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The Test of Ireland
The crisis of British imperialist rule in Ireland developing over the past four years has represented a decisive challenge to the British section of the Fourth International. Specifically, it has posed three urgent tasks for British revolutionists: (1) building a mass movement to defend the Irish fighters against imperialist repression; (2) politically assisting the Irish resistance organizations; (3) aiding in the development of an Irish section of the Fourth International that could apply and propagate the tenets of revolutionary Marxism in Ireland. Today it is glaringly evident that the British section of the Fourth International has failed to accomplish any of these three tasks. Moreover – what is still graver – the responsibility for this failure does not lie with the leadership of the British section alone.
The line of the IMG leadership toward the Irish crisis and the tasks flowing from it has clearly followed the logic of the adaptation to ultra-leftism by the majority at the Ninth World Congress. Furthermore, the ultra-left tendency of the IMG on this question has been fostered and hardened by the factionalism of the Ninth Congress majority in its defense of the guerrilla warfare orientation and in its method of justifying adapting to ultra-left moods in the youth radicalization.
This, process is exemplified by the fact that the IMG line on Ireland has been carried over into the press of the European sections, led by supporters of the Ninth World Congress guerrilla line, without any discussion in the official leadership bodies of the International. The experience and positions of those sections in North America and Oceania that oppose the guerrilla warfare line have been ignored by the European sections despite the impact of the revolutionary process in Ireland upon the immigrant communities across the ocean. Most of the material support for the guerrilla campaign so enthusiastically acclaimed by the supporters of the IEC majority comes from the United States and Canada. Even the attacks of the American government on alleged suppliers of the guerrilla campaign in Ireland have been passed over in silence by the press of the sections in Europe. Nothing has been printed by any organ of the European sections and groups that would indicate that the struggle in Ireland was not an exclusively “European” affair or that any section of the Fourth International other than the IMG had the opportunity of working directly with the Irish national liberation movement.
Thus, the leaderships that supported the adaptation to guerrillaism in Latin America have automatically extended the logic of this position to Ireland, developing an increasingly pro-terrorist line and apparently feeling justified in disregarding the views of the Trotskyists that opposed the Ninth World Congress turn. In short, guerrillaism became so central to their conception of revolutionary strategy, such a principled question, that in the case of Ireland conclusions were drawn automatically and no need was felt to even discuss them with those comrades who rejected the guerrilla strategy.
Very quickly the adaptation to ultra-leftism reflected in the Ninth World Congress resolution on Latin America came to permeate all the work of the majority on the Irish question, especially the section most directly involved. Before the Ninth World Congress, the IMG succeeded in organizing a demonstration of 100,000 persons against the war in Vietnam, against a war in which Britain had no direct part, by building a broad united front and developing a mass orientation in opposition to every organized tendency on the British left. The demonstration, in fact, helped to encourage the mass civil-rights demonstrations that initiated the revolutionary upsurge in Ireland.
But after adopting the “vanguardist” orientation of the Ninth World Congress majority, the IMG found itself unable to contribute to building a mass movement against the imperialist repression carried out by its own government against a people only a few miles from Britain who were officially citizens of the United Kingdom and had over a million relatives in the key centers of British industry. The IMG shifted to romantic and ultra-left sloganizing, trying to outdo all the other groups in the left in this. It found itself in splendid isolation as a result, not only in opposition to the other left groupings but also to the Irish organizations and to the dynamic of the mass anti-imperialist movement.
The past five years of the IMG’s work on the Irish question in Britain has three phases. The first was a transitional one from the mass orientation of 1968 to the vanguardist notions of the Ninth World Congress majority. In the initial period, the IMG press continued to put the emphasis on the need for a “mass” solidarity movement. Thus, the April 15, 1970, issue of The Red Mole declared, under the heading Our Tasks:
The task for revolutionaries in Britain is to oppose British imperialism, to demand that the troops be withdrawn and to demand self-determination for Ireland. As revolutionaries in an imperialist oppressor country we should at all times remember that we can offer solidarity to the Irish but that we are dealing with an oppressed nation which has to find its own liberation.
Only by the most principled internationalism can we be of assistance to our Irish comrades. The record of some sections of the English left has been a poor one so far as the failure to construct a mass-based solidarity movement demonstrates.
Under the heading What Is To Be Done in Britain, the July 1970 Red Mole broadsheet No. 3 declared:
We in Britain who support this struggle against British imperialism must not fail. There must be an all-out effort to build an effective solidarity movement on an all-inclusive basis, on the principle of self-determination for Ireland. The great reserves of Irish workers in Britain are ready to be mobilised in such a campaign. And in mobilising them we will begin to mobilise their British fellow workers, not to speak of the Black Workers. In carrying out our revolutionary duty to the Irish comrades we are at the same time preparing for the war against British imperialism in Ireland to be brought home to be fought in the lair of the beast itself.
Self-determination for Ireland!
Withdraw all British Troops now!
Release Bernadette Devlin and all Irish political prisoners now!
In the August 1970 Red Mole, Bob Purdie wrote:
Last year confusion about the real role of the Troops was rife on the British left. The situation today confirms the position of those who said that they had gone in to get the barricades down and to smash dual power in Derry and Belfast and that any temporary help/protection they gave to the Catholics against an Orange pogrom was with this in mind. Today there can be no confusion about their role, but the crime of the British left is inaction. The crisis in Northern Ireland deepens every day, and every day brings closer the inevitable confrontation between British Imperialism, and the forces of National Liberation in Ireland. What is needed now is to build a mass solidarity movement to aid that struggle.
The change from this correct orientation to an overt vanguardist approach seems to have been completed over the winter of 1970–71. In an article in the April 7, 1971, issue of The Red Mole, Comrade Purdie added a third slogan for the solidarity movement: “Support the Armed Action of the Irish People.”
Why was this necessary? Why were the slogans of “Self-determination for the Irish People” and “Withdraw British Troops” no longer sufficient in Britain? Didn’t they both place the blame for the violence in Ireland squarely on the British forces and didn’t they support the right of the Irish people to employ any means to solve their own problems? Didn’t they do this in terms that were understandable to the largest possible number of people in Britain? Didn’t the adding of the demand for explicit support for “armed action” ask the British people to support a specific tactic in Ireland and, by extension, support the groups utilizing such a tactic? Didn’t it therefore demand that the British left intervene in the struggle in Ireland in support of a certain tactic and a certain group? The whole history of the IMG’s solidarity work indicates that this was exactly the effect of this policy.
