No Equivocation!

No Equivocation! the British Socialist who fails to support by all possible means the uprisings in Ireland, Egypt and India against the London plutocracy such a Socialist deserves to be branded with infamy if not with a bullet' Trotsky' 1. Introduction The national liberation struggle in Ireland can expect little support from the British left.

As a matter of course, the Labour Party, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Tribunites and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) will pass resolutions deploring violence in the Six Counties.

They will request that the government introduce reforms to alleviate the plight of the people there. Party conferences and newspaper editorials will express sympathy and concern, and declare that reforms are long overdue. But this is bureaucratic hypocrisy at its worst. Look through the minutes of the TUC and Labour Party conferences: there is no discussion on the Irish question. Read through the pages of the Morning Star or Tribune: there are no suggestions how to build a movement against British imperialism's oppression of Ireland.

For the reformist press imperialism ended years ago. The various social democratic solutions to the Irish problem that are offered - the Bill of Rights and the Better Life for All Campaign — present the British imperialist state as the instrument for reform. Why was it that the CB never asked American imperialism to implement a Bill of Rights in Vietnam, but asks British imperialism to do just that in Ireland? Why is it that the official labour movement can have so much sympathy and concern for the struggles of the Chilean or South African peoples and yet ignore political oppression next door? Why is it that reformist organisations can label similar acts of violence as the deeds of freedom fighters in Zimbabwe but as those of criminals in Ireland?

Why is it that the radical left also accepts this double standard? 2 The organisations of the British working class refuse to give solidarity to the Irish people because they accept the right of the British state to administer the Six Counties. Trade unionists spontaneously identify with the struggles of the Chilean people despite their adherence to the British nation; but to identify with the struggles of the Irish people and to give them real support requires that the working class directly challenges its own state. Opposition to Britain's domination of Ireland can be built neither on trade union militancy nor on 21 moral indignation. On the Irish question genuine internationalism can only mean class confrontation with the British state. This is why the Irish question is so unpopular on the British left. The difficulty of building an anti-imperialist movement on Ireland has led sections of the radical left to look for a way around the thorny problem of the British state. All previous attempts to evade this question have led to nothing. The latest and most grandiose exercise in side-stepping the British state is the International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland. 3 The Tribunal expresses the dominant trend on the radical left — that of radical moralism. This trend will be assessed and criticised through a presentation of the Leninist approach to the question of national oppression.

2. The struggle for internationalism in the European working class At the end of the nineteenth century capitalism reached the stage where it could no longer accumulate within the confines of the nation state. In order to overcome the barriers to its expansion capital began to be exported and non-industrialised areas were drawn into the capitalist world economy. This extension of capitalism was accompanied by the colonisation of the non-industrialised nations. The 'scramble for Africa', for example, was part of capital's search for new sources of raw materials, new markets and new spheres of investment.

These tendencies of development crystallised into a distinct stage of capitalism — the stage of imperialism. This meant that the world was divided amongst a few of the leading capitalist nations. The imperialist world economy reinforced the uneven development of capitalism and resulted in the oppression of colonial peoples by a small number of major capitalist powers. The establishment of colonies had a strong impact on the metropolitan labour movement. They provided cheap food and raw materials and stimulated the expansion of the productive forces. Sections of the working class were able to derive some benefits from the imperialist plunder of the colonies. A privileged and pro-imperialist layer evolved in the labour movement which fostered social-chauvinism - socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds. The identification of colonial expansion with jobs and the promise of future prosperity undermined working class opposition to imperialism.

German Social Democratic Party (SPD) faced the first important test of its determination to oppose colonialism in 1884, when Bismarck asked for a subsidy for steamships to strengthen the German hold over southerh Africa. However, the majority of SPD deputies were more concerned with obtaining jobs for shipyard workers than with the subjugation of the African people. They accepted Bismarck's argument that the establishment of naval links with southern Africa had nothing to do with colonialism and so supported the request for 1 L Trotsky, 'Manifesto of the Second Congress', in The First Five Years of the Communist International, Vol 1, New Park, 1973, p153. 2 The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) says that the Palestinian commando raids are unquestionably an act of war' at the same time as it 'unequivocally dissociates itself from and condemns the IRA [Irish Republican Army, Ed] bombings of civilian targets like La Mon House'. See The Workers Revolutionary Party and the IRA', Statement by the Political Committee of the WRP, The News Line, 22 February 1978.

3 The radical left organisations most closely identified with this Tribunal are the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the International Marxist Group (IMG).

subsidies. " In theory the leadership of the Second International agreed with the warnings of Marx and Engels that the working class must oppose the annexationist foreign policy of the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels had argued for a ruthless campaign against chauvinism in the workers movement and had noted that the working class could not begin to liberate itself while it tolerated the oppression of other nations by its own bourgeoisie? For the Second International however, anti-colonialism was a moral imperative with no practical consequences. The International was itself strongly influenced by the pro-imperialist stratum of the European working class.

The relative prosperity produced by the rise of imperialism strengthened reformist tendencies throughout the labour movement — including tendencies in the Second International.

