Preliminary
Remarks on the Question of Protestants in Northern Ireland
Document
A, presented to the Socialist Labour Alliance Belfast Conference,
June 1971 by DR O’Connor Lysaght
The Northern-Irish Protestant question is, for the Irish ‘national’ bourgeoisie,
merely a disagreeable hangover from the struggle that it concluded
to its own satisfaction in December 1921. For Revolutionary Socialists,
it is a problem that, handled correctly, can give the initial impetus
to the achievement of the Workers' Republic, and, if necessary, could
spread into Britain the revolution that created it.
As a problem, it is an acid test for anyone claiming to operate the
Marxist method. The issues concerned cannot be clarified by a mechanical
reference to the case histories of Scientific Socialism. Only Connolly
had to face a problem similar to (because the same as) this. The
Russians and the Germans had to deal with the straight issue of a
metropolitan power's exploitation to its colonies: The Americans,
Debs and de Leon, had a similar matter. Only the Scot, John Maclean,
in his handling of the problem of the break-up of a metropolitan
power (the United Kingdom) into its component nations (England and
Scotland) had to deal with anything of any likeness, and his solution
is still arguably invalid.
The Problem about the Protestants of Northern Ireland is this: a
colonial community bearing certain of the stigmata of a nation insists
that it has the right to adhere politically to the metropolitan imperial
power in defiance of the claims of the majority on the island where
they both dwell. For Marxists, there are two immediate questions
to answer: is this community in itself a distinct ‘nation’ and,
if so, so what?
The scientific description of the ‘nation’ was formulated
by JV Stalin, during his Bolshevik period in his personal masterpiece
Marxism and the National Question (1913): ‘A nation is an historically
evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life,
and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.’
How many of these features are seen in the Protestant Ulstermen?
To begin, their community certainly ‘evolved’ historically.
It has existed (or part of it with most claims to be a nation: the
area cast of the River Bann: the ‘Belfast Pale’) for
some 300 years.
As to its ‘stability’, that is a matter deserving more
scrutiny later.
It possesses ‘community of language’ certainly in Stalin's
sense (‘We are referring, of course, to the colloquial language
of the people and not to the official government language’)
but so do all the people of the British Isles.
It does have ‘community of territory’ in the East European
sense in that there is an area (the aforesaid ‘Pale’)
which is recognisably a ‘Protestant’ area, albeit with ‘foreign’ (ie,
Catholic) enclaves (The Falls Road, the Glens of Antrim).
‘Community of Economic Life’ exists also amongst the
Protestants of the North-East of Ireland. Here is one particular
difference separating
them from their neighbours elsewhere in the island. In his work,
Stalin goes into the matter at length:
‘The
bourgeoisie plays the leading role (in the national movement).
The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem
of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious
from
competition with the bourgeoisie of another nationality. Hence
its desire to secure its ‘own’ its ‘home’ market.
The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns
its nationalism.’
In Ireland the
twin facts of union and rack-rent landlordism operated, after
1801, to drive a wedge
between the two communities in the
country. On the one hand, the industrial bourgeoisie of the
south, handicapped
by the poverty of its potential 'home' market and lacking supplies
of raw materials for producing capital goods gave up the ghost
(with a few exceptions). In the North-East its counterparts
were closer
to the sources of their raw materials and were able to use
the religious differences amongst their employees to good effect
to
maintain and
increase their rate of exploitation. Their loss of a viable
'home' market was made up (as, in similar circumstances, those
of Scotland
and Wales were made up) by their participation in that of England,
and, as the 19th century progressed, in that of the British
Raj. This provided the formal economic basis for their hostility
to
the claims of their opposite numbers in the south for ‘Home
Rule’ or
for anything that might ‘open the floodgates’ and
destroy the empire. The later development of Irish nationalism,
with its,
culmination in the Lemass protectionism of the 1930s, gave
the Protestant industrialists a definite justification of their
stand.
Of course,
by contracting out of the Irish national struggle, they had
allowed it to develop as it did. But it is at this point that
the last
factor making up the nation appears.
The psychological make-up of the Ulster Protestants, as manifested
in a community of culture was encouraged to develop during
the 19th century in a manner different from that of the Irish Catholic
majority.