This approach was sectarian within the context of Britain, and by discriminating increasingly among the forces fighting British imperialism – and discriminating not even on the basis of political criteria but on the basis of a tactic elevated to the position of a strategy, if not a principle, it tended more and more to break with the principled support of self-determination expressed in earlier statements. This development went hand in hand with a shift in the conception of the role of the solidarity movement.
For example, in an article in the September 1, 1971, Red Mole, Pat Jordan wrote:
Criticisms related to the tactics of the Irish militants must be expressed in a fraternal manner and largely confined to analytical material designed to influence their thinking. To be concrete: should a section of the IRA decide to indulge in an urban guerrilla campaign in selected parts of Britain, the thrust of the argumentation should be to explain why they have been forced along this road. We should not hesitate to express our support for their right to use these methods and we should oppose the hypocrisy of those who are ‘shocked’ by this development (explaining very clearly the implicit racialism inherent in this ‘shock’). When we express our doubts about such a tactic, it should be on the basis that we do not think it is the best method to defeat British imperialism (in general, urban guerrilla warfare should only be waged where the mass of the local population at least acquiesce in its use).
Any other course is to weaken and confuse our solidarity with the Irish people in their struggle against the British ruling class. But it is not just a question of duty – our task is to build a revolutionary cadre force in Britain. This means building a body of opinion which is prepared to use revolutionary violence in Britain to overthrow the British ruling class. It goes without saying that it is not conceivable that we can create a force which is prepared for revolutionary struggle in Britain if it is not prepared to support the armed struggle of others against that same ruling class.
Although the emphasis is still on defending the right of self-determination of the Irish, the thrust is subtly shifting toward a conception of using the example of the Irish struggle to build a “revolutionary cadre” in Britain by demanding support for the tactic of “armed struggle,” that is, urban guerrilla warfare, which is moreover separated from any political context. The example of “armed struggle” in Ireland is supposed to equip a “revolutionary cadre” in Britain to face armed action when the opportunity arises, presumably as the result of its exhilarating moral effect. Comrade Jordan does not say that by building a successful mass movement to force withdrawal of British troops, the British left can educate the workers in a revolutionary perspective, accentuate the contradictions in British society, and train revolutionists in the techniques of organizing the masses so that they can lead the class struggle to the stage of challenging the capitalist order. He says that by fully identifying with the “armed struggle” in Ireland a “revolutionary cadre” will steel its nerve sufficiently to initiate “armed struggle” in its own country.
The implications of this essentially moralistic notion of the role of armed struggle, as well as the sectarianism and ultra-leftism that flowed from separating out armed action in the abstract from the overall struggle and exalting it as a principle became all too evident in the following months.
In The Red Mole’s articles on the question of building a solidarity movement, the emphasis shifted from the need for an effective mass movement in defense of the Irish people to a certain conception of a need to sacrifice breadth for “principle.” As an editorial in the October 5, 1971, Red Mole put it:
If the Irish struggle is to succeed, the British left must fulfil its revolutionary duty. This means a struggle to construct a mass movement in Britain, essentially of British militants, in meaningful solidarity with the Irish struggle. [Emphasis in the original]
In the test of the last three years, only the International Marxist Group and The Red Mole have put forward a programme which corresponds with this. All other tendencies have, alas, been found wanting.
This tone of sectarian boasting and exclusivism is quite familiar on the. British left. In particular, it brings to mind the following statement:
Only the Socialist Labour League and the International Committee opposed direct rule from a class standpoint ...
Only the International Committee and its sections came out unequivocally against the intervention of British troops in Ireland from the very first minute. Against every other tendency we asserted that this was a basic question of principle. (Workers Press, June 28, 1972)
In the October 16, 1970, issue of The Red Mole, an article by Dave Kendall had also put “principle” in the forefront.
The task in Britain is to build an effective solidarity movement. To this end, revolutionary militants must fight for the adoption of principled positions toward the Irish struggle by the British Left which has a lamentable record on this score. The Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) must be an important step toward this end and every revolutionary organisation should offer its active support.
The program of the ISC printed in the same issue included three slogans, however, that overstepped the demand for self-determination:
As a whole, the program of the ISC seemed to represent a compromise between ultra-leftists of an economistic bent who demanded that the British solidarity movement support only those forces that were fighting capitalism as such and ultra-leftists of a more guerrillaist inclination who insisted that “armed struggle” was “the key.” An organization built on such a basis could not but be both sectarian and unstable. The axis of debate had been shifted from defending the right of self-determination to defending specific political tendencies in Ireland. Likewise, discussions of principle became divorced from the question of how to build the broadest and most powerful movement.
As a result of its sectarian character, the ISC became a sectarian battleground, and when the IMG was left in possession of the name, it found that it had captured itself and isolated itself from the mainstream of the solidarity movement. From the sterile ground of the abandoned ISC, the IMG sought to oppose the mass movement that arose in spite of its policy and to a large extent in spite of the conscious policy of all the British left groups.
When the first mass demonstration developed in support of Irish self-determination, The Red Mole’s comment in its November 15, 1971, issue was as follows:
The October 31st demonstration was an important step forward in the building of a campaign in this country in support of the Irish struggle. It showed by its size (at least 20,000) that there is now a basis for a mass campaign on this issue. And more importantly, it also showed (for instance, in the slogans taken up on the demonstration) that there is wide support for a campaign with an explicit solidarity position, i.e. one which goes beyond the two demands of the Anti-Internment League (end internment, withdraw the troops) to a position of solidarity with those forces who are leading the struggle against British imperialism.
Why is this last point so important? It is important because only by taking a position of unconditional solidarity with those forces which are leading the masses in the struggle to defeat British imperialism – i.e. the IRA – can we demonstrate quite unequivocally that we ourselves are for the defeat of our own ruling class. Many genuine revolutionaries believe that the demand for the immediate withdrawal of British troops is adequate for this purpose, and indeed it is essential to include this demand in the platform of any campaign. But this demand on its own is unfortunately ambiguous: it can very easily be taken up and transformed into a ‘Bring the boys home’ campaign based on liberal issues with only a negative impact. Such a campaign avoids the issues of the class struggle, can exist completely independently of them, and in its worst form can even divert resources from that struggle. A solidarity campaign is necessary because only on this basis can a campaign on Ireland become an integral part of the class struggle in this country, and only by becoming an integral part of the class struggle in this country can it actually have any effect. Only by posing the question of solidarity with those struggling for the defeat of British Imperialism, and pointing out that such a defeat for the British ruling class would be a positive victory for the labour movement, can we hope to mobilize sections of the liberal movement on a basis which would change the relationship of class forces in this country. Only in this way can we demonstrate that working class internationalism is not a matter of sentiment but a concrete necessity in the fight against imperialism. As we call for victory to the NLF rather than for peace in Vietnam, because we are for the actual defeat|of imperialism in Vietnam, so it is necessary at the present conjuncture, when the military struggle between the IRA and the British Army is of decisive importance in the North of Ireland, that we come out openly for victory to the IRA. At the present stage of the struggle this is a logical and necessary development flowing out of the slogans, particularly that of national self-determination, on which we have consistently campaigned. We would argue, therefore, that it is necessary to transform the present campaign against internment and for the withdrawal of British troops into a campaign which is in active solidarity with those leading the fight against British imperialism. We believe not only that it is necessary to take up this position, but that the October 31st demonstration showed very clearly the possibility of building a mass campaign on this basis. The IMG and the Spartacus League will continue to work in and support the Anti-Internment League, but with the perspective of winning it to a solidarity position. And in the meantime, we shall also continue to support and build the Irish Solidarity Campaign, as part of the process of building a national campaign in solidarity with those leading the struggle against British imperialism in Ireland, the IRA.