Hand in hand with the rise of reformism went increasing support for colonialism. In the first decade of this century its resounding declarations of internationalism covered a growing and active commitment to what was only a radical form of As imperialist predators began to quarrel about the division of colonial spoils, reformists started to use interimperialist rivalries as an excuse for their own nation to acquire colonies. Bernstein's apology for colonialism was that if Germany withdrew from the race for colonies, other nations would take her place and thus injure Germany's national More and more trade union leaders echoed Bernstein in arguing that the Second International should abandon its opposition to colonialism and instead advance a positive colonial policy of its own. Adapting to the chauvinist pressures that were generated by antagonisms, many labour leaders sought to give colonialism a socialist cover. The essence of the positive colonial policy was to accept that 'colonialism was here to stay', and to demand that the imperialist state modify its oppression by implementing reforms for the benefit of the natives'.

The Second International's first major debate on the colonial question took place at its 1907 Congress in Stuttgart.

Led by the Dutch Social Democrat Van Kol, the reformists argued that the labour movement had to recognise the facts of life: colonies were unavoidable-the task was to reform them. 4 Some reformists drew out the logic of Van Kol's arguments and justified a positive colonial policy on the grounds that imperialism had a progressive mission to play in the colonies. The German revisionist David told delegates: .. the Congress affirming that Socialism needs the productive powers of the entire world, which are destined to be placed in the service of humanity, and to raise the people of all colours and languages to the highest culture, sees in the colonialist idea envisaged connection an integral element in the universal aims of civilisation which the Socialist movement pursues. ' 5 It was a sign of the times that Van Kol's motion was supported by almost half the delegations.

At the Congress the defeat of the reformist position on colonialism was due to the combined efforts of Lenin, Luxemburg and Kautsky. The vote against colonialism, however, was more a reaffirmation of platonic internationalism than an indication of a Marxist appreciation of the colonial question.

Most delegates who voted against the reformist resolution did not understand that pro-colonial sentiments had already begun to undermine the independence of the labour movement, and as a result no steps were taken to combat socialchauvinism. Lenin was one of the few present who understood the consequences of accepting a colonial policy. It *.. would be an outright desertion to the bourgeois point of view.

It would be a decisive step towards subordinating the proletariat to bourgeois ideology, to bourgeois imperialism, which is now arrogantly raising its head. Lenin's warnings went unheeded and no attempts were made 22 by the European social-democratic parties to actively solidarise with the struggles of the oppressed The growth of nationalism in the imperialist countries went unchallenged in the first decades of this century. For all its professed anti-colonialism, Social Democracy did no more than moralise about "injustice'. The colonial question was the main issue in the 1907 Hottentot Elections in Germany. The SPD argued against colonialism by appealing to working class interest in reduced taxation and lower state expenditure on colonies, army and navy.? The SPD's main newspaper Vorwärts proclaimed that 'the abandonment of the colonies would constitute... a substantial financial, military, ethical and commercial gain for the Empire'. B This commonsense rejection of colonialism could offer no alternative to bourgeois calculations which showed it to be economically lucrative to the German nation. By identifying the interests of the German working class with those of the state, the SPD criticism of colonialism served to reinforce nationalism in the The Second International's disagreement with colonialism on ethical grounds was coupled with an arrogant attitude towards the struggles of oppressed peoples. Lenin noted that the super-profits from the colonies provided the material and economic basis for infecting the proletariat with colonial chauvinism'.9 In Britain Keir Hardie, one of the most prominent left-wingers in the infant Labour Party, approached the struggle of the Indian people from the point of view of the British Empire. Like the SPD Hardie wanted to reform his country's colonial system without dismantling its empire. In his 1907 tour of India, Hardie's advice to the colonial masses was to rely on constitutional change and to avoid actions which threatened the existing colonial structure. 'As far as the representatives of the British labour movement were concerned, Westminster was to be the instrument for improving the lot of the colonial people. In practice they proposed a "positive colonial policy' which was to be implemented by the imperialist state. If the colonial peoples used force against imperialism they could expect no support from the Second International. For the social-chauvinists changes in the colonies had to be made through the political channels laid down by the bourgeois state. The emancipation of oppressed nations was considered to be wholly conditional on the requirements of the imperialist nation state.!!

The failure of the Second International to oppose colonialism paved the way for its collapse at the outbreak of the First World War. Once the labour movement had tolerated the aggression of its own state in Asia and Africa it was a short step to taking its side in the conflict in Europe. The collapse of the Second International confirmed Lenin in his view that an uncompromising battle against social-chauvinism was necessary. Lenin's analysis demonstrated that the material basis for this collapse lay in the rise of imperialism and the formation of a labour aristocracy. For Lenin a proletarian internationalist position on the imperialist war went hand in hand with a revolutionary approach to the colonial question. During the war years Lenin developed a clear understanding of the colonial question. He showed that the struggle of an oppressed people for national liberation was a class issue for the international proletariat. The core of his position was the demand for the right of nations to self-determination.

Lenin emphasised that colonial oppression was not an option that could be taken up or rejected by imperialism, but a necessity for capitalism at its highest stage. No matter what its form, political oppression of backward capitalist countries was essential for the development of imperialism. To see annexationist policies as incidental to imperialism led to the conclusion that it could be persuaded to shed its warlike features. Against Kautsky's subjective view of imperialism Lenin argued: *The essence of the matter is that Kautsky detaches the politics of imperialism from its economics, speaks of annexations as a policy

"preferred" by finance capital, and opposes to it another bourgeois policy... the result is bourgeois reformism instead of Marxism. "12 Because imperialism must of necessity oppress colonial peoples, their struggle for national liberation must have an anti-capitalist character. This is the revolutionary significance of the demand for the right of nations to self-determination.

