Opposing the IRA’s bombs in Britain [1975]
[The two articles below by Desmond Greaves from the “Irish Democrat” of October 1975 illustrate how the Connolly Association reacted to the IRA’s bombing campaign in Britain. The Birmingham pub bombing of November 1974 was the most notorious of these incidents; in it 21 people were killed and some 200 injured. Following it Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act, empowering the police to arrest, detain and question people for up to seven days without charging them; and six innocent people were imprisoned for years as supposedly responsible.]
– – –
Let’s end these bombs in Britain
Bombs have started going off in England, and the mass media have confidently pronounced them “made in Ireland”.
We do not know whether they were made in Ireland or not, and we are not satisfied with the evidence that they are.
But one thing is a dead certainty. Bombs do not help the cause of Irish freedom. They hinder it.
And there is some evidence that people who want to hinder the cause of Irish freedom are fully aware of this fact.
The notorious Littlejohn who is doing time in Mountjoy for robbing a bank said he did it under British instructions in an attempt to discredit the Republicans. It is also said that he acted as an agent provocateur, getting people to undertake actions which he knew would be to their detriment, things they would not have done without his prompting.
How we would like to know what he was doing in Birmingham all that time, and why the man who harboured him is not to be prosecuted!
We do know that after the Winchester trial it was stated that ultra-Unionists and members of the National Front discussed letting off bombs in the Midlands to try and discredit the Irish, and get the English up against them.
The placing of bombs and similar actions are things which every member of the Irish community should determine that he will have nothing to do with. The weight of public opinion, exercised by responsible organisations and individuals of influence, should be brought to bear to create an atmosphere in which those who feel like resorting to violence know that it is held to be wrong by the majority of Irish people.
Before explaining why is wrong, and what the alternative is, let us make it clear that we can understand why people feel like doing it.
It is quite impossible for an English policeman to get into the skin of an Irishman.
Just after the war I wanted to visit Republican prisoners in Parkhurst [These were Republicans imprisoned following the IRA’s bombing campaign of 1939 in Britain. The Connolly Association participated in the campaign for their release in 1948]. I had to go to the Prison Commissioners to get permission. They were tall horse-faced gentlemen whose past careers were written all over them.
“Why do you want to go down and see these thugs?” asked one of the officials.
It was not said to provoke me. They just could not understand that people could be devoid of respect for the things which they held as sacred, English law and order, English property.
That the actions of their nation in Ireland had had driven out of the Irish people the last vestige of respect for these things was something they could not envisage in their wildest dreams.
That being so, they saw no difference between an IRA man and an armed burglar or rapist.
This total blindness of the English Establishment where Ireland is concerned, this blank wall of total prejudice, this stony self-satisfied chauvinism, allowing not one gleam of generosity or understanding, this is what the Irish see, and naturally they are able to be quite as implacable as the English.
The political bomber is the dead opposite of the thug or the violin criminal.
He is not to be understood by means of these conceptions.
He is a man who feels himself in the grip of a relentless enemy, an animal with one foot in a hunter’s trap, an insect struggling and squirming on a biologist’s forceps, a prisoner who must GET OUT if he breaks his neck.
He does not feel himself to be making war on society. Society is making war on him.
The supreme overmastering emotion is frustration. In causing the frustration the British Establishment have caused the bombs.
And if many Irish people will not admit in front of English people that they disapprove of the bombs, it is because even those who know that bombs are useless, still feel the frustration. They cannot regard as enemies those who affirm the separateness of Ireland, who made the declaration by the deed, even though the deed proves sterile.
The way to make sure there are no bombs is to pursue a policy that does not lead to frustration.
Suppose an Irishman from the Six Counties wants to see his country united, what can he do?
What door can he knock at? What political action can you take?
There is no political liberty in the Six Counties. He is discriminated against not for what he does, but for what he is, and yet he knows he is part of the majority of the Irish people.
It is the providing of opportunities for that political action, the opening of the door, that is the great duty of thinking people both in the Irish community and among the British working class.
Now to explain why it does not do to react emotionally to a sense of frustration.
On the front page of this issue of the “Irish Democrat” there is a call to try to end the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Over three hundred years ago there was a revolution in England which put an end into secret trials, imprisonments and torture.
These things have come back in modern England, brought in by a Labour Government. And the rights and liberties that were won years ago have to be fought for all over again.
Isn’t it obvious that the Birmingham bombs put us back, not forward?