In this statement, the vanguardist orientation of the IMG reached full flower. In the context of Britain, where it was essential to build an effective mass movement in support of the right of the Irish people to self-determination, the sectarian and ultra-left character of this position was absolutely clear. The IMG rejected the perspective of a mass campaign for withdrawal of troops. Why? Because it would necessarily be based on “liberal” issues; that is, the masses demonstrating for withdrawal of troops, for preventing the imperialist government from using its principal instrument of coercion and repression, would not necessarily start off being for revolution in Britain.
A solidarity campaign is necessary because only on this basis can a campaign on Ireland become an integral part of the class struggle in this country, and only by becoming an integral part of the class struggle in this country can it actually have effect.
The IMG’s position was ultimatistic because it denied the masses the opportunity to learn through experience and demanded that they enter into action only on the basis of explicit support for revolution. It was verbalistic because it held that by raising more “revolutionary slogans” the solidarity movement would have a more powerful effect, and it ignored the effect that a mass movement able to appeal to broad layers of the masses and exacerbate the contradictions of British society could have in staying the hand of imperialism and opening up a crisis of its mechanisms of control.
Like most ultra-left sectarian conceptions, this vanguardist approach of the IMG was essentially opportunistic and parasitic. The IMG did not seek to mobilize masses of people in its own country against its own government in support of the Irish people’s right to self-determination. It sought instead to identify itself with the fighters in Ireland more closely than any other force, to feed off their prestige in the circles of youth impatient for a revolutionary example. It said in effect:
We are the only ones who have the guts to say here in Britain everything that the fighters in Ireland are saying (and eventually do everything that they are doing); we represent the same thing here in Britain that they do in Ireland and therefore we must be taken seriously.
It is hardly surprising that the organizations actually fighting in Ireland found the attitude of the IMG at best a dubious compliment. The guerrillas whose positions were supported uncritically by the IMG might find such political defense useful at times, especially in their disputes with advocates of other tactics, but it was clear that the vicarious revolutionism of their imitators in Britain did not offer much help in the struggle against their principal opponent, British imperialism.
This contradiction seems to explain the following piteous lament by a member of the Manchester ISC published in the March 13, 1972, issue of the Red Mole.
I read with great interest the letter from the Lancaster comrades which appeared in The Red Mole 37, and I took particular interest in the part which I.S. played in the expulsion of the I.S.C. from the Irish ‘Solidarity Alliance’ on account of the principled stand which the I.S.C. took in regard to the slogan ‘Victory to the I.R.A.’
Up until 4 weeks ago, the Manchester branch of the I.S.C. of which I am a member consisted of the International Marxist Group, Workers Fight, I.S., Revolutionary Workers Party, Clann na hEireann [the British support group of the Official IRA], and about fifteen individual members, e.g. Irish nurses, building labourers, etc. From the formation of this branch, Clann na hEireann had been opposed to the slogan ‘Victory to the I.R.A.’ and four weeks ago they pulled out of the I.S.C. and after talks with the Provisional Sinn Fein decided to set up an Anti-Internment League.”
This blow was made even more bitter by the fact that “unity” had apparently been achieved in a nice trade-off whereby the I.S. accepted the slogan of “Victory to the IRA” in return for the IMG accepting its slogan of support for the “socialist forces” in Ireland.
Until this point, things had been going well with the branch and its members had been carrying out various activities such as pickets, leafletting and holding public meetings. A compromise had also been reached with I.S. whereby they accepted the slogan ‘Victory to the I.R.A.’ provided the other groups accepted the slogan ‘For a 32-County Workers Republic’ and this was agreed on.
In the same issue, Bob Purdie complained bitterly about the ISC in Glasgow being left in the lurch by IS and Clann na hEireann after an October 16, 1971, demonstration that had resulted in a number of arrests and fines. After leaving the ISC, Purdie explained, IS refused even to attend a unity meeting, giving this “tragic” reply to the IMG’s invitation:
”IS comrades will not be attending your meeting tomorrow night for the following reasons:
In defending the ISC against the IS’s attack, Comrade Purdie pointed to an IS internal document indicating that this sectarian opportunistic organization had no great interest in forming a broad support movement But at the same time, one point in the internal document tried to justify this sectarian attitude by pointing to an ever greater sectarianism on the part of the IMG.
How well was Comrade Purdie able to counter this attempt to shift the blame for failure to develop a broad solidarity movement onto the IMG? The polemic that followed this article indicates that he had some difficulties. In the first place, it drew a bitter attack from Clann na hEireann in a letter published in the May 1, 1972, Red Mole:
It is Clann’s Policy not to countenance the sectarian demands of the I.M.G. but to work closely with those individuals and organisations who are genuinely interested in building a mass movement in support of the Irish struggle.
The Glasgow area leader of the IS also responded quite sharply in a letter in the same issue:
We’ve been working on our own or jointly with Clann since January partly because, as our achievements show, we are actually strong enough to do so. But more crucially, because of deep political differences we have with the IMG on the character and orientation of solidarity work in Glasgow.
Two pages before his attack on us in The Red Mole, Bob [Purdie] pledges the IMG to ‘renew our attempts to build a principled solidarity movement in Britain.’ And he then defines a ‘principled’ movement as one that ‘does not hesitate to say: Victory to the IRA.’
Now as your readers will be well aware, IS’s full programme on Ireland ‘Unconditional but critical support for the IRA’, ‘For a 32-County Socialist Workers’ Republic’, and ‘For the Building of an Irish working-class Revolutionary Party’. But in order to bring into activity on a proper united front basis as many people as possible we are willing to work around slogans that contain less than our maximum demands.