The essence of imperialism lies in its division of the world into oppressor and oppressed nations. The struggle of an oppressed nation for national liberation has a democratic content which the working class of the oppressor nation must support. Lenin wrote: Imperialism means the progressively mounting oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of great powers... the focal point in the Social-Democratic programme must be that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism.

...It is from this division that our definition of the right of nations to self-determination" must follow, a definition that is consistently democratic, revolutionary, and in accord with the general task of the immediate struggle for socialism. 13 In an oppressor nation, revolutionaries are not worthy of the name unless they fight for the right to self-determination of nations oppressed by their own nation state: *It is for that right, and in a struggle to achieve sincere recognition for it, that the Social-Democrats of the oppressor nations must demand that the oppressed nations should have the right of secession, for otherwise recognition of equal rights for nations and of international working-class solidarity would in fact be merely empty phrasemongering, sheer hypocrisy. '14 Solidarity with the struggles of oppressed nations is essential for building proletarian internationalism in the oppressor country. This act of solidarity is not a favour which the working class of an oppressor nation extends to oppressed nations but is of crucial importance to the struggles of the proletariat in the imperialist heartland. Lenin wrote: *Marx demanded the separation of Treland from Britain... not ..from considerations of "justice for Ireland" but from the standpoint of the interests of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of the oppressor, i.e. British, nation against capitalism. The freedom of na re on, i no demand the that nation has been cramped and mutilated by the fact that it has oppressed another nation. The British proletariat's internationalism would remain a hypocritical phrase if they did not demand the separation of Ireland.' 15 For Lenin, as for Marx, the need for the British proletariat to fight for the self-determination of Ireland is based not on liberal moralism but on acute awareness that acceptance of imperialist oppression ideologically subordinates the working class to its own bourgeoisie. The working class cannot defend its interests as a class as long as it acquiesces in Britain's oppression of Ireland. This means that the working class of an oppressor nation cannot restrict its solidarity to resolutions and pledges of support, but must actively challenge imperialism and social-chauvinist ideas at home. One of the major gains of the Bolshevik struggle to build the Third International was the formulation of clear guidelines on this question for revolutionaries in oppressor nations.17 In this article we do not deal with the tactics and strategy that revolutionaries in an oppressed nation must pursue. As we have said, the struggle against imperialist oppression has a progressive content that all revolutionaries must support.

Communists support the nationalism of the oppressed insofar as it is directed against their oppressors. Precisely because the struggle for national liberation involves a combination of classes with different interests, some on the left have sought to counterpose the struggle for socialism to the struggle for national self-determination. Lenin argued that if revolutionaries in an oppressed nation do not give a lead to the netionalism of the oppressed, then it will be dominated by the bourgeoisie who will degrade the struggle in favour of its own class 23 interest: *To the workers the important thing is to distinguish the principles of the two trends. Insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation fights the oppressor, we are always, in every case, and more strongly than anywhere else, in favour, for we are the staunchest and the most consistent enemies of repression. But insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation stands for its own bourgeois national- See V L Lidtke, The Outlawed Party, Social Democracy in Germany 1878-1890, Princeton, 1966, p196.

Engels wrote to Kautsky in 1882: "You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well exactly the same as they think about politics in general: the same as the bourgeoisie think. the workers are cheerfully consuming their share of England's monopoly of the world market and the colonies....

One thing alone is certain: the victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign nation without underso doing. Marx-Engels Selected mining its own victory by Correspondence, Moscow, 1975, pp330-31.

*... the German people has a great interest in this — that China should not be the prey of other nations... that China's commercial policy should not be subordinated to the interest of a single power or a coalition of foreign powers— in short, that in all questions concerning China, Germany should have a word to say. E Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, New York, 1975, Van Kol advanced the most coherent reformist standpoint on the colonial question. For a presentation of his ideas see F Tishelman, 'Pays Bas: La Social-Democratie Hollandaise et L'Indonésie 1897-1907', in G Haupt and M Reberioux, eds, La Deuxième Internationale et l'Orient, Paris, 1967.

Quoted in G D H Cole, The Second International, Part 1, London, 1956, pp70-71. V I Lenin, "The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart', CW13, Moscow, 1972, p70. All references are to V I Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Edition, Moscow, 1972.

The financial burden of the Irish War is a theme of opportunists in the British Labour movement today. British social demothe Workers Socialist League (WL), informs us that 'we have to explain that spending on the Irish war, running into millions contributes to the cuts in social services, housing, health and much else. We have to demand that all spending on this war be stopped immediately. The CPGB notes that 'The cost of this policy of repression has been the loss of hundreds of lives and the squandering of millions of pounds.

See Sociatist Press, 11 February 1976, and the draft British Road Quoted in G D Crothers, The German Elections of 1907, New York, 1968, p151. 9 Lenin, op cit, p77. I0 Sée G Fisher, 'Grande Bretagne: Le Parti Travailliste et L'Inde 1905-1914' in G Haupt and M Reberioux, op cit.

