jack bennett, introduction to "freedom the wolfe tone way"

FREEDOM THE WOLFE TONE WAY

Sean Cronin and Richard Roche with an introduction by Jack Bennett

70p

TO LORCAN LEONARD R I P

Sean Cronin and Richard Roche

FREEDOM THE WOLFE TONE WAYwith an Introduction by Jack Bennett

ANVIL BOOKS

FREEDOMTHE WOLFE TONEWAY

Published in the Republic of Ireland by Anvil Books Ltd.,Tralee, County Kerry.

Copyright © Sean Cronin and Richard Roche 1973.

All rights reserved.

Conditions of Sale—This book shall not, without the written consent of Anvil Books Ltd., first given, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Made and printed in the Republic of Ireland by The Kerryman Ltd., Tralee, County Kerry.Set in lOpt. Times New Roman.

CONTENTS

I n t r o d u c t io n 9

P re fa c e 73

F r e ed o m t h e W o lfe T o n e W ay 81

A f t e r w o r d 227

A p p e n d ic e s 229

B ib l io g r a p h y 236

I n d ex 237

INTRODUCTION

J a c k Be n n e t t

I Preliminary Remarks

PAGE

9II Sectarian Poison: Its Mainstream and

Its By-Streams 11III Tone’s Three Principles—and the

Protestant ‘Majority’ 15IV A Short Note on Tone’s Attitude to

Religious Differences 21V Ulsteritis and Our United Dividers 23

VI The Northern Protestants: A Problemof Identity 27

VII A Note on Paul O’Dwyer’s View ofthe Protestants 31

VIII Note on the ‘Two Nations’ Diversion 33IX Democracy and the Mind-Forged Manacles 35X Democracy and the British Connection 42

XI Sovereignty and the Prospects for Prosperity 47XII National Struggle or Class Struggle? 54

XIII Conclusions—the One Valid Objective 57

Copyright © Jack Bennett 1973

I

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

No worthwhile purpose would be served in publishing a selection of the writings of Wolfe Tone if the things he had to say nearly two hundred years ago were totally without relevance to the unsolved problems of his tortured country today. His words, if taken merely as an historical curiosity giving some insight into the outlook of an eighteenth-century revolutionary, could be heard only as the hollow echoes of a lost cause.

At the same time, it would be a fruitless exercise in self- deception to imagine that Tone’s writings in themselves can offer a readymade solution to contemporary problems. They can provide some important guiding principles, but the temptation to draw facile parallels, or to hope vainly for some imitation of the patterns traced by the United Irishmen’s rebellion, can lead only to a barren sentimentalism.

The differences between Ireland in 1798 and Ireland in 1973 are vast. No need to take a bow for conceding that. Modern republicans, while holding to the ‘old’ objective, may be accounted schooled enough by now in facing changing circumstances in the pursuit of it. The severest censure must be reserved, rather, for those who would deny the surviving points of relevance in Tone’s politics, points which are perhaps discomforting because they survive, and points which recent events have shown to be still central to the disputes of today.

The differences might appear to be obvious, although they are seldom accurately defined. Instead of pursuing them at this stage, however, it would be more immediately to the point to look at those surviving similarities which give the writings of Tone their abiding fascination.

Staring us in the face is the one outstanding similarity which overrides all the differences, but one which has been with us for so long that it can easily pass unrecognised. In a few words, it is simply this:

The great issues in dispute, then and now, are identical.

10 FREEDOM THE WOLFE TONE WAY

Despite our growing involvement with modern problems, and despite all artificial efforts to impose ‘normal’ modern politics upon the two abnormal partitioned areas of Ireland, Irish politics today, and all the main conflicts in Irish politics, still revolve around the two chief points in Tone’s programme—the problem of unifying the Irish people, and the problem of obtaining their political independence.

Uniting the people. Living in peace. Togetherness.’ That is the question which today still baffles clergymen, chokes the political liberals with their own homilies, and incites every humbug to compete in tiresome variation on old banalities and platitudes. As a question which has also concerned patriots for generations, its persistent survival can no longer be argued with conviction to have no connection with the survival of that other problem—the failure of Ireland to obtain national unity and independence.

That national sovereignty remains the other great issue is today beyond dispute. The perversion and distortion of Irish affairs by partition politics may complicate it, but it also accentuates it. And the cause of upholding British rule in the North-east is still the central, hysterical obsession in the programme of the Ulster Unionist Party which, in order to protect its position on that ‘fundamental question,’ finds it must continually fan the flames of sectarian animosity. Even their modern ‘rebels’ link the cause of ‘being British’ with their political ‘Protestantism.’

The picture as Tone saw it is still with us. Religious divisions among the Irish serving to sustain the British presence; and continuing British power in turn serving to perpetuate those divisions. Inseparable twin evils, neither of which can be finally exorcised without the other, as will be shown (although the uncomfortable thought may make some polite people wince at ecumenical tea parties in Belfast).

If in his own day Tone had succeeded, his writings would now, indeed, be largely irrelevant. It is precisely because those twin political problems which he first set out to tackle are still unresolved that his writings retain a living vitality. Tone’s relevance is in the continuing importance of his unattained objectives.

However, we have heard a spokesman for the Labour Party, Conor Cruise O’Brien, declare in a lecture in Belfast in 1966 that it had by then “become clear”—to himself

anyway—that “the republic of Tone and Pearse—a 32- county republic—is neither attained nor attainable.”

The thesis that an independent, united Irish democracy is now impossible to attain is, to put it charitably, a thoughtless one. It is a glib and easy gambit which certainly cannot be sustained merely because the objective might appear to be remote, or out of tune with a prevailing mood, at some given moment in time (say, in 1966).

The purpose of this introductory essay is to argue the contrary—that unless Irish unity and independence are achieved, there is little hope for the future of democracy in Ireland, for the establishment of normal political relationships, or for directing economic development to serve the “common interests of Irishmen” ; that only within the framework of a sovereign 32-county Irish democracy can there be any real prospect of a truly healthy development at all; and therefore that Wolfe Tone’s formula for a republic is still valid.

What follows is, therefore, to some extent, polemical. But in pursuing contemporary dispute in relation to Tone’s writings, it is hoped that a more vital interest will be given to the writings themselves.

INTRODUCTION 11

II

SECTARIAN POISON: ITS MAINSTREAM AND ITS BY-STREAMS

A bo ve all, the finest political virtue bequeathed to us by Wolfe Tone was his strictly non-sectarian approach to his country’s problems. He took a secular view of secular matters. If only on that account, there can be no discounting the value of his writings as a lesson for today.

Tone himself describes his conviction about one simple matter. For the future well-being of Ireland, it was necessary for the people toTealise that they had “one common interest and one common enemy,” and for them to forget “their former ruinous dissensions, unite cordially and make common cause.” Fifty years after him, John Mitchel put the same non-sectarian message even more aggressively.

( ' ‘There is now no Protestant interest at all . . . There is


absolutely nothing left for Protestant and Catholic to quarrel about. . . . If any man talks to you now of religious sects, when the matter in hand relates to civil and political rights, to administration of government or distribution of property, depend on it . . . he means to cheat you.”

The message still hasn’t sunk in. In the North, too many people are still cheated by politicians who talk of religious sects. Sectarianism in its most virulent and bigoted form still dominates and distorts the politics of the British-ruled area. An obsession with the sectarian problem and with related questions of racial or ethnic origin still tends to colour Irish attitudes generally towards the problem of achieving national independence. Frequently, the religious or ethnic background of an individual is accepted as naturally tending to influence his judgment about what is good for the country and for all the people in it.

The present writer, for example, is a Belfastman who comes from a Protestant-Evangelical (Baptist) family. Admittedly, it was a home in which—although the political atmosphere may have been anti-nationalist—no word was ever tolerated of the common vulgarities of Orange-Unionist bigotry. Indeed, even the more polite forms of religious prejudice were firmly rebuked. And not being an ancestor- worshipper the writer is not sure, but he suspects that there is not a drop of what might be called ‘pure Irish blood’ in his veins. From undiluted immigrant stock, right back the line. So what? He lives here. The people are very much his own people. In the field of politics, at any rate, their problems are certainly his problems. He ought to be allowed an independent judgment of what he thinks best for the country, without reference to his ‘background.’

Yet, in the six-county area, the test has been firmly and oppressively enforced to hold that Protestants, by accident of their birth and on account simply of their being Protestants, must embrace certain pre-set attitudes to major political issues. Those who dare to dissent are doubly suspect, for—more than any mere Taig—they are expected, and assumed, to be ‘reliable’ and loyal to established institutions. The whip of conformity has often fallen more sharply on Protestant backs than the sting of discrimination on Catholics, and has made cowards in conscience out of many, particularly in the paramount matter of self-government of their own country.

It is monstrous that it should be so. From the very

INTRODUCTION 13

outset, that much must be taken to be axiomatic. Before any serious attempt is begun to assess Irish politics today or to judge their future prospects, an axiom which is integral to the democratic concept must be firmly established.

A simple illustration may be useful to reinforce the point. In any normal democratic system, certain things are conceded to be open to dispute. In Britain it may be argued whether the nationalisation of the steel industry may be a good thing or a bad thing for the steel workers and for the country as a whole. But it cannot rationally be held that it would be good for Catholic steel workers and bad for Protestants. To admit the absurdity, or to apply it, would clearly set the democratic processes upside down, distort them, and in fact render them invalid. The point itself may appear absurdly self-evident. The absurdity, however, is continually applied to things big and small within the context of six-county politics.

So, nothing short o f a conscious and total rejection of the sectarian approach, in all its devious cloaks and shades, can be considered as an acceptable starting point in assessing today’s political problems. Those lesser matters directly affecting religious life are, o f course, outside our consideration. And that is the axiom.

Furthermore, it implies no less than this: No validity can be granted to any argument about the great matters of consequence concerning the good of the country if it is founded upon reference to people’s religious affiliations.

And logically that must include, above all, the great question of political sovereignty over Irish territory.

A former Unionist Party election candidate, Brian McRoberts, said, however, in a recent speech: “Protestants do not wish to live in a state which has no links with Britain.” In thus summarising with approval the definitive unionist standpoint, he was giving expression to a widely accepted notion.

He was also purveying the quintessence of sectarian obscurantism. No rational criterion can possibly be advanced to show that Protestants, or any other religion, must necessarily live under any particular flag. McRoberts’


dictum lies at the roots of that mental sickness which effectively atrophies the thinking processes of the sectarian- indoctrinated.

There is no difficulty in recognising the cruder expressions of religious bigotry in politics, and not much difficulty in pin-pointing the more sophisticated and accepted forms of it. The poisonous effect of sectarianism on public life in the North, however, has led to a widespread revulsion which itself has produced what might be called inverted sectarianism. Although springing from the best of intentions, it is at fault when its effect is to conceal the realities of the situation.

During the civil rights campaign the view was expressed that it was ‘sectarian’ to call for Catholic rights. A contrivance to dodge the imaginary difficulty was conceived— by making it instead a call for “equal rights for all.” Basically, of course, it did involve the question of rights for all. But only through a direct attack on the particular grievances pressing on the Catholic community could that equality be achieved—not by a pretence which blurred the real inequalities. Wolfe Tone, the Protestant, was secretary of the Catholic committee. He actively championed the rights of Catholics as such. Was he sectarian? Many white Americans give their support to the demands for equality for the black people. Are they therefore black racialists? Variations on the inverted sectarian theme are heard in suggestions that Catholics should soft-pedal demands for national reunification for fear of antagonising Protestants, or that certain things are best left unsaid unless an ‘enlightened Protestant’ can be found to say them.

Some of the tiresome gyrations around the sectarian problem represent honest attempts to break through it. But they are nonsense just the same. They are like that amusing ‘sectarian’ problem which is still posed from time to time about whether the rosary should be said at republican funerals and commemorations. The blunt answer, of course, is that any Protestant who objects to the rosary at a Catholic graveside is a bigot.

Politicians are not behind-hand in catching on to nonsectarian gimmickry. The Labour Party spokesman Cruise O’Brien recently questioned whether Radio Eireann should broadcast the Angelus, suggesting that the practice tended to inform Protestant citizens that “this is a Catholic country.” As a patently gratuitous piece of condescension,

INTRODUCTION 15

the view also ignores the fact that the kernel of nonsectarianism is tolerance. The spirit of the ideal is perverted if conceived as a need to suppress expressions of another religion because they might be considered offensive, or even different.

The most painful thing to thoughtful people is that this sort of pseudo-non-sectarian posturing sometimes gets praised in newspapers under the cliche-category of “showing courage.” The truth, of course, is that the problem of sectarianism will not be cured by nibbling at its manifestations, but rather by ending its political cause. Indulgence in smug, meaningless, ‘courageous’ gestures may in the meantime give comfort to those who in fact flinch in face of the need to direct a frontal assault on the political set-up which sustains sectarianism, and which is, in turn, sustained by it.

I ll

TONE’S THREE PRINCIPLES—AND THE PROTESTANT ‘MAJORITY’

Of all the differences between the Ireland of Tone’s time and the Ireland of today, unquestionably one of the most noticeable—although far from being the most significant— is the changed political attitudes of the mass of Protestants, especially in the North, instead of forming a cordial union with their fellow Irishmen to run their own country for themselves in their own interests, they find themselves the prisoners of a fossilised politico-religious sectarianism which is entrenched and institutionalised as an integral part of the imperial administrative system in the six counties.

