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From Socialist Worker, No. 120, 1 May 1969, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
I ASKED Bernadette Devlin if she was a revolutionary socialist.
‘I have never read Marx’, she said, ‘but I have read Connolly and if James Connolly was a revolutionary socialist then so am I’.
Was she a Catholic and if so how did she square this with her socialism?
‘Connolly did. I believe in the separation of church and state. I take my religion from Rome not my politics. I don’t think that makes me any less a socialist, do you?’
Was Connolly her hero?
‘Connolly and Countess Markievicz. Don’t forget that I’m a woman.’
What about the row with George Brown over a United Ireland? What were her views on a United Ireland?
‘I stand for a Socialist Workers’ Republic. That’s what we mean by the slogan Tories Out, North and South. What Brown is talking about is a bourgeois united Ireland – that’s Sir Paul Chambers talking.’
Reed: You said that you were a revolutionary socialist. Do you see the need for a socialist organisation?
Devlin: There is no real socialist outfit in Ireland and I believe there is the need for one, but I can’t think of how we could go about building one. I believe that this is something which must be tackled or we will see the Green Tories jump up from their graves and try to swamp the movement.’
Reed: What issues, apart from Ireland, do you hope to raise in Westminster?
Devlin: The tinkers and the woman question. I support the demand for equal rights for women. That’s why ‘one man, one vote’, as a slogan has worried me. I was glad to see that London People’s Democracy has amended that to ‘one person, one vote.’
Reed: Is there any women’s movement in Ulster?
Devlin: Now there is. In Derry Labour Party the girls are forming a group and the latest issue of their paper Ramparts has an article called Come Back Mrs Pankhurst We Have Not Yet Overcome. I think that this will grow.
Reed: What can the British Left do about Ireland?
Devlin: A hell of a lot more than they have. For so long the Irish question has been forgotten by the Left of this country but I’m glad to see that a change is coming.
Reed: London’s PD has called for a mass single issue campaign to demand civil rights in Ireland. Will you help?
Devlin: I’m a member of PD, am I not?
Reed: You said last week that you thought civil war was beginning in Ulster. Do you still think so?
Devlin: I thought it was coming when I saw the voting results in Mid-Ulster. We did not get a pan-popish vote. Apart from the fact that I got more votes than there are Catholics on the register, we know that the Catholic upper class voted Tory so we got about 1,500 Protestant votes. The Unionists would not, they could not, allow this process to go on.
Reed: You mean that the government will provoke a civil war?
Devlin: We want civil rights, not civil war – it’s the Tory landlords and bosses who will be responsible.
Reed: Last week you called for a citizens’ army. What did you mean?
Devlin: I mean that the people of Bogside should prepare to organise and resist any attempt at repression. Street defence committees should be formed, missiles stocked, etc.
Reed: Defence not attack?
Devlin: For sure.
Reed: What are your views on the proposed anti-strike laws?
Devlin: I’m against all repressive laws which attack my people – the poor, the workers and small farmers, etc.
Reed: English orIrish?
Devlin: British or Irish, Catholic or Protestant, black or white.
Reed: One more question. ‘One man, one vote’. Will that end the campaign?
Devlin: Even if O’Neill or some other Prime Minister was to grant one man, one vote, and that is doubtful, then in areas like Derry they will gerrymander the city by joining it with safe Unionist Coleraine and the old rural district to ensure a Tory majority.
Copyright Socialist Worker, 1969. May be reproduced in whole or in part if acknowledgment is made to Socialist Worker.
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