11 During the Second World War, the CPB reprimanded the Indian people for their struggle against British imperialism. Now is not the time' it said. See F Richards, Under a National Flag- Fascism, Racism and the Labour Movement, RCT, 1978, V I Lenin, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism', The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination', CW21, p409.

The centrality of the struggle against chauvinism in the oppressor nation is drawn out by Lenin: "The view that a struggle must be conducted against social-chauvinism of the dominant nations.

who are now engaged in an imperialist war to enhance the oppression of nations, and are now oppressing most of the world's nations and most of the earth's population - this view must be decisive, cardinal and basic in the national programme of Social- Democracy.' Ibid, pp410-11.

See 'Theses on the National and Colonial Question', The Second Congress of the Communist International, Vol 1, London, 1977.

lism, we stand against. We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the oppressed nation."

In an oppressed nation the struggle for socialism cannot be achieved without the struggle for national liberation: *To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc - to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution.!2 It should be noted that while revolutionaries in an oppressed nation may, in the interest of the world revolutionary movement, oppose the exercise of its right to self-determination, the duty of revolutionaries in an oppressor nation is always to support the right of an oppressed nation to self-determination.

3. The revolutionary position clarified The defeats of the working class in the 1920s and 1930s, which were reflected in the degeneration of the Third International, led to the abandonment of the revolutionary position on colonialism. Though the official communist movement still gave formal support to the right of the colonial peoples to self-determination, in practice this support was considerably qualified. During the Second World War, the western communist and social democratic parties asked colonial peoples to postpone their struggle for the moment - in the interest of democracy of course. In this period Marxism was virtually destroyed in the European labour movement. Today there is considerable confusion about the attitude that the working class should adopt towards national liberation movements. Nobody now calls directly for a positive colonial policy: everybody on the left makes formal declarations supporting the right of nations to self-determination. Even the CPGB mouths the slogan from time to time — but in practice it calls on the British state to introduce progressive legislation for the Six Counties and to provide money for a Better Life for All. 7 At least Bernstein and Van Kol did not disguise their social-chauvinism by talking of self-determination.

Internationalist solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people stems from an understanding of between oppressed and oppressor nations. The failure to make this distinction leads to an equation of the nationalism of the oppressor with that of the oppressed. This represents a capitulation to the social-chauvinism in the imperialist nation.

By eradicating the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations, opportunists ignore the political oppression exercised by imperialist countries. However, Ireland is not merely economically dominated by foreign capital: it is politically oppressed by British imperialism. To obscure this point - to make abstract calls for a common front between Irish and British trade unionists against the same enemy, the multinationals and monopoly capitalism — is to draw a socialist veil over Britain's political oppression of Ireland The hallmark of opportunism on the Irish issue is neglect of the national question, along with the argument that 'socialism' is the answer. Organisations from the CPB to the WRP would prefer the Irish to forget about their national oppression. By wishing away the nationalism of the oppressed, these form of socialorganisations merely advance a radical chauvinism. SWP leader Tony Cliff argues: I would never dream that it is the job of the British workers to tell the Irish workers how to fight. But let's be clear. If there is a march for the right to work in Britain, 1 don't see any reason at all 24 why there shouldn't be a march from Dublin to Belfast on the question of unemployment....

But the SWP does tell Irish workers how to fight. It tells them to do what it tells British workers to do: be good trade unionists! The national oppression of Ireland by Britain is completely ignored. Denouncing the 'crimes' of the Provisionals, the CPGB draws out the chauvinist logic of Cliff's position. Referring to the struggle of the Irish people for democratic rights, it observes: *We in Britain have a crucial part to play in that struggle. It is a struggle against the same big business monopolies as exploit us here'. 6 For the CPGB "the same big business monopolies' are used to obscure the fact that the Irish are not merely exploited but are politically oppressed. This repudiation of the nationalism of the oppressed is an outright defence of British imperialism.

The failure to distinguish between oppressed and oppressor nations has left many genuine socialists confused about the relationship between the nationalism of the oppressed and nationalism in general. But internationalism is inseparable from supporting the struggles of an oppressed people for national liberation. Every organisation which counterposes internationalism to the struggle for national liberation inevitably adapts to social-chauvinism. Unlike many of its radical co-thinkers, the Spartacist League has given a particularly clear codification to this form of opportunism. Its leader James Robertson speculates: *Life is complicated comrades.... What we are seeking to de is to defend the core of revolutionary Marxism, the proletarian solution, against those who would simply embrace the "good" nation against the "bad" nation. 7 Life is so complicated for Robertson that the Leninist distinetion between oppressed and oppressor nations is too much to handle. The 'core of revolutionary Marxism', the 'proletarian solution', is the profound liberal insight that all is not perfect in oppressed nations and all is not hopeless in the oppressor nations. Sentiment replaces science; the fundamental difference between oppressed and oppressors is obliterated. Indeed life is so complicated that the real conditions of political oppression faced by the Irish can be waved aside with an anecdote: *How many of you have had the same experience that I have had, of working with young militants, either Ulstermen or from the Republic of Ireland? As soon as they're broken from the nationalist ideologies, and you encounter them and work with them as comrades outside that poor island, they are simply components of the English speaking nation.'8 At a time when the Irish people face daily political oppression at the hand of British imperialism, any talk of the Irish as simply "components of the English speaking nation' is totally reactionary. Speaking of these 'internationalists' who ask oppressed nations to forget their nationality, Engels *If members of a conquering nation called upon the nation they had conquered and continued to hold down to forget their specific nationality and position, to "sink national differences" and so forth, that was not Internationalism, it was nothing else but preaching to them submission to the yoke, and attempting to justify and to perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism. 9 Neglect of the distinction between the nationalism of the oppressed and that of the oppressor means that solidarity with the Irish people can be no more than concern for human welfare - a position entirely acceptable to British imperialism.