So in that respect things are somewhat more complicated, to say the least. The establishment in Ireland of state systems founded on the sectarian division of Irishmen, with a local majority in the North-east in favour of keeping it that way, sets new problems. Distortion of Tone’s teachings either through ignorance or by calculated chicanery is fairly common, especially when applied to the partition arrangement. Glib references to Tone’s antisectarian doctrines are made even in attempts to defend that greatest of all monuments to sectarianism, the Irish


border. A leader of the liberal-unionist Alliance Party in the North, Robert Cooper, in a speech quoting Tone’s ideals and reproaching republicans for violating them, managed to turn them to suit his own conception of an exclusive, six-county ‘non-sectarian togetherness,’ in separateness from the rest of Ireland and under continued Brtish control.

The great conundrum is now raised. The validity or otherwise of the ‘democratic voice’ of the six-county majority, their wish to ‘remain British’ and so on, is presented as a fundamental question. Is it not a violation of Tone’s democratic principles to deny them the “right to choose their own destiny” ? O’Brien says that we must not only renounce but condemn any claim to ‘impose’ unity on the northern Protestants “as repugnant to the essential teachings of Tone and Davis.”

Republicans and nationalists generally reply that the local majority in the North-east is an artificial, gerrymandered majority, arbitrarily cut off in order to create it. So it is. But it still exists, and its preponderance cannot be denied. The reply, while useful to the argument, is incomplete, for it does not get to the guts of the question.

The answer which will be argued in this essay, and which it is hoped will be amply demonstrated, is a fairly simple one which might be conspicuously self-evident—were it not obscured by dust clouds of political opportunism, make- believe and sometimes wilful self-deception.

The fact is that the right “to choose their own destiny” is the one right, above all, which is denied to the six-county population. The six-county political system denies the right of democratic choice on fundamental matters even to the ‘democratic majority’ within it. All major decisions affecting their well-being, their future and their status are taken virtually without reference to them. The realities of the British connection, which mean British political and economic domination, may have been veiled to many who were deluded by the charade of a local ‘parliament’—which has since been dispersed without as much as a by-your- leave. Because the political status of the six counties is exactly what the unionists say it is—an off-shore ‘province’ which is an integral part of the United Kingdom—its people cannot hope to have any significant say in the

INTRODUCTION 17

direction of their own affairs until they choose to exer t their influence within an all-Ireland system.

All argument which is based on a reference to the “wishes of the democratic majority” in the six counties is, therefore, based on a false premise, since it takes a stand in defence of something which they do not have anyway. And apart from its dependence on the illusion of self-determination, it tends—as all arguments based on false premises are wont to do—to lead in its practical application to contradiction and ambiguity. Once again, we will let O’Brien illustrate the point.

He has said: Partition can be ended “only by the agreement of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland.” Elsewhere, he put the same idea: “The future of Northern Ireland is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland to decide.” But, behold, a significant difference appears in yet another statement: Unity can be achieved only “by free consent of the Protestants of Northern Ireland and not before.”

Of the two distinct propositions he propounds, which does he really take seriously? Unity when a simple majority of the six-county population wants it? Or unity only when the majority of the ‘Protestant majority’ agrees to it? If a small proportion of Protestants were, say, to swing in favour of unity, we might have, together with the Catholics, a simple majority for unity. And it would be that sort of majority which would satisfy the mechanical ‘democratic’ requirements upon which the ‘democratic’ argument in favour of partition is itself founded. But we would still be left with the mass of Protestant citizenry, presumably still hostile. Would it then become democratic to ‘impose’ unity on them? If so, we would still be faced with the same problem—the problem of coercion. If not, where do we end with our democratic principles? Mechanistic democratic logic, applied rigidly to a situation such as that existing in the six counties, gets itself tied up in knots, basically because the problem is falsely presented from the start and because the real nature of the problem is overlooked.

The real problem can in no way be defined as one of forcing the Protestant population ‘into’ anything; the real problem is one o f forcing Britain to get out—and to grant democratic self-determination to all the Irish people without


reference to their religion. I f that democratic assembly, the Westminster parliament, should decide that it was its democratic wish to withdraw from Ireland, there is no democratic reason why it should not do so.

The conundrum begins to dissolve. The artificial application of Tone’s teachings to the six-county majority becomes a diversion to conceal the more realistic requirement—the obtaining of an uninhibited democracy in an all-Ireland context through the withdrawal of British power. The continued British presence remains the major distorting factor in Irish politics.

Thus, those sharper questions about the northern Protestants, like questions of ‘coercion,’ can also be answered, firstly by the strict application of our non-sectarian axiom, as well as by reference to the three great basic principles upon which Wolfe Tone’s politics was founded.

The three great principles for which Tone stood were:(1), democracy; (2), national sovereignty, and (3), the union of all the people in order to achieve the others.

Discussing the conflict in his times between the claims of aristocracy and of democracy, Tone wrote: “I was, of course, a democrat from the beginning.” And as his writings show, he did not view democracy in those narrow terms of ballot-box mechanics of which some self-appointed champions of democracy today make a fetish; but rather in the living sense of popular control over public affairs by an equal citizenship, ultimately in control of their own country i.e., self-determination and independence.

Of independence, Tone stated: “From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and England as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt that, while it lasted, this country could never be free or happy.” His object, he said, was: “To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never- failing source of all our political evils; and to assert the independence of my country.”

But what about the unity of the people? That was the weapon he forged. In that, he saw the most effective device—indeed, the only way—to achieve his objectives. “To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Pro

INTRODUCTION 19

testant, Catholic and dissenter—THESE WERE MY MEANS.”

Since the union of the people was the means by which he sought to obtain his other aims, it will be seen that Tone’s three principles were, for him, inseparable. Even more than love-and-marriage, horse-and-carriage, you can’t have one without the other. If any one of the principles is to retain meaning, they must all be applied simultaneously, because to yield on one of them involves the denial of the others.

Particularly absurd, for instance, would be any attempt to apply the principle of ‘union of the people’ to sanction their sectarian division under the partition set-up; and that would also mean the rejection of the principles of independence and democracy. Any twist which tries to use Tone’s democratic principle to grant some validity to the sectarian basis of Britain’s claim over the six-county territory is certainly in conflict with all three—with democracy itself, with independence, and with the ideal of a free union of the people.

Thus, that other question—which comes first, a union of hearts or a united territory?—also becomes an artificial one. It is a trick question, the only purpose of which is to shelve both of those ideals indefinitely. Just as Tone in his day applied his three principles to the set of circumstances facing him, so today when the major issues at stake are similar, we may apply the same principles in a way dictated by our different set of circumstances. If, say, the matter of ‘imposing’ a solution upon the Protestants is broached, it may be faced with integrity by reference to our nonsectarian axiom.

The writer, as a Protestant who long ago jettisoned sectarian attitudes in political matters, finds it difficult to appreciate the horrified incredulity which sometimes greets any suggestion that Protestants may justifiably be coerced in certain circumstances. As a man accustomed to looking on Irish people as people, and not as religious categories, he cannot swallow the strange notion that there is something particularly precious about Protestants, in so far as they must never be coerced, while it is perfectly permissible to coerce as many mere Irish Catholics as you like without giving a second thought to the morality of doing so.

The mass of Catholics in the six counties have for long enough been coerced into a state system which has been


repugnant to them. That, of course, is no argument in itself for coercing Protestants in their turn. Equally, ‘democratic majorities’ are no excuse for coercing either of them. The quantities which may now be counted on either side of the potential coercion scale are irrelevant; certainly they are irrelevant to all questions of democracy or morality. The fault must be adjudged to he on that side which has rejected the call to equal citizenship; and on that power which has sustained an unequal, oppressive sectarian system as an intrinsic feature of its claim to political domination. And the solution can lie only in the withdrawal of that baleful extraneous influence in order to permit a free union of the people, and in order to create conditions which would enable Tone’s ideal of friendship and reconciliation among Irish people to flourish.

O’Brien, the southern politician, by generously ‘renouncing’ all claims to ‘impose’ unity on the northern Protestants, is himself, in fact, granting an absurd validity to the Hibernian-Nationalist concept of the problem as expressed in the ‘take-over-the-North’ attitudes—even by setting it up as an aunt sally to knock down. The absurdity of the notion that northerners may or may not be ‘coerced’ by southern politicians is evident when it is realised that the practical problem of coercion involved in any such venture would be the coercion by 26-county forces of the overwhelming might of British armed power. The ‘take-over- the-North’ proposition does not exist as a valid option open to 26-county politicians. Inflated denunciations of the notion are as ridiculous as any argument for it. O’Brien’s stance is as ridiculous as any when he strikes postures around it as a means mainly to advertising his own superior, moralistic political virtues.

Morally, there is no reason to suppose that Protestants as such ought not to be coerced. But the problem is not a moral one. Another question is whether it is practicable to do so. And here again the problem is bedevilled by both simplification and exaggeration. You cannot bomb, shoot, terrorise a ‘million’ screaming, kicking Protestants into an Irish republic against their will. Of course you cannot. And because you cannot, the statement is a pointless one— unless its purpose is deliberately to obscure the possibilities of what might actually be done.

There is now no reason why the six-county majority should not be legislated into a new situation in which they

INTRODUCTION 2 1

could quickly adapt themselves to the idea of equal citizenship and claim for themselves an effective democratic voice in the running of their own country; a new situation which would sweep the ground from under the political vampires who have battened so long on sectarian divisions and in whom they have heretofore placed their trust. There is no reason why they should not be legislated for, rapidly and against their will, since all major British legislation recently has been imposed upon them against their will in any case. The British government has the power to enforce the arrangements necessary to ensure its own peaeeful. withdrawal. Whether that government can be made responsive to bombs and bullets is, indeed, the debatable question.

IV

A SHORT NOTE ON TONE’S ATTITUDE TO RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES

As part of the modern obsession with sectarianism, the religious connotations behind the revolt of the United Irishmen in 1798 are today grossly overworked. Wistful newspaper articles still conceive the rebellion largely in religious terms, as those great days when Catholics and ‘Presbyterians’ joined together for love of one another. Hopes of a repeat performance are, perhaps, behind the exaggerated political significance sometimes given to the modern ecumenical movement, and behind the tendency to neglect political realities in favour of tea parties.

The religious flavour in the United Irish movement was integral, but incidental, to it. Primarily, it was a great national movement of an oppressed people to achieve political independence. The discovery, of course, has been made—to the delight of one school of historians—that the masses of the fighting peasantry did not fully appreciate the lofty aims behind the struggle. So what? That does not alter the essential nature of the revolt, nor would it have altered the essential end product, had it succeeded.

The religious ‘clauses’ in the United Irishmen’s programme were specifically and ardently directed towards the removal of religious considerations. Tone himself viewed


the religious differences of the people, and their potential unity, with the secular eye of a patriot politician. Writing of the Protestants (as members only of the established church were then called), he said: “The Protestants I despaired of from the outset, for obvious reasons.” What reasons? Not on account of their protestantism, but on account of their “unjust monopoly” of power and privilege as a “colony of foreign usurpers in the land” in possession of “five sixths of the landed property,” and whose titles were founded “in massacre and plunder.” Thus, in the category of ‘Protestant,’ Tone saw chiefly a social class whose position made them the enemies of democracy.

In the dissenters (non-Anglican) and the Catholics he placed his greatest hopes, since they constituted the masses of the oppressed people, who had identical interests in securing political liberty and national freedom. His fight to liberate the Catholics from civil and religious oppression was not so much a religious question, but rather a political aim to draw them into a great democracy of equal citizenship.

But myths die hard. Somehow the notion still survives that the northern Presbyterians were inclined to republicanism because of their presbyterianism. Some years ago a northern Presbyterian of republican inclinations himself advanced a theory to support the contention, and explained it by reference to their democratic church structure. Needless to say, the theory has been sadly blighted by reality. The Presbyterian fighters were more numerous among the northern rebels because they were thicker on the ground. The leadership of the United Irishmen, however, included many members of the established church, among them Tone himself and Thomas Russell. Protestants they were, but hardly ‘foreign usurpers.’

V

ULSTERITIS AND OUR UNITED DIVIDERS

Indeed, the idols I have loved so longHave done my credit in men’s eyes much wrong.

—Omar Khayyam.

O u t r ig h t bigotry has gone right out of fashion for those six-county politicians who sense the need today to acquire a respectable image (although few are still averse to cashing in on its returns at the ballot box). The drum blattering protestantism of the past has got them in bad odour with the rest of the world, so caution is now called for. Let’s make haste, therefore, to find a substitute explanation which will rationalise the separation of Irishmen from Irishmen, without reference to their religion, and which will, above all, effectively smother Wolfe Tone’s exhortation to them “to form for the future but one people.”

Outlandish and fanciful are some of the theories which have been produced. Apart from superficial and half-baked ‘economic’ reasons (which will be mentioned later), we have been informed that the Protestants form a ‘separate and distinct’ community, a different strain or stream or a sort of hybrid Scotch-Irish, who follow another ‘way of life’ with vastly different ‘traditions’ and with—if you would believe it—a ‘culture’ of their own.*

A brief look at a few selected examples will be useful, for two reasons. Firstly, the energetic search for strained excuses to ‘justify’ the partition arrangement is in itself an indication that something incongruous exists which needs to be explained away. Secondly, it will be observed that all these intellectual efforts, when stripped to their

‘ Since this was written, an editorial writer on a Belfast newspaper was bold enough to venture the view that Catholics and Protestants have different ‘ethics,’ with only the vaguest innuendo about which set o f ethics the writer considered more ethical than the other. And, meanwhile, warfare has intensified in the cloud-cuckoo-land of certain theoretical journals between the mythical ‘two nations.’


basics, convolve in the end—despite themselves—around the bare bones of the old, ugly skeleton in unionism’s cupboard, namely, religious sectarianism pure and simple.