Thus, both IS and Clann in Glasgow prefer to build what Bob would probably describe as an ‘unprincipled’ movement around the minimum programme of demands to ‘End Internment’ and ‘Withdraw the Troops’.”
The IS organizer was also able to make an apparently rather telling point about the October 16 demonstration in Glasgow:
And IS feels that the wearing of berets and combat jackets, and the ‘principled’ unfurling of the Tricolour [the flag of the 26-County state] by the IMG on the October demonstration does bear out my statement in a local discussion document quoted by Bob, that the IMG are ‘ready and willing to sacrifice it (the potential of a mass campaign in Britain) on the altar of sectarianism’.
Comrade Purdie admitted that IMGers masquerading as IRA combatants was a “tactical error” at least in a city like Glasgow where there is a big Orange element:
It is true that IMG members carried a tricolour and wore berets on the October 16th demo. In the context of an Orange counter-demonstration this was a serious tactical mistake. It was not a breach of principle since we have always operated on the basis that individual organisations carry their own banners and slogans on united front demonstrations; IS, for example, carried a banner ‘For a Socialist Workers Republic’, which was not an agreed slogan. However, this cannot be a barrier to unity, since IS co-operated with us twice after this demonstration, and on neither occasion did we repeat our mistake.
In Glasgow, the symbols of Orange and Green are taken seriously. Mass mayhem, for instance, is a standard part of the program in the traditional football games between the Irish Catholic and Protestant teams. In the endemic violence of this decaying and demoralized industrial city the old rivalries between Irish nationalists and loyalists have retained their brutality while losing most of their political content. So, the IMG’s “tactical” error was obvious. Their sectarian demonstration was met by an even larger Orange one, equipped with razors, knives, and even meat cleavers. What is more, the sectarian and exotic character of the demonstration was so salient that the police felt no compulsion to prevent bloodshed and effectively forced the dispersion of the demonstration by knocking off for tea and leaving the make-believe “IRA” cheek to jowl with the real Orangemen. The result was a deep demoralization that long inhibited the left in Glasgow from organizing any open demonstrations in support of the right of the Irish people to self-determination. It does not seem, moreover, that it was very difficult for the IS to ridicule the IMG’s concept of a “principled solidarity movement.”
Comrade Purdie was left with rather weak arguments. Although participants in a mass march would certainly have had a right to wear IRA uniforms if they so desired, an organization whose members took this way of expressing their “principled demand of victory to the IRA” did not seem to have a very effective program for building a mass movement. There is, moreover, no principle that I know of that forbids revolutionists to wear IRA uniforms, and so this “error” must be described in a general way as a “tactical one.” But it did appear to arise from a profoundly erroneous approach and method – an approach that instead of trying to get masses of people to oppose British intervention in Ireland on grounds that they could understand, that is, the right of every nation to determine its own affairs, tried to get revolutionists in Britain to identify with the group and the tactic that the IMG considered most exemplary in Ireland. IMGers actually posing as members of the IRA was all too logically the inevitable outcome of this tendency.
In this context, Comrade Purdie’s argument that the line of “Victory to the IRA” was the most effective line on which to build a mass movement in defense of Irish self-determination seemed quite strained and unreal.
It is true that IMG considers that a principled programme for a solidarity movement would include ‘Victory to the IRA’ or some other formulation which unambiguously supports IRA action against British imperialism in Ireland, and which is for the defeat of the British Army. We totally reject comrade Jefferys’ conceptions about ‘Maximum’ and ‘minimum’ programmes, all of our work, and all of our demands are designed to win support for the right of the Irish people to self-determination, which we regard as being the proper principled stance for revolutionaries in Britain. Our demands are designed to concretise the question of self-determination, i.e. we demand that British troops be withdrawn, and internment be ended because we reject the right of British imperialism to intervene in Ireland, and it is this concept that we try to communicate in our political work. Both of these demands can only be temporary, and related to the immediate situation, for if internment were ended, and the troops withdrawn, the need for solidarity need not necessarily be any the less. The Irish people could be oppressed in just as cruel, if different ways. Because of the need to relate slogans to the changing situation, after internment we adopted the slogan of ‘Victory to the IRA’. This was intended to relate to the fact that a major part of the struggle in Ireland was the armed struggle against the British army carried out by the IRA. A solidarity movement which ignores such a major aspect of the struggle can hardly adequately support the Irish people. And it cannot tackle the problem which press propaganda about the IRA constitutes without an unambiguous position of explaining why armed struggle is necessary. In other words we concretise the demand for self-determination by taking a position on the armed struggle.
Why was it necessary “to take a position on the armed struggle”? Didn’t the slogan of self-determination for the Irish, including the right to determine their own tactics and means of handling foreign troops who had no right in Ireland answer all the arguments the British might raise against “the armed struggle”? Didn’t the demand that the British solidarity movement defend politically all acts of armed violence in Ireland make the task of calling for Irish self-determination much more difficult? Didn’t it in fact compromise the demand for self-determination by supporting a certain tactic in Ireland and therefore eventually the specific group or groups that advocated this tactic? Of course it did. This was the conscious intention of the IMG and was spelled out in its November 15, 1971, statement. A campaign on the demand for British withdrawal alone “avoids the issues of the class struggle, can exist completely independently of them, and in its worst form can even divert resources from that struggle.”
That is, a broad campaign was seen as in contradiction to the need of building the revolutionary organization. Mobilizing the masses to demand the withdrawal of British troops would detract from the “class struggle” in Britain. The purpose of “solidarity” was to educate a “revolutionary cadre” in the IMG’s conception of “armed struggle” which it considered exemplified by the actions of the guerrilla groups in Ireland. The conception of the British section of the Fourth International was clearly sectarian, concerned more with differentiating the “real revolutionists” through a verbally extreme position than with effective work to defend the right of self-determination. The method of the IMG was the same in essence as that of the Socialist Labour League (SLL), except that instead of “working class unity” and a “general strike,” the shibboleth was “armed struggle.”
Furthermore, like the Healyites, the IMG did not have the courage of its sectarian convictions. While insisting on maintaining its own sectarian front group, it pleaded that it had no intention of interfering with “unity in action.”
Comrade Purdie wrote in the May 1, 1972, Red Mole:
But IS and Clann intend to form an AIL in Glasgow. Good. We will support it; we have no intention of counterposing our Irish work to any attempt to achieve unity in action. Since Steve has issued an invitation to The Red Mole readers to work for the AIL demands I hereby apply on behalf of the Glasgow IMG. When do we start Steve? When can we affiliate?
