Antrim/Armagh: Unconditional but Critical Support

Socialist Fight unconditionally defends those Irish Republican militarists that carried out the executions of British Army soldiers at a barracks in Antrim earlier this year, and killed the officer of the PSNI colonial police force in Craigavon. The British Army are in Ireland as imperialist occupiers, denying self-determination to Ireland and maintaining the last major colony of the British Empire (the occupied 6 Counties of Ulster that comprise "Northern Ireland"). The soldiers were going from the occupation of one country to occupy another. For this reason, British Army soldiers are certainly 'legitimate targets' of those fighting for a united Ireland, free of imperialist forces and free of the Border that divides not only the Province of Ulster and the Irish nation, but also divides the working class. That is where we are in agreement with the "republican militarists".

However, we need to ask what do the republican militarists think can be gained from a resumption of the guerillaist strategy, "armed struggle", by a dedicated, secretive minority that failed so decisively when carried out by the P-IRA on the basis of much more support than is enjoyed by its splinter groups? We need to propose alternatives.

British troops were re-introduced in 1969 to ensure the maintenance of the border dividing Ireland since 1921 and to defend British interests in a much broader context than 'just' in Ireland. The Provisional IRA emerged as the defenders of the beleaguered Irish nationalist minority. Their goal was to "get the British soldiers out" of Ireland. Their campaign enjoyed mass support among those Irish nationalists under occupation, as well as among Irish immigrants worldwide.

Bobby Sands

This support peaked in 1980 and 1981, when Republican prisoners went on hunger strike to win their rights as Prisoners of War against Margaret Thatcher. Hunger Strike Committees sprung up all over the world, mostly in former British colonies. The working class of much of the world was mobilising in defence of "the men behind the wire" against world imperialism as represented by the British Government.

Thatcher's intransigence, with the total support of Labour’s shadow Home Secretary, former Northern Ireland Minister Don Concannon, an NUM sponsored former union official, and the cowardly inaction of much of the far left, caused the deaths of ten hunger strikers between 5th May and 20 August 1981. A brief look at the worldwide reaction to the death of Bobby Sands on 5th May shows its powerful anti-imperialist effect. This is from the Wikipedia account:

In Milan, 5,000 students burned the Union Flag and shouted "Freedom for Ulster" during a march. In Paris, thousands marched behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of 'The IRA will conquer'. In France, many towns and cities have streets named after Sands. Examples include Nantes, St Etienne, Le Mans Vierzon and St Denis. In the Republic of Ireland, his death led to riots and bus burning. In Dublin, the famous Moore Street market closed for the day of Sands funeral. In Liverpool a march in support of Sands took place from Upper Parliament Street to the Pier Head, chanting "Bobby Sands MP".

It was besieged by enraged Liverpool Orange Lodge members along the whole route. The International Longshoremen's Association in New York announced a twenty-four-hour boycott of British ships. Irish bars in the city were closed for two hours in mourning. In Hartford, Connecticut a memorial was dedicated to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers in 1997. The lower house of the New Jersey Legislature, voted 34-29 for a resolution honouring his "courage and commitment."

In 2001, a memorial to Sands and the other hunger strikers was unveiled in Havana, Cuba. After the 1979 Iranian revolution the government renamed Winston Churchill Boulevard to Bobby Sands Street. In the Indian Parliament, opposition members in the upper house Rajya Sabha stood for a minute's silence in tribute. A large monument dedicated to Irish protagonists for independence from Britain, including Bobby Sands, stands in the Waverley Cemetery in Sydney, Australia.

The all-Ireland Hunger Strike Committees and the mobilisations, were dominated by Sinn Fein who used them to build popular front alliances with Fianna Fáil and Labour local councillors in the south. Their policy was no confrontation with the southern state forces and this was rigorously enforced in this second revolutionary situation in May 1981 following the death of Bobby Sands; the other was in August 1969, both, of course, were all-Ireland upsurges.

In the late 1970s early 80s the radicalisation in Ireland was always to pressure the British state to negotiate a way out, so the roots of 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) were firmly planted then. SF used the hunger strikers as voting fodder. But the only force that could have got the Brits out was a united front with the British working class. However, except for currents like Irish Freedom (RCP) and some others, the ‘Brit left’ refused to give unconditional support and fight the Prevention of Terrorisms Act in the unions etc. It was this early British version of a War on Terror that exposed the chauvinism of the British left on Ireland.