A former Stormont prime minister, Terence O’Neill, was an initiator of the Ulsteritis syndrome which characterised attempts to establish a separate, six-county ‘Ulster’ identity. He began by defining the difference between northern and southern Irishmen as the same as that between “chalk and cheese.” But when it emerged that the differences which he really had in mind were the same as the differences which divided the people within the six-counties themselves, the definition became merely a new name for Prods and Taigs and a way to divide the sheep from the goats. Later, with somewhat more energy but just as little scientific basis, he pursued a frankly racialist mystique which held that a superior Ulster-Scotch breed of people had indelibly stamped the ‘province’ with a unique but undefined character. This, too, however, proved to be an unsound foundation on which to build his famous ‘bridges’ and unite the community. One of O’Neill’s last contributions to political thought before his retreat upstairs was to urge upon his followers the necessity of treating Catholics “decently” so that they could “learn to live like Protestants.”

A prominent Belfast labour man, David Bleakley, who is also a strong advocate of a ‘united Ulster,’ employs a blunter tack. The six-county people are British. Some of them because they think they are, and the others whether they like it or not. And that’s that. Upon that dogma, he bases his bold, clarion calls to all who “want to live together as fellow-citizens” to join in “sharing the vision of a truly united and prosperous Ulster” so that “Ulster may become a viable community.” Bleakley’s visionary horizons, too, are strictly limited. His conception of fellow-citizenship does not extend beyond the border. His noblest ideal he once expressed in the fetching phrase: “Let us accentuate our sense of Northern-Irelandness.”

It should be sensed at once that there is something peculiarly devious, or exceptionally perverse, about a doctrine which employs altruistic calls to ‘unity’ to sanction, and even insist upon, the political disunity of the people in a country like Ireland, where the population is stamped with an undeniably common character and even has ways of talking which are virtually indistinguishable from Kir-

INTRODUCTION 25

cubbin in the east of Ulster’s County Down to Killeshandra in Ulster’s County Cavan (but excluded from Bleakley’s notion of ‘Ulster’); where family ties link people of a variety of origins from Plumbridge in Tyrone to Burtonport in Donegal; where people on either side of the British political boundary are not only closely related by blood and matrimony but have an essential affinity of understanding with one another which is a basic characteristic of one people; and where, although they might differ in religion from place to place, their closer common bond is that they are all distinctly un-British.

A former unionist government minister, Robert Porter, for example, has another daring, tolerant and enlightened proposal for a “healthy, open, integrated society” which would at the same time, of course, sustain six-county separatism. He puts the problem down, in a recent article, to the existence of “two cultures or traditions,” one of them the “Scottish and Anglican stream of tradition” and the other Gaelic. Generously, then, he offers us “a regional tradition which we could happily share between us,” based upon a “dual culture” within this “bi-cultural and bireligious community of ours.”

All very fine until we reach the punch-line—and the political conditions which are insisted upon. Porter’s ideal of togetherness, he says himself, “could only follow acceptance by the minority of Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom.”

Why so? Why not say, rather, that it could follow only upon acceptance by the northern Protestant minority of equal citizenship within an independent Ireland? If it is really equality and ‘sharing’ things which Porter has in mind, and not a bullying attitude, the alternative proposition could be more logically sustained. Porter offers us no evidence, and no argument but a sectarian one, to uphold his ‘natural law’ that things can be shared only under British rule. The contrary is demonstrably the stronger proposition. Since all those things which Porter himself says we share are, in fact, shared by nobody but ourselves, the Irish, and are certainly not shared by anybody else in the “rest of the United Kingdom,” it is therefore more reasonable to argue that they can best be shared in practice, by those who share them, within an Irish political context. But, as we shall perhaps see, equality and ‘sharing’ are niotreally the things whichPorter and his friends hanker after.


Porter goes on to make this other point: “The one fact which cannot and must not be gainsaid is that the ratio between the two (religious groups) will still remain much the same.” Back we come to the sectarian religious headcount to back up a demand for political conformity. But it figures, all right. At a unionist rally in Maghera in July 1968, Porter said: “I have been amazed at the attitude of the opposition in criticising the Orange Order because of its close links with the Unionist Party.” He added that they “could not separate their political from their religious life.” He believed that “a great contribution could be made by both the Orange Order and the Unionist Party working together for the good of the country.”

If the hearts and honest souls of these enlightened liberals are really craving after unity, equality, peace and equal citizenship, what excuse can they have to offer for refusing to claim an equal status with their fellow-Irish, even as a religious minority, in an independent Ireland? Equality is equality in any context. So long as everyone is equal, religious minorities and majorities are irrelevant. A good excuse is the one thing they do not have. All they have is a dirty secret to conceal. They do not want equality at all —unless it is that sort of equality which grants them the right to disburse ‘equal treatment’ on their own political conditions from a position of supremacy. So they cling to their dependence on British power as the sure and tested guarantee of a system which has bestowed upon them in the past all the privileges accruing from the exploitation of religious divisions.

The truth is that that miserable brand of unity-mongers who yearn so ardently after their ideal of a united six- county Ulsterism in separateness from the rest of the Irish people are liars in their own hearts. They know that they do not seek ‘unity’ of any sort. They do not want unity among either Ulster people or Irish people. They are interested only in borrowing the idealistic phraseology of unity to make their underlying sectarianism look decent, and to decorate their baser ambition of cementing the sectarian division of Ireland with goody-goody mortar. Of all the enemies of peace and reconciliation in Ireland today, there are few who are more fork-tongued than that unctuous band of united dividers.

It will be observed that, of all the excuses offered to justify the political division of the Irish people, those which are

cloaked in the virtue of ‘togetherness’ and overlaid with the jargon of citizenship are often the meanest, for they are the most cheating. They pose a false ideal of six- county unity in impossible and contradictory apposition to the only logical application of the principle of mutual trust and equality—within an all-Ireland political framework.

INTRODUCTION 27

VI

THE NORTHERN PROTESTANTS:A PROBLEM OF IDENTITY

So what are they, the northern Protestants? Are they Irish at all? Or a hybrid strain? Or a distinctly different culture? The question is of more than academic interest. If an examination of those characteristics which are said to set them apart from their fellow-countrymen can find, in fact, no substance in them, then the British-Unionist-Ulster doctrine, which is founded upon the alleged differences, is deflated. If the only significant difference to be discovered is the difference between different denominations of the same religion, it must follow that their actual material interests, political and economic, are in fact identical with those of their fellow-Irishmen, and that the exploitation of religious sectarianism is therefore a device to obscure their true interests—in the interests of somebody else.

Certainly, there are immediately recognisable differences in character and speech between northerners and the rest, although no greater than regional variations within other nations. The point is, however, that all northerners, both Prods and Taigs, share those common characteristics. Similar speech, and similar accents with only subtle variations, are heard from Antrim to Donegal. The same sort of humour, with subtle variations. Even the same acquired gestures like the distinctive Ulster nod-of-the-head to passers-by. Overall, an essentially identical psychological make-up which is characteristic of one people.

Let us look at some of those claims advanced to sustain the political doctrine of a homogeneous British-Unionisl Ulster entity settled upon a unified territory.

Two races? Two ‘converging’ ethnic streams? Two?


Dozens, we might safely say. But all so unrecognisably blended together throughout their long common history that it is now impossible to apply any reliable test which could accurately distinguish between them. Who, on the streets and in the pubs of Ulster, can really tell the races apart? True, there are rural pockets here and there which preserve their own local distinctiveness, where descent may be mainly from Gaelic, Norman or old English stock, or of obvious Scottish origin. But overall the people are cast in one common mould, and share the same folk memories even if they are of their own disputes.

Gaelic names may still predominate among the Catholic people, but even that is no sure test. O’Neill can be, in truth, a Chichester. Among the members of the IRA killed in the past three years appear names like Henderson, Forsythe, Saunders, Reid, etc. Protestants who may have a long and ancient Gaelic ancestry must, according to the British-Unionist-Ulster doctrine, regard their heritage as alien—to conform to the Big Lie. Separateness is the Big Lie.

A different way o f life? Or a British way of life? If there is such a thing at all as a British way of life, even in Britain, it is impossible to find anything in Ulster to which the description could be confidently applied. People generally follow very similar ways of life which vary according to class rather than ethnic origins. The fact that there are two types of football cannot be held to constitute a significantly different way of life. And the different customs for observing the Sabbath, as well as being utterly strange to the British way of life, serve to illustrate the point that the only notable difference is in religion.

Different traditions? Distinctive traditions ‘on each side’ which we can all share and of which we can all be equally proud? Robert Porter says there are. It would be interesting to hear of any British-Unionist-Ulster traditions of which we could be proud. Admittedly, however, orangeism does represent a genuine tradition within the Protestant community. But it is a religious-sectarian tradition involving a conscious choice of political allegiance which is not necessarily shared by all Protestants, and which specifically excludes fellow-citizens on account of religion and therefore cannot be shared by them.

In the entire ethos of the Unionist-Orange tradition it would be difficult to find a single saving grace of which

INTRODUCTION 2 9

we, or they themselves, could be justly proud. In history its role has been to render political support to every reactionary cause and balk every popular movement for democratic advance. Its heroes are landlords and aristocrats, cynical career politicians, militarists and imperialists, and every despicable species of tyrant and oppressor. The spirit is reflected even in song: ‘The South Down Militia is the Terror of the Land.’ That is not a tradition at all. It is merely a sordid political record.

Two cultures? If the unionist claim to represent a separate, distinct, popular-based ethnic entity in north-east Ireland were indeed valid, there ought to be a culture to reflect it. And there ought to be something to show for it— in cultural products. But what is there? Unfortunately, within the complete corpus of unionist humbug there cannot be perceived the slightest spark of anything which could be called culture at all, never mind a culture expressing the British-Unionist-Ulster concept.

Oh poetry, where is thy unionist voice? Muted, indeed. Ulster has not yet produced a poet of any stature who could safely be said to reflect the unionist notion of distinctiveness and separatism or who could be remotely identified with unionist politics. Many fine Protestant poets there have been. When they turn their artists’ eyes on their surroundings and their people, it is usually to protest their Irishness and claim the right to be considered equal with their fellow-Irish in an Irish situation. (See The Planter and the Gael by John Hewitt and John Montague). In unionist political groups today, in fact, the works of Samuel Ferguson, a Protestant, would be considered more dangerous and inflammatory than the writings of Pearse himself, since, drawing as they do largely upon the Irish and Gaelic tradition, they are repugnant to the great politico-sectarian myth.

It is noticeable that those few Orange-Kiplingesque jingles of a merit at least worth preserving are mostly of a bellicose and bombastic nature, and reveal a singular lack of true poetic feeling. It is not possible for real poetry, in truth, to ‘identify’ with political unionism, the Big Lie. The late John Irvine, a gentle soul and a lyrical poet of rare sensitivity, was a Protestant who became a convinced rebel and republican. His revulsion against unionist racial-sectarianism which denies us our true nature was possibly a factor which led him later to identify himself


completely with his Irish people by joining the Catholic Church. A not uncommon reaction. Is unionism anti- Protestant, too?

Literature? Drama? Again not a work extant to reflect the unionist myth. In literature, reality must be reflected, and reality and myth never coincide. Ballygullion? Who could claim that as a British literary work or a unionist one? The majority of Protestant writers have turned to Irish experience and Irish history for inspiration. The Protestant playwright from the Belfast shipyard, the late Sam Thompson, was righteously and aggressively anti-unionist.

Visual arts? Those few good artists who favoured the portrayal of people have painted pictures which depict quite the contrary of the unionist picture of a British Ulster. Who can say of the work of William Conor that his shawlies, his street urchins, his mill and factory workers, his crossroads fiddlers, depict ‘two cultures’? Who can identify the Prods or the Taigs among his old men and young girls? His work, on the contrary, perhaps better than anything else portrays a common way of life with distinctly Irish characteristics.

Even in music, the repertoire of the Orange bands consists largely of stolen tunes, and that genuine tradition which favours Scottish pipe bands no more reflects a distinctive culture than does the popularity o f‘pop’ make us all Luxem- bourgers.

In the final analysis, all the pseudo-sophisticated hocus- pocus from reasonable people about diverging streams of this and that is seen to be what it obviously is—lame, feeble and dishonest efforts to justify the unjustifiable. It is a far-fetched notion, indeed, which affects to see a separate British cultural stream running down the Shankill Road. Ironically, the people who are least of all impressed by the fancy theories are the mass of ordinary Protestants. Few of them give the slightest credence to them. Back to basics at street level, the Protestant people themselves know very well what it is all about. It is about religion. And it is about bigotry.

A loyalist song-book published on the Shankill contains a song which goes like this:

My old man is an Orangeman,Marching with a rope.He’d love to march right on to Rome,And hang the-----Pope.

INTRODUCTION 31

Another verse of the same song, however, informs us that “My auntie is a fenian.” She dreams about the Vatican, the Virgin Mary, goes to chapel and “talks a lot of tripe.” Bigotry on the ground floor can be a family business, too. When even your auntie can be a Fenian, what’s the use of talking about ethnic streams or cultural traditions?

Or when wives, sons, cousins and lovers can find themselves politically divided by the ‘big’ question—which of their brands of religion is best?—what substance can possibly be attached to the claim that Catholics and Protestants constitute ‘two nations’, unless it is simply another excuse to justify crude sectarianism?

