Your recent interviews with notables from the "Official" Sinn Fein movement leads me to make a few comments about the concept of the struggle in Ireland, and the forces engaged in it.
Firstly I feel Bob Purdie, in Aug. Red Mole, was too kind to the "Red Republicans" who, he claims, have declared for a Workers Republic. In fact they have proposed the formation of a National Liberation Front with the Communist Party of Ireland, a Stalinist organisation which accepted the "British Road to Socialism". Included in this Front were to be the progressive Chambers of Commerce. In such a front how could the interests of exploiter and exploited be reconciled?
The "Official Republicans" in January 1970 opposed a People's Democracysponsored motion on Civil Rights in the South at the annual conference of the CRA by supporting a "reference back" motion. Seemingly the Fianna Fail leadership of the South should not yet be opposed.
The Officials have also pleaded for the retention of Stormont, the puppet Parliament of our Imperialist masters. They feel we need more democracy, not less, and that Stormont anyway is an Irish institution! More democracy in the Six Counties means simply more bourgeois democracy, more participation for the Catholic middle class in the institutions of the Government. That's why the "Officials" support NICRA's Bill of Rights campaign. That is why the abstentionist Republicans (the officials still support abstentionism) now demand the retention of a Parliament they don't recognise!! It is not the duty of Socialists Stalinists (like Mairin De Burca who is and Revolutionaries to defend the instruments of Imperialist Oppression. The Red Mole 16th-31st Oct. 1970 Page 6 In pursuance of the concept of a NLF type struggle the "Officials" have tended to place class issues to the background.
In the important cement strike militant support from Republicans was nonexistent. Verbal support was not enough for the People's Democracy. We took militant action on a class issue resulting in 17 of our members going to Court.
The people's army i.e. the IRA, stood on the side-lines.
The campaign by Republicans on Fishing Rights is basically a petit-bourgeois tactic. This campaign doesn't really affect people's jobs, but their activity is in their spare time. On the other hand, P.D., seeing the deprivation caused to the Lough Neagh Fishermen and the threat to 300 jobs, took militant action. Now 14 of our members face gaol for defending the rights of the Fishermen. This is obviously a class issue, but the right of anglers to fish is not a class issue.
The differences between the People's Democracy and the Official Republicans stem from different approaches to the Irish situation. We in the P.D. believe the struggle must be a Socialist struggle. That a National Revolution to establish an independent capitalist Ireland, we hold to be impossible. Only the working class can lead the Irish Revolution. Only the raising of the class issues and the struggle for the Workers' Republic can smash sectarianism and show the way forward for the Irish people.
Finally may I say that we in the P.D. teel that support from English revolutionaries should not be for the struggle in Ireland, but for the Socialist struggle in Ireland. I personally find it hard to believe that English Trotskyists would support quoted as saying she believed there is equality of opportunity in the USSR) in preference to supporting a group like the P.D. who do in fact reject Stalinism and are struggling for Permanent Revolution.
Yours fraternally, Gerry Ruddy, 75 University Avenue, Belfast 7.
We on The Red Mole are gratified to find that Irish revolutionaries such as comrade Ruddy think our coverage of Ireland important enough to criticise, and we welcome the opportunity to extend the discussion between British and Irish revolutionaries.
Our central disagreement with comrade Ruddy's letter is not on his assessment of the Irish Republican movement, although we will comment on this below, but on the attitude which he thinks British revolutionaries should take towards the various movements in Ireland, and to the general struggle there. This discussion is particularly important just now because it coincides with disagreements amongst revolutionaries in Britain about the role of the Irish Solidarity Campaign as a movement in Britain to support the Irish struggle.
Gerry says, "We in the P.D. feel that support from English revolutionaries should not be for the struggle in Ireland, but for the Socialist struggle in Ireland."
This leads us to ask, what other struggle is there? However, he clarifies the point a few lines further on, when he questions our support for Mairin De Burca (of Sinn Fein), "in preference to supporting a group like P.D."
We will deal later with the whole question of our attitude to both movements, but we want to take up the suggestion that we ought to support P.D. specifically. We support People's Democracy (P.D.) in all its actions against British imperialism and Irish capitalism, but we recognise the simple fact that P.D. does not have hegemony, there are a number of other organisations and individuals involved in that struggle (including the Republicans). We are anxious to learn about the activities of all of these tendencies, to critically examine them, and to try to make an assessment of which of them will struggle most effectively. At present we do not think that this question can be answered, therefore we cannot support any one organisation.
What Is Our Central Responsibility? But we think that our central responsibility towards Irish revolutionaries is to attempt to build a movement here to combat their most powerful enemy, British imperialism. We believe that all of Ireland's problems, historical or contemporary, are directly attributable to that imperialism. We think that we, who live in the belly of the monster, should.do everything possible to fight its domination of Ireland; that means to build a broad movement in support of the right of the Irish people to self-determination, not to tell them what they should do about their problems, but to try and gain them the right to solve these problems for themselves. We do have opinions on how they can go forward but we will not make their acceptance of those opinions a condition for our support; that means even if the main forces fighting British imperia lism did not accept a socialist perspective, we would still support them. It is on this basis that we want to build the Irish Solidarity Campaign But the fact is that everyone who is genuinely fighting British imperialism in Ireland does recognise, in however confused and inconsistent a way, the need to combat its agent, Trish capitalism. There is no genuine contradiction between supporting the struggle "in general" and supporting the socialist organisations; the only contradiction would be in supporting particula organisations before the issue of who will lead the main struggle has been clarified.
Our attitude to the P.D. and the Republicans is based on the concept outlined above, namely that the leadership of the Irish revolution is yet to be decided. We support the many positive actions of both organisations, are critical of many things which we consider wrong with both organisations, are uncommitted about other aspects.
P.D., the Republic Movement and Our selves One criticism we would have of P.D. is the sectarian attitude it seems to have taken towards the developments in the Republican movement.