The Three-Pronged Attack [September 1968]
[Editor’s Note: In his editorial in the September 1968 “Irish Democrat” Desmond Greaves outlined his view of how concerted action in the North, in Britain and in the Republic could bring about political conditions conducive to achieving a United Ireland. He referred to this concept as the“three-pronged attack”and he saw the campaign for civil rights within Northern Ireland as the“central prong”of that. He referred to this concept a year later in an editorial titled “1969-1970: Three- pronged attack”, which was carried in the January 1970 issue of the “Irish Democrat”and which is also reprinted below.
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The Three-Pronged Attack
It is good news that the campaign for civil rights inside the Six Counties is now moving into a more militant phase.
That it is a wholly local and natural growth is shown by the fact that it has won support all along the line, from Republicans to members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party.
Its vital requirement is the building of a wide mass basis, and all sections composing it will need to exercise the greatest care and responsibility to see that nothing is introduced which might cause division or threaten the growth of unity.
There is a possible danger that enthusiasts outside the Six Counties may feel impatient, but there is still much sense in the principle of one thing at a time.
The civil rights agitation can create the mass space for an alternative government. That alternative government will then face the imperialists of London with a mandate in their hands. The whole constitutional apparatus might be rapidly revised, with a united Ireland as its end point.
The main object of attack for the Six-County movement is obviously the Six-County Government. If and when it replaces that Government, of course, it will still have the imperial Government to face. And there is no reason why in the course of bringing pressure to bear on the Six-County Government it should not avail of the fact that the imperial Government is in overall control, and that the imperial Government is open to pressure also. But there should be no illusions here. The imperial Government is an enemy of the people of North-East Ireland, or it would not be there. Anything good it may ever do, will be either incidentally in pursuing policies which run counter to local unionist interests, or under pressure from the democratic movement in Britain.
The most important place for the struggle against misgovernment and partition is unquestionably the Six Counties themselves. If no complaint is made there, then all outside support becomes an absurdity.
But nevertheless, the process of democratisation can be a very protracted business if the people of the Six Counties receive no support from outside. And the two places from which they are entitled to expect it are first the Twenty-six Counties and second Britain.
To be perfectly frank, we do not think that the job of our friends in the Leinster House area is merely to cross the border, perform acts of protest possibly beyond the immediate resources of the local people, and then to retire. This has its place, but there is a good old principle: one state, one movement. The main job of the Twenty-six County democrats in this connection is to end the position where the leader of the Dublin Government gallivants round the world to boost the oilmen and is too busy to protect his fellow-countrymen and co-religionists in the occupied area of his own country.
This position should never have arisen. It may perhaps be partly a side effect of a widespread tendency among some of the finest sons of the Irish people to neglect legal opportunities that lie before them because they seem too tame or involve the “recognition” of people who are there, but whom they think shouldn’t be there.
News now comes through that there are proposals to awaken the people of the South to the realities of the situation in the North. No better news ever came out of Ireland. This will help to counter the acceptance of partition among the mass of the people. And without the mass of the people leaders are impotent.
Naturally enough such a movement will be directed towards the Twenty-six County Government, who are getting away with doing nothing on the border question for close on twenty years. If they wanted to, Fianna Fail could bring up partition at the United Nations. They could bring the denials of democracy up at The Hague and put Britain in the dock for dishonouring her own signature.
Here again one could just imagine the germ of a movement which might grow into an alternative government, provided all trace of doctrinairism was sedulously kept out and the movement for national unity linked with the immediate demands of the working people as expressed, understood and fought for by themselves.
Finally, there is the movement in Britain. While this may have to be triggered off by the Irish immigrants, it is a fallacy to think of it as a purely Irish movement. It must be a movement of British democracy, and draw in all generous and enlightened people, young and old, who want their country free from the taint of imperialism and the threat of nuclear war.
Obviously, their main point of attack must be the British Government, the Government of the state in which they reside.
This is why the Irish question cannot be separated from the other political issues which confront British democracy. Nor can it be separated from the supreme issue of the policy of the British Labour movement, whose leaders are at the moment up to their necks in imperialism, but will not always be the same.
On the total question of the occupation of Ireland, there can be only one target, the imperial Government which enforces it. This is why people within Ireland have a right to make demands on the imperial Government at all times. But on the subsidiary question of civil rights in the occupied area, imperialism has delegated its powers to quislings, so it should divert attacks from itself. Does that create an uncertainty as to which letterbox to drop our demands in? Is it illogical that while Belfast should be calling on Stormont to restore democracy, London should be calling on Westminster to do the same?
The contradiction is only formal and has no substance. Stormont is much more likely to give in to the Six-County democrats if it knows that if it fails to do so it will immediately incur the risk of being over-ridden from Westminster. And if the campaign against Stormont is making substantial progress, the way in which Westminster might then act, providing there was enough pressure, might be to instruct Stormont to accede to the wishes of the people. But what must be demanded at Westminster is what the movement in the Six Counties wants and nothing else.
