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Where now for the Republican Movement?
Eamonn McCann
The
governments and mainstream parties want rid of the IRA because its very
existence is a challenge to established ideas of law and order and to the
stability of the Northern and Southern States. In the wake of the Northern Bank
robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney, they are demanding that Sinn Fein
ditch the military wing and lead their followers into full acceptance of the
political and constitutional set-up.
The socialist objection to the IRA is different.
The Governments are encouraged by the fact that the Provisional IRA is less
popular today than at any time in the last quarter century in the working-class
Catholic areas of the North where it has been most deeply-rooted. This isn’t on
account of the supposed immorality of robbing a bank. But the multi-million
pound, transnational money operation in which the IRA was subsequently shown to
have been involved clearly had nothing to do with leading people to liberation,
in any sense of the phrase, or with ending partition. Instead, it indicated that
IRA activities aren’t exactly aligned with the interests of the people in whose
name it purports to act. The IRA was hanging out with a different class of
people entirely.
The brutal killing of Robert McCartney illustrates the same point.
Some former members and supporters of Sinn Fein and/or the IRA have concluded
that what’s needed is a reformed or refurbished Republican Movement, with a
leadership committed to true Republican ideals rather than to personal or
political advancement. They largely attribute the current debacle to bad
leadership, wrong turnings or sinister motivation on the part of Gerry Adams and
his associates. This is an inadequate conclusion.
At the heart of the tradition in which this newspaper stands is the idea that
socialism must come from below. That it cannot be imposed or bestowed upon the
working class from above, whether by parliamentarians or paramilitaries, but can
be accomplished only by working-class people themselves organising in their
workplaces and communities to advance their situation, ultimately to overthrow
the capitalist system.
Commentators have contrasted the role of the IRA in the 1970s in the Short
Strand, where Robert McCartney lived, and the role now exemplified by the IRA
members involved in his killing. Once they were protectors of the community, it
is said. Now they are oppressors. There is truth in this as far as it goes. But
it misses the connection between the IRA then and now.
The IRA may on occasion have given the community physical protection,
particularly in the circumstances of the early ‘70s. But it was never answerable
or accountable to the community. It has sometimes styled itself the ‘peoples
army’. But it organises and operates out of sight of the people. It was and is,
necessarily, a clandestine organisation. Its members are oath-bound to give
total allegiance to paramilitary chiefs who, far from finding validation in
endorsement by the people, must keep their very identities hidden from the
people.
This is true of the IRA in defender as well as oppressor mode. It is one of the
keys to understanding the transition.
Every ruling class voice is currently raised high urging Republicans to ditch
paramilitarism, become totally respectable and join the conservative consensus.
Forgiveness and glittering prizes are on offer to those who accept. This would
represent abandonment of struggle. The SWP urges Republicans who think of
themselves also as socialists to turn not to the Right but to the socialist
ideas of self-liberation which alone offer a road forward.
March 2005
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