In an editorial entitled ‘One People,’ published in the paper Wolfe Tone Today, which was brought out in 1963 to mark the bicentenary of Tone’s birth, the present writer wrote:

We believe that the Irish nation springs from a fusion of peoples of a variety of racial origins as a result of their sharing an exclusive common history upon the common territory of Ireland.

We believe that Piet and Gael, Danish and Norman invader, English and Scots settler have all blended in the crucible of history into one vigorous and resourceful people with its own distinctive characteristics—characteristics which, while varying in places, set the Irishman recognisably apart from other peoples.

No evidence to the contrary has since been produced to alter that verdict.

VII

A NOTE ON PAUL O’DWYER’S VIEW OF THE PROTESTANTS

T h a t dauntless and extremely capable champion of a democratic settlement to the Irish question, Paul O’Dwyer of New York, in a recent analysis questioned the traditional republican view of regarding the northern Protestants as Irish at all.

3 2 FREEDOM THE WOLFE TONE WAY

“Almost all of the transplanted (planter) stock are what they insist they are—British.” “The planter stock has been almost exclusively faithful to the Crown and to the landlords, and to all the enemies of a free Ireland.” “A separate and distinct group of people who have shown such consistent hostility to the soil.” “Colonials . . . with their hearts and minds and souls at their point of origin.”

To any serious foreign student of Irish affairs, looking in at us from without and from far away, that must certainly appear to be a true statement of the position, and the only credible explanation for the abnormal and uniquely reactionary role which Protestants, in the mass, have played in Irish affairs. But there are nuances to the story which the outsider may not grasp, and contradictions and complications to every over-simplified verdict. A longer sojourn among the Protestant people of Belfast would soon dispel the notion that their hearts and minds and souls are hankering after their points of origin. They no more do so than do the hearts of the Magyars hanker after central Asia. They know of no land other than Ireland. And there are other explanations of their strange behaviour.

In the article from which the above quotations were taken, O’Dwyer was, however, arguing the Algerian parallel. He was suggesting at least something along the lines of the de Gaulle solution. He was advocating, in short, a British withdrawal. And in doing so he introduced some welcome notes of realism to the discussion, particularly in his strictures upon those who adopt a sentimental attitude to Presbyterians on a basis of a long-forgotten history. Quite properly he rebuked those “who endeavour to classify the Chichester-Clarks and Brookeboroughs as Irish,” for that landed class still is, as it was in Tone’s time, a colony of foreign usurpers. From them springs the dominant pro-British ideology, for theirs are the roots which are firmly planted in England—in English schools and in English homes and in English officers’ messes. They, too, are the lords who speak with a foreign tongue, and with their Eton accents and English habits they are just as foreign to the people of the Sandy Row and Shankill as they are to the people of the Falls.

Furthermore, O’Dwyer in his argument for an Algerian- type solution adds a significant rider to it which in practical political terms, when shorn of definition difficulties, amounts to a re-statement of the classical republican vision. He says

INTRODUCTION 33

Britain should withdraw and issue an invitation to those who consider themselves British to “come home.” But then, he adds, “I venture to suggest that not too many would accept it” (the invitation). “Those who would return to England or Scotland would be mainly the landed barons.” He proceeds to envisage a new Irish democracy in which the “great mass” of the Protestant people, “with divisiveness generated by reliance on Tory interference out of the way,” would turn their eyes “towards Tara” and bring a “most beneficial and refreshing influence” to the national life.

They would be Irishmen then, wouldn’t they? So what is the difference?

VIII

NOTE ON THE ‘TWO NATIONS’ DIVERSION

E n o u g h has been adduced by this stage to show that, of all the strange notions advanced to justify partition, the most indefensible must be the ‘theory’ of the ‘two nations.’ This product of pure fantasy was first established as a dogma by a Dublin group which used to call itself the Irish Communist Organisation, and is worth a brief mention for its curiosity value and on account of the pernicious application of it in practice to defend the six-county sectarian system.

It is held, not only that the northern Protestants constitute a nation unto themselves, but that Ireland’s national problem consists of an aggressive southern Catholic bourgeoisie, with dreams of colonial aggrandisement, seeking to conquer and subdue the North. Reality is stood upon its head. “Nationalism equals sectarianism.” That is actually their slogan. The unionist origin of sectarianism in the imperialist divide-and-conquer scheme of things is totally omitted. Indeed, the role of British imperialism itself, and its continued presence in Ireland, is overlooked by this brand of communist.

A strange nation, indeed, this ‘Orange nation,’ which never had a single national-liberation hero but which adulates only those imperialists who helped carve out the British empire. FA strange nation which never fought for


independence, but fought against it, against self-determination, in a cause linked with the upholding of the integrity of empire. No wonder that the propaganda of the adherents of this dogma coincides frequently with the doctrines of unionist orators. And not surprisingly, the ‘theory’ has found particular favour in traditionally pro-imperialist circles in the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the northern trade union movement, where it fits nicely in with Orange prejudices.

It is interesting that this pro-imperialist communist organisation calls itself ‘Stalinist’ to distinguish it from the traditional communist party and from some fringe crackpot leftist groups like Trotskyites, Maoists and other semi- demi variations. Their publications consist, in a large part, of lengthy, turgid denunciations of one another’s deviations liberally laced with clichefied revolutionary jargon and imitating the style of the old revolutionary authors without, however, offering much in the way of original thought. Stalin himself, as a young revolutionary, made a study of the European national question and came up with a definition of a nation which was more comprehensive than and certainly as acceptable as most others. In no way could it be applied to grant ‘nationhood’ status to the northern Irish Protestants. As an example of the nonsense thought up by this group, the following gem could be quoted from an ICO publication: “Nationalism is a particular form of capitalist ideology which . . . wherever it occurs . . . is opposed to the interests of the working class.”

It is doubtful if there is a single red-blooded, red-fiagger of a revolutionary international proletarian anywhere who could uphold, even with the most doctrinaire quotations, the doctrine that nationalism is always ‘opposed’ to the interests of the workers. It was Stalin himself, I think, who once advanced the argument that even the feudalistic nationalism of the Emir of Afghanistan, although intrinsically more ‘backward’ than ‘bourgeois nationalism,’ was in fact more progressive and advanced than the ‘socialism’ of workers in the imperialistic countries which denied other peoples the right of self-determination.

All revolutionary movements, whether nationalist or socialist, tend to produce tearaway fringe groups, romantics who would rather lose a good battle on the barricades than win a cause, lovers of argument for ego’s sake to puff up their own conceit, and adventurers of all sorts. The

INTRODUCTION 35

ultra-leftist phenomenon associated with communism was once described by the Russian leader, Lenin, as an “infantile disorder.” From the antics of the ICO and its associated ‘workers’ association’ we can diagnose signs today of senile decay.

IX

DEMOCRACY AND THE MIND-FORGED MANACLES

In every cry of every Man,In every Infant’s cry o f fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear.

—Blake.

R epe a t e d l y we are bidden to “recognise the reality” of the attitudes of the vast majority of the northern Protestants. In other words, we are being told, by implication, to accept the political state of affairs which is held to be in accord with those attitudes. The reality behind that state of affairs is thus too easily cast aside, and the actual reality—the real nature—of the attitudes themselves is seldom questioned, let alone explained. Yet those attitudes stand sorely in need of an objective explanation.

Those ‘attitudes’ have produced a truly extraordinary state of affairs. In recent history the role of the popular Protestant ‘masses’ constitutes a unique social curiosity unparalleled in the experience of modern times. Alone among the cities of Europe, Belfast has a highly-concentrated industrial working class which has never produced a strong, independent, political labour movement of its own. Dense, some would say, in more ways than one, it is paradoxically a working class which, while producing a distinctly higher proportion of individual radicals than anywhere else, is politically, in the mass, more backward than any other that can readily be called to mind. Nowhere else are ‘the workers’ so conservative or so obsequiously willing to follow the bandwagon of their own landlords and their own bosses. Clearly, there is something unnatural


about it all. And the explanation may lie in an unnatural state of affairs.

It may be acknowledged at once that it is not unusual to find a people devoted to the ideology of their own masters. Examples could well be offered from the twenty-six counties. What is totally exceptional about the six counties is that the masses of the ordinary working people there have been so devotedly and consistently enslaved—for so terribly long —and still show no signs of wishing to cast off their mind- forged manacles. The democratic maxim about fooling the people does not apply. Only in the Protestant areas of the six counties can you successfully fool all of the people all of the time—or at least enough of them to count. And the reason may well lie in the absence of democracy.

The ‘attitudes’ of the northern Protestants—and their curious persistence—may be explained by two rather sordid factors, neither of which has anything to do with democracy. First, the survival of a tribalistic, sectarian ideology assiduously nourished by the powers-that-be. And, second, immediate—but actual—material benefits which give some appearance of substance to the ideology.

Of the two factors, unquestionably the ideological one is the most potent. The material one is a fraud, for although it offers some tempting bribes on the spot, it induces the bribed person actually to act politically against his own long-term economic interests. Thus ideology predominates over actual considerations of material well-being. And that is not altogether unique either. The Indian sociologist and historian, D. D. Kosambi, in his book The Culture And Civilisation O f Ancient India, mentions examples of entire communities who actually died out because their ‘beliefs’ would not allow them to adapt themselves to new modes necessary for their survival.

The inhibiting power of an ideology based on deeply- ingrained, communally-held political attitudes, rooted in a sectarian folklore going back for generations, and sustained by an elaborate superstructure of mystical and emotional symbolism, should not be difficult to recognise— especially when it exists within a state and political system designed to support it. Any man who, from early youth, has had Union Jacks tattooed on his arms, or engraven in his heart, must find the psychological break necessary to

INTRODUCTION 3 7

change his political views potentially traumatic. For most ordinary mortals it is a re-adjustment which is certainly difficult to make—without some help from another direction.

To appreciate the effectiveness of the factor of material bribery, it is not necessary to describe here in detail the well-known system of discrimination which has kept the masses of the ordinary Catholic people in the position of a depressed and impoverished minority, held in contumely, who are frequently denied even the status of hewers of wood. (A political oath is required to work in the forests). Protestants have, have had, and expect to have, a virtual monopoly of all the good jobs. Many skilled trades are reserved exclusively for Protestants, and many others largely so. Even some union branches practise and enforce a sectarian exclusiveness against Catholics. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, the Protestant working class constitutes a firmly-established local aristocracy of labour to whom benefits accrue directly and in proportion to the deprivation of Catholics.

The fact that its share of the crumbs may sometimes be meagre, as in times of mass unemployment, or the fact that some sections of the Protestant ‘poor white’ population endure continual poverty and want, does not alter the essential nature of the relationships. Rather do sectarian antagonisms tend to sharpen in times of economic difficulties. Even in depression, the hope of the more privileged slaves survives that they still stand the best chance of getting whatever might be going. Thus, anti-Catholic bigotry is always found at its most uninhibited in Protestant working- class areas. They know what it is all about, too well. The perennial hopes of labour leaders for a uniting of the people against the system are continually frustrated. The worst features of the system itself bind the mind-forged manacles even tighter.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that a society of this type, founded upon those realities, must necessarily create for itself a sustaining ideology, embroidered with loftier sentiments to conceal its grosser nature—an ideology which becomes all-embracing, compulsive and universally accepted among its supporters. The cruder anti-papish expressions are left to the streets and to the election hustings. More genteel forms of anti-Catholic prejudice arise which the sophisticated can more comfortably stomach. Being ‘pro-Protestant,’ it is said, need not mean being anti-


Catholic. “Some of my best friends . . etc. Thereby, many ardent adherents of the unionist system are enabled even to deplore bigotry, to deny the system’s foundation upon sectarianism, and to explain away obvious examples with glib excuses. Dirty, disloyal or unreliable, or whatnot. See how many ‘clean’ Catholics there are in decent jobs.

The six-county Protestant middle-classes, who like middle-classes everywhere know of the life of the ordinary five-eighth only in vague, shuddering images of people living in slums and back streets, have for fifty years consistently refused to believe in the existence of anti-Catholic discrimination, even when so obviously operated under their noses, and even when they themselves have actively operated it. Such is the protection which ideology gives to conscience. The same middle-classes are those who may be heard today affecting a self-righteous horror at what appears to them to be the savagery and wanton destruction accompanying the inevitable uprising of the long downtrodden.

Clearly, therefore, recognition o f the ‘reality’ o f northern Protestant ‘attitudes' provides a picture o f a system in which the democratic processes are so effectively distorted as to be rendered invalid. The real reality is that circumstances prevail which constitute the antithesis o f democracy, and which in fact make the attainment o f democracy, within the six-county context, impossible.

Clearly, therefore, to open the way to any democratic advance, that system which combines the bribery o f a labour aristocracy with a mystical pro-British ideology, must be broken. It must be broken by those democratic forces inside the six counties who are willing and courageous enough to mount a frontal assault on the system, in alliance with democratic forces in the rest o f Ireland, as well as in Britain, where the political and military power to uphold the system rests.

Conversely, any failure to recognise the realities behind the six-county set-up; any effort to portray its problems in terms of mere 'community relations’ detached from the political realities which produce the problems; or any arguments for opting out of the direct struggle which

INTRODUCTION 3 9

ignore the origin and source of the problems in continued British suzerainty—all these dodges lead only to confusions, to irrelevancies and to absurdities, as well as to mere nibbling at the problems themselves.

O’Brien the Labour man has frequently propounded the opting-out formula. The “real problem” he defined as one of “the relations between the two communities” which must be set at right before anything else is done (Derry, March 1971). Obliged, then, to offer suggestions for tackling the problem within the system which maintains it, O’Brien the intellectual finds himself in enforced retreat to a position of anti-intellectual subjectivism. What ought to be done? Why, “Protestants and Catholics should learn to work together” (August ’71). A sharply perceptive observation, indeed. “More” could be done by teachers, he tells us. “More” could be done by clergymen (of all denominations, of course). And while everyone is doing more and more, we could also get down to re-writing our history books. Anything, in short, which stops short of dismantling the political cause of the trouble.