The leader of the Hunger Strikers in the Maze Prison, Bobby Sands, was elected with 30,492 votes from his death-bed as an MP to Westminster for Fermanagh and South Tyrone as an Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner. Sinn Fein won the by-election caused by his death from starvation. With Thatcher trashing the industrial base of the British economy at this time - taking on the most well-organised sections of the British working class "salami-style" (first the dockers, then the steel-workers leading to the great Miners' Strike of 1984-5), the mass influx of workers into the branches of Sinn Fein in the 26 County Republic and... the possibilities for a mass campaign to rid Ireland of imperialist domination, led by the organised workers were certainly there.

Good Friday Agreement

However, this seems to have been the beginning of the end for the Provo campaign against the British occupation of Ireland which finished with the signing of the GFA in 1998 and the subsequent decommissioning of Provo weapons. The central occurrence in the intervening years , 1981 to the mid-1990s' striking of a deal between the petit-bourgeois nationalists of the P-IRA and the imperialists of the British Government (the GFA), was the world-historic defeat for the proletariat of the collapse of the deformed and degenerated workers' states of Eastern Europe, the USSR, China etc in 1998-91.

This victory for imperialism dramatically shifted the whole balance of world forces away from progressives and toward neo-liberal capitalism: its effects being seen everywhere with a huge ideological offensive by imperialism, spreading neo-liberal economics everywhere in the world. Politically we saw the collapse of former opponents of imperialism in the form of political formations 'making deals', or supporting nasty, thoroughly anti-working class Governments.

This was collectively known as "the Peace Process", most famously involving the PLO in Palestine, the ANC in South Africa and Sinn Fein in Ireland. In April 2009 Gerry Adams and his team visited Israel and Gaza to extol the benefits of the GFA. Nowadays, Sinn Fein as junior partners at Stormont, sit almost at the top of the new structure of Government for the occupied 6 Counties - overseeing the running of the hated Northern statelet that their predecessors fought and died to destroy, actively assisting the British imperialists in their continued occupation by attempting to legitimise the occupation and its political structures!

It would seem that the aims of those that carried out the attacks on the British Military and the PSNI colonial police force were to de-stabilise Sinn Fein's involvement in the Stormont regime to collapse the structures. From reading the various websites of these republican militarists, including their statements of Easter 2009, it is clear to see that they offer no way forward for the workers and poor of Ireland or anywhere else in the world but by their actions they damage the opportunities for the workers - the only truly and consistently progressive force in modern society, to impose their own solution to the various crises facing them and the planet.

The militarists have a warped idea that the increase in repression that is an inevitable side-product of their 'terroristic' forms of action is in some way progressive (sounds a bit like recommending a vote for the Tories in a British election - 'because the working class need to be whipped like a dog before they shall get off their knees and fight' or something!). Of course the closing down of civil liberties can in no way be to the advantage of the working class, which needs the utmost liberty in order to arrive at a programme for the conquest of political power.

Hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle

Do we share the aims of the republican militarists? Well, they rarely criticise the partitionist Government of the 26 Counties Republic of Ireland and think that 'justice' shall be done if the 6 Counties currently under occupation were to comprise part of a capitalist 32 county united Ireland. We as revolutionary socialists have to ask what the class nature of such a future united Ireland might be, and we stand with James Connolly who wrote in the Shan Van Vocht in January 1897:

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

That is the story of the 26 counties. We are in favour of a 32 county Workers' Republic in Ireland which would be part of a socialist federation of the islands of Britain and of Europe, and of the whole world. We recognise that the only genuine solution to the present finance and economic crises—as well as for problems such as the "national question" in Ireland—is the ending of the nightmare of capitalism worldwide which is based on the private ownership of everything in the world - a tiny number of capitalists own and control the whole of the Earth's resources.

We fight for a world revolution, the vision of October 1917 in Russia. Easter 1916, August 1969, May 1981, were part of that objectively; the Irish working class needs a leadership that consciously fights for it.

Socialist Fight is published by the International Trotskyist Current.
Contact: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

G 20: Socialist Fight Leaflet

• Internationalism Now!

• Down with Economic Nationalism, Bj4Bw and “No2 EU” Europhobia!

• Build a Rank-and-File organisation that fights the bosses and the class treachery of the TU bureaucracy!