As with the economic factor, this was a turn away from the
trend
of the 18th century, It had been encouraged by the scabbery
of the Catholics against the northern front of the '98 rising, compared
with rumours of atrocities against Protestants in other areas.
Later,
religious division amongst the plebeians was a useful force
for
the bosses to use to maintain profits at a time of depression
and rationalisation.
In turn, this trend was maintained by the Catholic sectarian
development of Irish nationalism from O'Connell (and, in particular,
from the
Emancipation Act) onwards. And this continued, in turn stimulated
by the North-Eastern Protestants' refusal to continue in the
tradition of '98. By 1886, Ulster industrialism was, in its
way, even more
dependent on the Catholic Church than the gombeen-men of that
religion. The latter could have continued their economic role
without their
clergy, but at a time of increasing labour militancy (culminating
in a Lib-Lab candidate for North Belfast in 1885), the industrial
bosses feared continuing religious unity and took the opportunity
of the Home Rule Bill to divide their workers again. How far
this was conscious, it is hard to say. Once again the criminal
bigotry,
of all sections of the Irish national movement (including such
so-called 'non-denominational' bodies as Sinn Féin, the IRA, and the
Labour and Communist parties) has fed the belief amongst the Ulster
Protestants that Home Rule means, automatically, 'Rome Rule'. This
again, has encouraged the 'Prods' to maintain their own form of superstition.
But there is more to the north-eastern culture than Religion.
The fact that the economy was more dependent on the British raj
than
those of the other nations and ur-nations of Britain resulted
in a corresponding popular paranoia about that raj that exceeded
that
of the said communities. The Flag of Protestant Ulster is the
Union Jack rather than the Red Hand. The Unionists are ‘British’:
the only people in the British Isles that actually described themselves
as such. After the First World War, Belfast had the largest (and
most proletarian) membership of the British Empire Union in the United
Kingdom. At Westminster, from their incorporation the Ulster Unionist
MPs were the vanguard of imperialism.
Of course, there is an exception to all this loyalty: the two
years (1912-1914) when Ulster looked like having to defend its
separation
from the Catholic south even against the armed forces of that
Empire to which it proclaimed its loyalty. But the apparent exception
does but prove the rule. The fact remains that when, at last,
the
Ulster
Volunteers went to war they did so in defence of the entity that
they had been formed to oppose. But this might have been mere
accident, until one remembers that they had the support of nearly
half (and
an increasing number at that) of the British MPs, a large section
of the Army and large minorities in the Dominions (especially
Canada). All these would (and at the Curragh, did) defend Ulster's
'right'
and saved it from having to fight. Battle would be its last resource
-and would come only as a prelude to wide-spread imperial civil
war. By August 1914, the Unionists were winning without a shot
being fired.
Of course, there are other attributes to the culture of the Ulster
Protestants. They have a liberal side to their rhetoric when
they care to use it. They have a considerable repertoire of folk
songs
(mainly based on ‘Taig’ tunes). Nonetheless these are
secondary to the outstanding forces in the Orange psychology – Imperialism
and the Protestant religion.
It is the nature of the economic and psychological factors in
the Ulster Protestant community that makes its stability as
a separate
unit less than is usual for a true nation. On this subject,
it is worth recalling what Stalin has to say in his work:
‘It
is unquestionable that the great empires of Cyrus and Alexander
could
not be called nations, although they came to be constituted
historically and were formed out of different tribes
and races. They were not nations, but casual and loosely-connected
conglomerations
of groups, which fell apart or joined together depending
upon the victories or defeats of this or that conqueror.
‘Thus, a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a
stable community of people.’
The examples
quoted might seem to be a far cry from the small, compact, Belfast
Pale.
However, the subject has more in common
with the Persian
and Hellenic Empires than appears at first sight. For,
whatever about the Ulster Protestants' claim to be a separate nation,
it is certainly
true that, on the data given, they (or rather, those around
Belfast) can (and do) claim to be part of the nation, not
of Ireland but
of Britain. This claim has been upheld, though less, recently,
than
before, by their leaders.