A proper understanding of the six-county sectarian system, however, also helps to explain some of the more complicated peculiarities associated with it, and to dispel many of the fallacies which help sustain it. It explains, for instance, the curiosity of ‘pure’ anti-Catholic discrimination which appears so surprising and inexplicable when applied, say, to resident English Catholics and others who might reasonably be regarded as quite ‘loyal.’ The notion that Catholics are excluded from employment, or given only second preference, because they are ‘disloyal’ and “unwilling to co-operate” anyway, is a shabby excuse. The truth is that, to ensure that the conformity of the Protestants is safely purchased, it is necessary to maintain for them, as Protestants, a guaranteed advantage. To permit too many Catholic exceptions would be to dangerously undermine the structure of privilege. So hard luck. English-born Catholics must share the burden. They are especially suspect in places of power. Thus, again, the active ingredient in the entire sectarian system is seen to be the poison of political unionism with which the system is maintained.

A proper understanding also adequately explains the failure of the labour movement in the six counties to make any headway—since the democratic principles of the labour


movement are frustrated from the outset by the system of privilege and domination which is inextricably woven up with the sectarian ideology of the Unionist Party. It also explains the widespread prevalence of a frank and would-be ‘logical’ opportunism within that labour movement, by dint of which many labour leaders, who knew in their hearts the truth to be otherwise, justified major compromises with the dominant, reactionary ideology, and yielded on important matters like being ‘pro-British,’ in the hope thereby of making some inroads within the established system. It should hardly be necessary to remark that none of those opportunistic calculations has ever borne good fruit.

A proper understanding also dispels that greatest fallacy of all about bigotry being “the same on both sides”—so beloved by the thoughtless, fair-minded liberal—as well as that ploy which pleases English newspapermen which suggests that a united Ireland would bring the reverse situation—the oppression of the Protestants by the Catholic majority.

Anyone, of course, can produce any amount of illustrations to prove the existence of Catholic, anti-Protestant prejudice and bigotry. As a by-product of the general sectarian conflict which is intrinsic to the six-county situation, it is undoubtedly much more widespread than it would be normally. Nevertheless, there is nothing quite so impossible to sustain as that mean-spirited and dishonest sectarian alibi which would attempt to draw the parallel and to equate expressions of Catholic bigotry with the extreme politico-sectarian obscenities of ultra-unionist- protestantism. Not a shred of evidence can be produced to show an equivalent on the Catholic side of anything like the virulence which is characteristic of the common, accepted stock-in-trade of those who exploit political ‘protestantism.’ Similarly, no serious question could arise in a united Ireland of Protestants suffering oppression ‘in reverse’—simply because the purpose for which sectarian bigotry is nourished would then be gone. Those Catholics who, retaining bitter memories, might tend to discriminate against Protestants would soon find that such practices were no longer in accord with existing realities.

In an integrated, united Ireland, religious discrimination would quickly die out for two good reasons. First, it would no more be politically useful to anyone. Second, the

INTRODUCTION 41

Protestants themselves would still be in strong enough an economic position to see that it would not work. So however much the problem of sectarianism is examined, and from whatever angle, and no matter what academic games may be made of it by detached dons like the one who wasted a whole book writing about ‘Ireland’s cultural divide,’ in the end there is no escaping the conclusion that bigotry in the North-east has an inseparable association with the continuance of British power.

A proper understanding ought to dissipate for good the nonsense which holds that this or that course of action must be avoided, or some particular tone of words eschewed, for fear of “increasing the polarisation,” or “splitting the working class further,” or “hardening sectarian attitudes.” Or, as O’Brien has put it, merely to “talk” of territorial unity will divide the communities “even more.”

The ‘communities’ have been poles apart for generations. No working class has ever been so divided into two sections which have held their distance from each other for so long. Total, peaceful polarisation has prevailed undisturbed, and gone unchallenged, for long enough. Only, indeed, when the sectarian basis of the system was first endangered by the rise of the peaceful civil rights movement did the underlying polarisation come openly to the surface in the violent and defensive reaction which was an instinctive movement to preserve privilege.

The polarisation parlance most popular in Belfast left- wing and trade union circles was always that which concerned the “splitting of the working class.” Traditionally, sectarianism is taboo in the trade union and labour movement. It is frowned upon and frequently denounced. It is interesting to observe what is done about it in practice. Some trade union branches, for instance, operate a fairly rigid system of anti-Catholic discrimination. But well dare anyone in the labour movement call this in question. He who does so is looked upon with horror as someone who has uttered a blasphemy. Why? Because, you see, this is what’s known as “introducing sectarian issues.” Sectarianism is tolerable so long as it is not mentioned.

The uniting of the working class is unquestionably an important objective if Ireland is ever to obtain a workable democracy. But what should they be united to do? On the basis of what political objectives should they try to unite? Those are elementary questions for the baby-infants


class in simple politics, yet they are shunned as utterly embarrassing by many mature labour leaders.

Political programmes which would keep the workers bound to the political system which divides them can clearly offer little promise of ‘unity.’ The workers can hardly be expected to unite now under a set-up which has ensured the domination over them for so long of ultra- right-wing conservative politics. Likewise, those dreams of uniting them on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues which have held labour visionaries hypnotised, immobile and transfixed at their own mirages, have in practice been shown to be delusionary. Some workers may unite transitorily on a strike today or on an ‘economic demand’ tomorrow. What’s the use of that, if they resume the practice of cutting one another’s throats the day after on the big, political, sectarian issues?

The six-county working class is split by the sectarian politics of the British partition system. Around that one great question are the fires of bigotry kept eternally burning, to keep them split for ever. Politically, therefore, it is impossible to conceive of any realistic programme for uniting the workers unless it is aimed at ending the partition system, unless it takes an unequivocable stand in favour of the withdrawal of the divisive influence of imperial rule, and unless it is based on the ideal of uniting all Irish workers in equality within an all-Ireland democracy—where they would be in a more advantageous situation to exert their influence as a large and respectable class of the community.

To say that much, however, must not be taken as implying any disparagement of many genuine efforts made from time to time by really courageous individuals in the trade union movement to attack the foundations of the system. Like the British soldiers, they may be said to be “doing a magnificent job of work in exceptionally difficult circumstances.”

X

DEMOCRACY AND THE BRITISH CONNECTION I

U lster is British. In its most recent publicity material, the Unionist Party described its supporters simply as “those British people living in Ulster.’.’ However ardently unionist

INTRODUCTION 43

factions may compete in flogging their various shades of sectarian-protestantism, or their blatant bigotry, they are all equally and obsessively insistent about their Britishness.

The six counties are indeed British, in the sense of being a British possession. The population, willy-nilly, are British citizens. The pro-British population are British citizens in the same sense as were those Indian merchants of Kenya who placed such a superstitious faith in the value of their British passports that they rejected an offer to opt for Kenyan citizenship. Later, when they discovered the disadvantages of being non-Kenyan nationals, it was too late. Their precious passports were worthless. Britain, the mother country, would not let them in.

The six counties are not British in any other sense. Never mind geography, the maps and the intervening Moyle. Those features are not conclusive in themselves. What can be taken to establish for a certainty the non-British character of the area are other more telling factors. Social history and economic geography, land patterns and manufacturing peculiarities—most of them foreign to British experience, most unknown in Britain, and all of them shared only with the rest of Ireland. The useless ‘famine roads’ built to go nowhere through the Donegal mountains have their equivalent in the numerous ‘famine walls’ that still surround the landed estates of Co. Down. Common memories of yellow meal, landlord rapacity, sectarian conflict—they all still speak a language today that the English do not know. An Irish language.

Above all, the six-county population is not British in its speech, or in its character—or even in its ‘attitudes’ which we are so often bidden to take note of. Particularly, it is in no way British in the sense of being part of the British people, sharing in their problems, being involved in their disputes, or blending anonymously into their ‘way of life.’ Indeed, the most pro-British sections of the six-county people often reveal a subconscious awareness that they are not British at all. A recent television news film showed an angry band of Shankill Road women protesting about something. One of them said to the English reporter: “Look, mister, we’re British—and that’s something you British had better remember.” Their Britishness is not a description of what they are: it is a description of their political opinions. The Unionist Party slogan, ‘Ulster is British,’ is conclusive proof in itself that Ulster is not. If


Ulster were really British, there would be no need to proclaim the fact.

The lesson is extremely important. There is no question here o f scoring a mere debating point. The essentially non-British character o f the six-county area and its people is fundamental to any consideration o f the workings o f the democratic system. Democracy simply cannot work, however mechanically perfect its ballot-box arrangements, when extended artificially from one country to embrace a totally different set o f political circumstances in another country, and when it is in conflict with that fundamental democratic principle— the self-determination o f peoples.

The conflict which exists by virtue of the inclusion of the six north-eastern Irish counties within the United Kingdom should be readily understood. Every nation, including the British nation, has its own particular problems, its great disputes about what would be best for the country in political and economic matters, the big issues around which the arguments rage. In a democracy, as in Britain, these questions are decided in regular elections—however democratically imperfect they may be.

In times of elections to the Westminster parliament, however, the ‘British’ people of the six counties are denied any real part in the great democratic process of decision- taking. Except for an extremely small minority of politically-conscious labour men or English-orientated aristocrats, all the major issues in dispute ‘across the water’ are irrelevant to the six-county people and to their situation. Problems peculiar to the six counties are themselves irrelevant to the British people who generally do not want to know about them. Election campaigns locally rage around other questions entirely, questions of Irish politics, and the ‘fundamental’ question of the British connection. The six- county people, including the six-county Protestant majority, are thus, by virtue of the very Irish nature of their own squabbles, effectively excluded from participation in the British democratic system.

Thus it will be seen that the exclusion o f the six counties from a united Irish democracy has produced a political situation which is thoroughly undemocratic in both its major aspects. Internally, it is undemocratic— as a self-

INTRODUCTION 45

perpetuating system o f sectarian privilege. Externally, in its relations with the United Kingdom, under the British connection, democracy is also absent. The recent dispersal o f the Stormont assembly served merely to bring to the surface the reality which has always existed under all the phoney-democratic decorations.

It may therefore reasonably be held to follow that only in an all-Ireland context can the people of the six counties hope to exert any real influence or obtain effective participation in democratic processes, or to have any real say in decision-taking on matters of importance to them. Only a united Ireland can grant them democracy. Because they are not, in fact, a part of the British nation, they are irrelevant in any context other than an Irish one.

Some may attempt to argue that because six-county elections are something in the nature of a plebiscite they can be said to express the “democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority.” Plebiscites in themselves, however, cannot be equated with democracy. When their effect is to deny popular control over public affairs, they are positively anti-democratic. Hitler and Franco were both known to hold plebiscites to obtain a ‘popular mandate’ on specific questions. No one suggests that their regimes could therefore be described as democratic.

O’Brien is on record, however, as having said that the six-county system is fundamentally democratic, although it may be conceded to have certain defects. Again, perhaps, he was looking at the mechanical forms of democracy, and at the mechanical abuses of those forms by various devices such as gerrymandering. To accept mere appearances, and to assume thereby that the article is genuine, suggests a reluctance to face the greatest problem which the actual existence of an anti-democratic arrangement poses—the problem of radically different methods of struggle against it.

In a well-publicised debate with Tomas Mac Giolla, O’Brien analysed what appears to him, no doubt genuinely, lo be the “mystical and irrational concept of the people” held by republicans; their “romantic nationalism and hatred of foreigners;” and their “militarism” which was leading to fascism. The division, he said, was “between


those who accept democracy and those who don’t accept it,” and for the Labour Party he said, “We are committed to the democratic process.”

In a comment on the debate, The Irish Times remarked: “All politicians live by the invocation of some brand of mystique.” It did not add that O’Brien the politician consistently employs his own democratic mystique, invoking the superficial trappings of democracy to the neglect and concealment of the sharper reality—the absence of true democracy in the sense of a sovereign people in absolute control of the affairs of their own country.

The distortions caused by partition in every aspect of normal democratic politics are conspicuous enough inside the six counties. In the twenty-six counties the effects are not so sharp nor so immediately obvious. But even a Fianna Fail government spokesman, in a television debate, conceded that the partition issue distorted normal political relationships and coloured many major aspects of public affairs.

O’Brien, in the debate with Mac Giolla, offered “no short-) cuts.” He said: “It is a long haul, even until labour is as strong here as it is in the rest of western Europe.” But why is it not already so strong? Again, unless we fall back on subjectivism by blaming some ‘innate conservatism’ among the Irish people—which is nonsense—the weakness of the labour movement in the political field can be seen only as characteristic of a country with an unsolved national problem.

Labour leaders in the twenty-six counties who vainly dream of advancing their cause, let alone obtaining socialism, within the partition framework, without reference to that supreme matter of national sovereignty, and in actual acceptance of the system as a valid democratic arrangement, are doomed to suffer the same bitter disillusionment as did generations of six-county labour leaders before them. The haul would be long indeed, for it would extend to Kingdom Come.

For labour to make any significant advance, it would need to be in the forefront of the struggle to obtain national unity and independence. In the meantime, whatever disputes may arise over questions of immediate methods and tactics, the republicans still occupy that position—in the vanguard of the fight for an Irish democracy. That is not to say that they necessarily ought to.