The Establishment cannot be destroyed by blowing up workers. But it can use the indignation aroused to arm itself with extra powers, which are then used against the workers.
The Establishment cannot even be destroyed by blowing up members of its own class. There is always somebody else to step into everybody’s place. A system cannot be destroyed by actions against individuals.
On the contrary it can be strengthened, because those who are indifferent are rallied to the side of the victim.
After the recent bombs sellers of the “Irish Democrat” found many an Irishmen staring into his pint of beer and pretending not to see even this sober periodical.
Does it help, to provide excuses for searches, intimidations, inquisitions, creating vast computerised dossiers on the whole Irish community, and a few at home as well?
Does it help, to spread a general sense of insecurity, so that people are afraid to exercise even the rights that have not been interfered with.
We want a complete and immediate moratorium on bombs, so that something more effective can be tried. And here it is.
We have got to persuade the British Trades Union Congress to stand for the freedom of Ireland.
It will take time. But it shouldn’t take anything like the time fruitlessly wasted on the other method. How long ago was the Clerkenwell explosion? [ A Fenian incident in 1867 in which a dozen civilians were killed] A century. The burnings of British farms and factories? [During the Irish War of Independence] Over fifty years. The bombings before the war? Nearly forty years. And Ireland is still unfree.
And of course it is. For reacting emotionally to frustration is going to get one nowhere.
What is required is a sensible course of action
There is only one power in England that is as strong as the Government.
That power is the organised working class. Unless you can engage that power on your side you can never have enough power at all.
The Connolly Association has not thought that up just now. It has been the consistent argument of the Association throughout its existence.
But until recently there was not much sign that the policy of the Association was going to be tried.
Enough has been done, however, to show that it would work. Charles Cunningham put a resolution through his trade union branch calling on the TUC to go for a Bill of Rights. It went as far as the TUC, where it was passed. In the meantime the Bill of Rights had been drafted and worked on by some of the leading lawyers of Britain, and had received 230 votes in the House of Commons. Unfortunately the TUC did nothing about it. But now the resolution has gone through again and providing the pressure is kept up they will have to.
There are many Irishmen in the London trade union movement. They have joined with their fellow trade unionists of other nationalities to deal with the position in the Six Counties, and now we have a hundred meetings of trade unionists discussing what is to be done.
This is only a beginning, and only a part of what is being done. It is necessary to win the political organisations of the British working class. The lobby of Parliament on November 4th will aim to convince the MPs. We need resolutions passed at the Labour Party conference. It is a matter of setting the country’s alternative power on the right course of action.
First, we have the task of restoring to Irish people in Britain the civil rights which have been taken away by the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Second, we must secure the restoration of civil rights taken away from our countrymen in Northern Ireland, and the granting of the rights they have never had.
Then we will have the ground clear for negotiations on the way England should make a complete withdrawal from Ireland, and thus make possible the government of Ireland by representatives of the majority of the Irish people.
These things can be got if the organised workingclass movement demands them.
Is it not worthwhile leaving the bombs down for a while, so this can be tried? If we think that, we should say so.
– – –
Help them to cut the cackle
Many people in England exclaim to you what a terribly complicated insoluble question faces them in Ireland. The poor things don’t know which way to turn with it.
Is it not time the Irish community and those English people who do understand, helped them to cut the cackle and see that at bottom the Irish question is baby simple?
The Englishman watches the television, listens to the radio, or reads his paper when there’s anying to read in it, and he has paraded before him “two sides”. Mr Merlyn Rees is credited with having told Lena Jeger, MP for St. Pancras South who asked him a question, that there were two “tribes”.
Now what’s the dispute between them? Fundamentally it is over whether the Six Counties should exist apart from the other Twenty-Six Counties of Ireland.
Now some say they should. Others say they shouldn’t. Both can’t be right, though both may think themselves right.
It is time for the British Labour movement to decide for itself which of the two is right and which is wrong, instead of trying to mediate between right and wrong. For that’s the cause of the trouble.
Now the “Irish Democrat” makes bold to say that beyond question it is those who are opposed to partition, those who want a united Ireland, who are right, even though they are in the minority in the Six Counties. So here we have a case where the minority is right. If the minority is right, all the referendums in the world won’t help anything but the cause of wrong.
