Matt Merrigan on the IRA in the mid-fifties

Submitted by martin on 30 March, 2012 - 9:26

An article by Matt Merrigan in the New York "Shachtmanite" weekly, Labor Action, 19 September 1955, vol.19 no.38. The original title was "Festering Sore: the Partition of Ireland", and it was datelined "Dublin, August 24".


The Irish and English papers in the last few weeks have featured the Irish Republican Army's raids on British military installations as precursors of an all-out campaign to focus world attention on the continued partition of Ireland by Britain.

The raid on Arborfield Barracks in Berkshire, England, by IRA commandos; and the removal of thousands of rounds of ammunition and a quantity of machine guns threw the British security forces into a state of nerves. Military and police activity recalled the 1939-41 bomb campaign by the IRA in English cities which culminated in hangings and prison sentences for IRA activists.

Petty bourgeois and fringed with fascists, the leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein (its political mouthpiece) is a conspiratorial cloak and dagger sect. its basic approach to national unity is emotional and hysterical. It proclaims that its mission is preordained and holy by virtue of its opposition to British imperialism. But it lacks an elementary understanding of the international role of imperialism in general, and is wholly out of touch with the social and national struggles of other colonial peoples.

The commando-like raids in Britain were preceded by attacks across the border into Northern Ireland. But the problem at being confronted by armed fellow-Irishmen of the British army garrison in Northern Ireland was a propaganda difficulty unlikely to be encountered by attacks in Britain proper. Also in Britain the Irish, northern and southern, enjoy the some rights as British subjects and among the millions of emigrant Irish in Britain the IRA finds a fruitful field for sympathisers and recruits in the very heart of enemy territory.

Repressive police measures against even moderate nationalists domiciled in Northern Ireland makes the extra-legal activity at the IRA doubly difficult in what is termed the occupied sectors of the country. Hence the actions in Britain.

Socialist influence in the ranks of the IRA and Sinn Fein is non-existent. Connolly's association with the independence movement 40 years ago,is hailed by them today as a vindication of their "progressiveness". Connolly's Marxist approach to the national question is misrepresented as having been super-patriotic and chauvinist.

The political labour movement as represented by the Labour Party in Ireland has no principled position on the anti-partition struggle. Therefore its attitude toward the IRA and its physica1-force policy is utterly opportunist. It seeks for purely parliamentary reasons to identify itself (but not too closely) with the anti-British chauvinism that the IRA evokes. But one waits vainly for a statement on the matter from the government of the Republic in which the Labour Party holds four ministries, including Justice, which would be charged with combating the "illegal" IRA in the Republic.

It is reported that a "pact" between the government and the IRA has been concluded in which the "blind eye" is turned to the IRA's extraterritorial activities in return for "hands off" the authority and institutions of the Republic (which the IRA characterises as a creature of British imperialism) in whose parliament they refuse to sit. (One should bear in mind, of course, the fact that they have not won even one seat in the House of Representatives [An Dail].)

The Trade Union Congress - as distinct from the nominal claim of the Labour Party - is a genuine all-Ireland body, being the trade union centre for both States. It is not recognised by the Northern Ireland authorities by virtue of this supra-border complexion. It nevertheless retain its homogeneity in an industrial sense by avoiding the national question or the constitutional position of the two States.

To retain this unity means being completely pragmatic; and in deference to the unions with members in Northern Ireland, the Congress affords a measure of autonomy via a Northern Ireland Committee of the T U C which concerns itself with problems peculiar to its State.

Labour unity is sorely hampered by the national question. A small centre for purely Irish unions exists in the Republic alongside the TUC. It represents a breakaway from the TUC some ten years ago over a charge of the domination of the Irish TUC by English unions (unions which were English by origin and extended their activities to Ireland) which were claimed to have a quasi-imperialist orientation. There is a germ of substance in this claim, for without a doubt these amalgamated unions recruited Irish labour for the war effort, and were assisted by the Stalinists to this end.

However the basic leadership of this nationalist centre is incorrigibly sectarian nationalist, and basically petty bourgeois in politics, though a few of its leaders still sentimentally, and for mostly corrupt reasons continue their membership in the Labour Party.

