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IRA renounces the armed struggle

“The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign. This will take effect from 4pm this afternoon.” So began spokesman Seanna Walsh, delivering an IRA statement via DVD on 28th July. “All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.”

Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), warmly welcomed this statement. Immediately a process of dismantling army watchtowers in Republican areas began. Britain announced its intention to begin reducing its garrison in the province. Given Blair’s embroilment in Iraq this is hardly surprising. British imperialism urgently needs them elsewhere, given its role as deputy to the “world policeman“.

This is truly a historic statement, despite the fact that since the 1997 IRA cease-fire, and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the Republicans’ war to drive British imperialism out of Northern Ireland has been over. But the IRA’s retention of large arms stocks made the unlikely return to the armed struggle just enough of a possibility for the Northern Unionists and the British to effectively keep them out of the power-sharing they were promised in 1998 in return for their cease-fire.

Naturally enough every capitalist state will do all it can to enforce its total monopoly of violence. In Northern Ireland this leaves the large nationalist minority — which has never accepted the democratic validity of British rule — under the power of the British army, however reduced in numbers. More importantly, on a day to day basis, it means leaving them to the tender mercies of a Loyalist-dominated police force. In short, despite nearly thirty years of a guerrilla war, the Six Counties still remains “a Protestant state for a Protestant people”.

But neither the 26 counties of the Republic nor the Six Counties have stood still for 35 years. The Republic of Ireland’s economy is no longer the agricultural backwater and exporter of labour that it was in the 1960s. It grew at around 10% per annum between 1995 and 2000. Agriculture is now dwarfed by industry, which accounts for 38% of GDP, about 80% of exports, and employs 28% of the labour force— albeit the vast majority of it owned by United States, Japanese and European Union multinationals.

In the North improvements have been made in increasing jobs in nationalist areas, ending the most glaring types of discrimination against Catholics and improving housing provision. But the residential and educational separation of the two communities is still largely intact.

If the International Monitoring Commission in its second report in January finds that the IRA has put of its weaponry beyond use and has effectively disbanded as a fighting force, even the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of the old bigot Ian Paisley may be forced to talk to Sinn Fein. The two bourgeois governments hope that a deal can be reached well in advance of Assembly elections due in spring 2007. As the saying goes “there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip”; and never was that saying more often proved true than in the Northern Ireland “peace process”.

Why has this statement come at this time?

For four years the Assembly lurched from crisis to crisis as the Unionist parties’ conditional support for power sharing with Sinn Fein and the SDLP hinged on further weapons “decommissioning” and effective disbandment of the IRA. Two rounds of limited weapons destruction failed to appease the anti-Catholic bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party. But Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein and the IRA were not inclined to complete disarmament so long as policing in the six counties of Northern Ireland remained firmly under Unionist control. Eventually the Assembly collapsed over the issue in 2003.

In December 2004 an attempt to relaunch the suspended institutions of devolved government in Northern Ireland ended in impasse. Although the IRA declared their readiness to enter the endgame of disarmament and disbandment, the DUP, with one eye on the forthcoming British elections, threw a spanner in the works by demanding the public humiliation of the IRA — that the weapons destruction should be filmed.

When, shortly afterwards, the Northern Irish Bank was robbed to the tune of £26 million, both Blair and Ahern pointed the finger of blame at the IRA and accused Sinn Fein of having knowledge of it during the talks. Sinn Fein MPs’ Westminster salaries were subsequently suspended.

Then came the killing of a Sinn Fein supporter, Robert McCartney, outside a pub and the subsequent campaign by his family for justice, calling on Sinn Fein to assist in identifying his murderers. On 6th April, Adams made a speech calling on the IRA to give up its arms, a careful PR exercise aimed at two audiences: “soft” Sinn Fein voters who might have been put off by McCartney’s murder; and middle-class Catholics dithering between voting Sin Fein or the SDLP. It was also very much meant for George Bush’s ears. No invitation to the White House on St Patrick’s Day and all that signifies were taken very seriously by Sinn Fein. Adams’ speech was sold heavily in the US as a major development.