But the creation of a British community was a process that
was based on a certain historically short-term situation:
Britain's
role as
the first industrial capitalist country (‘the workshop’)
of the world. Even before this, of course, England had intervened
to slow down (in the second case, to halt) the development of two
peoples (The Irish and the Welsh) towards nationhood. However its
capitalistic pre-eminence enabled it to continue to expand and consolidate
itself: to merge politically with the nation of the Scots, to keep
the Welsh divided amongst themselves, to thwart the development of
a united Irish nation and, as its crowning achievement, to win to
its active support a major section of the Irish national vanguard
of '98. Had its monopoly position in the capitalist world not been
challenged by Germany and the USA it might even have been able to
win over the rest of the Irish despite the religious problem (and
the Irish clergy would not have opposed a merger) and the bitterness
created [by] the famine.
But, as its empire breaks up, so, too, does the British
community. Scotland is now restive. So is Wales, though
because of its
lack of the economic factor it is not yet a full nation.
Northern
Ireland is dependent for its identity, now, on British
bribes (covering
actual exploitation) its puppet regime and religious vendetta.
Of these,
it is significant of the present political trends in Britain,
that Stormont is regarded as something to be preserved.
The founders of the sub-state accepted it reluctantly.
Of the
other two factors,
the British welfare state is contracting and, in any case,
can be
countered by a Socialist analysis of the actuality of imperialism's
exploitation of the Six Counties. The religious divide
looms as
wide as ever, due, as we have seen, to the incompetence
and downright malice of bourgeois and petty bourgeois (including
so-called
Socialist) political movements on both sides of the border.
Here, again, a
scientific
Socialist policy that does not funk the question of religion
will play a major role in winning the Protestant workers.
Thus the Northern Ireland Protestants do not constitute
a separate nation, or part of a nation separate from the
majority
of the
Irish people. It is rather a part of an unformed Irish
nation that had
its growth stunted when its original bourgeois revolution
was smashed and of which the establishment will be one
function of
the coming
Socialist revolution.
There are several corollaries to all this. In the first
place, the fact that Ulster Protestants do not constitute
a nation as
such means
that, similarly, the claim that the Irish Catholics on
their own form a nation must be rejected for the same
reasons. Until the
present decade (the 1970s) it was notable that those
readiest to accept the
separation of Northern Ireland – including such as Ernest Blythe
and Desmond Fennell – were also those who were most prepared
to accept the confessional nature of the twenty-six county state
as being most in keeping with the national 'psychology' (in reality
because the Catholic Church is useful to discipline the workforce).
Again, it must be asserted that, after 1800, not only did the Northern
Protestant psychology change, the Irish Catholic psychology did so
too. The latter became less Gaelic and more Catholic-Jansenist. Even
without the presence of the Protestants, an 18th century Gaelic Irish
Republic would in matters of faith and morals, have been freer than
the modern 26 County State. In short the 26 County community is merely
a section of an unformed national community that has had the fate
to fall under the influence of what is called ‘the One Catholic
and Apostolic Church’ And vice versa, as has been shown, the
Ulster Protestants have been diverted similarly by sectarian Protestantism
and imperialism.
Secondly, the statement of the Socialists' duty to complete
the formation of the nation will undoubtedly cause disagreement
on
the ultra-left.
After all, we want international Socialism, we can't have ‘Socialism’ in
one country (or in one nation), etc. For such as these, it is worth
recalling that Connolly anticipated the end of ‘states, territories
and regions’, under Socialism, but not ‘nations’,
that indeed he insisted on the impossibility of having ‘international-ism’ without ‘nationalism’,
and, of course, that he saw the Irish national revolution as the
first sign in the world Socialist revolution.
Further, the actual Government of the first Workers' Republic
of the world passed at the Tenth Congress of the Communist
Party of
the Soviet Union (1921) a resolution stating its aims
to be ‘The
elimination of actual national inequality . . . (b) .