the same as the struggle for complete national liberation, for 2 VI Lenin, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up', 4. Solidarity with the Irish people: what it means Because Ireland is an oppressed nation it cannot advance on the road to socialism while Britain's political domination continues. Therefore the struggle against British imperialism in Ireland is progressive. The fight against the political domination of Ireland by Britain is one that revolutionaries must unconditionally support. What does unconditional support mean? Lenin wrote: "The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support. *10 Support for the democratic content of this struggle expresses solidarity with the anti-imperialist struggle of the Irish. When bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalists divert the struggle for national liberation from its anti-imperialist course, revolutionaries have a duty to criticise this degradation of the fight for self-determination. However it is not the nationalist movement that revolutionaries criticise, but its degradation. Not infrequently... we find the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations talking of national revolt, while in practice it enters into reactionary compacts with the bourgeoisie of the oppressor nation behind the backs of, and against, its own people. In such cases the criticism of revolutionary Marxists should be directed not against the national movement, but against its degradation, vulgarisation, against the tendency to reduce it to a petty squabble."!!

It is necessary to emphasise this point because the degradation of the national struggle by the Irish bourgeoisie is often used as an excuse to denounce the Irish national movement itself.

Opportunists raise the bogey of "Green' nationalism, making the radical suggestion that Irish workers will be just as exploited by their own bourgeoisie as they now are by British exploitation in imperialism. The recognition of capitalist Ireland absolves these "socialists' from the responsibility of supporting the struggle against national oppression.

Unconditional support for the struggle of the Irish for self-determination means unconditional support. It means supporting the struggle against British imperialism irrespective of the form that struggle takes. National self-determination is complete independence, against annexation, and socialists cannot — without ceasing to be socialists — reject such struggle in whatever form, right down to an uprising or war. '12 To denounce the form the struggle for national liberation assumes is to put conditions on that struggle and render solidarity meaningless. Denunciations of particular forms of armed tactics, such as assassinations or bombing campaigns, reflect an equivocal attitude towards wars of liberation. By its very nature, a war inflicts violence on civilians and can have tragic consequences. To denounce these acts of violence is to denounce violence in the abstract. It is to abandon a class assessment of violence. It results in the equation of the violence of the oppressed with that of the oppressors.

After the bombing of a Birmingham pub in 1974, Socialist Worker's front page headline was 'All socialists must condemn these senseless killings* 13 This was a spineless capitulation to public hysteria whipped up by the bourgeoisie.

Logically, such a position leads to the renunciation of class violence altogether. Revolutionary communists have a duty to criticise Eire Nua, the programme of the Provisional Sinn Féin, because it fails to place the struggle for national liberation on a consistent anti-imperialist basis. The outcome of the struggle in Ireland depends on the liberation movement developing a programme on a firm internationalist foundation. This is a matter with which the world proletariat is concerned. However, the struggle waged by the Provisionals against British imperialism must be supported unconditionally by revolutionaries in Britain. Given the strength of chauvinism amongst all classes in Britain, criticism of particular tactics of the Provisionals can only represent a concession to bourgeois outrage — the bourgeois propaganda which portrays the liberation movement as a mere 'handful of terrorists" The radical left's 'criticism' of the Provisionals shows that it has accepted the language and notions of the bourgeoisie. After criticising the La Mon House bombing, Socialist Worker argued: "This was an act done out of desperation: desperation at discrimination in housing and jobs, desperation at the beatings, the shootings, the torture and the dragging away of the young men in the middle of the night". ' In liberal fashion, the SWP uses bourgeois psychology to explain the struggle for elementary democratic rights.

In order to justify its "criticisms' of IRA tactics, the radical left distorts reality. It makes the point that Marxists have always been against individual terror and conspiracies.

This argument simply reinforces bourgeois propaganda that the Irish troubles' are the work of a few psychopaths. But the military operations of the IRA are not acts of individual terrorism: the Provisionals are leading the struggle of the Irish people and represent the only significant force that can defend the Catholic minority from loyalist pogroms. To label as individual terrorism the armed struggle of the Provisionals is to join the bourgeois chorus against terror. Socialist Worker justifies its disgusting response to the Birmingham bombings *Marxists have always argued that the violence of small, conspiratorial groups set apart from the mass of workers cannot change society towards socialism. Even if such actions are successful in killing a particular nasty ruler thousands more will be ready to take his place.

