Editorial

Editorial 'The units are growing more experienced in antiinsurgency and doubtless too, their intelligence is better; but it is difficult to understand why the British Army which penetrated the Malaysian Communist rebel organisation has been unable to plant successful agents in an organisation whose members share the same round eyes, pale skins and cultural background.

(Clare Hollingworth, Defence Correspondent, Tea in "IRA country" gives Army hopes of victory, Daily Telegraph, 14 November 1977.)

British imperialism will need much more than good intelligence and experience in anti-insurgency in order to extinguish the national aspirations of the Irish people. What it lacks in "intelligence' and experience in counter-insurgency', British torture and terror. With characteristic arrogance the British bourgeoisie has repeatedly announced that the Irish problem has been solved. But the national aspirations of the Irish people have never been eliminated by force of British arms; nine years of war confirm this lesson, never forgotten in Ireland but never learned in Britain.

The Labour Party has been a faithful supporter of British imperialism. Its role has been to obscure Britain's domination of Ireland with the honeyed phrases of social democracy. The Labour Party provides the bourgeoisie with the important service of reassuring the working class that there is nothing special about the Irish question. The past ten years have seen the killing and torture of hundreds of Irish men and women— and yet the prominent Labour politician Michael Foot can say: Northern Ireland is so seriously under-represented at Westminster compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, that a remedy must be found. " Foot provides the human face The denial of the most elementary democratic rights of the Irish people —their oppression as a nation - is cynically presented as under-representation at Westminster. This is the same Westminster that presides over the military occupation of the Six Counties.

The Labour Party plays a key role in sustaining the national consensus which supports the strategy of the British state in Ireland. The bipartisan Irish policy has endured one change of government after another and has not met with any serious working class opposition. While the bourgeoisie directly faces a major political threat in the Six Counties, in Britain the oppression of Ireland does not appear to be a political issue for the working class.

This issue of Revolutionary Communist Papers shows that the struggle in Ireland must continue because in the imperialist epoch there can be no permanent solution to the contradictions which arise from Britain's historic domination.

*British Imperialism and the Irish Crisis' provides a scientific analysis of the changing material conditions in Ireland North and South. This analysis shows that the political oppression of Ireland — which has reinforced its economic backwardness — is the cause of inherent social instability. The world crisis of 1 capitalism, which is particularly severe in Ireland as an oppressed country, has intensified the tendencies towards social unrest. Class antagonism has become more direct and the national aspirations of the Irish have been strengthened.

The growing importance of the national question in Ireland constitutes a major threat to capitalist relations in Ireland and to their guarantor, British imperialism. The British state has no choice but to continue to intensify its oppression.

By stirring up and exploiting nationalism in the British labour movement, the bourgeoisie has turned the threat to its rule in Ireland to its own advantage. In Britain, the Irish War serves to foster chauvinism in all classes. The collaboration that the British bourgeoisie obtains from the labour movement on the question of Ireland erodes independent working class action in other spheres. Marx's famous statement, that the working class can never do anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling classes', is fully confirmed today. Acquiescing in Britain's military policy in the Six Counties over the past decade, the labour movement was inevitably unable to oppose the national interest' politically when it came to the Social Contract. By supporting the national consensus on Ireland and the national interest in resolving the crisis of capitalism in Britain the labour movement accepts the ultimate right of the bourgeois state to decide on issues of fundamental political importance.

Effective solidarity with the struggle for self-determination in Ireland demands a direct challenge to the British state; the need for a clear Marxist understanding of the bourgeois state is one of the main themes of both articles in this journal.

Many on the left pay lip-service to the view that the British state is a class state. Yet, when it comes to Britain's oppression of Ireland, the class nature of the state is quickly forgotten.

The worst sort of opportunism is manifested by the Communist Party of Great Britain which asks the British state to implement reforms in Ireland. These concessions to the national consensus legitimise Britain's oppression of Ireland and the view that the bourgeois state is an instrument which the working class can wield for its own purpose.

Without challenging the role of the British state in Ireland all the left can do is try to curb the excesses of imperialist oppression. The reformist standpoint on Ireland is shared by the groups of the radical left. The article No Equivocation!'

shows that sympathy with the Irish people and moral outrage against British troops are not merely an insufficient basis for an anti-imperialist movement; by adapting to bourgeois ideology the radical left holds back the development of such a Thus the radical left's Tribunal on Presence in Ireland' shows that petit-bourgeois moralism seeks only to modify the political oppression of the Irish people without challenging the agency of that oppression- An anti-imperialist movement in Britain, the oppressor nation, must be built on the foundation of revolutionary politics. The objective of this journal is to stimulate opposition to the role played by the British state in Ireland by providing a Marxist analysis of the Irish War which affirms the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. The RCT places two demands at the centre of its propaganda — Selfdetermination for the Irish People' and Troops Out Now'. It is only through struggle around these two demands that it is possible to build independent working class opposition to Britain's oppression of Treland.

The analysis in the two articles will be of value to revolutionaries in Ireland itself. However the aim is not to provide an orientation for their struggle. A strategy for the 1 Daily Telegraph, 30 November 1977.

