rather than a workers republic. It leads to an ambiguity on the leading populist bourgeois party, Fianna Fail, particularly under the leadership of the verbal nationalist Haughey. Thus the CP in the last election ran the headline: ‘Vote Left and transfer to Fianna Fail.’ [12]

Such a perspective allows for no orientation to Protestant workers: since the struggle is for a united Ireland, it can only mean that they get less. Only a consistent fight for a workers republic could persuade Protestant workers that they should forfeit their defence of marginal privileges in the struggle where all workers will achieve more. The stages theorists are therefore forced to treat Protestant workers as a permanently reactionary bloc until after the border has been removed, are unable to address Protestant workers on a class basis and so expose the contradictions in their own loyalist ideas.

But how then is the border to be removed? If Protestant workers are prepared to defend the Northern state (as they have shown), then the only way that partition can be removed is when the Northern minority manage to bring about the mobilisation of Southern workers and their progressive allies on a nationalist basis – in the fight for a united Ireland. Leaving aside the fact that it is a logic that leads to civil war which would induce permanent divisions in the working class, our major concern here is whether such a movement is even possible.

The evidence to date casts some doubts. The Southern regime has managed to institute with virtually no opposition the special Criminal Courts and co-operation on border security with the RUC and the British army. Currently, it has successfully implemented the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act whereby suspects can be tried in the South for political ‘crimes’ committed in the North. The harsh truth is that Southern workers do not have any active record in defending republicans who are leading the struggle in the North.

Much of it has to do with the manner in which the struggle has been conducted. The traditions of republicanism rely on the armed struggle as a substitute for open organisation and mobilisation. The attempts to turn on and off the mass struggle and their view of it as simply the adjunct to the military campaign leaves the vast majority of Southern workers passive and therefore prey to the bosses propaganda. It is one thing in West Belfast or Derry to support the armed struggle. It is a different matter when the same invitation is issued to Southern workers who are not directly affected by the jackboot of the British army and years of discrimination. Individuals and political activists can maintain their ideas against the barrage of the media for years. But the mass of workers change their ideas permanently only through struggle and organisation. After every high point of the activity in the South, after Bloody Sunday and the H Block, the movement slumped into inaction as the mass of workers were offered nothing more than the possibility of passively supporting the armed struggle up North.

It is not simply the tactics of republicanism. It is their politics of relying on an all-class alliance which accounts for the failures. There have been various left turns which reflect its newly won support in the ghettoes of the North. But its overall tradition has been one of appealing to the whole Irish people – to the bosses and the workers. Its only programme is a nationalist one.

The objective changes in the South have meant that such a nationalist message no longer directly touches on the lives of workers. It could in the 20s and 30s win the enthusiastic support of workers when capitalism and landlordism was firmly identified with Britain. But today Southern workers are not confronting a shadowy group of lackeys behind whom the real force of British imperialism lurks. It is more likely to be the American multinationals and an expanded native Irish capitalist class. As we have argued, most Southern workers are not employed by British multinationals whose political representatives dominate the North. The economic crisis that Southern workers face cannot be laid at the door of Downing St or the London Stock Exchange. They arise from the integration into a world economy that is in deep recession. And their own ruling class is less and less under the thumbs of British imperialism.

Sections of the republican movement have begun to recognise the problems of spreading the struggle to the South. Increasingly a symptom of the left turn inside Sinn Fein has been the increase in their resolutions calling for ‘more involvement in social issues’ (without specifying how), the strategy of republicans is that if they are seen to back workers ‘social struggles’ workers in turn will support their (republican) struggle in the North. Missing is any notion that the fight against the Northern state can only be won as part of a workers’ struggle. More basically there is no way in a republican framework that they can explain why the workers they have supported should throw their weight behind the fight against partition as a class. It comes down simply to Sinn Fein winning credibility and hoping that the armed struggle will eventually win support among the passive masses of the South.

Insofar as there has been any attempt to translate the republican message into economic terms, it revolves around proclaiming that the fight is not just for political independence but for ‘economic independence as well’. It is for an anti-imperialist government where workers would gain substantially through a renewed determination to industrialise the country without reliance on the multinationals. Protectionism, self-reliance and the extension of the state sector are seen as the means.

But the slogan of an economically independent Ireland is not a new one or indeed a particularly radical one. It was also the slogan of the first Fianna Fail government that came to power in 1932. Within a year of De Valera’s election an economic war with Britain was underway. Between 1932 and 1936 duties were placed on over 1,000 imported commodities. Self-sufficiency, the intensification of agriculture through a change from cattle ranching to tillage, and the building of Irish industry were the aims. De Valera had no qualms about extending the state sector as a means of achieving these aims.

There were some breakthroughs at first. Manufacturing employment almost doubled from 1932 to 1946. Although much of the native capitalist class continued to salt away their money on the London Stock Exchange, others did take out franchises on the assembly of cars, got into cement production, building and textiles. But ultimately De Valera’s policies did not lead to a breaking out of the straitjacket of backwardness. In conditions of voluntary isolation of the 30s and enforced isolation of the war, it provided a small base for native Irish capital to exploit. That was the limit of its achievement. Once that market was saturated, Irish capitalism went onto a desperate decline. Thus from the period 1950–1959 employment actually declined by an average of 0.5% a year. [13]

De Valera failed in a period when the world economy was less integrated. True, he failed to take a particularly consistently state capitalist road. But there is no reason to believe that such a road today, built on the tiny home market that is Ireland, could have any more successful results. The memory of Southern workers of protectionism and self-reliance is the emigrant ship and abject poverty.
 

