INTERVIEW WITH BERNADETTE McALISKEY OF THE I.R.S.P.The following interview was given to Gerry Foley on 15 May by Bernadette McAliskey.
Along with Seamus Costello, a former leader of Official Sinn Fein, McAliskey is the most well known leader of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which was founded in December 1974 primarily by people who left Official Sinn Fein.
•What involvement, if any, did the IRSP have in the shooting of Billy McMillen, the Official IRA commander in Belfast, who was killed at the end of April?
We don't think we have any responsibility for the McMillen shooting. We accept that there may be a remote possibility that on an individual level, somebody either sympathetic to or connected with the IRSP may have had a hand in it. But we think what is of overriding importance is that as an org anisation the IRSP condemned the killing of McMillen and saw the shooting as a disaster.
•in your opinion, what started the conflict between the Officials and the IRSP?
I think the origin of the conflict was very simple: the Officials refused to accept the right of people to disagree with their political line — and not only to disagree with it, but to organise along different political Right from the beginning they stated that because we didn't accept their political approach to the Protestant workers that we were 'sectarian".
Their charge was based on the fact that we refused to see the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association as some sort of progressive working class organisations It was based on our refusal to accept the essentially economist road of the Officials, that the way forward is to ingratiate yourself with the Protestant workers solely on the question of the Ring Road and redundancies, and ignore the political aspects.
We see this economist road as a blind alley and we think that any unity achieved on a purely economic basis is a false unity. That is, if you give up everything but economic reforms and then after that try to tell the Protestant workers that in the next stage we are all going to be Republicans, it will all fall apart. That kind of unity is a false unity that will immediately fall down when i comes to any real test, as has been showil -m tae past.
Particularly in Belfast, the Officials felt that when the Provisional split occurred they had made a mistake in allowing the organisation to develop and not crushing it physically at the start.
So it was essential to smash the IRSP before it got off the ground. I think that it was as hard and as crude as that. A decision was taken to smash our organisation before it had an opportunity for weakening any further the Official base in the North, or in fact in the whole of the country.
• In that context, how do you think the conflict can be ended?
I think that the only way the conflict can be ended is if we continue to put forward our political arguments in the beliet that politics will win out in the end, that people who have the right political approach and who argue politically will at the end of the day be listened to and accepted or rejected on the basis of their politics.
In the meantime we have been trying through every channel - the liberals, the pacifists, the trade unions - to get talks going with them on how we van guarantee the right of the two organisations to follow their own political approach without interfering with each other. • How do you think this conflict has affected the overall struggle against British imperialism? Photo: ANDREW WIARD (Report)
land and the killing of Billy McMillen have shown that the very existence of this kind of conflict gives sufficient cover for the British army, Loyalists, reactionaries, or anybody else, simply to destroy both organisations. part of that international struggle, not simply in terms of everbody struggling in their own country, but building links with international organisations.
to arms raids •Do you have any programme for the Irish communities abroad? Any idea for how to link them with what is going on here? Any plans for util ising their support in an organised way? We have a short-term programme that involves essentially maintaining links with various solidarity movements where they have previously existed. Basically the short-term programme around which we accept the solidarity of these groups is the demand tor the immediate withdrawal of British troops, an end to repressive legislation, and the right to self-determination.
That's a programme that was already in existence, and there were problems with some groups because some people said, for example, that you can't take the troops out of Northern Ireland immediately, or we must not raise the issue of self-determination because it doesn't have class content. But essentially that is the immediate short-term solidaritv programme which people who have supported us demand.
DEMONSTRATE against the Prevention of Terrorism Act SATURDAY 5 JULY Assemble 2.30pm, Kilburn Underground Stn Organised by ad hoc committee supported by IS, imo, wretc and under the auspices of TOM