When a man is in prison it is small occasion for finnicky concern whether he escapes through the door or the window.
What it is important to see is that there is one movement, with three distinct prongs. The central prong is the agitation in the Six Counties. Let the others move parallel, and firm.
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[Editorial by C. Desmond Greaves in the January 1970 issue of the “Irish Democrat”]
1969-1970: Three-Pronged Attack
The phrase “three- pronged attack” was coined by the famous English Marxist historian T.A. Jackson. He meant by it the combined assault on Unionism as the bastion of English ascendancy in Ireland, the main blow being delivered by the centre prong in the Six Counties, while parallel thrusts were made by solidarity movements in the Twenty-six Counties and in Britain.
That is the strategy on which the Connolly Association bases its hopes
New Year is the time for stocktaking. In the light of this, how far have we got?
Nobody would dispute that mighty blows have been struck by the democratic movement in the Six Counties. So mighty that Unionism revealed itself as unable to rule any longer in the old way.
Well, why was there no revolution? Because if Unionism was unable to rule, England was still able to rule. The lesson? There needs to be a parallel movement in England, not necessarily of the same form, but such that the British Government is forced to yield to popular demand.
Another factor. The centre of Wolfe Tone’s strategy for Civil Rights – and never forget that that was Wolfe Tone’s MEANS of freeing Ireland; read his diary if you don’t believe it – was the winning of the progressive Protestants.
In Bernadette Devlin’s book [ie. The Price of My Soul,1969] she tells of the confrontation at Dungannon. She asks why they were all called out if they couldn’t attack the police who lined up before them. The answer is to demonstrate to the world in general, and the best elements in the Protestant community, that the Unionists were denying them democracy, but that the Protestants had nothing to fear from them.
It was primarily the disastrous tactics at Newry that threw this advantage away [i.e. the demonstration in Newry on 11 January, organised by the local branch of the People’s Democracy, at which demonstrators burned police tenders and PD activists ransacked a local post office]. Of course the youngsters in the lead were inexperienced. We applaud their courage and initiative. We cannot give them wisdom; they must require it themselves.
And the lesson of this? The great need is to get back to Wolfe Tone. Systematically and patiently to clear the poison out of the systems of the Protestant community. Perhaps some prominent Protestants will start this?
It is possible that while these might not support the full concession of civil rights, they might be prepared to fight for the honest implementation of promises given.
This might bring in the Trade Unionists and might heal the breach between People’s Democracy and Social Justice. And there is NOTHING, repeat NOTHING, contradictory in fighting for the implementation of concessions already given – in so far as they are real – and demanding that things are taken further and full rights conceded.
The establishment of “Solidarity” in the Twenty-Six Counties is a welcome recognition of the fact that the FORM the struggle for Irish freedom is taking today is like that in Wolfe Tone’s day – a struggle for civil rights for Catholics against Unionist penal laws [“Solidarity” was a short-lived body established by Anthony Coughlan, Noel Harris and others in Dublin following the August 1969 events in Belfast and Derry. It published a pamphlet, written by Coughlan,“The Northern Crisis: the Way Forward”, which made the case for the Bill of Rights that was then being advocated by NICRA in the North and the Connolly Association and others in Britain. Irish State papers released years later indicated that the Dept. of Foreign Affairs considered circulating this pamphlet to policy-makers in Britain and elsewhere at the time, but did not proceed with that idea]. The weakness in the Twenty-Six Counties is that the ferment among the masses has not yet gripped the understandings of the major political parties. Let them grasp this: they play with this question, as they play with the Common Market issue, at their peril.
For frankly, we do not regard Blaney’s crude interventions as anything but Fianna Fail demagogy [Neil Blaney TD, Irish Government Minister, was involved in the 1970s arms trial over alleged importation of arms for the IRA.] Fianna Fail, if it was doing its job, would be using the existence of an independent Irish State to tackle England, to cut loose from all that prevents giving full political aid to democracy in the North. A few Labour TD’s are doing the job of pressing them on this. But the mass movement needs to press the TDs. Whether you are in Leinster House yourself or wouldn’t be seen dead in it, it is very important to you what those who ARE in it are doing.
Finally, England. Unity in action has been achieved, and plans are to be drawn up on January 11th. The task in Britain is different from that in the Six Counties or the Twenty-Six. In the six they have to bell the cat. Here we have to bait the lion.
There are only two possible Governments here in the foreseeable future, Labour or Tory. At present Labour IS Tory – at the top, but not below. By working on the Labour and Trade Union movement we can CHANGE the policy of Labour and win the Bill of Rights and so write democracy into the constitution of the Six Counties. That would be the beginning of the end of Unionism, as it would be a sign that England no longer felt herself able to support it.
The great danger in England is the mechanical application of tactics suitable in Ireland, or the transference to England of struggles and differences that have no meaning outside Ireland. You can’t live in two countries at once.
Let’s see what tally we can mark up at the end of 1970. The watchword must be unity of action, always against the main enemy.