Economism” and “Terrorism”: The roots of  IRA violence  [1979]

[Article with the title “The roots of violence” from the October 1979 issue of the monthly “Irish Democrat”]

When Sir Henry Wilson was assassinated in June 1920, De Valera was asked to make a statement to the Press.

He said, “The killing of a human being is an awful act, but as awful when the victim is the humble worker or peasant, unknown outside his own immediate neighbourhood, as when the victim is placed in the seats of the mighty and his name is known in every corner of the earth.

“It is characteristic of our hypocritical civilisation that it is in the latter case only that we are expected to cry out and express our horror and condemnation . . .  I know that life has been made hell for the Nationalist minority in Belfast and its neighbourhood for the past couple of years … I do not approve but I must not pretend to misunderstand.”  

That statement should be studied alongside one by James Connolly.

At the first hint of partition Connolly wrote: “Such a scheme would destroy the Labour Movement by disrupting it. It would perpetuate the discords now prevalent and help the Home Rule and Orange capitalist to keep their rallying cries before the public as the political watchwords of the day. In short, it would make division more intense and confusion of ideas and parties more confounded.”

He wrote further: “The betrayal of the national democracy of industrial Ulster would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South; it would set back the wheel of progress, would impede the oncoming unity of the Irish Labour Movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it endured.”

Who dares deny that these results have followed? Nowhere on earth is there such confusion as in the Six Counties, confusion of parties, confusion of ideas.  In this artificial, cramped, parochial colonial dictatorship it is impossible to think straight.

The most blatant absurdities are asserted with an unquestioning confidence only equalled by the sectional interestedness of the speakers. Partition is a system expressly designed to create disunity and confusion.

Those on the privileged side find excuses for keeping things as they are. Those who are underprivileged are driven mad by the magnitude of the injustice and the hypocrisy of its supporters. That is the background to violence – the fact of partition

This simple proposition lay at the back of Mr Lynch’s warning to Mr Callaghan [ie. The then Irish Taoiseach to the then British Prime Minister].

“No matter,” he told him, “If you secure a total military victory this year, trouble will break out again before ten years are out.”

Mr Callaghan was reported as replying, “In ten years I will not be Prime Minister.” No wonder he lost the election.  He was only interested in himself

The essence of the partition system is that the majority of the Irish people are denied jurisdiction in six of their own counties. The majority of the people of Lancashire and Yorkshire would like to be ruled by somebody other than Mrs Thatcher.   Would they be allowed to set up a separate government”

If a foreign power was to send in armed force to enable them to do this, would the southern English accept or reject it?  We hope that they would not resort to terrorism in support of the poor oppressed Tory minority in the North, but can we be sure they would not?

But partition is more than a line on the map. It dprives the nationalists, part of the majority of the Irish people, of the benefits of their national institutions. Incidentally it has also had the effect of robbing the Protestants of their special Irish cultural heritage and making the test for them of an adherence to the sterile creed of Orangeism, with its landlord origins. 

Partition was designed, as Connolly understood, to wreck the Labour movement. It did it in six months. The most vigorous Labour movement in Western Europe was reduced to impotence as quickly as that.

And what of the means? Consider the position in 1920, the last year of a united Ireland. The ravages of the Black and Tans were opposed by a united Labour movement. British Labour gave it support.

Tom Johnson, Cathal O’Shannon and other Irish Labour leaders toured the working class centres of Britain speaking at monster meetings and urging the Irish to organise themselves into something like the modern Connolly Association and link up with Labour.

One of these meetings, held in Manchester, was the biggest working class gathering since the days of the Chartists. It was never suggested in those days that the British workers were not entitled to discuss the fundamentals of their Government’s Irish policy.

And what happened after partition? The nationalist majority of the Irish people were thrown into such confusion that they fought a disastrous civil war. Instead of one voice the Irish people spoke with many. Irish labour, which had provided the muscle for the national liberation movement  – yes, this can be proved – presented a formal unity by concentrating on economic issues

All attempts to preserve an All-Ireland mass political party of Labour failed. Labour had built up an unassailable position thanks to its stand on the national question. After partition it was separated from its traditional source of strength. It became “economist”. This is not said by way of blame but to point the consequences of partition.

The unity of the Irish and British labour movements was disrupted at the same time. By the time Herbert Morrison passed the Ireland Act in 1949, which made partition permanent, the two movements were poles apart. Sean Dunne [Irish trade unionist and  radical politician] attended the Labour Party conference, not to take part in it, but to shower the delegates with leaflet from the gallery.

Ireland is fortunately being discussed this year at the Labour Party Conference. There have been instances of Trade Unions preventing their members from discussing resolutions on the subject even when these have been properly passed and submitted according to the rule.

The British workers perform the important function of sending soldiers to be killed and money to be squandered  – that they are allowed.  But no independent voice on what it is all about. Moreover, they only hear one side.

How many of them know that the largest trade union in Ireland is opposed to partition? The weakening of the fraternal links between London and Dublin has had fatal consequences. Partition has resulted in political stultification. 

At this point we refer to the Republicans. On September 1st they made a statement that was virtually ignored by the English mass media. It gave the impression of men burned up by bitterness and frustration.

“Nobody will listen.  Nobody will look. We’ll make them listen. We’ll make them look.” They are well able to do so.  But the wickedness of what they had done did not dismay them. They could point to too much wickedness that was done by their enemies. That is what it has come to.

Now has anybody ever said that the “economism” of the Labour movement and the “terrorism” of the Republicans are the two sides of one coin?  While it is not fashion among the youngsters of today, most will agree that V. I. Lenin was a fairly successful revolutionary. 

He held that “terrorism”, rife among the peasant organisations of Russia, was directly linked with the “economism” of the local Labour movement, which he was trying to lead in the direction of all-sided action.

I remember discussing the subject with the late Mr Sean Murray as long ago as 1939. He thought, as I thought, that when the movement concentrates on proletarian questions and loses its hold on democratic questions, these are taken up by others in a manner corresponding to their class tradition.

What is therefore needed is that the Labour movement should re-establish its hold on democratic questions. Then the traditional methods of the working class will come back into vogue. 

Some people will want to restrict the agitation to issues of the liberalisation of the Six County regime. The more liberalising that can be done, the better for everybody. But restriction is harmful. Some people regard the issues of civil rights as coterminous with democracy. That is not so.

 The supreme democratic issue is partition. It is the question of whether the majority of the people of Ireland have a right to rule the whole of their country. Partition is the reason for the denial of all other forms of democracy.

They would not need to be denied but for partition.  Surely the British working class should be made cognisant of that!  Act on immediate questions but at least educate on fundamentals.

Of course Lenin had something for the Republicans as well. He did not indulge in bursts of moral indignation against the “terrorists”.  When his own brother – a “terrorist” – was killed, he said, “We know a better way.”

But he rejected “terrorism”, and he rejected it on the strongest possible ground, that of its inexpediency. Nearly all the “terrorist” organisations in the world have worthy objects. But as De Valera once said: “Here were people who wanted something and what they were doing was not going to get it for them.” [A comment that De Valera made to Greaves when the latter interviewed him in connection with his biography of Liam Mellows.] 

There is an Italian proverb about hurrying slowly, and maybe we will have to hurry slowly. The ignorance of the British public on Ireland and the Irish is so vast and all-pervading that if they were at any point stampeded into action, I would be afraid of what that action would be.

To inform that ignorance, to explain first principles, to show the historical roots of the evils of the present day, is a task for which none are so well equipped as the Irish community and their friends in Britain, together with those within the labour movement who at least know that something is radically wrong.

C.D.G.