The G20 summit demonstrates the rapidity with which the crisis is unfolding. Whole economies like Iceland and Ireland are virtually bankrupt, financial meltdown has unleashed economic meltdown and no one can say where it will end. And the political ramifications for the left are equally rapid. The Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes were the August 4th for the British working class. Those like the SP and CPB who gave them enthusiastic support have now got their reward.

The Stalinists of the CPB, who have been the traditional bagmen for the class traitors of the TU bureaucracy, have welcomed the ‘Trotskyist’ SP into the fold of economic nationalism. Fronted by Bob Crow, with no consultation with his members, the new No2 EU platform is a straight British nationalist response which attempts to steal the votes of the UKIP. Like the infamous ‘foreigners out’ demonstration in Staythorp this appalling political treachery has struck fear into every immigrant worker and much of the black and Asian community. If even ’lefts’ like Simpson, Crow, Nellist and the CPB are prepared to tack so far right for opportunist gains how can we defeat the BNP?

But divisions are not really so bad if they reveal reality in time to fight back. The SWP has swung to the left after the split with Galloway and is now recruiting rapidly on leftist demands. Despite all the problems with their own capitulation to trade union bureaucracies and the popular frontism of the UAF, etc. their members are demanding a real fight now and revolutionists should give critical support as far as they go.

The future of the working class and poor, particularly immigrants, is indeed grim and they will be joined by a vast section of the middle class who will be rapidly driven down into their ranks. A year or so ago every right-wing think-thank in the planet trumpeted low taxation, deregulation and privatisation as the neo-liberal model that lead to robust economic growth.

The number of millionaires and billionaires burgeoned but this was necessary so the poor could benefit from some trickle-down, or ‘crumbs from the master’s table’ as one patronising bigot put it long ago. Today we are encouraged to hate these greedy bankers and fat cat finance capitalists but not the system itself, which the People’s Charter assures us is reformable.

The anarchist answer is to defend localism; local communities defending jobs and fighting the oppressive state is the only way. What is wrong with British jobs for British workers, Irish jobs for Irish workers and local jobs for local workers? Down with the EU, back to fortress Britain? But the door is then opened for the far right; economic nationalism is the field of operation of the fascists, it ties the workers to the bosses and must destroy the very basis of working class consciousness, its internationalism and its objective need to produce wealth on the basis of a world planned economy. Workers are the true global class whose interests can only be truly served by a planned world economy, capitalism is a global system run by a national bourgeoisie who are only interested in the own profit.

Revolutionary Trotskyism must provide the answer then with its aspiration for the world revolution. If the Waterford Crystal occupation becomes fashionable then the sacred right of private property, which underpins all global oppression, will be raised again as an international tactic. Only when private property is overthrown and collective, effective human rights are established and when we produce food and manufactures for human need, not profit can workers begin the struggle for international socialism. We must sweep away the ‘muck of ages’, sexism, homophobia and economic nationalism which leads to racism, wars and copper fastens all human oppression.

But we cannot do it effectively when we collaborate with a TU bureaucracy which seeks to jail militant Belfast Airport shop stewards. We cannot do it when we go on marches with Lindsey Oil Refinery strikers who shout ‘foreigners out’. Just as we must not capitulate to the trade union bureaucracy we cannot circumvent them either by ‘base unions’, we must fight and defeat them to reclaim the unions as class struggle organs.

Internationalists will then see their aspirations as real possibilities; no local answers, no trade union bureaucratic sell-out deals to save capitalism; occupy, organise and strike to unite the working class nationally and internationally, then the revolutionary struggles will begin in earnest.

Down with No2 EU, workers of the world unite!

Socialist Fight PO Box 59188,
London, NW2 9LJ.
Email: Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

Socialist Fight: No support for these chauvinist, xenophobic strikes

We reprint the leaflet of the British Trotskyist group Socialist Fight opposing the recent strike wave in defence of "British Jobs for British Workers". We publish it in the interests of furthering discussion and debate between our tendencies, though we differ on some aspects of Socialist Fight analysis (see comment below leaflet).