Irish revolution can only be developed from the direct experience of struggle in Ireland. For British revolutionaries the priority is to fight against the imperialism of the oppressor nation. This requires systematic propaganda work around the Two revolutionary demands, addressing the most advanced sections of the working class and making no concessions to the chauvinist and reformist prejudices of the official labour In previous publications, the Revolutionary Communist Tendency has shown that radical moralism can only undermine the struggles of the working class.

. The dangerous consequences of this tendency have been revealed in the radical left's calls on the bourgeois state to ban the demonstrations of the National Front (NF). When the bourgeois state banned a NF demonstration during the recent Ilford byelection, it also banned all demonstrations in the London area for two months- a serious restriction on the democratic rights of the working class. The same equivocal attitude towards the bourgeois state on the question of Ireland preempts effective solidarity with the struggles of the Irish people; it also undermines the political independence of the British working class. The strength of radical moralism amongst those who see themselves as socialists or even revolutionaries shows the need to struggle for Marxism in the working class. Given the absence of a Marxist tradition in the working class every sort of petit-bourgeois prejudice can be presented as a Marxist or Leninist approach. A pre-condition for building an antiimperialist movement on Ireland is ideological struggle against this trend. The articles in this journal analyse the relationship between British imperialism and Ireland and explain the central role of the British state. It is this that gives the materialist analysis of Ireland immediate practical consequences. The RCT has been in existence for almost one and a half years. The first issue of Revolutionary Communist Papers, devoted to the elaboration of the political struggle that led to the formation of the RCT, has been fully vindicated by the events of the past year. The analysis of our split with the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) has provided the RCT with important lessons for political work today. Revolutionary Communist Papers No 1 showed that different conceptions of how a revolutionary organisation should be built have direct political consequences. The opportunist orientation of the RCG in relation to the CPGB and the question of South Africa arose out of the failure to confront consciously the task of party-building. The process of political struggle involved in the split and the clarification required for the production of RCP No 1 formed an invaluable stage in the political development of the RCT. Further ideological clarification along the lines indicated in RCP No 1 has provided the RCT with foundations for serious programmatic develop- As the radical left continues to apply yesterday's shortcuts to today's problems the discussion on party-building in RCP No 1 retains its relevance. In its attempts to overcome political isolation from the working class through organisational means, the radical left makes one concession after another to the prevailing trade union consciousness of the labour movement. One such short-cut to mass action is the Anti-Nazi League — a circus of film stars, footballers, professors and poets, Stalinists and social democrats. The Socialist Worker recently boasted of its Popular Front creation that it could attract prominent athletes because 'there is nothing violent about the organisation'.? The method of independent party-building outlined in RCP No 1 and exemplified in the propaganda pamphlet Under a National Flag ...is the only revolutionary alternative to the antics of the radical left.

During the past year the RCT has gone through a concentrated process of political consolidation. Given our 2 limited resources and lack of experience, our emphasis was on political clarification and cadre training. As a result we have been able to raise the political level of the movement and attract new forces to revolutionary communism. This journal is one of the results of collective work and debate inside the RCT? The theoretical work and political experience gained by the RCT during the past year means that we can now publish revolutionary propaganda regularly. The Steering Committee of the RCT took the political decision to publish Revolutionary Communist Papers No 2 as a special issue on Ireland. It was decided that in addition to British Imperialism and the Irish Crisis', an article dealing with the left's abandonment of even a formal commitment to the building of an anti-imperialist movement on Ireland should be contained in this journal.

'No Equivocation!' is a response to the ideological disarray of the left on the Irish issue. The article on the Recession and the working class response, intended for publication in this issue, has had to be postponed. This will appear in RCP No 3 which will be published this summer.

Ireland is an almost forgotten issue on the British left which scarcely dares perturb the tranquil consensus the labour movement shares with its own bourgeoisie. Behind the fiery rhetoric directed at the National Front lurks the question of immigration controls - thousands of committed antifascists will baulk at a programme of total opposition to restrictions on immigration. Arguments for the immediate withdrawal of troops and against all immigration controls are among the most difficult to win in the working class movement, and for that reason they are ignored or avoided by the reformist and radical left alike. We confront these issues directly in our pamphlets and journals because they provide critical points to attack reformist consciousness and in particular the loyalty of the labour movement to the British nation state. Propaganda is the major means of establishing a Marxist alternative to reformism in the working class today.

Our ability to accomplish this task depends on having the requisite financial resources. We need money from our readers to ensure the continuation of our journals and pamphlets; more money is essential to ensure that Marxist ideas reach the Readers of RCP can play a major role in the dissemination of revolutionary propaganda. In order to make an impact on the workers' movement we need readers in towns where we have as yet no members, to provide concrete assistance by selling RCP or stocking bookshops. Please write immediately if you are ready to contribute to the building of the movement Finally, readers who have begun to appreciate the importance of building a revolutionary organisation on the basis of Marxism and would like more information about the activities of the RCT should write to the address provided. We welcome comments and criticisms. 15 April 1978 Under a National Flag - Fascism, Racism and the Labour Movement, RCT, 1978. 2 Socialist Worker, 1 April 1978.

3 Here we have to acknowledge our debt to the analysis contained in 'Britain and the Irish Revolution', Revolutionary Communist No 2, May 1975. This analysis, which is part of our programmatic heritage, has provided the starting point for the RCT's theoretical work on Ireland.