Nationalism and the 'national question'

An open letter to British trade unionists, from an Irish socialist living in England, after the killing of two children by an IRA bomb in Warrington, in March 1993. Socialist Organiser 557, 1 April 1993 Dear Brothers and Sisters: Like everyone else whose human feelings are not blocked or numbed by national hatred or chauvinistic self righteousness, you are horrified and angry over the IRA bomb in Warrington which exploded in a crowed of weekend shoppers and killed two children. I understand those feelings, and I share them. So, evidently, do most Irish people, here and in the two parts of...

[This is a copy-edited and slightly expanded version of the text in Solidarity replying to Lysaght .] A dozen years on from the “Good Friday Agreement” (GFA) things in Northern Ireland are far from settled. The Good Friday system is far from stable. The political system set up by the GFA is an intricate network of bureaucratised Catholic-Protestant sectarianism. Communal antagonism is still so strong that it takes 60 or so permanent walls to keep active communalism from erupting into violence across Belfast. Militarist republican activity is still a major factor in Northern Ireland. It is a...

INTRODUCTION The evolution of the Provisional IRA-Sinn Fein movement into just another constitutional-nationalist party has evoked only a discreet, and yet very eloquent, silence from those on the international"revolutionary left" who had spent decades weaving "socialist" fantasies around the communal war which the provisional IRA-SF was waging in the Six Counties. The Provo war, they used to insist - that was the "Permanent Revolution" unfolding in Ireland! It would surely end in an all-Ireland socialist revolution. Gerry Adams would be Ireland's Fidel Castro; a Provo-ruled Ireland - the...

This pamphlet explains how Scottish nationalism came into being, how it was shaped by economic and political developments and how it has, unfortunately, shaped the workers movement. Most of the left in Scotland present a distorted view of Scottish history tailored to support arguments in favour of independence. “The pro-independence Scottish left has gutted the history of post-Union Scotland of its real historical content and replaced it with a mixture of recycled leftovers of Jacobite anti-Union propaganda and contemporary ‘anti-imperialist’ verbiage.” It serves as an ideological...

The striking thing about this collection ("The Communists and the Irish Revolution", edited by Rayner Lysaght) is that one of the key documents reproduced here "The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination", 1915 — one of Lenin's most important texts on the national question — has been bowdlerised so that the meaning of what Lenin wrote is transformed into its very opposite. The words in square brackets below have been excised from Lysaght's text: Socialists of “the oppressing nations must demand the freedom of the oppressed nations to secede. for otherwise...

Jalal: main issues in Iraq. 1 negotiations between US government and Iraq government, mostly in secret. US want to make length of occupation open. They will end when they want. Want to establish permanent 43 bases in Iraq. Some groups: mainly Sunni ex Baathist disagree with these points. Some mainstream Kurdish groups support US troops. But main opposition Sunni ex Baathist and Shia supported by Iran. Three main groups in parliament 1 Iran backed Shia Islamists. 2 Sunni ex Baathists supported by Syria etc and now by US 3 Kurdish nationalists. Big argument over Kirkuk recently. Act 140: future...

Responding to Sean Matgamna’s dicussion piece in Solidarity 3/136, “What if Israel bombs Iran”. Was Sean’s article scandalous? No. Was Sean’s article badly written? Is it clear exactly what his position is from reading it? Yes and no respectively. Was Sean’s article balanced? Is it adequate? Does it give a rounded view of the issues? No, no, no. Sean’s analysis of the situation is essentially no more than that Israel is threatened by the clerical fascists and “homicidal religious lunatics” that make up the ruling circles of Iran. There is assumed to be no class or political differentiation...

AN ISLAND FOR CITIZEN PROCUSTES It happens often: "You? (They mean to cut) "No Irishman!" My politics don't fit: The island is the nation: not "them", "it." Folk? No — plain, lake, and rock! But you must not Arraign these dancers of the communal strut, Or wash old blood out of your eyes, or audit The soundings from the suppurating pit, Or look to Tone — dry bones, stomped underfoot. "West Brit: not your identity or birth Or inbred love of the Gael tells who you are Or names your place: strait politics en-girth In-gather: we define, and we debar!" The real is cut to fit a false design, Grown...

On October 25th, 1971, Peter Graham died in Dublin at the hands of semi-gangster members of the "Republican" urban-guerrilla organisation, "Saor Eire", of which he was a member. (Its nearest equivalent today would be the INLA and IPLO). He had been beaten with a hammer, subjected to other indignities, and then shot in the neck and left to choke on his own blood. He was 25 years old. An electrician from the Coombe district of Dublin, Peter had joined the Stalinist "Connolly Youth Movement" at 20 and become a Trotskyist a year later. I knew Peter Graham well, and cared about him. He was marked...

No better, more democratic, or more effective rules exist for organising relations between peoples and fragments of peoples than those of Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades. Consistent and comprehensive democracy: self-determination for compact majorities; indifference towards existing state boundries; as much autonomy, self rule, as circumstances allow, for peoples who are not a compact majority; unity of the working class across the borders and other divides on the basis of consistent democracy. Nothing else is more conducive to working class unity across the divides and despite them. These...