At the same time we have no intention of withdrawing from our work to build a movement on a principled solidarity basis, and while we will not advocate that its activities cut across those of the AIL, we will continue to support and build the ISC. We will also make our opinions on the question of a programme clear within the AIL, while avoiding doing so in a way which would aggravate the present strained relations between ourselves and IS.
If the AIL was not based on a “principled solidarity basis,” how could the IMG participate in it? On the other hand, if it was possible for a revolutionary organization to participate in a principled way in this much larger organization, in fact, the real united-front organization on the Irish question, why did the IMG need the ISC? The only possible explanation was that it knew that it could not lead a broad movement on the basis of its “victory to the IRA” line but wanted to be in a position where it could parasitize off the broad movement, building a periphery through a deliberately exclusive organization, the type of organization exemplified by the “revolutionary contingents” built by the ultra-left groups in the big anti-war marches in the United States.
But then in the fall of 1972, the IMG succeeded in taking the leadership of the AIL, winning it to a “solidarity” position. It took such firm leadership in fact that Comrade Purdie himself took the job of national organizer. The former organizer, it was explained by Comrade Lawless in The Red Mole, had lost interest in the position, the organization no longer being able to pay him a salary. About the same time, the ISC voted to merge with the AIL, which had gone into a deep decline following the downturn in the struggle in Ireland that began with the introduction of direct rule in the spring of 1972. Did the assumption of the main responsibility for the antiimperialist movement mean that the IMG had decided to take the lead in building a broad movement? Did it mean that it could build such a movement on the basis of its line of “Victory to the IRA”? Alas – to use a favorite interjection of the Red Mole – neither seemed to be the case.
Instead the IMG seemed determined to assume the dubious honor of riding a dying horse to its death. Instead of taking up the responsibility for building an effective movement in defense of the Irish people, the IMG seemed rather to be taking the responsibility for giving the coup de grâce to the one reasonably effective anti-imperialist organization, which was being rapidly abandoned by the other sectarian British groups that had always been lukewarm at best about mobilizing masses in support of the Irish right of self-determination. Once again, as in the case of the original ISC, the IMG seemed only to be putting itself in a position where IS could shift the whole blame for sectarian wrecking onto it.
A document submitted to the May 1973 National Committee plenum of the IMG gave the same sort of qualifiedly optimistic assessment of the AIL that was typical of similar statements about the ISC:
Since last spring the AIL has been in a state of slow disintegration; the successes we have had, in the November 14th and Bloody Sunday mobilisations have produced slight upturns, but these have been temporary, and have slowed down the rate of decline rather than overcoming it. The cause of the downturn is clear, it is the change in the conjuncture since Direct Rule, which has turned the ‘politics of the last atrocity’ against us. Seen in this context, the maintenance of the AIL on its present level is a considerable achievement, and one which was only won through a hard political struggle. A struggle which we started before the change in the conjuncture, and which, despite tactical errors, enabled us to consolidate a united front, firm enough to stand up in this last period.
The London bombings and the Police offensive have seriously weakened the AIL. The pressure of ‘public opinion’, which reached gale force after the bombings, and the grim reality of state repression, have induced a desertion by liberal and reformist elements, and a hiatus in the activity of less politically developed sections, especially in the branches where Irish workers predominate. There is still a core of committed people, and as the situation changes the inactive elements will return; but they are at present mainly engaged outside the AIL in anti-repression work.
Against the Stream noted the strong tendency to pull away from the AIL by Republicans. This was arrested by the success of the two mobilisations, and in the case of the Provos by pressure from Dublin (in the case of Clann the pressure from Dublin was in the opposite direction). The new conjuncture has given these tendencies a strong impetus, Clann, at a recent Ard Coiste (National Cttee) meeting, disaffiliated. At present however there is no sign of IS following suit, and the AIL will continue to receive the support of Clann and SF [Provisional Sinn Fein] members who are committed to the AIL.
As dim as the prospects of the AIL seemed to the IMG leadership in May 1973, they looked brighter than in the concluding phase of the ISC. A document written in December 1972 and approved by the IMG Irish Commission described the phases of the organization’s work as follows:
Perhaps it was this period of “relative” isolation Comrade Purdie was speaking about when he said at the conference of the Irish Trotskyists in March that for a whole period the ISC in London consisted of five persons who drank together in the same pub. Consistently optimistic, to be sure, Comrade Purdie stressed that this was better than their drinking in five separate pubs.
Another document submitted to the IMG leadership for discussion, How to Lead from Behind by Comrade Sykes, made it clear, moreover, that the “shift, of the AIL to a solidarity position” came none too soon for the leaders of the IMG’s Irish work.
Were we correct, after the Anti-Internment League had been set up, to maintain the Irish Solidarity Campaign in existence?
The answer to this must be NO. It is not enough to say that the IMG-ISC comrades were involved in, intervened in or even played a leading role in the AIL during this period. The point is, we did maintain the ISC as a separate organization, justified this politically, and in so doing seriously miseducated the IMG rank and file who were involved in their local areas on the question of Ireland. Why were we wrong in so doing? Firstly, the IMG allowed its own position on the question of slogans or demands to act as a barrier to achieving the broadest possible unity in opposition to the oppressive role of British imperialism in Ireland. In maintaining the ISC during this period we were being straightforwardly sectarian. In Oxford, for instance, and this was probably typical of quite a number of IMG branches at this time, the IMG was the only organized force in the ISC. Not only that but we refused to set up an AIL when other forces were attempting to do so, namely IS, encouraged by John Gray (who came to Oxford twice for this purpose). Our reason for not co-operating was the fact that the AIL would not adopt our slogan on the IRA.
In other words we refused to work in a united front with other groups who did not accept our position.
Firstly, was it a question of principle? Would it have been unprincipled to merge ISC and AIL when AIL was set up? No. The AIL was never an unprincipled alliance. If the AIL had been built around a demand for ‘Peace’ in Ireland, it would have been an entirely different matter. But quite a few IMG comrades approached this as a principled issue. This error was reinforced by the Red Mole’s statement on the merger to the effect that there was no principled political difference which justified maintaining the separate organizations, thereby implying that it was a principled question before that. The argument put forward to explain our tactic towards the AIL was more or less as follows. Here on the one hand, are we, the IMG/ISC, with the correct programme. There, on the other hand, are the masses of the AIL that we want to talk to. So what we have to do is to fight to bring the AIL to the solidarity position so that we can join it.
