However the significance of the Cameron report does not lie in the accuracy of this detail or that conclusion (and indeed it contains a large amount of useful factual information), but in the strategy which it sets out for the restoration of capitalist stability in Northern Ireland. It tries to do this by outlining a view of the reason for the troubles, and measures to overcome them which can achieve a consensus of the Northern Irish and British ruling classes, the state functionaries in the province, the Labour Government, and most importantly those sections of the right wing of the civil rights movement which represent the new Catholic middle class. This consensus is best summed up by a passage from a pamphlet issued by the Government of Northern Ireland as a commentary to accompany the report:
'In commending the report for public study and reflection, the Government attach only one condition, namely that it should be taken as a composite Whole. When this is done, a pattern emerges which the country has for long recognised as existing and is threatening civil and constitutional stability. It is a pattern of some genuinely held grievances; of the formulation of well-meaning organisations to ventilate these grievances but also of the prompt exploitation of these organisations by ill-disposed persons for their own ends, not the least of which is a systematic attempt first to discredit and then to undermine all constituted authority - the local authorities, the police, the Ulster Special Constabulary and ultimately the Parliament and government of Northern Ireland - in a determination to achieve either the merging of this state into the Irish Republic or the setting up of a new Irish Workers' Republic,
Lord Cameron, the Scottish judge appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland to lead the commission of enquiry into the reasons for the outbreak of violence in the province, is reputed to have an ancestor who was one of the original 13 apprentice boys of Derry who shut the gates of the city against the Jacobite forces of James II. This action is a famous one in the history of the struggle to preserve the power of the new British bourgeois class, His descendant is called upon to perform a task which is no less important, but much more complex,
The report is a classical example of the judicial mind at work, not only in its language, but in the method with which the evidence is sifted, and the preconceptions from which it starts. There are three fixed stars in Lord Cameron's universe, firstly that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and that its constitutional status must be maintained, and flowing from this that the state machinery of Northern Ireland, by virtue of the fact that it is British, must be impartial and that any individual or group which does not accept the constitution of the province is at best deluded, at worst evil-intentioned. When describing the violence in Derry last October 5, the action of the RUC in batoning civil rights supporters, including Eddie McAteer and Gerry Fitt (before any order to draw batons had been given), the indiscriminate use of water cannons, the boxing in of demonstrators by two lines of police, and the savage baton charges by both lines, are presented as unfortunate, but temporary, aberrations on the part of the RUC, while the left wing of the demonstrators is dealt with summarily: 'A section of extremists wished to provoke violence, or at least a confrontation with the police without regard to the consequences'. It is particularly instructive to read along with the section of the report which deals with the Burntollet ambush the excellent book Burntollet by Bowes Egan and Vincent McCormack, which comes to radically different conclusions about the nature of the attack, and which presents much more detailed evidence than Lord Cameron's commission appears to have considered.
With minor orchestrations, this theme can be played by all of the above mentioned sections, and in fact some of them have introduced an important new variation; Callaghan, 'liberal' commentators such as The Guardian, and Quintin Hogg, have suggested that in return for the imminent reforms, the 'Catholics' ought to make some gesture to the 'Protestants', The gesture they have in mind is simply that the 'Catholics' should recognise the Northern Irish constitution; in other words that they should give up the perspective of a united Ireland. This argument is reinforced by constant reference in the Cameron report to the genuine grievance which Protestant extremists felt about the refusal of the Nationalists and Republicans to recognise the constitution (this is rather similar to suggesting that the lot of the Jews in Nazi Germany would have been improved if they had accepted the right of the SA to persecute them,
The strategy outlined in the Cameron report is quite clear; the base of the artificial Northern Irish state must be changed from a perpendicular bloc of the Protestant working, middle, business and landowning classes to a diagonal one which includes the Catholic middle and propertied classes, and expels from the bloc the plebeian Orange extremists and excludes the working class and youth of the Nationalist, Republican, and Socialist camps. It is very questionable whether this perspective is realisable; in fact as this is being written news is coming in of clashes between Paisleyites and British troops, sparked off by the decision to make basic changes in the structure of the RUC and the 'B' Specials; on previous form the Unionists and the Labour Government are more likely to make concessions to these elements than to the civil rights movement, but how they will get out of this tight spot is far from clear at present.
Undoubtedly the civil rights movement, like Parnell's Home Rule party, was able to achieve a great deal with demands which fell short of the call to smash the hold of British imperialism in Ireland, but like that experience it must be seen as a historically limited movement which gestates the forces for a new assault on imperialism. This is not to say that the civil rights struggle is over, or should be de-escalated; on the contrary the left should increase its efforts to drive the movement forward and gain leadership of it. but it should be understood that the main enemy of progress in Ireland is not the southern 'Green Tories' or the northern 'Blue' ones, but British imperialism, so that consistent Republicans and revolutionary socialists have the same enemy and aim; in the short run they need each other for protection, in the long run they must fight together for success, This is the essence of James Connolly's message to the workers of Ireland, in face of the 'Cameron consensus', which seeks to smash them: the Republicans and the Left must unite on a 'Connolly consensus'.
One thing is clear, however - energetic attempts will be made to separate from the 'legitimate' civil rights movement the militant Republicans and the revolutionary left. This is quite likely to go as far as extensive arrests, and failure with the other fork of the strategy can only result in a more energetic pursuit of this policy in an attempt to appease the Orangemen. This indicates the necessity of a close alliance between the Republicans and the Left, if only for mutual protection.
However this must extend beyond a merely defensive strategy to the whole field of political perspectives. The Republicans must clearly understand that their strategy to date has foundered on indifference to the Irish Republic engendered by the negative features of the southern bourgeois regime; they must extend their fight, take up the cudgels against the 'Green Tories' and genuinely seek to reunite Ireland as the 'Workers Republic' which they have verbally accepted recently.
Similarly the Left, in particular PD, must refurbish their line by recognising the importance of the national question. At every step which the civil rights struggle in the North has taken, the weight of Irish history has settled more firmly on its back,
The Cameron report represents a final attempt to close the gates on the forces which menace the existence of the Northern Irish state, but the hinges are rusty and the bars are rotten; there is yet time to rally the workers of Ireland, north and south, to smash down these gates for ever, and smash with them the evils of imperialism, capitalism and religious sectarianism.