. . a stubborn and persistent struggle against all survivals of national
oppression
and colonial slavery’ amongst the 30,000,000 soviet
citizens ‘consisting
principally of Turkic peoples . . . who have not passed
through a capitalist development, who do not or practically
do not, possess
an industrial proletariat of their own, who in the majority
of cases preserve the pastoral and patriarchal tribal
form of life . . . or
who have not yet progressed completely beyond a semi-patriarchal,
semi--feudal form of life (ie all those whose claims
to national status were dubious) . . . but who have already
been drawn into the
common current of Soviet development.’ To do this
the government was to encourage a development of co-operatives,
and also, in common
with the better developed nations ‘to help them
(a) to develop and consolidate their own Soviet state
system in forms consistent
with the national social conditions of these peoples:
(b) to develop and consolidate their own courts, administrative
bodies, economic
organs, functioning in the native language and recruited
from among local people acquainted with the customs and
psychology of the local
population (c) to develop a press, schools, theatres,
clubs and cultural and educational institutions generally,
functioning in the native
language, and (d) to organise and develop an extensive
system of courses and schools both for general education
and for vocational
and technical training given in the native languages
(mainly for the un-formed nations enumerated above) in
order to accelerate the
training of native cadres of skilled working men and
Soviet and Party workers in all spheres of administration,
and particularly in the
sphere of education’. In other words, clearly,
Soviet policy was to develop national characteristics
in so far as they did not
clash with working-class power.
Of course the development of a nation under Socialist government
is different from its development under capitalism in one
aspect: the economic community that it possesses will be
merely a part
of an overall economic community (unless Ireland is as
unlucky as Russia
in the failure of the Revolution to spread). But what will
be developed after the revolution will still be a recognisable
nation.
The third corollary is that of the League for a Workers'
Republic's definition of Northern Ireland as a ‘nationality’,
distinct from a nation. Presumably this coincides with
the definition given
above, but since the League has failed to date (29.5.71)
to clarify its definition beyond saying that a ‘nationality is an undeveloped
nation’ it is uncertain.
Analysis is useful only if it forms the basis for future
action. Thus, the Socialist Labour Alliance must be offered
a possible
strategy as well as the theoretical base for it. Such a
strategy should be
based on 6 points:
1. Full support for workers' struggles north and south.
A campaign must be carried out for all working-class
demands, against redundancy
and unemployment. The long-term aim must be a general
strike which, unlike those of 1918-1920, will involve the Ulster
Protestant working-class,
as well as the workers elsewhere.
This point should not be necessary to mention as part of
a strategy for a Socialist Labour Alliance. However, as
it should be part
of such a strategy, it should not be ignored here.
2. In propaganda work, much more should be done about the
economic effects of imperialism in the republic. What has
been achieved
on that subject, so far, is remarkably scrappy.
A study group should be set up to produce such a report,
and link it to the Common Market issue, the subjective
facts of the
matter,
etc.
3. The issue of religion is the major cultural cause of
division between the two parts of Ireland. Revolutionary
Socialists
must attack it not only because of this but because Revolutionary
Socialism is,
of its nature, secular, or it is nothing.
Certainly there must be freedom for all outside the movement
itself to practice their peculiar individual forms of superstition.
However,
the movement must insist that for itself it can accept
these only as forms of superstition such as its members
must overcome
and
which it can allow to survive in public life only on its
own terms. (It
is, of course, true that from its inception the People's
Democracy has been carrying out this task. But against
the PD it must be
pointed out that it has often tended (as in the Belfast-Dublin
march of April
1969) to concentrate on that particular matter to the exclusion
of the problems at the economic basis of society. The first
two points
(above) will operate to avoid this danger).
As the major part of the struggle against religious superstition,
it is proposed that the following 5 Secular Proposals be
adopted by the Conference as Alliance policy:
a) End of denominational (ie, non-secular) education
north and south.
b) Expropriation, of all religious property without compensation,
north and south.
c) Withdrawal from Bunreacht na hÉireann of articles 41 (on
the Family) 42 (on Property) and 44 (on Religion).
d) Repeal of legislation in the Republic that forbids contraception,
adult homosexual activity, divorce and abortion.
e) Ending of the right of a priest to carry out the function
of a State Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
4. The above three points will contribute greatly to the
weakening of Northern Irish Protestant separatism. Nonetheless,
the question
must be asked whether or not it will be principled and/or
necessary to give formal recognition to the validity of
this separatism,
if only to carry out Lenin's formula: ‘disunion for the purpose
of union’.
The Protestants of the Belfast ‘Pale’ are not a nation.
They may be what the LWR describes as a ‘nationality’.
Should they be allowed the right to self-determination?
The question is one of tactics: how is such a right likely
to affect the Irish revolution and its continuance abroad?
In the
long run,
and with the policies already enumerated, it would not
make much difference: it could only be a dangerous red
herring.