XI

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR PROSPERITY

O n c e upon a time when Wolfe Tone wrote a pamphlet recommending the Irish parliament to declare for independence and neutrality, a certain bumptious ass—a member of that parliament—declared angrily that the author should be hanged, for the proposal would mean that “our coals would cost us £5 a ton.” And ever since, all consideration of the question of national independence has been plagued with equally fatuous trivia, with simplicisms so easy that the most feeble-minded may grasp them, and with arguments based on immediate, apparent disadvantages by which the real, long-term economic interests of the country are set aside.

Ever since then, Ireland’s ensuing poverty has been explained simply by the lack of wealth. No coal. No minerals. No natural riches or resources of any sort. No nothing. The lush physical conditions which attracted endless waves of plunderers had apparently vanished. The bounteous wealth created in the sweat of generations of Irish working people is omitted from most accounts, for, if it was ever there, it is now nowhere to be seen. To mention it might raise the question: where did it go? Who got it? It is most improper even for modern ‘economic histories of Ireland’ to suggest that it went to England. It betrays a lack of scholarly detachment to say that Ireland is poor because Ireland was plundered. No. Ireland is poor because she is poor.

In more recent times the former Stormont prime minister, Terence O’Neill, set himself up as an expert in economic trivia to impress the thoughtless. What would happen to our great shipyards, our huge aircraft industry, under an Irish republic, he asked. No more admiralty orders for big aircraft carriers; no more planes being built for Britain’s air force.

We have not got a republic yet, but those particular mirages of endless bounties from the British connection


have long since evaporated. So more lately O’Neill has been heard reducing his argument to even more vague, humanitarian terms. It is just that he wants to see all the people “enjoying a British standard of living rather than an Irish standard of living.”

Never mind that the low ‘Irish standards’ may be due to the British connection; never mind that the ‘British standards’ can be upheld only with the begging bowl. The fact that O’Neill, as late as March 1972 in a debate in the House of Lords, employed exactly the same formula, using the same words unaltered from his previous arguments, is a measure of the mental calibre of the average economic defender of the British connection, and an illustration of the parrot-like simplicity which still fascinates those bumptious asses whom political unionism still produces with such fecundity.

Wolfe Tone, as a young man making a close and objective examination of the position of his native country, became convinced—as he tells us in his writings—that “the influence of England was the radical vice of our government, and consequently that Ireland would never be free, prosperous or happy until she was independent.” Elsewhere he described the British connection as “the bane of Ireland’s prosperity,” and expressed the view that “while it lasted” Ireland could never be free or happy.

The connection has lasted a long time, and, as a result, prosperity is the one thing which Ireland has never known. Few could be so bold today as to deny that if Tone and the United Irishmen had succeeded in their objectives, Ireland’s subsequent history would have been very different, and a lot happier. A sovereign government would have been compelled to reverse those processes leading inevitably to economic ruin and degradation; it would have staunched the rapacious exploitation which, with the tightening of the union, eventually bled this country white and left it in its present unhappy state.

In Tone’s time we saw the early emergence in Ireland, in a fairly classical form, of that type of national movement which later, throughout the nineteenth century, was to produce the independent national states of Europe as we know them today. A rising manufacturing and merchant class, chafing at economic, commercial and political restrictions, and discontented by the denial to them of political power to have a decisive say in directing affairs in their

INTRODUCTION 49and in the country’s interest, provided an ideological impetus to the modern concept of nationhood. An oppressed peasantry, with a century of experience in sporadic land struggles, provided a mass army ripe for rebellion.

And the working men and artisans of Dublin and Belfast produced both leaders and fighting men of particular courage, intelligence and uncompromising resoluteness.

Today the picture has changed utterly. D ’imthigh sin agus thainig seo. In the North those erstwhile kings of industry and commerce who might once have chosen to be tycoons in their own land are all gone. The economic union and its overwhelming pressures forced a political surrender, too, which in its turn resulted in the actual sellout of individual enterprises. Comprador capitalism replaces I he ‘sturdy independence’ of yore. Coupon-clippers whose “interests are the interests of another country” are in the political ascendant. All major industrial development exists by grace of ‘outside investment,’ as in any semicolonial territory. Not a single large enterprise of any importance remains which could be truly called ‘Ulster- owned.’

To explain the strange phenomenon, those who have gone on sociological excavations to discover an ‘Ulster bourgeoisie’ have invariably come up clueless. The real explanation is much simpler. The merchants and mill- owners, as a naturally timid class, felt it to be safer to depend on British power, allied to religious sectarianism, (o keep the trade union danger in check and curb the threat oj social upheaval. Ambition involving risk was never i heir forte. Better by far a more menial status in ensured comfort than any greatness through daring.

Today, in the twenty-six counties, the trends are all in i he same direction. All efforts to establish a strongly-based native Irish capitalism have failed. They did not fail for want of a desire to do so. That much may be taken for Ijranted. Rather did the shadow of an age-old Irish reality blight the dreams. The relationship between creditor, debtor and bailiff had much more to do with it.

Of crucial importance was the failure to establish an cconomy which allowed the local accumulation of capital und profits, and an embargo on their export—expressed in I he failure to establish an independent money market which could have, in itself, facilitated the generation of further reproductive economic activity on the lines of that famous


‘factor’ so often quoted by economists. That failure may reasonably be attributed to the accumulation of ‘lawful’ debts during the previous hundred disastrous years of the British connection, and to that failure the most recent exclusion of the resources of the industrial North unquestionably contributed.

Now the same relentless economic pressures which achieved the outright purchase of six-county resources are being applied to the twenty-six. The effects of Anglo-Irish ‘free trade,’ and the sell-out to foreigners of mineral wealth of inestimable value, are only symptoms of the greater failure to achieve a political and economic sovereignty which could have enabled us to exploit our own riches for our own good. If the process goes on, the same fate is in store for the twenty-six county plutocracy as that which has already befallen their northern equivalents. Total obscurity, political surrender and a departure from the stage of history. The actual disposal of their capital assets, the shutting down of their enterprises and the selling out— in exchange for more menial and insignificant incomes—of their old businesses. A process, in short, which is described by vulgar and biased people as ‘gobbling up.’

Together with the economic pressures has come the softening-up talk. Along with the debtor’s compulsion to submerge himself in an even more disastrous, greater west- European economic union, comes the revival within the twenty-six counties of those same, old asinine observations on questions of Irish independence which once involved Wolfe Tone in the price of coal. “How much do you think you’ll get for your bullocks if we don’t go in?” Of total irrelevance are the long-term interests of the people of the country. Nationality itself is belittled in order to accommodate the ideology of the greater empire to come. Perhaps even to the gratification of O’Brien, old shibboleths are replaced with new ones, and nothing is left except sentiment and lip-service to the fascist, mystical and ‘unattainable’ notion of an Irish sovereignty.

Fatuous trivia which appeal to immediate appearances and to those of feeble understanding are again trotted out like articles of the gospel. Those shallow types of political liberals whose deepest thoughts never plumbed below the surface of a Jeffersonian platitude are unanimously enchanted by the glorious European dawn. Political liberals, who always cherished a sneaking respect anyway for anything

INTRODUCTION 51

that carried the weight of military might behind it, could be sold virtually anything, however monstrously it might be contrary to the nation’s interests, so long as it is made to ‘sound nice’ and wrapped up in lofty phraseology. The empire of the western European Moguls sounds good because it is called a ‘community’ and is disguised as ‘co-operation.’ Alas! How much more support could it have won for itself, if only it had been called the Greater Far West Europe Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Now, however, that the question of Irish sovereignty is again rearing its irrepressible head, the modern shibboleth merchants are working overtime. “Sovereignty no longer matters.” Really, there is no such thing anyway, any more. All nations must give up a ‘little bit’ of their sovereignty. And as the British border in Ireland exerts an ever more pernicious and crippling influence on the free development of the Irish economy and Irish political democracy, we are told—sure, isn’t it obvious if you’re feeble-minded— that in the coming common market national boundaries will have “less and less meaning.”

They mean nothing to anybody except to those who are called upon to withdraw from them. It is remarkable that all the old-fashioned and backward notions about sovereignty are frowned upon only when they are applied to nations under the heel of the great powers. Boundaries might not matter, but there is no call upon Britain or America to hand over bits of their territories to their neighbours. The industrial giants of the world may freely and arbitrarily create their own rules relating to tariffs and trade, but for a small country it is inward-looking, isolationist, if not suicidal, to attempt to do so.

The greatest delusion o f the age is that strange and stupid act o f self-deception which holds that a nation may still freely order its own affairs while another nation sits on its neck, occupies part o f its territory, distorts its politics and denies it democracy, and subdues and subordinates its needs in economic development to the requirements o f a more advanced industrial economy.

Nationalists of the Hibernian school have always held that partition was an ‘injustice’ to the ancient Irish nation. They never quite understood that it constitutes, in fact, a continuing, constricting incubus on the life of the Irish


people, and an active, bleeding sore for which all our exceptional political and economic miseries are to blame. Tone’s famous words about the “curse of the British connection.”

Within the partition framework, those economic demands for the amelioration of depressed conditions which have left-wing ideologists so deeply enamoured, and which are sometimes called ‘bread and butter issues,’ take on an especially absurd, Disneyland fantasy-quality. In the six counties they usually amount to applying pressure to get the trade union movement to apply pressure to get the local administration to apply pressure on the British government to do this thing or that. But the British government, quite unconcerned about the ‘pressures,’ sails on—and doesn’t bother. In politics, the business of asking governments to which you are opposed to do things which your own ideal government might do is a thankless one, as well as a foolish course of agitation. Why not work instead for a sovereign government which would have both the power and the will to undertake the necessary measures? But that, of course, would bring the left-wingers uncomfortably close to the dangerous bone of real politics.

In the twenty-six counties there is an equivalent sort of wonderland behaviour. Suppose the government there would really like to pay larger benefits all round, but cannot afford to do so? Should the answer not be to get a sovereign, independent Irish government which would have both the power and the will? No, no. Not at all. The socialists of the O’Brien school hold that it is not permissible even to ‘talk’ about territorial unity and political independence because, they say, a million Protestants in the north “don’t want” those things. It is quite all right, however, to blether away to your heart’s content about ‘socialism,’ even though five million Irish people, at the moment at any rate, do not want socialism. How come? What’s the difference? Simple. It is a helluvalot safer to blether about socialism. It gets you nowhere. It keeps the cosy status quo comfortably intact. And it does not bring you too closely to the bone of real politics.

Today, just as in Tone’s time, only a sovereign Irish government could possibly assume those powers necessary to set things right for the Irish people. Much more so even than in Tone’s time, that government would be required

INTRODUCTION 53

to take extremely radical and maybe sometimes harsh courses of action to readjust the balance, to catch up on lost time, and to salvage what’s left of our national resources and our cultural heritage. That truth might not yet have percolated through to the majority of Irish people, but it has dawned on a significant number of our British overlords to assist them in giving currency to another modern shibboleth.

Britain does not really want to hang on to the six counties, we are told. She would really like to be rid of them. When Britain shows some sign of actually withdrawing her physical presence from Ireland, we may begin to believe that. There is nothing to prevent her declaring her lack of interest by making rapid arrangements now for evacuation. Until then, blandly asserted ‘convictions’ with no substance to support them will remain suspect.

The possession and occupation of ‘mere territory’ without worrying too much about ‘winning the hearts’ of the people who live on it has never bothered Britain. Those modern Irish shibboleth merchants who tell us today that the possession of mere territory is unimportant are, of course, merely providing Britain with a new excuse to go on occupying the Irish territory she wants as long as she thinks it is important for her to do so.

At the same time those lurid pen-pictures of wicked imperialists consciously scheming together to re-bind Ireland, hand and foot, to a new imperialist, federated scheme-of-things may be taken with a grain of salt. British imperialism rarely operates with such conscious deliberation —although its ultimate design usually works out quite as satisfactorily. British imperialism tends to operate rather by instinctive awareness of its ‘economic ties,’ its investment interests and suspicion about what the natives might get up to if they are left alone. So it amounts to much the same thing. Elaborate schemes for political ‘federations’ conceal the instinctive British distrust about having an independent Ireland, with a sovereign government in full control of both political and economic decisions, on Britain’s western seaboard. You never know what the rascals might do. The doubts have been put plainly into words by more than one British Tory politician who has expressed fears of having an ‘Irish Cuba’ to cope with if full economic and political democracy were ever granted to the Irish people.

Economically, Ireland’s need to have unrestricted control


over her entire territory and resources, so as to order affairs for the benefit of all Irish people, is the complete answer to those other mouthers of mindless platitudes who insist that the ‘South’ must first be turned into a paradise before the ‘North’ can be ‘asked in.’ Neither North nor South can know the full meaning of prosperity until they together obtain the sovereign political machinery with which they can bring that desirable state of affairs to fruition.

For Irish democrats, therefore, the supreme and urgent issue must remain the same as that which motivated Wolfe Tone—the obtaining of one sovereign government for all Ireland which will have the power to take those decisions necessary for the salvation of Ireland as a nation and her people as a happy, prosperous part of it. No wise man could be so bold as to assert that the granting of sovereignty would automatically, in itself, guarantee prosperity. The Irish people might perversely elect an independent government which would not take the necessary measures. But the fundamental point is that they would then have the democratic right to change it—a choice which is at present denied to the Irish people both North and South in all matters affecting the most vital long-term economic interests of the people. Even if we were saddled with a dictatorship, issues would still be considerably simplified in contrast to the confusions of partition-politics. The task would be to overthrow the dictatorship, and then even O’Brien might admit that methods other than mystical ballot-box formalities might be justifiably applied.