Does this statement mean the IRA has in fact been disbanded?

Significantly no army convention was called to sanction the statement, nor was there a change of constitution to support it. The IRA still retains an Army Council, a General Headquarters, a Northern Command and various brigades. Sinn Fein leaders Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris have been replaced by three trusted west Belfast lieutenants on the Army Council. This suggests the Army Council of the IRA knows it will be involved in activities potentially embarrassing to Sinn Fein.

But regardless of what is claimed, there is no clear division between There is no major split in the IRA at grassroots or leadership level. The hardliners generally all left in late 1997 to form the Real IRA. In grassroots Republican eyes, neither the RIRA nor the Continuity IRA are “successful” because they haven’t killed any police or British soldiers. Since 1994 the vast majority of disillusioned IRA members have simply retired.

The IRA’s three previous decommissioning acts have involved 6% of its arsenal, according to journalist reports. Now it is expected to decommission most of its 1980s Libyan acquired weapons. This will effectively disarm it as any sort of guerrilla force. It is likely it would retain the clean handguns it has acquired in recent years for potential use against Loyalist paramilitaries, “rogue” Republicans, and in all probability some “economic” activities. This will probably provide the basis for police and Unionist claims that the IRA has not disarmed and should not be allowed into power-sharing.

Decommissioning its arsenal is one thing; nobody expects the IRA to decommission its business empire, much of which is now legitimate, with “respectable businessmen” fronting hundreds of enterprises including shops, apartments and office blocks, restaurants, hotels and pubs. The problem is that it is widely known in nationalist communities that, while some senior individuals may have personally profited, the bulk of ordinary activists most certainly haven’t. Most funds are returned to the organisation. Nobody expects that all this ended at 4pm on 28th July.

The most glaring absence in the IRA’s the statement was any mention of policing. Sinn Fein has always insisted that the British government has not given enough on policing to persuade it to join the policing board. Republican demands with regard to legislative police reform include total disbandment of the special branch, reform of the use of rubber bullets and better representation of nationalists on the policing board, especially at district level. It also wants a pledge to devolve policing and justice powers to Stormont before it holds a special Ardfheis (conference) to secure approval for Catholics joining the police force.

David Ervine of the “Progressive” Unionist Party hit the nail on the head when he said: “Policing is a nightmare for them, Martin Mc Guinness and Bairbre de Brun sitting as British ministers at Stormont is one thing, but the peeler in the street is much more in yer face for Republicans. Accepting him means totally accepting the ‘alien’ state.”

Peace without justice

As to the future, the DUP has worked with Sinn Fein councillors and, informally, with its assembly members in the past. They have taken positions in the executive and would do so again once they squeeze the maximum concessions from Sin Fein. The next months may well see talks restart on resurrecting the devolved institutions.

The Republican struggle, however, was based on real social injustice, which nothing in the past decade has fundamentally resolved. That is the denial of the right to self-determination for the Irish people as a whole and that section of it, imprisoned against its will, in “Northern Ireland”. Loyalist paramilitary and state terrorism, and British occupation were far more indiscriminate in their targets: their goal was to break the spirit of resistance of the nationalist population as a whole; whereas the IRA’s was the right to self-determination and a united Ireland.

For all the bleating by the British state and its journalists about the murderous actions of the IRA, it is the British army, its secret services and their Loyalist collaborators who hold the shameful and bloody record. Northern Ireland was for 25 years and more a test bed for assassinations, torture (such as the use of “white noise” and “helicopter” techniques) and widespread informants. These same techniques were exported around the globe, as were the army “experts” who trained foreign forces how to use them. Finally, they were used again by British troops in torture camps like Camp Breadbasket.

Ireland remains divided by the British state, whose troops remain stationed in the North. Northern Ireland minister Peter Hain holds a veto over all political decisions; Tony Blair can unilaterally suspend or reinstate the Assembly.