If innocent bystanders are hurt in the process, the result is a needless loss of life that turns people against the very idea of social change. "15 Socialist Worker equivocates over the Irish struggle. Can it really be that the thousands of Irish men and women who have been killed, tortured and imprisoned in the war in the Six 1 VI Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination', CW20, See Morning Star, 14 February 1978.

what petty-bourgeois nationalism means by internationalism is the mere equality of nations... which leaves national egoism untouched.' - Theses on the National and Colonial Question', Speech quoted in Socialist Challenge, 9 February 1978. The Spartacist League does not like Tony Cliff. Nevertheless, it calls for a British Isles-wide trade union federation as a method of promoting joint struggle and cutting across the divisions in the working class in Ireland'. Perhaps the Spartacist League should cut across the Atlantic or the Irish Sea and find out for itself how the British TUC reinforces Westminster's hold over Ireland through its various affiliates -UCATT, NGA, ASTMS, NUS and others. See Theses on Ireland', Spartacist, Autumn 1977, Morning Star, 20 February 1978 •Workers Must Crush Sectarian Terror', Supplemental Remarks by James Robertson, in Spartacist, op cit, pp15-16.

Engels' record of his report at the General Council meeting of 14 May 1872, in K Marx and F Engels, Treland and the Irish Question, Moscow, 1971, p303.

Lenin, op cit, CW20, p412.

10 11. VI Lenin, 'A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism', CW23, p61. 12 Ibid, p34. Socialist Worker, 30 November 1974.

13 14 Socialist Worker, 25 February 1978.

15 Socialist Worker, 30 November 1974.

25

Counties are 'small conspiratorial groups? Socialist Worker distorts Trotsky's approach to terror. His was a working class standpoint: "under conditions of civil war, the assassination of individual oppressors ceases to be an act of individual terror'. 1 In his day Lenin criticised those opportunists who characterised the Easter Rising in Dublin as a "putsch': 'The term "putsch", in the scientific sense, may be employed only when the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of conspirators or stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the masses. The centuries-old Irish national movement... also manifested itself in street fighting conducted by a section of the urban petty bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations.... Whoever calls such a rebellion a "putsch" is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon.?

Criticism of the individual terrorism' of the Provisionals reveals an inability to locate terror within a class perspective.

The logic of this position is to ask the Irish to give up the armed struggle, or at least to restrict it to the Catholic ghettoes.? The radical left's 'solidarity' with the Irish struggle has no revolutionary content. Criticisms of 'individual terrorism' must be seen in terms of the concrete conditions of today.

Why are they made? Does the British working class have illusions in individual terrorism - or is this issue raised by the British left in order to disassociate itself from a war of national liberation against the British state? Why is it that these critics seldom if ever criticise the bombs that go off in Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Zimbabwe or Israel? Our socialists can recognise a war of national liberation only when it is over 1000 miles away. In this way they undermine internationalism in the working class.

The task of internationalists in Britain is not to bemoan the absence of revolutionary leadership in Ireland but to act as revolutionaries against their own bourgeoisie. This means actively supporting the struggle for national liberation that is going on now. Solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people - the unconditional support of the democratic content of that struggle- means challenging British imperialism and social-chauvinism in the labour movement. * Not to attack the right of the British state to oppress the Irish people is to turn solidarity into an empty phrase.

5. The Tribunal - the radical left gives colonial policy a positive content The equivocation of the radical left over the struggle of the Irish people finds a clear expression in its practical activity on this issue. Formally, most radical left groups accept the two revolutionary demands 'Self-determination for People' and Troops Out Now'. However, when we look closer we find that these demands have a wholly rhetorical status in their campaigns. In the past four years almost all the 'events' organised by the radical left on the question of Ireland have been publicised without these slogans. The IMG explains *The Tribunal, the United TOM and other related activities on the Irish question must do all it can to involve as many people, individuals and organisations. This implies the planning, building and attendance at such activities should be non-exclusive.' S In Britain an anti-imperialist movement on the Irish question can only be built on a class conscious basis: to be worthy of the name, an anti-imperialist movement must confront the British bourgeois state. That is why the IMG desires to reduce opposition to Britain's oppression of Ireland to the lowest common denominator - to a publicity stunt that is an unprincipled move born of desperation and it can never 26 lay the basis for an anti-imperialist movement.

Liberal circles in Britain have recently expressed concern about 'human rights". The American State Department has been particularly interested in this question, since discussions of brutality which go beyond the capitalist norm serve to obscure the class content of the day-to-day oppression meted out by imperialism. The Tribunal is an attempt to draw attention to Ireland on the basis of appealing to those worried about 'human rights'. Unlike previous radical left campaigns, this initiative makes no pretence of challenging British imperialism and its political oppression of the Irish people. The IMG argues that the potential of the Tribunal must be grasped. The renewed debate on human rights throughout the world gives an opportunity to internationalise the Tribunal'. 6 By now we are a long way from any consideration of British imperialism. But the end is not in sight. In January 1978 the IMG and the SWP discovered that the name International Tribunal on British Crimes in Ireland' was too exclusive: it prejudged British imperialism. In true statesman-like fashion they changed the name to International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland'. 7 For our part the change of name has only a symptomatic significance. Whatever its name, the Tribunal will not contribute to the building of an anti-imperialist movement. The question at stake is not human rights, but the suppression of the democratic rights of the Irish by British imperialism. To build an anti-imperialist movement in the working class is to break it from its identification with the British state. The position people take on Britain's domination of Ireland depends on how they perceive their class interests, not on the findings of an 'independent' investigation.