Northern Ireland capitalists, represented by shipbuilding and linens, believe that union with Britain serves their interests better than membership -in an Irish Republic. Perhaps when Britain led the world's manufacturing race and the Empire banked in economic sunshine while the colonial peoples perished in the shade there was some substance to this attitude. But today with Britain losing her edge in textiles and shipbuilding the economic backwater of Northern Ireland is fast becoming a stagnant pool. Yet the Tory Unionist Party is as intransigent on the question of union as it was 30 years ago when it came to power.

Nevertheless, it still can, by manipulating anti-Catholic and anti-Republican prejudices, command a mass following even in periods of mass unemployment. The militant politico-religious protestant Orange Order provides a fanatical loyalist counterweight to the threats of Republican fanaticism. Added to this a very efficient gerrymandering of electoral areas which precludes the emergence of either a Nationalist or Labour opposition in the Northern Ireland parliament.

The Machiavellian role of the Catholic Church in the politics of the Republic and the threats of violence by the IRA extremists lend substance to the claims of the Tory Unionists that Northern Ireland citizens in an all-Ireland Republic would be second-class, and thereby consolidate the Unionists at every turn. The threats of the IRA justify the Northern regime in ruling by emergency powers and retaining an armed semi-military police force, which intimidates even the most moderate political critics of the regime.

Westminster exercises absolute control over fiscal defence and social policies in Northern Ireland with the exception of the policing of the area which is prerogative of the Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs, who in his own immediate political interests can be relied upon to do a good job.

The Republic, which extends over four-fifths of the island, is ruled at the moment by a coalition composed of extreme right, centre and the left-centre Labour Party, with de Valera's populist party in opposition. The Republic has its own institutions, and accredited representatives abroad.

The economy of the Republic is basically agricultural with a light manufacturing industry dependent on the importation of raw materials from abroad, and a processing industry ancillary to some agricultural products like sugar beet growing and the manufacture of sugar, barley for brewing end distilling, etc. A miserable under-capitalisation, primarily in agriculture, with the volume of production remaining fairly stagnant, begets an impoverished and under-employed rural proletariat who leave the country of the rate of 10,000 to 20,000 per year for Britain (where jobs are chasing men) and for other countries, mostly Canada end the United States.

Some secondary causes drive young people for the most part into emigration: (1) The restrictive and coercive role of parents toward youthful exuberance, and the desire to wed without necessarily having the accommodations or the means to live on the basis of the peasant proprietorship of the parents. (2) The all-pervading clerical influence that isolates and exercises social and domestic pressures on young people who betray any sign of non-conformism in politics, philosophy or literary tastes.

It is against this background, then, that the nationalist demagogy of the IRA and Sinn Fein seeks to win the allegiance of the revolutionary youth (with a measure of success) for a chauvinist and petty bourgeois concept of national unity. To this extent this demagogy has found a response in quasi-socialist circles and among Labour e1ements, and for want of a faith in the efficacy of socialist action, they have drifted towards if not an open justification of physical force and direct action, then an acquiescence in the use of these methods by the anti-socialist, anti-democratic IRA and Sinn Fein.

With the emergency of an influential and anti-imperialist current in the Irish Labour Party the Irish working class movement could take the initiative on the unity question.

Without the Imperial Preference that Northern Ireland enjoys, and the tremendous financial assistance from the British exchequer, the artificially inflated economy and the social services (which paradoxically are a monument to the British Labour Party administration, implemented by the Tory Unionist government in Northern Ireland to justify their integral position in the United Kingdom though politically galling to them) would collapse like a pricked bubble if British patronage ceased in Northern Ireland.

However, considerations like Northern Ireland's strategic position as part of NATO's military network are not absent from Britain's (and quite possibly America's) attitude, because of the possibility of a united Ireland staying outside current military alignments.

If one can offer an opinion on this vexing question it is this: in any solution that can be found, cognisance must be taken of the intangible elements like loyalty to forms of religious beliefs and cultural and traditional ties of the dissident local majority and national minority in what is now Northern Ireland. The broadest democratic and political rights must be afforded what would be a minority in the national context. Sinn Fein and the IRA would coerce the will and force the consent of the citizens of the area, and would undoubtedly police it for a whole period in an attempt to exorcise what they would consider treasonable and heretical loyalties, as does the regime in Northern Ireland today vis-a-vis the Nationalists.

Only a socialist-led working class party could give these democratic guarantees to the workers of NorthernIreland on the basis of an economic communion: a basic identity of social and economic interests, in collaboration with a real socialist Labour Government at Westminster. Any interim settlement must be a federal one, where each state would be locally autonomous and yet subscribe to a national objective.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.