The Good Friday agreement formalised the Unionist veto that is the bedrock of this statelet. The Unionists retain their veto over any fundamental dismantling of this sectarian state.

The DUP has used this veto to ensure that, despite some alleviation of Catholic discrimination, the police and security services remain Unionist controlled.

If and when the power-sharing is resumed it will still be based on a sectarian head count underpinned by confessional politics; this will impede the development of cross-community working class politics. Sinn Fein now aims for a united Ireland by peaceful means. They hope for further electoral advances in the South which will enable them to become a power broker in a 26 Counties government eventually. This comes on top of their success in displacing the SDLP as the main nationalist party in the Six Counties. Demographic changes in the north (negating the unionist majority or leaving the minority on their own state) by 2015 and further advance in the south would lead them to believe they can engineer an all-Ireland referendum on a united Ireland.

But, justified as the goal of a united Ireland was and is, the road to it is not that of unifying the Irish nationalists of all classes into a gradual step-by step establishement of a capitalist country within the imperialist EU. Unless a united working class politics comes into being, transcending and obliterating the religious-communalist divide, then the above scenario, as it looms nearer, will in all probability lead to a reactionary Loyalist revolt against it, either trying to impose some sort of veto or even a bloody repartition of the Six Counties. In any case, if and when the power-sharing executive is restored, it will still be based on a sectarian head count.

Socialists and the Irish War

The Irish war consisted of decades of intermittent guerilla warfare: the 1974 “mainland” campaign bombing; the 1981-84 bombing campaign which nearly killed Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet in the middle of the Miners Strike. Then there were the upsurges in mass struggle: the civil rights movement of 1969-70; the mass uprising around Bloody Sunday (1972); the huge demonstrations around the hunger strikes by IRA prisoners, notably on the death of Bobby Sands. Despite the heroism of the volunteers and the Republican communities and the justice of their cause (self-determination, Irish unity, an end to the sectarian statelet), the struggle never developed into a huge and rising mass movement, North and South, supported by the British working class movement.

This was not a pipe dream. It could have happened at least during the three above-mentioned periods of mass struggle. But always petit bourgeois Republicanism returned to the guerilla struggle or rather subordinated the mass action to it. Occasionally this was marred by actual sectarian killings and criminality.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary Trotskyists of the Irish Workers Group (now Workers Power Ireland) and Workers Power Britain gave unconditional support to the Irish resistance struggle, including the armed struggle. We called continually for British troops out. We criticised all sectarian acts. But we also criticised mercilessly the petit bourgeois guerrilla strategy of the IRA saying clearly that it would lead to defeat. So it has.

Now, as Sinn Fein adapt themselves to normal bourgeois politics in Northern Ireland and the Republic, as the last rags of petit bourgeois revolutionary nationalism (and even a whiff of Stalinist “socialism”) fall from them, a new opportunity exists — a turn to working class and genuine revolutionary socialist politics in both the North and the South, a politics which does not renounce Irish unity, nor the right of the people to bear arms but which puts its whole stress on mass working class action. A politics which, as we have always said, is based on Trotsky’s strategy of permanent revolution. Only the Irish working class, organised politically as a class, in a Leninist party, can lead the struggle for national liberation to a conclusion by overthrowing both the southern bourgeoisie and ending British imperialist rule in Ireland.

In the coming months and years revolutionary socialists will oppose the setting up of a new Stormont state, based on a division of spoils amongst “Catholic/nationalist and “Protestant/Loyalist” communalism. They will fight for. Instead we must do all we can to unite Protestant and Catholic workers in the militant defence of their own class interests, to fight for a united workers’ republic as envisaged by James Connolly and Jim Larkin. On the road to this goal, important democratic changes to the existing system of national oppression and exploitation will also have to be fought for — the complete secularisation of education, the immediate withdrawal of all British troops, the dissolution of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, its replacement by a workers’ and popular militia and the election of an all–Ireland Constituent Assembly.

Long live the Irish national liberation struggle

Long live the Irish proletarian revolution as part of the world revolution.

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