The mimics of bourgeois jurisprudence who support the Tribunal are anxious about streams of allegations concerning aspects of Britain's presence in Ireland'. 8 The radical left forgets that terms like "presence' have a class content.

Whether people of a particular class condemn or support repression depends on how they perceive their class interests.

While our independent investigators moralise that they 'believe that the exercise of military, judicial and political control in the northern Six Counties has disturbing implications for civil and human rights"," the bourgeoisie approaches the question strictly from the point of view of its class interests. Commenting on the European Court's decision on 'allegations' of British torture The Daily Telegraph, a strident voice of the bourgeoisie, says The Court did find that the "deep interrogation" methods complained of and now forever forsworn by the British Government were inhuman and degrading". It also recognised the immense contribution they made to the anti-terrorist campaign. Can states threatened by anarchy be properly and realistically expected not to employ such methods?* 10 The bourgeoisie does not recognise "human rights' in the abstract - the question is whether torture and terror advances its class interests. The working class should emulate this attitude. As long as the labour movement maintains its identification with the British state, 'facts' will not win British workers to a position of solidarity with the struggles of the Irish. No Tribunal can be 'independent' from the class struggle.

Childish prattle about independence can only reinforce the domination of bourgeois ideology over the working class."

The radical left has real illusions in bourgeois justice. On 11 January 1978 Socialist Challenge noted that: "The launching of the International Tribunal coincides with the announcement of the verdict by the European Court in which Britain is being tried for torture.... The verdict is expected to further embarrass Britain.... '12 To the IMG's surprise the verdict did not embarrass Britain: a week later it lamented European Court abolishes human rights'.! Much to its chagrin, the IMG discovered that,

honest, you can't get a fair trial anywhere these days. But the radical left's faith in the independence of the judiciary is still unshaken. Abandoned by the European Court of Human Rights, it takes its case elsewhere: *In December 1977 investigators from Amnesty International (recipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1977) visited Northern Ireland to examine the continuous reports of physical and psychological torture at the British government interrogation centre in Castlereagh, outside Belfast. The launching of the Tribunal can only aid such investigations. 4 Any attempt to aid the investigations of the liberals at Amnesty International only reinforces the prejudice that bourgeois repression can be exposed by a neutral and disinterested body. We can assure the radical left that Amnesty International will be very efficient at exposing torture in Chile or the Soviet Union. But where the British state is directly involved, as in Ireland, it will exercise a sense of proportion It is not that the Tribunal 'does not go far enough': it is going in entirely the wrong direction. The Tribunal not only fails to challenge imperialism: it actually accommodates to imperialism. The Tribunal reinforces the notion that British imperialism could 'play fair' in Ireland. Justifying their initiative, the organisers of the Tribunal argue that the British people must 'uphold human rights and call their own government to account in the event of any violations, particularly in the light of the apparent absence of any determination on the part of responsible authorities to deal with allegations of abuse of power'. It is the abuse of power, not the power of Britain over Ireland itself, that is questioned. It is the violations involved in Britain's "presence' in Ireland that are questioned — not this presence itself. This wretched opportunism suggests that the 'determination' shown by 'responsible authorities' has a role to play in Ireland. Let us look at the determination of the authority who is most responsible for Britain's presence in Ireland - Roy Mason: *We are squeezing the terrorists like rolling up a toothpaste tube.

We are squeezing them out of their safe havens. We are squeezing squeezing them out of society and into prison. i explosives. We are them away from their supplies of money and It is only appropriate that this 'independent' Tribunal has asked Roy Mason to make a submission. The Tribunal is indeed non-exclusive. Its non-exclusive approach turns out to be a reformist one of trying to moderate oppression, not to end it. It accepts political oppression but takes issue only with its extreme forms. The radical left gives today's colonial policy a positive content. Supporters of the Tribunal will say: "Yes, we know about imperialism, but at least we are bringing the facts to people's attention'. But 'facts', just like terror or justice, have a class content; they are presented either from the standpoint of the proletariat or from that of the bourgeoisie. As long as the labour movement accepts the right of the British state to oppress the Irish, it will accept the means that are necessary to maintain this domination. Appeals to human justice do not stir the conscience of Social Democracy. In 1974, the Labour Party Conference supported the Prevention of Terrorism Act because it recognised the urgent need to protect our people from the terrorism which is now spilling over from Northern Ireland. The new powers being taken by the Government are temporary (sic): they will lapse after six months' 19 Facts' can only defend the interests of the working class if they are presented from an anti-imperialist perspective. And it is exactly the difficult question of imperialism that the Tribunal delicately avoids. Without challenging the right of the British state to oppress the Irish, people will interpret the facts in accordance with bourgeois public opinion. We have no reason to question the worthy motives of the supporters of the Tribunal. But their attempt to raise the question of Ireland on this 'non-exclusive' basis leaves the interests of the working class in the hands of petit-bourgeois moralists. 2º The moral distaste for terror that we saw earlier is translated by the Tribunal into the language of the law courts.