Now a number of things need to be said. First we were obviously correct to disband ISC and work in the AIL. But we did it too late and we gave the wrong reason for doing so. If the AIL had not adopted the solidarity position what would we have done? Eventually, I think we would have merged, because of the incorrectness of maintaining the ISC was becoming more obvious to a lot of comrades, and for the correct reason. But because the AIL did change its programme we were able to merge without having to confront the incorrectness of our past position, a position which we still, at this late stage, completely justify: ‘we were correct to have this tactical arrangement as a precaution since at any time the situation in the AIL could have changed, and made it more difficult for us to consolidate our leadership.’ (Purdie, Against the Stream, 26-12-72). At the November AIL conference there was a motion proposed to the effect that the AIL drop the solidarity slogan. If that had passed would we have walked out? Obviously it would be wrong to do so. I’m sure Cd McGovern would also oppose walking out. But the point is, the line we have taken in the past on the AIL can only miseducate and confuse members as to what would be politically correct in that sort of situation. Most likely we would come up with some kind of manoeuvre which kept us half in and half out.”
The same document disposed rather effectively, although in ponderous and obscure paragraphs, of the basic political premises underlying the IMG’s Irish work since 1971:
(3) Should the Solidarity Movement be based on Revolutionary Defeatist Programme?
Having cleared away the wrong sort of argument for engaging in ‘programmatic struggle’ it is now necessary to confront the real argument. This argument is stated quite clearly in the 1972 Conference Document and again in Against the Stream, and it is as follows:
“The principled revolutionary position of solidarity with the forces struggling against British Imperialism was not separable from the programme necessary to draw wider forces around the revolutionary vanguard and augment its efforts to engage in immediate political action on the Irish question” (AtS 4).
“The essence of our position is that in order to build a movement based on self determination we must demand that it explicitly support the armed struggle of the IRA against the British Army” (Conference Document, p. 15).
The need, for reasons already explained, is for a broadly based movement among the mass vanguard in Britain which opposes Britain’s war in Ireland. In the normal run of affairs, the initial impetus for such a movement will come from the organised vanguard, in other words, from the various political tendencies. It may or may not be the case that the common position shared by the organised vanguard is one of revolutionary defeatism. In any case the task which is then posed is to build the movement, initiated by the organised vanguard, and extend it into the working class and other social layers, to make it quantitatively and qualitatively an effective challenge to the British war effort. Now what the above argument says is that in order to extend the movement outside the ranks of the political tendencies, a programme based on revolutionary defeatism is essential. Therefore it is correct and necessary to struggle for that programme inside the UF [United Front] as a means towards building the broader movement.
Now, on the face of it, this doesn’t at all seem to be obviously correct [Amen! – GF]. It would appear to be a plausible argument to say that, although it would be correct, inside such a broad movement, for revolutionaries to put forward a revolutionary defeatist programme, nevertheless the mass vanguard is not a ‘revolutionary’ vanguard and will not be mobilised by political tendencies on a programme of ‘principled revolutionary defeatism’.
This position, on how to build a broad movement has never been seriously questioned in the IMG. The experience of the VSC [Vietnam Solidarity Campaign] has become a norm. The American experience is regarded as either an exception or as involving some sort of questionable politics. So, without prejudging what is correct, it is necessary to look at the arguments that have been offered so far to back up this position.
Arg. 1 “Without a clear position of support for those who are carrying on armed struggle against the British Army any mass movement would split in the face of disagreements about particular military tactics, especially since the entire propaganda machine of the British bourgeoisie is striving to create such disagreements.” (Conf. Doct., p. 6).
Now this argument misses a very important point about united front campaigns, namely, that they are not meant to eliminate political antagonisms. Of course there are going to be disagreements. Among the thousands that demonstrated after the massacre of Derry’s Bloody Sunday there must have been a section that demonstrated to protest this particular atrocity but without understanding the need to support the military tactics of the other side. Similarly, growing out of the experience of their own struggle against the British ruling class, an increasing section of the mass vanguard may come to understand that Britain is exploiting Irish workers also and is in fact using her troops to maintain this exploitation. This could lead to their understanding the need for a troops withdrawal from Ireland but, once again without understanding the need to support the Provos in their military campaign. Now what follows from this? Not that we ‘dilute our politics’ to accommodate to the lowest level. Posing the question in this way gets us off on the wrong foot right from the start. The task of the revolutionary group vis à vis these elements is clearly to advance and explain our own position, namely why it is necessary to support the armed struggle of the IRA. In fact, if the AIL did ever grow into a real mass united front, the political tendencies with a position of revolutionary defeatism would probably be in a minority. To say that the UF would be ‘split’ over such disagreement can only be based on the confusion that unity of programme is a prerequisite for unity of action. If this were the case then the whole question of the UF could not even be raised.
Arg. 2 “But the most important reason for having a clear position on this question iB that it is on this point that the interests of the Irish and British workers are most highly integrated, precisely because this is the sharpest point of the struggle. We must advance a position of revolutionary defeatism, a defeat for the Army in Ireland would enormously strengthen the British working class and a consciousness of this fact among the British working class would enormously advance their revolutionary potential.” (Conf. Doct., p. 6).
Of course all this is true, if we were talking about the revolutionary group. Objectively, the interests of Irish & British workers are highly integrated at this point, objectively a defeat for the army would strengthen the British working class. Subjectively, however, there is a deficiency here, namely that the British working class does not understand this. The UF tactic is precisely an important way of overcoming this to some extent, because, by creating a broadly based unity of action against the war, the conditions are created in which the methods, the propaganda and the leadership of the revolutionary group can be effective in advancing the consciousness of sections of the mass vanguard on precisely such questions as these. This however is not an argument about the programme of the UF, it is an argument about the task of a revolutionary group inside a UF, namely the politics it puts across to the mass elements that are drawn to the UF.
Arg. 3 “Up to now we have rejected the course of building a Troops Out Movement because we knew that a movement built on such a limited political basis could not be a vehicle for ongoing political action on the Irish question during such times as the struggle remains outside the understanding and concern of all but a small section of the vanguard in Britain.” (Against the Stream, p. 4).
What this argument says is that at a time when only the organized political tendencies can be brought into action on Ireland, the following is true:
I doubt very much that either of those is true. Let’s take them in order. Firstly, whatever stability the AIL has had, it is just so much idealism to say that this was because of some section of its programme. Let’s look at what Against the Stream says about the attitudes of the various tendencies inside the AIL during this period.
Clan Some elements were hostile, but they stayed in because it provided them with a local platform and a milieu from which to recruit. Clan has since withdrawn from AIL.