As has
been shown, the objective factors weakening the solidarity
of the Ulster
Protestant community are operating and must be encouraged.
But matters cannot be 'left to the development of these
factors, simply because there are pressures working to
prolong the
agonising survival of the community.
First of these is British capitalism. Now that, economically,
the Republic is qualitatively as subordinate to Britain
as Northern Ireland, its natural instinct is to reunite
the
country. But
this
would cause
too many security problems on Britain's flank. Irish capitalism
cannot afford (if it ever could) to maintain the declining
economy of the
North East. Politically it is unattractive not only to
the Protestants but to increasing numbers of Catholics.
Reunification
of Ireland
under capitalism (ie under Britain) would weaken that capitalism.
Nor is it likely that Britain can establish that liberal
bourgeois state in Northern Ireland that it has promised.
Northern Ireland
was designed as a state divided within itself. A normal
bourgeois democracy needs greater unity than it has enjoyed.
Economic
decline, clerical dominance in the Republic, the crisis
of leadership
in Irish Socialism and over a century of ‘Divide and Profit’ tactics
by the Protestant industrialists have combined to ensure that the
largest single political force amongst the Ulster Protestants is
Paisleyism. Britain can do one of three things: it can continued
the status quo, with either Republicanism or Paisleyism. It is not
difficult to see which is the most likely.
In these circumstances, anything that can at least neutralise
enough Protestants is worth trying, and it is purely in
this spirit (the
spirit of Lenin dealing with the Moujiks) that one must
consider allowing self-determination to the ‘Pale’ of Belfast.
Of course, it must be stressed that self-determination cannot mean
surrender either to Paisleyism or to British imperialism – nor
can it be applied in Northern Ireland per se.
It is arguable that such limited (but Bolshevik) terms
of self-determination would lack sufficient credibility
to
win enough of the Protestants
from Paisleyism. On this matter however, it can be pointed
out that it should be taken in conjunction with the other
proposals
listed.
Accordingly, more investigation should be done into this
matter and more discussion should be instituted through
the theoretical
journals
available to the Alliance, particularly the Northern
Star (as this is most involved in the areas concerned).
5. The probability that, despite eleventh hour attempts,
Paisleyism will triumph in Northern Ireland (for the
time being) means that
the Alliance must struggle to provide Socialist Leadership
for the Republican areas. It must warn the inhabitants
of these areas
of
the facts of the political situation, point out why the
policies sponsored by Gardiner Place, Kevin Street and
the various
terrorist groups, cannot achieve even the reunification
of Ireland, and
emphasise, once more, Connolly's dictum: ‘Nationalism
without Socialism is national recreancy’. It must
prepare the Northern Ireland Catholic areas for the revival
of the barricades, and, for the immediate
transformation of the new communes into Soviets. The
Southern branches of the Alliance should give their comrades
all possible help in this.
Two definite proposals can be made immediately.
Firstly, members of the Alliance should prepare to get
training in using arms.
Secondly, a pamphlet explaining the failure of the insurrection
of August 1969 (basically a failure to escalate intensively
and extensively)
should be prepared and published as soon as possible.
6. At all times the Alliance should remember and should
try to explain that the Irish national revolution is but
the
beginning
of an uninterrupted
international revolution, and that its fate is bound up
with its spreading.
Summary
1. Because of the instability of the factors providing
its distinct character, the Northern Irish Protestant community
is not a nation
but rather a part of the unformed nation of the Irish.
2. The particular characteristics that gave the Protestants
their (‘national’ appearance (namely British
capitalism and religious superstition) are being eroded,
or are likely to be eroded
by the inter-national decline of imperialism and religion.
3. The British Government, because of its capitalist nature,
cannot hasten this process, however much it may desire
to do so. In practice
it can only make matters worse and is likely, unchecked,
to have to prepare a Paisleyite-Fascist dictatorship.
4. Only a Socialist movement can reunite the country as
part (perhaps a catalytic part) of the process of Permanent
Revolution.
5. The question of Protestant self-determination is a matter
of pure tactics to be considered only in connection with
the overall
Socialist
strategy.
6. This strategy will include struggles against capitalism,
against religious superstition, and against the petty bourgeois
aspects
of Republicanism. All these struggles are described above
in detail.
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