Malcolm Redfellow learns something new every day ...

Monday, 15th March, 2010: Malcolm rediscovers some roots

Anticipating a wait in the clinic, Malcolm intended to take with him a book. Nothing new there.

He went rooting in the attic stacks and found (to his small surprise, having forgotten he had either) not only D.George Boyce’s Nationalism in Ireland but also, alongside it, A.C.Hepburn’s anthology of documents on The Conflict of Nationality in Northern Ireland [out of print].

The coincidence of two books, vaguely relevant to each other, adjacently shelved, astounded Malcolm, so he had to rest for a moment to admire his own organisational efficiency.

He leafed through Hepburn, and found a prescient and durable abbreviated essay, lifted from Ralph Miliband’s (that’s the dad’s) Socialist Register for 1972. And here it is:

Anders Boserup: Contradictions and Struggles in Northern Ireland [1972]

As is nationalism elsewhere, Catholic Irish nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon dating from the mid-nineteenth century and the period of the Gaelic revival. Like other nationalisms, it has sought to establish a continuity with a past which has been reinterpreted in romanticized terms. It thus incorporates an entire set of myths about the Irish struggle against English domination and the Protestant Ascendancy and about a pre-plantation Gaelic society of a communistic type -- all of them myths, the foundations of which in historical fact are as tenuous as those of the corresponding Protestant ones.

British domination is thus seen as the root of all the problems of Ireland. In the socialist ideology British domination becomes British imperialism. In this way everything fits nicely into place in what appears to be a consistent socialist theory. The severing of the links with the British oppressor becomes the precondition for socialism in Ireland. The Orange oligarchy in the North (as well as the Green Tories in the South) become the middlemen, the neo-colonialist agents of British imperialism, and the Unionist workers, lured by petty privileges, its helpless tools. Most important: the existence of the common enemy, British imperialism, fuses Catholics and Protestants into one 'people' in so far as their objective interests are concerned. National differences conveniently recede into the background ...

Theories which ultimately reduce to notions like these are held with only minor variations by such diverse groups as the Communist Party, the IRA and People's Democracy ...

… Few nationalist ideologies could have provided a more fertile soil for socialist ideas than did the Irish since the socialist and anti-imperialist struggles were so easily shown to be two aspects of the same thing. In fact, of course, the Catholic left did not 'take over' a nationalist ideology; it was born of it and grew up in it. Its own ideology remained a variant of it, with somewhat different priorities, certainly, but with the main concepts and beliefs unchanged. This fusion of nationalism and socialism is particularly marked in the writings of James Connolly in the first decades of this century. Piety towards him has been such that all socialist groups today claim to be his heirs, and no-one even begins to ask whether his demand for an all-Irish Socialist Republic is as valid today as it was in his time. Instead, he has become part of the myths and the dogmas -- a further 'proof', if any had been needed, that a Socialist Republic is a 32~county Republic as a matter of course …

* * *

If it is to engage effectively in the struggle against the Orange system the left must necessarily dissociate itself from 32-county nationalism and accept the existence of the Northern State. As long as the left does not do this but. more or less wholeheartedly, plays the tune of Catholic nationalism it is in fact shoring up that system by providing it with a badly needed scarecrow to frighten Protestant workers.

The affirmation that Northern Irish Protestants constitute a separate national entity with a right to refuse incorporation in the Republic is usually considered to be divisive of the working class and therefore anti-socialist. On the contrary I think that it is the stubborn affirmation of unity and solidarity where none exists and the extravagant claim of Irish Catholics to the whole island which is divisive. The Catholic left demands a 32-county Republic and tries to sweeten the pill for Protestants by affirming that this will be a socialist, and ipso facto a secular Republic. Protestants would be fools if they believed it. Socialism in Ireland is not for tomorrow, and, even if it were, deeply entrenched ideologies do not disappear overnight. The Catholic left, by its espousal of the demand for a united Ireland. has demonstrated that even those who claim to constitute the socialist vanguard are trapped in nationalist ideologies.

Ultimately it is to put the cart before the horse to demand a 32·county Republic and hope that it can then develop towards socialism…

The unity of Ireland will come after the feudal and colonial remnants in the North have been swept away and after the South has given up its demands. Then, to paraphrase Marx, after the separation there may come federation, but federation on the basis of equal rights for nations and international working-class solidarity. To start with an imposed unity is to betray the ideals of internationalism, socialism and democracy....

To conclude I submit that there is a need for a reorientation of the struggle of the Catholic left, by which it would leave aside the windmills of British imperialism and the wholly counter-productive demands for Irish reunification, and would concentrate on the real issue of today: crushing the Orange system; and doing this in a revolutionary, rather than a reformist way, exploiting the opportunities it gives for raising the revolutionary consciousness of the workers -- which simply means their understanding of their own objective situation. Both among Protestants and among Catholics it is widely assumed that the Protestant ascendancy and the Union with Britain are two sides of the same coin: that the interests of'colonialism and those of imperialism, those of Orange rule and those of Westminster and British capital are coincident. I have tried to show that on the contrary it is here that the principal contradiction is to be found. To develop correct insight and hence revolutionary consciousness among Irish workers the best strategy seems to be to expose and to sharpen the contradiction. For in so doing both Protestant and Catholic workers will be forced to revise their received notions. As this contradiction is brought out into the open they will have to align with one side and against the other, but they cannot continue to align (or to believe they align) with both as do the Protestants, or against both as do the Catholics. Thus, whatever realignments occur they will facilitate common action by workers on both sides of the fence. The most pernicious aspect of the current struggle against 'British imperialism' is precisely that it perpetuates the false identification of Union with Unionist rule which lies at the very core of those ideologies which divide the working class ...

[source: R. Miliband and J. Savile (eds.) The Socialist Register 1972, pp. 181-90]

Sphere: Related Content