“A trade union led by reactionary fakers organizes a strike against the admission of Negro workers into a certain branch of industry. Shall we support such a shameful strike? Of course not. But let us imagine that the bosses, utilizing the given strike, make an attempt to crush the trade union and to make impossible in general the organized self-defence of the workers. In this case we will defend the trade union as a matter of course in spite of its reactionary leadership.” Trotsky 1939

Socialist Fight (SF) unequivocally opposes the current ‘wildcat’ strikes because they were called on the reactionary basis of ‘British jobs for British workers’ (BJ4BW), it was on this xenophobic basis they were spread, with the assistance of the right wing media and on this basis they were tacitly endorsed by the entire Unite and GMB leaderships. We place the blame for this situation squarely on the backs of the reactionary Labour movement leaders; Gordon Brown and the Labour party leaders for endorsing the reactionary slogan, borrowed from the BNP, the Unite, GMB and other TU leaderships for tacitly endorsing and pursuing negotiations on that basis. A major weight of responsibility also rests on the shoulders of those left groups and organisations, the Communists Party of Britain (CPB), the Socialist Party of England and Wales and others who have acted as left apologists for these bureaucratic misleaders of the working class. When similar demands were made on the French TU leadership they immediately rejected them as reactionary chauvinism and insisted on the demands like ‘we will not pay for the bankers/capitalism’s crisis’.

We reject the compromise of Keith Gibson of the Lindsey strike committee and the SPEW. This does not repudiate the original BJ4BWs demands, which were displayed so openly on the pickets. It is rather a cover for it, hoping we will forget, or close our eyes, to what it is really about. Gibson says that “Stewards and Union Officials asked to meet with IREM a.s.a.p. after Christmas to clarify the proposal i.e. would IREM employ British labour?” Then it explains that the walkout took place when “Shaws’ workforce were told by the Stewards that IREM had stated they would not be employing British labour.” (rb on SU Blog 3 Feb) He admits here that the initial walkout was about the nationality of the workforce, not about wages, conditions or any of the other red herrings he and his apologists have been trying to drag across the trail ever since.

The SP motion, now the property of the strike committee and the mass meeting, but not the property of the Unite leadership – Simpson, Woodley or Jerry Hicks – says “Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available”. That is simply BJ4BWs in another form. We reject the notion that “Union control of hiring is always preferable to the bosses controlling hiring. Enforcing an illegal closed shop would be a massive advance for the working class movement in this country”. On what basis would the union nominate people for jobs? The only issue that may be in question is equal access to jobs, but that is down to the subcontracting system itself, not nationality. When socialist in British trade unions fought discrimination against nationalists in the north of Ireland they were always referred back to the Irish Region (Region 11, Northern Ireland in the case of the TGWU). Here, in the best workers’ traditions, Loyalist craft engineering unions (like we have here), with all the history of privilege and empire loyalty had contempt for other workers and ensured they (nationalists) did not get to join the craft unions and did not get jobs.

Discrimination proceeded swimmingly, all in the name of the best trade union practices, the power of the unions was consolidated and the NI 'troubles' ensued. This ‘union control’ is only a demand for 'local' communalist discrimination; the predecessor of the SPEW in Ireland was quite comfortable with that. And British and Irish based union leaders turned their heads away and pretended they just did not see. In a certain sense this demand is more reactionary than national chauvinism; presumable workers from the south of England, Wales and Scotland, let alone Ireland, would quickly be sent packing by our ‘local’ TU registrar of jobs.

As one comrade said, “But the SPEW states that it is the bosses who are setting one nationality against another. Yes but why play the same game? It is the BNP, say the SPEW, who are attempting to sever fraternal relations between workers from different nations, but the SPEW want union control of a register of locally skilled workers presumably to facilitate local jobs for local people. Some are trying to find socialist gold under this militant dross of nationalism. But that seems like an attempt at alchemy’ (BB). You cannot endorse the strikes and repudiate the aims, they are the same. If you endorse and seek to spread these strikes you are dealing a crippling blow to the British Labour movement.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Workers Power (WP) and SF are not siding with the Gov/bosses. The line-up is clear. The strikes have the enthusiastic support of the BNP, they have the support of the capitalist media, more enthusiastic the more you move to the right. The TU bureaucracy as a whole who would scarcely lift a finger to fight job losses or pay constraints while countless billions are handed over to bankers almost without conditions are enthusiastic supporters of these illegal but highly reactionary strikes.