XII

NATIONAL STRUGGLE OR CLASS STRUGGLE?

As far back as Tone’s time, different attitudes to the question of obtaining national freedom could be observed which were, in general terms, usually linked to social status. Tone himself notes the greater timidity shown by some sections of the northern business class when confronted with radical demands for Catholic rights and for total democratic reform based on universal suffrage. Other

INTRODUCTION 55

United Irish leaders commented on similar tendencies— particularly Jamie Hope, the weaver from Co. Antrim, and Henry Joy McCracken. (“The rich always betray the poor.”)

Nevertheless, in those days, there existed an actual community of interest in achieving national independence among all the major social classes of the nation—merchants and manufacturers, workers and artisans, and the peasantry. Any incipient conflicts of interest between, say, employer and employed, or between middlemen, shopkeepers and manufacturers, appeared to be incidental and irrelevant to the great question. And indeed, being undeveloped, they were incidental at that time. The one major question of class exploitation—the oppression of the peasantry by the landlords—was itself linked with the question of national liberation, for the landlords themselves were part of the English garrison.

Since then, however, with the growth of capitalism and commerce, actual conflicts of interests developed within Irish society, and became more acute. The great 1913 Dublin strike brought to the forefront that other great voice of national democracy—organised labour. But long before that, the national movement was already dividing into divergent streams which again, in broad terms, could be said to reflect divergent economic interests, and different social status. Constitutional nationalism, dynamiters and Fenians; Hibernianism and republicanism; Land Leaguers, Redmondites and IRB men; Griffith Sinn Fein monarchists, radical revolutionary republicans and republican socialists. Always, the tendency was for the wealthier classes to be the most conservative, the weakest in pursuing the national objective and the most ready to accept compromise. The poorer social classes, the workers, the shopkeepers and the professions provided the more radical impulse behind the struggle for liberation.

The sharpening conflicts within Irish society complicated the problem of attaining national freedom. The dream of a total national unity evaporated. Political confusion arose so that, for instance, Irish workers in economic conflict with their nationalist bosses naturally tended to reject their bosses’ brand of nationalism, but in so doing they sometimes were tempted to dismiss the national objective altogether as irrelevant, and so, unconsciously, to take up a proimperialist position. And in the North the issues were


further clouded by sectarianism. Because unionism linked the cause of the British connection with protestantism and so turned the national question into a sectarian question, it became customary in left-wing circles to scorn the question of national unity and independence as ‘sectarian,’ and to declare that the border was a ‘bogey’ which did not affect things one way or another. So they began to play a part in the democratic play-acting and to flog their ‘bread and butter issues’ in a totally unrealistic failure to recognise the actual absence of true democracy and the impossibility even of winning their own social demands within the partition framework.

The political left, of course, dearly loves a class battle. And the more they can succeed in viewing the struggle as a direct one between the classes the better can they be seen to rise above those more sordid realities which ordinary mortals must face. Even when repeated experience should have taught them that the six-county framework does not, and cannot, provide a political battleground to suit their ideal form of struggle, many left-wingers continued with their quixotic sorties against capitalist windmills, and even attempted to depict the conflicts of the past three years in terms which they wished were true, but were not, and to define them as a confrontation between the rich and the poor.

The actual reality of any given situation, however, has an unkind habit in the long run of imposing its true character, and the predominating conflicts underlying it, upon historical events. And by no stretch of the imagination can the present conflicts in the North be described any longer as a pure class struggle. The ‘uprising of the workers’ is taking place without that most numerous section of the working class—the Protestant people. The plain fact is that, despite the growth of class conflicts between capital and labour, the predominant issue in the six counties is, and always has been, the national issue—and will continue to be until the withdrawal of British power. The uprising is one of an oppressed religious sector, which is bearing the brunt of the fight for a democratic settlement.

Class considerations can certainly be detected in the situation in as much as they may generally be found behind any big conflict. But the nature of them has already been noted. The wealthier classes, whatever their nominal ideology, are the more conservative and the most likely to

INTRODUCTION 57

sell out, or compromise, say, on some ‘federal’ scheme which would preserve British influence. The real revolutionary road in Ireland, and the direction which the conditions themselves dictate, is in the fight for the reunification of Ireland in independence. Left-wingers, and particularly those more politically-conscious elements among them, who have consistently refused to face that truth have done a disservice not only to themselves but also to the Protestant people, whom they have helped to delude.

XIII

CONCLUSIONS: THE ONE VALID OBJECTIVE

S in c e political issues associated with the uncompleted national struggle are clearly still today the predominant issues in Irish politics—as events of the past few years have shown them to be—it must follow that the settlement of the disputes involved, and the substitution of normal political relationships in their place, requires the abolition of the national problem—through the completion of the national struggle and the attaining of a unified, national democracy.

In any assessment of the state of Irish affairs today, or of any political attitude towards them, certain tests may still be applied by reference to the guiding principles to be found in the writings of Wolfe Tone. Strict application in our different situation of Tone’s non-sectarian approach, and of his radical view of democracy and sovereignty, does in fact provide the only realistic guide to the eventual achieving of normality, peace and reconciliation.

If the requirements of Irish democracy, the requirements of economic sovereignty, and the best long-term interests of the Irish people raise the very reasonable demand that the country should be allowed to govern itself, free from outside interference, it will be seen—and I believe it has been amply demonstrated—that none of those sectarian considerations still associated with British rule may be counted as a valid obstacle in the way of that objective. Wolfe Tone’s teachings, and a recognition of their surviving relevance, provide, rather, a clearer understanding of the nature of the partition problem itself—and an understand


ing which above all disposes of the Great Delusion about partition which has been fostered so assiduously by partition’s own defenders that many of them have themselves become victims of it.

The Great Delusion about partition—which the Hibernian-Nationalist type of anti-partition propaganda itself often reflects, and encourages—is that notion which views the arrangement as a matter merely of Ireland being divided into “two states,” each with an equal choice of “going its own way.” It is a notion which therefore defines the problem simply as one of getting them to come “closer together.” Co-operation on joint electricity projects, and on things like fisheries and drainage, is thereby accorded a ludicrous political significance. Self-deception defying all comprehension also causes victims of the delusion to hail, for instance, the prospect of the abolition of tariffs within the Common Market—on the ground that this, somehow, “will make the border disappear.” Turning to a faith in magic is characteristic of those who turn their backs on reality—and, in this case, on the reality that the overriding factor in the partition problem is the presence of British power.

An accurate definition of the partition problem, however, passes the test of political science: it does not, in its application, produce such palpable nonsense. The real definition is, too truly, the simple and obvious one. Britain, faced with an uncontainable movement of Irish democracy towards self-determination, played the ‘Orange card’ in order to frustrate it, and fanned to a new fury those sectarian animosities which she coddled so carefully in her own interests ever since that first ‘dangerous union’ between the religions occurred in 1798. “We shall not have home rule for Ireland” was the unionist slogan. There was no claptrap about ‘democratic majorities’ then. But in the end Britain was forced to retreat, and was obliged to contract the political boundaries of the United Kingdom until they included only a smaller part of Ireland. And, in the area to which she still clung, her power was, naturally and inevitably, based on a sustained and intensified form of political bigotry.

Thus, by definition, partition is simply the contraction o f the area o f British power in Ireland. The solution o f the partition problem, and o f the problems o f sectarian

INTRODUCTION 59

strife connected with it, will be found in the further contraction o f the United Kingdom’s boundaries—until theylie beyond the Irish seas.

The accurate definition disposes of much nonsense. It disposes of that absurd contention which is still occasionally heard that the ‘roots’ of partition lie in the plantation of Ulster 300 years ago—a facile ‘explanation,’ indeed, which by implication accepts that there is therefore something natural in the modern madness of unionist sectarian bigotry. It is an adequate answer also to the most recent stupidity heard from Alliance Party speakers, and others, which holds that “partition is not to blame for bigotry” because (surprise, sunrise) sectarian conflict actually existed “before” partition (as they discovered by reading an historical review on the subject). Of course it did. It always flourished under British rule. And with the reduction in the area of British rule—i.e., partition—it continued within that area in a more concentrated form.

Of all the simplicisms employed to pardon the British presence—and to avoid facing the plain facts—the most feeble is perhaps that commonly-expressed notion that bigotry among the Irish is itself the prior ‘cause’ of partition—rather than British power being the sustaining cause of bigotry, and partition with it. This is a particularly fatalistic, cart-before-the-horse attitude which is essentially bigoted in itself because it asserts a firm belief in the naturalness of religious antipathy. It is usually held by ‘respectable’ people as a cloak for their conscience to protect them from coming to conclusions which would lump them in the same camp with republican malcontents.

The true definition of partition, and the obvious one. is too much for those who prefer to avoid uncomfortable political conclusions. It is also too simply irritating to the pundits employed to complicate the question and to hide the stark reality. Elaborate are the tricks, tortuous the many pretences, and amusing some of the alibis which have been employed to give credibility to the ‘two states’ notion, and even to suggest that the six-county area has a measure of ‘self-determination.’ A great parliament building was provided, complete with maces, black rods and other baubles for politicians to play at being sovereign legislators. Official ‘government’ publications were printed to uphold the superstition that the six counties had something called


a ‘constitution.’ Scholarly works were written to transform the sordid realities of partition into an idealistic “experiment in devolution.” Partition is even described as “ the foundation of Ulster” in unionist propaganda. And in a recent book, which is a dull history of six-county affairs, one humourless writer who could not be suspected of joking describes it as “fifty years of self-government.”

The Great Delusion betrays its fraudulent basis, however, as soon as it comes face-to-face with the problem of unifying the people, or with the devious, double-think arguments about coercion. Uncritically, the opposite of the actual position is accepted as the objective truth. Reality is inverted. Thus, English politicians may be heard declaring pompously that it is “up to the Irish themselves to settle their own quarrels”—blandly ignoring, or minimising, their own involvement, and dodging the obvious question, “Why don’t you go away and let us do so?” The ‘two states’ notion is part of Britain’s alibi, concealing her ultimate responsibility to arrange for a withdrawal in order to permit a free union of the Irish people, and in order to allow a new political atmosphere to develop in which the spirit of reconciliation could flourish, free from those sectarian-orientated conflicts which all revolve around the one issue—the continuance of British rule.

The inversion o f the true position can be recognised most clearly o f all in the talk about coercion. For it has to be conceded that there is at least an element o f coercion involved when an imperial power maintains its presence by military might, by political trickery and by economic domination. But it cannot possibly be argued that there is the slightest degree o f coercion involved in going away and leaving us alone.

I f the genuine problem presented by a withdrawal should happen to be—as it does appear to be in the present Irish situation—that some people would be left behind who could not bring themselves to accept an equal citizenship with their fellow countrymen in a new, sovereign state, no matter what their reasons might be, whether arising from a deep intensity o f sentiment, from an attachment to real or imaginary British traditions, or from pure bitter bigotry, there would be no justification in treating them like the Indians o f Kenya. There is no reason why they

INTRODUCTION 61should not be offered every generous facility, i f they wished,to go away as well.

It may be said that this view ignores the problem of Protestant fears. These fears are variously described as being ‘genuine,’ or even ‘justified,’ or sometimes merely as ‘real,’ or maybe, just ‘understandable.’ The present writer, who knows the Protestant people well and who feels an affinity to them despite their political disorientation, is convinced that the correct description is that which was used by J. B. Armour, the Presbyterian minister of Bally- money, who at the height of the Carsonite agitation of 1912 said that the Protestant fears of home rule were ‘imaginary.’ And like any mental patient suffering from hallucinations, the cure may well lie in shock treatment. If the Protestant people were finally brought face-to-face with their bogey-man as a result of a British decision to withdraw, those fearful, age-old obsessions, which are exploited by politicians who really have contempt for the people, would rapidly dissolve. The writer agrees with Paul O’Dwyer of New York that “very few” of them would want to go away. Instead, once liberated from the anti-democratic sectarianism of partition politics, their energies would be released in a constructive direction to exert a preponderant and happier influence—and a politically beneficial one—within the only framework where they can hope to have any real influence at all, and that is within an independent Irish republic.

What about the backlash? What about that modern equivalent of the raging Carsonite hysteria which was used to frustrate the cause of Irish democracy in 1912? The violence and the threats of violence from the unionist political camp in today’s anti-democratic cause? The political gunfire which began in Malvern Street, Belfast, in 1966 in resistance to change and in defence of the sectarian system of privilege and ascendancy?

In the midst of the unprecedented violence produced by the present situation, it is clearly absurd to contend that a radical step towards a lasting settlement is impossible “for fear of violence.” Those politicians who wear their democratic hearts on their sleeves, and who make use of the ‘backlash’ argument to uphold the undemocratic status quo, may well be asked: What is so particularly awe-inspiring or respectable about a reactionary sort of violence that it


must perpetually be bowed down to, in contrast to that j other sort of rebellious violence which can be cured for | good by the application of the ultimate democratic solution —Irish self-determination.

The subject of violence is the hypocrite’s happiest hunting ground in Ireland today. Nobody likes it, nobody wants it, and it is popular to denounce it. But the violence that is with us has different political connotations. And those Labour Party politicians in the twenty-six counties — particularly Cruise O’Brien and Noel Browne—who like to grant ‘democratic’ validity to the ‘backlash’ sort of violence must be either grievously unbalanced in their assessment of the northern situation or else totally dishonest and calculating in their exploitation of it for their own political purposes. For there are two sides to the violence business, as everyone else knows, and those two politicians have embraced the reactionary side.