And why are the majority wrong? Because they claim a democratic principle which they are in breach of themselves. They are a majority only in Six Counties. They can only remain a majority while the rest of Ireland, whose inhabitants are overwhelmingly against them, are prevented from exercising their rights as a majority of the Irish people as a whole.
How did this position come about? It came about because the English Government imposed it by force, and has maintained it by fraud and terror.
Tt! Tt! we can hear somebody say. Look at all the decent trade unionists who support the border. Well, decent trade unionists they may or may not be; whatever about decency, they are grievously mistaken. They think their security, prosperity and future depend on keeping their fellow-countrymen in a subordinate position, and invite their fellow trade unionists in England to make themselves accomplices in a reign of terror which is necessary to achieve and maintain that position. Whereas in reality their best interests would be served by building up the mighty resources of a united independent Ireland, which would be strong enough to stand up to the international monopolies and develop the country for the benefit of all the people.
We hasten to remark that the leaders of the trade unions in the Six Counties can usually see this point, but are unable to convince their members of it, because of the unceasing torrent of sectarian and imperialist propaganda.
The cleavage has its comprehensible side. Old skills are disappearing and jobs are in jeopardy. The way to replace the jobs is to get a united Irish working class and fight for a new Ireland. But that is not an immediate solution. There is a temptation to concentrate on keeping the Catholics outside, keeping all the jobs to the Protestants.
The attitude of the Unionist worker who takes this stand is comparable to that of the old-fashioned tradesman in the building trade who didn’t want the labourers organised for fear they might rise up to his standard. Or perhaps more like the worker who is led away by anti-black prejudice to advocate colour discrimination. It is no accident that the National Front saw in the outlook of these workers a possible fertile field for their own even more insidious propaganda.
But, to return. The Republicans are right. The Unionists are wrong. We do not hesitate to say it: the IRA are absolutely right in wanting a United Ireland, and where they are to be criticised is only in the methods they sometimes adopt in hopes of achieving it.
We make this point particularly because as we go to press the Tories are demanding that there shall be an all-out military campaign to smash the IRA. And we are also aware that there is pressure on the leaders of the IRA to tear up the cease-fire and launch full-scale military operations [Reference to a temporary IRA ceasefire that then existed].
We hope that neither of these things will happen. A fresh round of escalating violence can do no good, indeed can only be disastrous for the cause of Irish unity, or that of the working class in either of these islands.
But we place our finger on what we conceive to be the fundamental change of attitude required among the British workers, who should transmit it to their Government.
We have never advocated violence as a means of solving the Irish problem. We have always condemned individual terrorism, not because it is morally more wicked than dropping a bomb on Hiroshima, but because that only does it not work, it acts against the cause it is supposed to assist. We defy any supporter of individual terrorism to give one instance in world history where it ever achieved any useful purpose. It is the reaction of those who have lost everything but their sense of desperation.
But that does not alter the fact that those who want a united Irish Republic are the democrats, and those who are opposed to it at the tyrants. All the follies committed in the Republican cause do not extinguish the fact that that cause is a just one.
If that recognition could dawn among the workers of England it would do more to bring about a unity of Republicans in pursuit of sane constructive policies than anything else.
But what effect would it have on the Unionist-minded workers? A salutary one, you can be sure. It is not a question of getting up and pitch-forking them into a United Ireland. It is a matter of reversing the whole tenor of criticism. Every day the Unionist leaders are assured by the British Government that they will stand with them to the last, that fundamentally Britain’s object is to aid the minority, the partitionists. Every statement of this kind strengthens the hold of the Unionists on the working class. If the attitude of the English Labour Movement were to be today what it was 50-odd years ago, they would say to the Unionist workers, “You are accomplices in a grievous wrong.” That statement need not be accompanied by angry threats or denunciations. The Orange workers are not scoundrels; they are woefully mistaken men and women. They have been content to allow the Six Counties to become a hell on earth rather than abandon an absurd position of twopence halfpenny looking down on twopence. There is no sense in it. What harm if the English trade unions should say so?
We are not denying the subject its complexities. England has created such a mess that it is not going to be easy to get out of it. We are not saying that the SDLP are the boys for Ireland; nor the “Officials”; nor anybody else in the nationalist camp. But we are saying that the broad principle on which the Irishmen who call themselves nationalists all stand, the principle that the majority of the people of Ireland should rule the whole of Ireland, is a democratic principle, and a just principle.
If the people of England could be got to grasp that one basic premise, then there might be hope for constructive actions.