Anthony Coughlan: The Northern Crisis—Which Way Forward.
It is now almost fifty years since Stalin invented the theory of Socialism in one country. It is almost twenty since the foreign “communist” parties “discovered” the Peaceful Road to Socialism. Stalinists and those influenced by them haven't learnt a thing in all that time, in fact they have got worse. If anyone wanted a confirmation of that simple truth, it is in this pamphlet.
The core of Coughlan’s argument is the belief that it is possible to achieve “a democratic community—or at least as near to such as is possible even in a divided Ireland—in which free and full political debate can occur, a community in which some people no longer benefit from discrimination against their neighbours, in which the great mass of Protestants can learn that Nationalists, Republicans and Socialists are not all votaries of the Great Beast of Babylon, and in which some of them can gradually be won to accepting the ideal of national unity”. Or in other words “If pigs could fly...” This miracle is apparently to be achieved in order to make possible “free and peaceful argument among the people of Northern Ireland” and is to be achieved by a “broadly-based struggle for democracy and civil rights”. One of the main weapons in this broadly-based struggle is the “Northern Ireland (Civil Rights) Association [illegible] has launched for mass signature throughout the North”. One of the main tasks of this campaign is to keep the “working class struggle for socialism” separate from the struggle of the “forces of democracy and progress”.
Having dealt with Mr. Coughlan's fantasy world we may now turn to reality. The most important reality in Ireland is that the division of the working class along religious lines was systematically created and is systematically maintained by the Northern Irish bourgeoisie (1). Any analysis which does not start from this simple fact is doomed to pointlessness. The entire power of this class rests on this point and it knows it. In order to maintain this division of the working class, the bourgeoisie relies on its control of the press, of broadcasting, of education, etc. As long as it has this control, any talk of “free and full political debate” is just utopian dreaming. But to take control of these away from the bourgeoisie requires the ending of capitalism in Northern Ireland, and that, even Mr. Coughlan has to admit, requires rather more than the efforts of the forces of “democracy and progress”.
The second reality is that neither the Stormont nor the British Government is in the slightest bit interested in whether a Bill of Rights is passed for Northern Ireland or not. They would ignore any such Bill whenever and however it suited them just as ruling classes or castes do in S. Africa, USA or the USSR.
The third reality is that the problems which create the crisis in Northern Ireland are not merely political but are fundamental social questions connected with housing, unemployment, wages, etc. These Coughlan deals with when he says that the south must “put its house in order by dropping plans to resist trade union rights, by developing the social services, by opposing the pressures of economic imperialism and creating full employment.” We agree entirely with Coughlan that all these things are desirable and furthermore we think that people are prepared to struggle for them. But there is no point going around saying “wouldn't it be nice to have so and so”, the question is how to get them, and the fact is that none of these things is attainable under capitalism. The plans to restrict trade union rights are not the product of the peculiarly reactionary nature of Jack Lynch’s government, but to the fact that Irish capitalism is finding it increasingly hard to pay for the wage increases which a strong independent trade union movement can win. Furthermore, any capitalist Irish government would be forced to take the same measures, no matter how much it was based on the mythical “forces of progress and democracy”. Exactly the same applies to the developing of the social services. As for “opposing the forces of economic imperialism”, this is a complete utopia as long as capitalism exists in Ireland, for it is precisely the capitalist market which results in the economic, and therefore political, domination of Ireland by Britain. Therefore to break the links which bind Ireland to Britain, it is necessary to destroy this market and for this a working class revolution leading to the nationalisation of the economy and a state monopoly of foreign trade is necessary.
We could go on and on in the same fashion. Just to give the tone of the rest of the argument, we will therefore only include one more gem. This is Coughlan's statement that “In the conditions of Northern Ireland today it is clearly unrealistic to demand ‘workers’ control’ from a Government which is reluctant to introduce One-Man-One-Vote”. Well, we have news for Mr. Coughlan, and that is that it is not merely “unrealistic in Northern Ireland today” to demand workers control from the Unionists, but that it is “unrealistic” at any-time, at any-place and in any-manner to demand workers’ control from a capitalist government. Unless Mr. Coughlan realises that, he has less political sense than even this pamphlet would indicate. As for the subject of workers’ control, the beginnings of what workers’ control of the state would look like was seen in “Free” Derry and “Free” Belfast, and this was not demanded from the government but taken, just as workers control of production and of the state will be taken. The job of socialists is to spread the examples of Derry and Belfast and to convince the people of Ireland that if they are prepared to fight, they can get those things which they want. And the things which they want, housing, jobs, wages, social services, cannot be obtained by the forces of “progress and democracy” but only by the struggle of the working class for socialism, which Coughlan wants us to forget about so that his precious businessmen and “progressive” priests do not collapse quivering with fear! The task of the moment is patiently explaining and showing to people that the things which they want can only be achieved by the overthrowing of capitalism, not going around spreading confusion by urging people to sign pathetically useless petitions for Bills of Rights which would be meaningless even if achieved. The only effect of the type of politics that Coughlan advocates would be the demoralisation of people as soon as the futility of their efforts became apparent.
Footnotes
(1) Anyone who doubts that at this stage should read Rayner Lysaght’s pamphlet, The Making of Northern Ireland and the Basis of Its Undoing. (Available from Red Books, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.)