SF [Provisional Sinn Fein] Almost pulled out after AIL Conference. Staying in because of pressure from Dublin and change in composition of London Comhairle Ceanntar. Has now also withdrawn.
IS Completely opportunist, they’ll work when there’s a chance of recruiting. A small section politically committed.
IMG Only IMG is completely committed to building the AIL. Despite this shaky arrangement AIL has remained stable. Why? Firstly, because of the ongoing war in Ulster which, despite some conjunctural downturn has remained at a fairly constantly high level and, over a given period of say one year, produces a fair number of ‘high points’ of mobilizers. Thus in one year we have had the Bloody Sunday Massacre, the campaign to defend the liberated areas, operation Motorman, the Hunger Strike in Belfast jail, Aldershot, the arrest of MacStiofain in the South etc. Secondly the political activity on the issue of Ireland during the past three years has politicized a small but steady section of the organized vanguard.
As for the policy of the leaders of the IMG’s Irish work, Sykes pointed out that it remained the same as in the period of the ISC – maintenance of a sectarian position while in fact tail-ending broader movements developing outside its purview.
The real problem posed for the revolutionary vanguard in this country now is how to broaden the forces in Britain resisting the British war in Ireland, how to orient to the developing crisis in British society resulting from the Irish war and to adopt the tactics appropriate to this orientation ...
How is this question posed in Against the Stream? It is posed in terms of do we or do we not have a strategy of building a TOM [Troops Out Movement]? The answer it gives is no, because this is not a stable basis for a UF and it is not a basis for extending the movement, but if such a movement got under way we would have a tactical orientation to it, while maintaining the strategy of building a solidarity movement (i.e. one based on a programme of revolutionary defeatism).” (Emphasis in the original.)
This document is rather unclear on the question of an alternative to the IMG leadership’s line in Irish work and it does not break fundamentally with the methodology of the IEC majority. However, in the context of this discussion, the IMG leadership’s discovery of a “new conjuncture” becomes more understandable. The perspective was outlined by Comrade Purdie in the January 13, 1973, conference of the AIL. This is the way the January 20 Red Mole summarized his report:
He outlined the work done over the past few years in building a solidarity movement from the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign to the present AIL. The main lesson he drew from this experience was that at certain times (e.g. after internment) it was possible and absolutely necessary to try to build a movement involving the largest possible number of people around simple demands (e.g. ‘End Internment’). Nevertheless, it was also necessary at times to fight within that movement for more developed political demands (such as explicit support for the military struggle of the IRA). Unless this was done, experience has shown that the movement will crumble with a change in the situation in Ireland (as the introduction of direct rule showed). The central basis of such demands must be the right of the Irish to self-determination.
He also pointed out the possibilities in the near future for building a movement on the basis of ‘Troops Out of Ireland’, and said that the AIL must be ready to take all opportunities for constructing such a movement.
In the February 17, 1973, issue of the Red Mole Comrade Lawless argued that the latest British atrocity in the New Lodge Road area had increased the possibility for building a “TOM.”
But the result of their desperate rampage increased the pressure in British society for a withdrawal from Ireland – this pressure is reflected in the Labour Party’s careful airing of the demand to ‘Bring our Boys Home’. This demand is highlighted by the centrist Eric Heffer who joined Wilson’s stalking-horse on this issue, James Wellbeloved, to call for the withdrawal of ‘our boys’, while at the same time protecting himself against allegations of being an anti-imperialist by referring to the dangers our boys have to face from the ‘savages’ on both sides.
However half-hearted this demand, it contains serious dangers for Whitelaw. The shifting of the Tribunites [Labour party leftists] could easily provoke a movement by Harold Wilson to break bi-partisanship on Ireland and in turn precipitate a stampede in Britain for the withdrawal of troops, leading to the anti-war and solidarity movements of thousands gaining the strength of millions, and even reaching such proportions as to threaten to rend the fabric of British society on this issue.
Revolutionary socialists involved in rallying aid for the struggle in Ireland must, in the next crucial weeks, be sensitive to these possibilities and prepare now the initiatives to gather and organise this potential.’ (Emphasis in original.)
Comrade Lawless’s article pointed to the May 19 AIL conference on The British Labour Movement and the British Army in Ireland that was to concretize the new line. The statement adopted there called for activity along the following lines:
The British working class must support only those solutions which give the Irish people, as a whole, the right to solve Ireland’s problems, and deny any further interference by British imperialism. The central demand must be for the immediate withdrawal of British troops, the political prisoners and detainees must be released, and all repressive legislation abolished. Unless the British working class uses its strength to win these demands, the methods now being used in Ireland will be turned against them.” (Red Weekly, May 25, 1973, emphasis in original.)
In a document by one of the principal leaders of the Irish Commission, entitled The Central Orientation of Our Irish Work, the aim of the May 19 conference was explained this way:
The May 19th conference therefore should not be seen as the founding conference of a TOM. It has a limited function of intervening in this conjuncture to show how the struggle in Ireland links up immediately with the problems confronting the British working class, and to win a small number of Trade Unionists to work within the TUs [trade unions] against the repression in Ireland. This would have two effects:
We should explain why we are in solidarity with the IRA, and the other organisations resisting British Imperialism, but should make it clear that this is not a barrier to our collaboration with Others who do not take this position against the repression.
But although the issue of repression is important, we must resist any tendency to get stuck at the level of an anti-repression campaign. We did not choose to fight on this ground; without a successful challenge to repression we cannot get any further, but our aim must be to get on to the ground of opposition to the British Army. And so far as is possible we should be attempting to direct the forces involved in the anti-repression work towards our central orientation.”
Thus, despite bows in the direction of a broader movement, the method of the leaders of the IMG’s Irish work has obviously not changed. Their basic orientation remains sectarian and parasitic. Their main objective remains to mark out a “revolutionary circle” within the general movement that their political conceptions cannot promote or focus. This broad current of revulsion against the imperialist repression in Ireland has in fact tended to develop outside the purview of the IMG. While the IMG leaders have failed signally to offer this broad movement a perspective, they have been forced again and again to bow to it, have irresistibly been drawn into its wake. The IMG’s turns and the “many-sided” nature of its work are not thus an example of its “flexibility” and the “sophistication” of its tactics but simply an expression of the general law that normally the tail does not wag the dog.
The inevitable result of the IMG’s sectarian politics, its contempt for the mass movement, is that it has proved unable to play a leadership role but in fact has been forced to tail-end the masses. In fact, the turn toward a “TOM” seems to represent not simply tail-ending the masses but a deliberate attempt to tail-end the Labour party lefts, or even Wilson himself.