The socialist alternative

The connections between the struggle in the North and the Southern working class can only be drawn in socialist terms. The class interests of Southern workers – indeed all workers in Ireland are bound up with the destruction of the Northern state. There is no possibility of a socialist state on either side of the Irish border. Both states hang together. The Northern state is not just a class instrument of the bosses, it is also the direct custodian of the divisions inside the ranks of the working class themselves. As long as the oppression of anti-unionists can continue without opposition, the forces of reaction on both sides of the Irish border are strengthened. A. working class that stands passive before that oppression will never be in a position to impose its ideas and forms of organisation on Irish society. The forces of nationalism will be able to push the class struggle in the background.

Because there are less immediate and direct connections between the’ economic struggles of Southern workers and that of anti-unionists against oppression, their involvement in that fight can only come about with the development of a socialist consciousness. A simple leaflet issued by Corporation workers during the H-Block campaign illustrates the type of propaganda required. Instead of just appealing to support ‘fellow Irish men’ they argued that those in the H-Blocks and the mass of anti-unionists were involved in a struggle ‘against the extreme end of a system that oppresses us all’. It is through the development of a political consciousness against capitalism in all its forms that the real connections between Southern workers and anti-unionists can be made.

That sort of consciousness does not fall from the skies. It has much to do with the activities of a revolutionary Marxist organisation that has built real roots in the class. But consciousness and understanding do not develop in a vacuum. If workers in the South are not confident enough to win the most basic economic battles, they will hardly feel powerful enough to take on the battle against the partition or the level of repression that flows from its existence. Ten years of wage agreements, of the surrender of political independence in the name of industrialisation, have all contributed to the weakening of the self-activity of Southern workers. That in turn has rendered conditions less favourable to Marxist ideas. But the relative success of Southern capitalism is already beginning to pale amid the ever-deepening recession. The heightening of the class struggle in a period of capitalist instability will make the search for political explanations and solutions more likely.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the small revolutionary forces in Ireland took up the motto of Connolly that you cannot defeat imperialism unless you uproot capitalism on the way. The Republican Congress in 1934 for example argued: ‘Only by uprooting capitalism, the whole system of exploitation from which imperialism flows, only by establishing a new political and economic system of society can we ourselves assume freedom from England’. [14] They were arguing with the mass of people throughout the island who were already committed to fighting imperialism, on how to achieve its final defeat. British imperialism was clearly the source of the problem for Irish workers and small farmers.

Today we have to come at it in reverse in the South. There can be no winning against the bosses and their system until the political struggles are taken up. There can be no uprooting of capitalism unless we smash the Northern state on the way. We are talking to the mass of workers who have to fight the bosses – native and foreign – on a day-to-day basis. It is capitalism which is the source of the problem rather than one isolated part of it in the form of British imperialism. The key task of revolutionaries in Ireland, with its strong traditions of syndicalism, is to argue that we cannot win by trade union action alone. That means revolutionaries arguing that the Southern working class must take up the national question in order to end the oppression of a section of its own class and the political divisions that have ensured.

But despite coming at it in reverse, we share one key idea with the revolutionaries of the 20s and 30s. There is no separation between imperialism and capitalism, as in the stages theory. ‘Imperialism’ is nothing other than the way the organisation of worldwide capitalism affects Ireland. It is the same system that has British troops upholding sectarianism as has the multi-nationals and native bosses exploiting Southern workers. An ‘anti-imperialism’ which separates the activities of Britain in the North from its role as a capitalist power can only draw the connections by claiming it a role as the ‘chief exploiter’ of Southern labour. It is a message increasingly at variance with reality and leads only to left nationalism rather than socialism.

Notes

1. The Workers Party, formerly Sinn Fein the Workers Party. They have come close to a two nations position and now advocate support for the RUC. In the South they concentrate on capturing positions in the unions and in promoting various economic plans which point the way to a state capitalist Ireland.

2. Review of Industrial Policy, Industrial Development Authority 1970.

3. Ibid.

4. Nigel Harris: Deindustrialisation, in International Socialism 2 : 7.

5. Ibid.

6. Garret K. Fitzgerald speaking in Dallas. Reported in Irish Times, 19/3/81.

7. Survey of Current Business, US Department of Commerce 1976.

8. Annual Reports, Industrial Development Authority, 1974–1981.

9. R. Lysaght: British Imperialism in Ireland, in Morgan & Purdie (eds.), Divided Nation, Divided Class.

10. Industrial Development in Ireland, Industrial Development Authority 1980.

11. Telisis Report, National Economic and Social Council, Dublin 1982.

12. Quoted in Private Enterprise – all carrot and no stic’, Irish Business, November 1982.

13. T.K. Whitaker in Chubb and Lynch (eds.), Economic Planning and Development, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin 1966.

14. Republican Congress Manifesto, 1934.

 
Top of page

ISJ 2 Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

Last updated on 16 April 2015