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The Struggle in Ireland is Not Over!
by Turlough McManus
Recently, headlines around the world announced that the former guerillas of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and their political wing, Sinn Féin, had broken the final link to their anti-imperialist past by voting at a special party congress to endorse the colonial, paramilitary, racist police force they spent decades fighting against in a bloody struggle that forced a stalemate.
Of course this was no surprise to many anti-imperialists and socialists in Ireland who fully expected this disgrace. This was merely the final act of treachery by the former republican movement, following repeated sellouts and capitulations to bourgeois nationalism. There are many indications on the ground that the Provisionals have gone too far for their own support base to accept, and are now losing support. It has been said that the conflict between English imperialism and Ireland's working class is over, but this interpretation, while popular, is incorrect. The struggle has merely adopted new forms of resistance.
Following close on the heals of the "historic" announcement that Sinn Féin would back the British colonial police, the contradictions inherent in British misrule of Ireland manifested themselves dramatically. A large crowd of people commemorating the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 in Derry city were forced to engage in street fighting with the paramilitary police to defend themselves. As if to show their contempt for Sinn Féin's humiliating submission to their rule, the police had arrived in riot gear spoiling for a confrontation. It was yet another reminder that the British are not in Ireland for peace, but to suppress the democratic will of the Irish people for self-determination.
As the riot escalated local youth heroically confronted the colonial police with stones and fire bombs. Members of New Sinn Féin then moved in to actually remove and confiscate the fire bombs from the locals defending themselves! The struggle against British rule is continuing in mass struggle, and will continue to assert itself despite the Provisional's attempts to suppress it.
The Irish people are strongly in favour of peace; yet British occupation cannot deliver stability, let alone peace. The imperialists are tied to the most reactionary political movement in Europe with any mass support: the colonial-minded and paranoid Irish Unionist bigots who regard any equality with Nationalists (let alone immigrant workers or othe minorities!) as unacceptable. Therefore, the British are not in a position to democratise the Six County state, even if they wanted to do so.
There is a growing alternative to the US-brokered pacification process in Ireland. Although the PIRA was successful at suppressing the Irish Republican Socialist Party’s message for decades, the amount of discontent with their betrayal has become too much to contain. The policing issue appears to have provoked it to boil over the pot. Sinn Féin’s political transformation from anti-imperialist force to reformist Catholic Nationalist party has proved the Republican Socialist Movement's Good Friday Agreement (also known as the ‘Peace Process’) analysis correct. We are seeing more republicans openly questioning and even opposing the current sell out. Peggy O’Hara, the courageous mother of INLA hunger strike martyr Patsy O’Hara, has announced that she will run in the upcoming elections to oppose Sinn Féin. She has received the full backing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
Only by combining the struggle for workers’ liberation and the campaigns regarding issues that effect our class such as privitisation, policing, etc., with the struggle for national liberation can we move forward. There is no other way to progress but to build the party and ‘to mobilise our class towards the objective of dis-establishing the Northern colonial and Southern neo-colonial statelets on this island, thus ending imperialism and capitalism, and preparing the basic structures for an Irish Workers' Republic’. Any movement that is not led by the working class will always hesitate and ultimately compromise the full freedom of Ireland as the middle class nationalists have done yet again.
Turlough McManus is a comrade of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP).
The IRSP can be reached by writing: “The Secretary,” Irish Republican Socialist Party, 392 Falls Road, Belfast, BT12, Ireland, or on the internet at: www.irsm.org
by Turlough McManus
Recently, headlines around the world announced that the former guerillas of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and their political wing, Sinn Féin, had broken the final link to their anti-imperialist past by voting at a special party congress to endorse the colonial, paramilitary, racist police force they spent decades fighting against in a bloody struggle that forced a stalemate.
Of course this was no surprise to many anti-imperialists and socialists in Ireland who fully expected this disgrace. This was merely the final act of treachery by the former republican movement, following repeated sellouts and capitulations to bourgeois nationalism. There are many indications on the ground that the Provisionals have gone too far for their own support base to accept, and are now losing support. It has been said that the conflict between English imperialism and Ireland's working class is over, but this interpretation, while popular, is incorrect. The struggle has merely adopted new forms of resistance.
Following close on the heals of the "historic" announcement that Sinn Féin would back the British colonial police, the contradictions inherent in British misrule of Ireland manifested themselves dramatically. A large crowd of people commemorating the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 in Derry city were forced to engage in street fighting with the paramilitary police to defend themselves. As if to show their contempt for Sinn Féin's humiliating submission to their rule, the police had arrived in riot gear spoiling for a confrontation. It was yet another reminder that the British are not in Ireland for peace, but to suppress the democratic will of the Irish people for self-determination.
As the riot escalated local youth heroically confronted the colonial police with stones and fire bombs. Members of New Sinn Féin then moved in to actually remove and confiscate the fire bombs from the locals defending themselves! The struggle against British rule is continuing in mass struggle, and will continue to assert itself despite the Provisional's attempts to suppress it.
The Irish people are strongly in favour of peace; yet British occupation cannot deliver stability, let alone peace. The imperialists are tied to the most reactionary political movement in Europe with any mass support: the colonial-minded and paranoid Irish Unionist bigots who regard any equality with Nationalists (let alone immigrant workers or othe minorities!) as unacceptable. Therefore, the British are not in a position to democratise the Six County state, even if they wanted to do so.
There is a growing alternative to the US-brokered pacification process in Ireland. Although the PIRA was successful at suppressing the Irish Republican Socialist Party’s message for decades, the amount of discontent with their betrayal has become too much to contain. The policing issue appears to have provoked it to boil over the pot. Sinn Féin’s political transformation from anti-imperialist force to reformist Catholic Nationalist party has proved the Republican Socialist Movement's Good Friday Agreement (also known as the ‘Peace Process’) analysis correct. We are seeing more republicans openly questioning and even opposing the current sell out. Peggy O’Hara, the courageous mother of INLA hunger strike martyr Patsy O’Hara, has announced that she will run in the upcoming elections to oppose Sinn Féin. She has received the full backing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
Only by combining the struggle for workers’ liberation and the campaigns regarding issues that effect our class such as privitisation, policing, etc., with the struggle for national liberation can we move forward. There is no other way to progress but to build the party and ‘to mobilise our class towards the objective of dis-establishing the Northern colonial and Southern neo-colonial statelets on this island, thus ending imperialism and capitalism, and preparing the basic structures for an Irish Workers' Republic’. Any movement that is not led by the working class will always hesitate and ultimately compromise the full freedom of Ireland as the middle class nationalists have done yet again.
Turlough McManus is a comrade of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP).
The IRSP can be reached by writing: “The Secretary,” Irish Republican Socialist Party, 392 Falls Road, Belfast, BT12, Ireland, or on the internet at: www.irsm.org
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