The author of The Central Orientation of Our Irish Work gives the following arguments against trying to form a “TOM,” such as the backward anti-Vietnam war movement in the U.S.
The author of this document seems to think that the anti-war movement in the United States developed almost automatically (or perhaps spontaneistically) and that its victories were handed to it at the start.
What, for example, produced the split in the ruling class? Wasn’t it the growing fear that the effects of the war on American society were too costly to justify the expenses needed to continue the war? That is, precisely the existence of forces determined to focus the anti-war sentiment into a powerful mass movement capable of inhibiting the power of American imperialism to make war?
Why did the “youth vanguard” take up the issue of Vietnam? The young radical organizations that existed at the start of U.S. involvement in Indochina showed no great desire to defend the Vietnamese people’s right of self-determination. The American Trotskyists had to wage a hard fight to make Vietnam the central issue for the left in the United States and to prevent all sorts of reformists and ultra-leftists from diverting the “youth vanguard” to other issues that they thought could be springboards to make the war “an integral part of the class struggle” in the U.S.
Furthermore, the issues at stake in Vietnam did not look at all clear to the “youth vanguard” in the early sixties. It was only a determined campaign on the central question – the right of the Vietnamese people to determine their own future – that clarified the issues in Vietnam.
Most importantly, although the U.S. Army was a conscripted one, anti-war sentiment was only openly expressed within it when a powerful anti-war movement was operating within the society at large. The demoralization and disaffection of the army was the reflection of the political forces at work in civilian society. The author of The Central Orientation seems to regard military discipline as a politically autonomous factor. In fact, it is only one element in capitalist ideological hegemony. The ability of capitalist society to convince soldiers, professional or conscript, to face death and injury in its defense depends on general confidence in the policy of the bourgeoisie. A mercenary force like the French Foreign Legion, made up of desperados, outcasts, and lumpen fascistic elements might not be so readily affected by the general political moods of the society. But this is hardly the case with a professional army of the British type, which is made up largely of young workers in need of jobs who were attracted by the advantages offered by the recruiters.
In fact, the British army in Ireland seems to be a fair mirror of British society. Despite the attempts of the officers to keep the ranks in a state of constant tension, there is a whole gamut of attitudes running through various strata from brutalized Glasgow slum toughs to very young and obviously frightened English youths. The fact that wives of soldiers started a “bring the boys home” campaign on their own indicates the possibilities for organizing in the army. The question arises, then, why the IMG leadership was so willing to believe that the youth in the British army were hardened killers and robots of repression. Similar attitudes were present among the ultra-leftists and pacifists in the American anti-war movement where they quite clearly reflected petty-bourgeois elitism and contempt for the working class. The Socialist Workers party had to wage a long hard fight against these tendencies to defend not only its perspective of mass mobilization against the war but its fundamental proletarian orientation.
If the British army has no “close links” with the population, as The Red Mole has claimed, how can writers in the same organ (now entitled Red Weekly) talk about important sentiment in the Labour party for “getting our boys out”? No matter how they interpret the political implications of such sentiment, its very existence makes nonsense of former “analyses” that presented the army as a mercenary force separated off from political influence by a Chinese wall of “military discipline” and “professionalism.” If the esprit de corps and discipline of a “professional” army precludes work among soldiers, how could the petition campaigns of their relatives calling for withdrawal begin and develop as it has? If this military discipline was so formidable, why should the relatively small number of casualties suffered by the British forces in Ireland have led to such an obvious demoralization? Isn’t it fundamentally because of the political conviction that the role of the troops was not defensible, that the cause in which they were asked to fight was not worth even a hundred lives in four years?
Why did the IMG have to wait for the development of an actual attempt to organize a withdrawal movement in army circles before it began to pay any attention to this type of activity? Why didn’t it raise this perspective from the start?
The only possible answer is that it was blinded by sectarian and elitist political conceptions. Therefore it could not offer a perspective. It could only “reorient” empirically to this vitally important activity once it actually began to develop. That is, it did not lead the mass movement but tail-ended it.
The sentiment for withdrawal is not a new “conjunctural” phenomenon in Britain. In its October 5, 1971, issue The Red Mole declared:
In Britain itself, a recent opinion poll showed that despite the mass hysteria of the British press, despite the treachery of the Social Democracy, despite the virtual desertion of the Irish struggle by a large section of the British Left, 58% of the British population support the recall of the British troops from Ireland. This percentage will grow as more and more British troops return home to the graveyards and mental homes of Britain.
Thus, despite all the IMG leaders’ claims about it being qualitatively more difficult to build a mass movement for withdrawal in Britain than it was in the U.S., two years ago the percentage of the British population favoring withdrawal was greater than the percentage of such sentiment in the United States until the final phase of the anti-war movement.
Furthermore, there is a curious contradiction between the IMG leaders’ arguments about the peculiar difficulties of building a mass withdrawal movement in Britain and their apparent expectation that the Labour party will do them the favor of creating a withdrawal movement for its own political advantage. This expectation is logical, however, in view of the conceptions expressed in the November 15, 1971, Red Mole article:
Many genuine revolutionaries believe that the demand for the immediate withdrawal of British troops is adequate for this purpose, and indeed it is essential to include this demand in the platform of any campaign. But this demand on its own is unfortunately ambiguous: it can very easily be taken up and transformed into a ‘Bring the boys home’ campaign based on liberal issues with only a negative impact.
Since a withdrawal campaign, then, would be essentially “liberal,” why not expect the Labour party to build one, which revolutionists could then support as having some “conjunctural” usefulness?
It is likely in fact that elements of the Labour party may support or even initiate protests against British involvement in Ireland if popular pressure is sufficient, possibly to gain a political lever against the Tory hawks or to co-opt anti-war sentiment. Even the American Democratic party did that. But to expect the Labour party to conduct a withdrawal campaign in any consistent way would be to believe that the social imperialists themselves are capable of fighting imperialism, of defending the right of oppressed peoples to self-determination.
This is the opportunistic implication of the IMG leaders’ sectarian and ultra-left orientation. This concept alone indicates that the Labour reformists will prove incapable of giving impetus to a mass withdrawal movement, even if they empirically readjust their course to accommodate to the mass sentiment for withdrawal. This conception also indicates the real basis of the IMG’s objections to building a “bring the boys home movement.” They flow from a rejection of the role of democratic demands in the struggle against imperialism, a rejection of the method of the Transitional Program – that is, mobilizing the masses on the basis of their present level of consciousness in a struggle that leads them objectively in battles against the decaying capitalist-imperialist system that can no longer satisfy reasonable democratic and immediate economic demands.
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Last updated: 20 January 2020