As a member of one of the 2 republican organisations Rayner Losaght alleges to be least affected by Scalinism" (Clann na h Elreann), I am writing to reply to his letter in the Mole (No.8, Vol.2).
Comrade Lysaght's agrues that the split in the Republican movement (which had been maturing since the mid-sixties), received a violent jolt in Aug. "69, with the "frilure to secession of Dec, 1969/70 Jan. Thus the split came before the "outstanding defects of the Stalinite method: the peaceful road to socialisms in N. Ireland and the 2 stage theory had been exposed. As a result polarisation of members of the IRA and Sinn Fein to "officials" or "Provisionals" was on the basis of allegiance to either purist physical force nationalists or Stalinist social reformist.
Lysaght then poses the question can the official evolution co the ryur de avertede Answer: "It is possible that it could turn leftwards again, but this is doubtful."
If this is correct then the future for the left" in Ireland in the 1970s is very bleak, However I belleve that the evidence, produced to support this theory, is both cursory and selective and the argument is marred by statements which are either inaccurate or overstated.
Two examples:1) He states, "today Gardiner Place's influence in N.Ireland is limited to two areas of Belfast." On the contrary, within Belfast the officials possess approximatly equal organisational strength to the Provisionals (though they lack the latters steady flow of Free State based money), while in the rest of the 6 Cos the officials are much stronger than the Provisionals.
Statements such as the above cun only weaken Lysaght's credibility with Left Republicans.
2) In his anxiety to attribute the injection of the stalinist virus into the officials to King St. Lysaght declares; -rares was not secessful in achieving his aims; but was successtul in Imposing the policies chat he thought should achleve these aims The socialists were forced out and were not asked to return by Greaves, In a few lines Greaves Is transformed by implication from a partially su coessful policy advisor to "hatchet man-in-chief" of the "Stalinist"
denship.
These, admittedly, are minor points. They do however add fale support to Lysaght's theory and are very much in line with the interpretation of the present situation of the Officials provided by the "news" as reported by the Flanna Fail Coogan "Trish Press", He quotes the Ground Rents and Fisheries Campaigns, as evidence of the process of stalinisation within the Official leadership's development of strategy. The following passage is the nearest he comes to actually defining what this process is, "the conscious limiting of socialist perspectives being imposed by the leadership." This is inadequate, both in its application to the policies of the Official leadership, and as a means of identifying the Individual Stalinists within the leadership. Nor, I believe, Is it adequate for the nailing of these activities as "petit bourgeois", (see below).
The "official" leadership is not homogenous and the motivation of its members for adopting the same lines of action is not identical. This is not to deny that some of the members of the Sino Fein Ard Comharile and Army Council may be "Stalinists" It is to deny that their presence automatically tums the Republican movement or its leadership into their vehicle. To judge from Comrade Lysaght's letter anyone would think that the leadership of the movement consisted of 5 Dublin based Republicans 4 of whom are "Stalinists"
He suggests that the left-wing speoches of people like Goulding are primarily verbal genuflections before the "Workers Republic" altar. Doubtless he would regard Sean Garland's article "Building Revolution" in the "United Irishman" (May 1971) as being in the same rein. Sean Garland writes of "a rise in the working class consciousness Only through struggles can the workers build the actual organs through which they cun tomorrow take over the administration of the economy and the State, freely elected workers committees at factory or street level which will federate themselves afterwards locally, regionally, and nationully. That is what the conquest of political power really means.
He concludes, "Above all, it must be bome in mind that whatever actions are engage in, housing agications, land and fishery agitations, civil rights or cultural agitations, all are bound up with and must be linked with the fight. for freedom and socialism, and that in all these fights so establish the rights of the ordinary people there is a class fight. We must demonstrate bo all Irish people that our movement expresses the interests of that most exploited class, the working class, and that we have the programme and the polley, the aim to make that class victorinus at last, in the long struggle for freedom and socialism.
The sins here are, as usual, sins of omission; Garland makes no specific reference to the uctual means by which the workers chemselves are to be mobilised-only their relationship to other asperts of the anit-Imperialist struggle than their own. To Lysaght this, no doubt is the "conscious limiting of socialist perspectives -Stalinism, in operation again. I believe that this is evidenee, guite simply, of the lack of knowledge and experience of working class struggle many of those in the leadership of the movement possess. Yet Gurlands lack of experien could hardly be attributed to his"petit-bourgeols" back ground!
Lysaghts disparaging remarks about the "Fish-ins" and Ground Rent strikes are significant, more for what they revela about his attitude towards Republicans and certain aspeets of the anti-Imperialist struggle, then for what they implicity state. He sees the drift into both these agitations as a sign "that the Stalinites myth of the 'two stage theory' encouraged such people as Costello, Gill, Goulding and O Toole to accept the limitations of their petit-bourgeois of Irelands exploiters. we being taken bus burners, he refers to. petit-bourgeois nature. it was Goulding more than anyone else who was res ponsible for tbe turn to the left. How did socialists Ilke Lysaght react to the opportunity this created?
Lysaght says Many of us believed that, after all, the bulk of the movernent was made up of genuine revolutionaries, who would be abenated, evencually, by the outstunding defects of the Stalinite melhod." A belief, apparently, that did not inspire them to actually join an organisation of "genuine revolutionaries" in order to further the process of alienation. There is a certain wishful element involved (Soar Bire?)
Republicans uncbeckable It them: the Irish Citizen Army. ultimate tactics.
Yours fratemaily, Padring Yeets 67 Birchcood Crescent Birmingham - 12.
GLUSSART clann na newcann-me ORE Kepublicar oreantation for Trish exiles in Britain Gardiner Place-the HQ. of the "Offimals"
Greares -C. Desmond Greaves; British C.I. 's chief idealogue on Irish questions.
Ard Comhairle-Executive Council Goukling Cathal Goulding: Current Chief of Staff of the Offiolat IRA.
Sean Garland- National Organiser of the Official Repubbcan Movement.
N. W.R.L. -National Waters Restoration Loggue, United Front body cumpaigning gainst private control of frish Fishing richts Gaeltacht-Irish speaking areas.
Ard Fheis-Conference.
Socialist Party of Ireland-scal group which broke away from the Omical Sinn Fein in January this year, Mainly composed of activists in the Dubling Housing Action (squatrers) campaien Socialist Labour Alliance Unired Front of left-wingers who are dissidents within or who have left the Irish Labour Party, and other Left groups and Individuals