If, for instance, a democratic solution were applied to the Irish question and Britain were to announce her withdrawal in favour of Irish self-determination, there would undoubtedly be a violent reaction from extreme unionism. But it would be a peculiar form of violence, with an interesting political character. What sort?

It would be the last-ditch kick o f a reactionary system resisting its historical demise. It would be a non-perpetuating form o f violence. Once put down, it would be finished with. Once defeated, the cause o f it would be banished for ever—relegated to the unhappy past. Thereafter, violence could no more be expected from that source than violence could be expected today in Scotland in the cause o f restoring the Stuart monarchy.

On the other hand, the violence which is caused by the violation of democracy is likely to continue until the question of achieving a united Irish democracy is solved.If the situation is one which breeds violence, there is no use preaching against it, as the bishops have discovered. Or, as a famous republican often quoted put it, “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.” This writer himself once looked on that slogan as a republican war-cry—as a sort of threat of what they would do if they didn’t get what they wanted. In the light of experience, it takes on more

INTRODUCTION 63

of the quality of an astute and scientific observation on the political reality.

Deplore it as we may, if we have a situation which produces violence, and if we really want to put a stop to it, we have no choice but to take the political road which will abolish the causes of it for good.

In terms of political morality, virtue is all on the side of those who seek to follow that road to ultimate peace, and the heaviest burden of responsibility rests on those who have the power to ensure the most peaceful possible advance along that road—primarily on the British Government. Professions of horror and revulsion at the present violence are hypocritical when associated with policies designed to preserve the political breeding ground of violence.

An understanding of the true definition of the partition problem also casts a sorry light on some of the irrelevancies advanced for reforming the 26-county constitution. Looking at this debate from the North, much of the talk appears to reflect the ‘two-states’ delusion—expressed in the “take over the North” complex. The northern Protestants are to be lured or coaxed “into the South” by advertising methods, by “free concessions” and by silly semantics. Particularly pathetic is the conservative dream of “moderate Unionists and Nationalists” uniting to solve the partition problem, because even in their ‘moderate’ guises the terms are mutually exclusive. Any unionist who comes to accept the democratic aim of a united, sovereign state could no longer call himself a unionist.

The vision of the northern Protestants marching into an Irish republic behind a flagpole bearing an enlarged representation of a contraceptive hardly requires a laboured reply to hold it up to ridicule. The truth is that the few sections in the 26-county constitution said to be objectionable to Protestants—and those of them which actually are— are trivia besides the greater matters of consequence facing the Irish people today. They are trivialities as far as the northern people are concerned, for they serve only as a butt for jibes and sneers in the propaganda of the British- connection crowd. Their removal might change the content of the propaganda, but nothing else. The fact is that the operators of the unionist political system are not at all likely to be charmed by any promise of equality in any


context; rather, their interest is in maintaining their privilege and overlordship in their own petty kingdom.

Besides those minor changes now being proposed in the 26-county constitution, the immense changes which would of necessity follow immediately upon the withdrawal of British power, both in the constitutional and political spheres, would be devastating. Make no mistake about it. In a 32-county Ireland the northern Protestants would settle the terms of the new constitution for all of us. They would get the constitution they wanted, and the freedoms they claim. If they didn’t, they could wreck the country. And if they didn’t, they would be entitled to take any action until they did. What is not quite appreciated by O’Brien and his friends, who bestow a democratic blessing on the northern majority within the artificial British-power structure, is that actions taken by the Protestants as a community on their own behalf can acquire democratic justification only within the general democratic framework of a united Ireland.

Similarly in the field of party politics. Who can really conceive of the present patterns of party relationships surviving within an all-Ireland democracy? All things would be utterly changed. It is fairly certain that the present 26-county parties themselves would not continue in their present shape and form. Certainly, the idea that there could still be a unionist party with any influence is as outlandish as expecting a royalist-Bourbon party to capture the government of France—although, at the most, we might have a freak-fringe survival comparable with that militant Protestant group which still apparently exists in some part of Holland. The recognition of the real, refreshing impact upon Irish politics which freedom would bring serves all the more to illustrate the present distortion of affairs, North and South, by partition, and to provide a spur to all democrats to bring the intolerable situation to a speedy end.

Irish affairs are today in the throes of change. Unless again aborted by conservative forces in league with calculating political opportunists, the product could this time be promising. With the rapid daily changes and the constant flux in political matters, any comment on day-to-day issues in a short essay of this sort could quickly become out of date. But in assessing events, there is one sure test which

INTRODUCTION 65

may still be generally applied—the guiding principles of Wolfe Tone. When applied without distortion, without prevarication and without any ifs and buts, only one conclusion can be drawn.

For or against democracy, unity and independence— that is still what the major political conflicts, and all the argument around it, are all about. The true democrats are those who will keep that objective vigorously to the forefront o f their political programme, and those who will pursue the attainment o f it.

The conservative forces, and the anti-democratic forces, are those who will pay lip-service to the objective and do nothing about it; or those who will use spurious ‘democratic’ arguments to downgrade it, to resist action to attain it, or to put it on the long finger; or those, of course, who will oppose it outright.

There are various shades of in-between whose degrees of conservatism or radicalism may be judged by their attitudes to the central, democratic question—just as it always has been in Irish history. O’Brien, who has committed himself so firmly to opposing British withdrawal, should not have been offended when somebody recently described him as being on the ‘conservative’ side. If he thinks he is being radical by criticising the 26-county constitution, he is truly an unawakened Tory in Don Quixote armour.

Modern political programmes, when viewed in the light of the Wolfe Tone test for democratic principles, may either pass the test or fail it.

For instance, although Wolfe Tone was not a socialist, it may be considered valid in today’s conditions to set some form of socialism as an ultimate objective—so long as ‘socialism’ is not made a pre-condition for achieving national freedom, and so long as the attainment first of the necessary democratic, national framework is kept to the forefront as the central and most important objective.

No amount of talk about socialism or democracy, on l he other hand, can be said to be in tune with the spirit of Wolfe Tone’s principles if it involves some formula which accepts the undemocratic, stultifying status quo of


the British partition system on the ground, say, that the i ‘majority’ of the northern Protestants must first agree to accepting democracy. That is a formula conceived to postpone the democratic solution interminably, to prolong the agony for ever and to render a peaceful settlement virtually impossible.

O’Brien, in his debate with Mac Giolla, accused the modern republican movement—of both major shades—of tending towards fascism because, he said, they exploited an “irrational and mystical” concept of the people and the nation. That was O’Brien being glib again. As a debater who prides himself in his own intellectual insight, his understanding of the subtleties and complexities of political phenomena proved to be defective on that occasion when he attempted, in order to establish his own weak point, to draw a plausible but superficial parallel.

The parallel he attempted to draw was with the classical European brand of fascism which—both in the thirties and today—has always exploited a savage, chauvinistic sort of nationalism, liberally laced with racial hatred and irrational prejudice. But O’Brien, the political scientist, is gravely at fault for ignoring the essential, identifying characteristics of fascism—characteristics which have been totally absent | from the IRA even in its most militaristic and unpolitical phases.

The nationalistic jingoism of fascist movements is easily recognisable in three ways: first of all, it is always employed in an ultra-conservative cause; secondly, it battens chiefly on the middle-class love of stability, and fears of disturbance, and is therefore always identified, as in the neo- fascist movement in Italy today, with the ‘law-and-order’ brigade; and thirdly, and above all, it uses a ‘pure’ and uncritical nationalistic hysteria to divert people’s attention from real and urgent social and political problems, to dull their understanding, and to blunt their instinctive compulsion towards democratic action.

None of those characteristics can be laid at the door of either section of the republican movement today. For all the faults which may be found with traditional republicanism, fascism is one thing it is not tainted with, either today or yesterday. Rather, its prevailing spirit has always been democratic. In contrast to the fascist ethos, both sections of the republican movement—each of them perhaps in its

INTRODUCTION 67

own inadequate way—are attempting as minority revolutionary movements, fighting against conservative odds, to keep the real needs and the most urgent social and political problems before the people.

O’Brien was being quite dishonest in accusing republicans of exploiting a fascist-nationalistic type of ‘hatred,’ and he must know it. O’Brien, on the other hand, with his law- and-order, stamp-them-out appeal to middle-class respectability, is not averse to exploiting the irrational prejudice of the six-county ‘majority’ to justify his own conservative stand and to divert the people’s attention from the real need to enforce a radical political change in Ireland. It is not altogether surprising that his Labour Party is engaged in political flirtations with the ultra-conservatives of Fine Gael, now dressed in the progressive cloak of critics of the constitution—the only Irish party which ever spawned a fully-fledged Irish fascism, complete with thugs, thick-heads und theological obscurantism. O’Brien’s democratic mysticism offers him no defence. Neo-fascist parties in Europe today sometimes go under democratic labels.

In judging the next, immediate stages in the unfolding Irish story, adherence to Wolfe Tone’s principles can also provide a fairly safe guide to recognising what would be a step forward, and what would be a step back. “Damn your concessions, England” is another republican catch-cry. It is important today to be able to distinguish between what ure concessions ‘granted’—and concessions won.

Concessions against which republicans may justifiably lake an intransigent position are those trickery-concessions by Britain, offered as a substitute for full, democratic self- determination; concessions designed—like partition—to frustrate for a further period the achievement of an independent Ireland; and concessions calculated to continue British power and control over Irish affairs.

In that category of ‘concession’ may be included all schemes which would give Britain any veto, say or influence in any matter over which the Irish people alone are entitled lo exercise their sovereign right of decision. In that category may be included all those devious ‘federation’ plans which would grant Britain some sort of ‘protective custody’ over the northern Protestants, with a right to interfere—either by treaty or by constitutional arrangement. In that category may be counted the arrogant and presumptuous proposals


by the British Labour leader, Harold Wilson, under which mother England could sit on Ireland’s neck till Kingdom Come—or until the Irish people learned to behave properly according to English standards and to observe English table manners and parliamentary procedures. In that category could be included any sort of plan to preserve the virtually- defunct Stormont sectarian system, even within a united, independent Ireland.

On the other hand, concessions won should have a radically different nature, easily recognisable.

Concessions certainly cannot include plans which, like the Sinn Fein scheme for a Dail Uladh as part of a new regional system of government in an independent Ireland can come into effect only when British power is withdrawn. No one is likely to beg Britain to grant that in advance. It is an advanced and imaginative conception of the future which could well provide the ideal arrangement which would allow Ulster regionalism to flourish without its sectarian bias as at present. But it is too advanced to consider as an immediate ‘next stage.’ We cannot leap from where we are now to that desirable state in one jump. If we would like to have even a Dail Uladh, there has got to be some intermediate move towards it.

Recognition of concessions wrested from Britain, as distinct from substitutes granted, will be possible when we see changes enforced within the six counties which can be interpreted in no other way than as preparations for a British withdrawal; when affairs are set in the direction of irreversible progress to the granting of full and guaranteed independence in the end.

The only interim formula which could lead to a long- lasting peace—in view of all the sectarian problems involved—would be some arrangement for running the six counties in the meantime which would imply a virtual declaration of intent to withdraw by Britain.

For republicans and democrats who really desire to see Ireland free of British rule, that must be the general, main and immediate demand—because once achieved, victory would be all but won and there would have to be unimpeded and rapid progress towards the ultimate goal of complete Irish sovereignty. The only great objective left would be the hastening of the date for the British departure. The

INTRODUCTION 6 9

time in between could be spent in getting the Protestant people adjusted to the ideas of democracy and equality, and to the prospect of taking for the first time in their history an effective part in the running of their own affairs.

Wolfe Tone in his day sacrificed a promising and comfortable career for his honesty in politics. And for his honesty, he was killed by the British gauleiters of those days —men at least equal in savagery and vindictiveness to the Nazi-type oppressors of modern imperialism. Today, it is possible that the power and might of an arrogant neighbouring nation could still be used to submerge again by force, for a while, the will of the Irish people to self-assertion and their claim to sovereignty over their own land. Mean- spirited, calculating ‘democrats’ of all sorts may be counting on that mighty power to set them up in immediate positions of political respectability and benefit—but the democratic will of the people will count in the long run.

For that ‘mystical’ quantity which cannot be counted at ballot boxes—the Irish people—there is one thing for sure which is neither mystical nor irrational. And that is their simple, democratic right to govern themselves, and their overwhelming desire that Britain should depart and allow them to do so. Only the confusions of ‘democratic’ party politics make it difficult for them to choose how best to go about attaining that ideal state of affairs. The question of methods causes so many difficulties among republicans themselves. How can the people whose fate is at stake be expected to judge?

One thing, and only one thing, is fairly certain in the present state of Ireland, however. Without the attainment of the Wolfe Tone objective of total political separation from Britain, without the attainment of a democratic 32-county Irish republic, the only ‘unattainable’ things in Ireland today are democracy and prosperity. Without the application of the Wolfe Tone solution, the only losers will be the ordinary people of Ireland—those very solid, non- mystical real people—the working people and the small farmers of Ireland. Without the Wolfe Tone solution, their only prospect is decimation and social submergence.

Only those who can today offer a clear and consistent political leadership by keeping Ireland’s justifiable claim to sovereignty uppermost in their aims, and by maintaining in the forefront of their demands the irrefutably valid


objective of national independence—even if it is at the cost of personal sacrifice to themselves—only they are likely to be deemed by future generations to be those who in our day have most honourably upheld the cause of a lasting peace, real prosperity and true freedom for all the Irish.

Jack Bennett, Lisburn.

20 June 1972© Copyright, Jack Bennett, 1973

jack bennett, introduction to "freedom the wolfe tone way"

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