The CPB, the SPEW and the TU bureaucracy are supporting it for entirely reactionary reasons. The bosses are 'opposed' because that is in their immediate short tern financial interests, but they are not anything like as opposed as they would be if the plant was occupied, and the right of private property was thereby challenged, as in Waterford Glass. The government are 'opposed' but really not like they would oppose a real workers action, in the long term interests of the class as an international whole, like Gate Gourmet. They are for ‘law and order’ and against ‘trouble’ in general but if they have to have ‘trouble’ they could not get better than this from their point of view. Where are the threats to sequestrate the union funds, where are the high court judges injunctions, where are the brutal police attacks? Where is the class consciousness of those who cannot see the difference? And we reject with contempt those backward workerists who say we are siding with the Tories because Kenneth Clarke made an anti-racist statement criticism of the strikers. Tory anti-racism bad, workers racism good, declare these political idiots.

It was entirely correct of the Campaign against Immigration Controls (CAIC) to picket the Unite HQ and SF endorses the action. The prejudices of localist craft trade unionists would have been easily overcome and the strike orientated in a healthy direction if it had got a lead from the top. But Unite gave them their head. Principled socialists would seek to argue and struggle politically with these workers to explain that workers cannot win in national, let alone local isolation. No, we need a rank-and-file movement in the unions to combat this. It is entirely nonsensical to talk of the form being reactionary and the content being revolutionary as if this was some kind of Marxist dialectic.

These are reactionary strikes for reactionary ends which can only win by driving foreign workers out of the country and setting in train the destruction of the entire working class and its organisations and all their historical gains. Fight them now, fight the reactionary leadership of the class who are responsible for this appalling situation or it will get worse. Do not try to find the silver lining; it is not there. They do mean what they say. If they occupied the plant and forged international solidarity that would be an entirely different strike, with entirely different leaders. To pretend otherwise is to defend the existing leaders and to prepare more defeats. This is differentiating the left in Britain; it goes to the core of class politics. Fight the reaction without reservations and you will find new revolutionists who will come forward to champion the interests of the class as an international whole.

In conclusion we quote from an Italian socialist group, the Communist Workers Party, “Our hope is that the SWP may be physically present in the struggle to denounce what is becoming a falsified reality i.e. that by which Great Britain is being occupied by foreigners, and British workers are being forced out of jobs because of them”.
Yours Ottaviano Scipione, PCL-Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori - Italy (Abruzzi Region)

• Occupy to prevent plant closures and job losses!
• For a comprehensive programme of public works, council house and infrastructure building to overcome unemployment!
• The trade unions must take responsibility for organising the unemployed now, before they fall prey to fascism!
• For a militant ‘no platforming’ of fascists combined with United Front demands on workers leaders to fight capitalism AND fascism!
• No to Popular Fronts compromises with capitalism like the Peoples Charter!
• Make the bosses and the bankers pay for the crisis – not the workers!
• For a rigorous progressive taxation system, comprehensive prevention of tax avoidance scams by transnational companies and the rich and a wealth tax to make the capitalists pay for the crisis!
• For a genuine rank-and-file movement in the trade unions to fight the bureaucratic labour lieutenants of capital who lead today’s trade unions!
• For direct employment by all firms of all labour, end the pernicious system of sub-contracting and agency working!
• For an open conference of all those political groups and individuals who oppose these reactionary strikes!
• Build a revolutionary socialist leadership to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism internationally!

Contact: Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ. Email: Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

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Socialist Fight sees the workers involved in these strikes as "craft workers" while we would see them as part of the "labour aristocracy" that benefits from the privileges of skilled workers who share in some of the super-profits of British imperialism. Labour aristocrats have history of social imperialism supporting their imperialist ruling class in return for the defence of their privileged jobs. It is the breakdown of this historic partnership as British bosses are looking for cheaper EU and other contractors employing non-British workers that explains why these workers took 'wildcat' action. The role of the 'left' bureaucracy of the Communist Party and Socialist Party is to cover the naked chauvinism of British Jobs for British Workers is part of the international left aligned to the World Social Forum and the Bolivarian revolution that brings together Stalinist, Castroists, Maoists and fake Trotskyists. The role of the 'left' bureaucracy is to use the unions to pressure the bourgeois state to the left rather than call for independent unions, occupations, and the general strike. It is the left leg of the Menshevik International aligned to "socialism in the 21st century" that has abandoned Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism and the "dictatorship of the proletariat".