Revolutionaries do not begin with the question of whether a movement is 'exclusive' or not. Their starting point is the establishment of the political foundations for a movement that can provide real solidarity with the struggles of the Irish people. We are against the non-exclusive Tribunal of the radical left, not because we are doctrinaire, but because an event based on petit-bourgeois moralising excludes the building of an anti-imperialist movement. Imperialism is a tricky question, but the failure to challenge the right of the British state to oppress Ireland means that internationalism has no In Britain there is little opposition to bourgeois public opinion on Ireland. The absence of an anti-imperialist current in the labour movement indicates that the working class does not have an independent position on Ireland. Is the problem 'Green' nationalism? Is the problem "individual terrorism'? Is the problem that the working class does not know the "facts"?

Or is it that nationalism in the labour movement goes unchallenged, and that when the question of Ireland is raised, trade unionists look to the state to solve it?

For revolutionary communists there can be no equivocation on Ireland. Solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people can be effective only if an anti-imperialist movement is built in the working class. Moral indignation will not convince British workers that their cause is the same as that of the Irish people.

Workers will only be won to a position of solidarity when they question the right of the British state to oppress Irelandwhen they understand that the interests of the bourgeois state are fundamentally antagonistic to those of the proletariat.

Such opposition to the British state will not develop overnight.

In order to build an anti-imperialist movement, communists must ensure that working class opposition to various aspects of the bourgeois strategy in Ireland is transformed into a conscious internationalist vanguard. This process of training a vanguard will only take place through the struggle for a revolutionary position on Ireland. History will not be tricked by 'credible' tribunals. The struggle for the two demands, *Troops Out Now' and 'Self-determination for the Irish People', draws out the link between the independent interests of the British working class and those of the Irish people.

Those who are seriously concerned with the oppression of the Irish must make a choice. They can appeal to bourgeois fair play or they can contribute to the building of working class opposition to imperialism.

Frank Richards L Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours, New Park, 1968, p46. Commenting on the La Mon House bombing the WL makes the profound observation: Individual acts of terrorism will not defeat British Imperialism'. See Socialist Press, 8 March 1978. In the worst traditions of the Second International, the SL's sister organisation, the WRP, makes the reactionary note that the *practical political effects of individual terror... play into the hands of the imperialist enemy. See The News Line, 22 February 1978. 2 Lenin, op cit, CW22, p355.

*But the bombing of places frequented by ordinary workers 3 cannot in any sense contribute to the defence of the Catholic areas or to the driving out of British troops. See Socialist Worker, 30 November 1974.

4 The substance of this approach is summed up in the two revolutionary demands, "Troops Out Now' and Self-determination for 27

the Irish People'. Lenin had this to say about the demand for the separation of Ireland from Britain: 'Actually, however, this demand alone presented a consistently revolutionary programme; it alone was in accord with internationalism; it alone advocated concentration along non-imperialist lines." Lenin, op cit, CW21, p410. Socialist Challenge, 30 June 1977, p10. In a polemic against revolutionaries in the old Troops Out Movement, who insisted that it mobilise on the demands 'Self-determination for the Irish People' and "Troops Out Now', the IMG explained: 'It is no use and no help at all to make your principles a barrier to convince others that those principles are right. Troops Our - How?', Red Weekly, 29 January 1976. Socialist Challenge, 30 June 1977.

7 In diplomatic fashion this change of name was never raised by Socialist Challenge or Socialist Worker.

Except for the newly headed notepaper and leaflets, history will have no record of this amicable settlement. Our information is based on notes taken by the RCT at the planning committee meeting of the Tribunal on 17 January 1978. The change in name was justified on the grounds that the word crimes' prejudges the issue: what was wanted was a credible' (sic) International Tribunal.

8 Student Appeal Form'. International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland. 9 International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland— Appeal for International Support for Tribunal', March 1978.

10 The Daily Telegraph, 19 January 1978.

11 Trotsky wrote: The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilability of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechisms are concealed under moral abstractions patronised by religion, philosophy, or that hybrid which is called "common-sense". The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception. The exposure of this deceit which retains the tradition of thousands of years is the first duty of a proletarian revolutionist. Trotsky, op cit, p15.

12 Socialist Challenge, 19 January 1978.

13 Socialist Challenge, 26 January 1978. So wedded is the IMG to the intricacies of the power of the law that it actually believes that the European Court can abolish human rights. Perhaps the IMG can set up teams to monitor the implementation of the Helsinki agreements in Britain. 14 'International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland', op cit.

Patrons of Amnesty International include such illustrious friends 15 of the Irish people as Lord Gardiner, who recommended the ending of political status for republican freedom fighters, and Harold Wilson, who implemented this recommendation. For the republican assessment of Amnesty, see An Phoblacht, 4 January 1978. 16 Join Us", International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland. 17 International Tribunal..., op cit.

18 Roy Mason in an interview by Chapman Pincher, Daily Express, 5 December 1977, 19 'Statement by NEC of LP', approved by Conference 30 November 1974. In Appendix 8 of the Report of the 1973 Annual Conference of Labour Party, London, 1974.

20 Trotsky wrote about petit-bourgeois moralists: They do not understand that morality is a function of the class struggle; that democratic morality corresponds to the epoch of liberal and progressive capitalism; that the sharpening of the class struggle in passing through its latest phase definitely and irrevocably destroyed this morality; that in its place came the morality of fascism on one side, on the other, the morality of proletarian revolution. ' Trotsky, op cit, p17.

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