John Hoyland replies:
Firstly, 1 stand well corrected on my use of the phrase about "louts". You are entirely right about this.
Secondly, I have taught in Further Educa tion Colleges containing a fair proportion of skinheads for several years. I could cite dozens of examples of their interest, friendliness, independence of spirit, etc. like the one described by John Arden (who, like me, is generalising from his own experience). This does not prevent me from criticising the social role they are now tending to play, so far as I am able to observe it.
Thirdly, at no point in my article did / attack working-class youth as a whole. My article dealt specifically with those skinheads (a small fraction of their age-group who have identified themselves by punch-ups on the foot- interests of their class. ball terraces and by attacks on blacks and inevitability about the process of consciousness hippies (and their own working-class contemporaries) in the streets.
However, Comrade Taylor's letter in particular does not only suffer from his attack on a position I do not hold in relation to Further Education. Underneath his point-scoring about psychologisms and cosy-values, there is a kind of ourierist romanticism which is as misleading and dangerous as the elevation of crime into an act of intrinsic revolutionary merit by sections of the anarchists and situationists, Of course the skinheads may turn out to be no more significant (from the political point of view) than the Teds. Of course there is no inevitability about them turning into fascists. Of course they belong to the most beleaguered sections of the working-class - the sections that suffer most from the inequalities and injustices of our society. I was at great pains to make these points in my article, comrades, and I tried to make it clear that insofar as their behaviour is a defiant assertion of their (class) identity, socialists should view it with interest and understanding. I might have added that skinheads are victimised by the police and other authorities every bit as consistently as the hippies and left-wingers. But to go from there to claiming that the skinheads represent the "vanguard of a relatively militant resistance to bourgeois society" is absolutely incredible All three comrades choose to ignore the fact EDITOR Tariq Ali EDITORIAL BOARD DESIGNER CIRCULATION AND ADVERTISING David Kendall DISTRIBUTION John Weal SECRETARY HAN SCORE
The Black Dwarf October Ist 1969 Page 6 The crisis in Ireland confronts the left in Britain with its most important struggle at the present time. Bourgeois politics will attempt to place the 'Irish question' outside the muted conflict of its two party consensus. It will be a bitter indictment of the left if it accepts this and limits its response to general slogans and political solidarity with the Civil Rights movement. With the entry of British troops onto the streets of Belfast and Derry and the ludicrous "intervention' of the Lynch regime in the South the basic issue at stake in the present troubles was made quite clear. It is the first issue of Irish politics and it is not the religious question: it is between Irish self-determination and British The present conflict, the use of British troops, borders of the six-counties. Unionist rule all remain within the But the fundamental politics of the situation is not so confined. No demand for self-determination, such as that put forward by the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign, and more important no socialist perspective makes sense if it is confined to the limits of a one party statelet. statelet which was carved out of Ireland with the blessing of Westminster after a bloody war in the South, and which has been kept in being by a reign of terror in the North itself.
There has been confusion about how to handle the relationship between helping to develop an effective revolutionary theory and popular national anti-imperialist forces there. strategy within Ireland and supporting the Such confusion can only be overcome by being objective; which is a United Socialist workers clear about the fundamental revolutionary and Farmers Republic of Ireland. Two things follow from this. Self determination for the Irish people and the withdrawal of British troops. A revolution in Ireland will be much more than these two things, without them it will be impossible.
A number of important questions have been raised around these issues. It has been argued that for socialists the demand for self determination should replace the demand for a united republic; that the latter is a limitation of the former. Nothing is further from the truth.
Socialism is the consumation of self determination, and it redoubles the vigour with which we fight for self-determination. For socialists to forget about their own objectives and go to the assistance of the bourgeoisie, means to hand over both their politics and the class that they are fighting to represent. There can be no compromise in the struggle for self determination, no 'critical' support that turns out to be no support at all, because self determination is a basic and fundamental necessity for socialism.
With regard to British troops we have seen the astonishing situation of socialists in England subordinating their principles and their overall politics to the demands of the minute in Belfast. Seemingly without realising that self determination incompatible with presence of British troops. The troops are on the streets in Northern Ireland to enforce the interests of British capitalism across the water;
policy upon the Unionist party. To keep silent guarding the factories and enforcing a new about British troops, whistling in the air when they are mentioned, supports the solution they are attempting to impose But, it is argued, how can we demand the withdrawal of British troops when this would lead to a pogrom, section of the population want British troops to when the most oppressed be there? Only the bourgeoisie, in particular the support the mass struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland, and we must never forget it. But it is essential to distinguish between the vanguard and the masses. As socialists our duty lies not only to those engaged in the struggle at whatever level it may have reached, but to those who are trying to develop it and to those in Britain who are being mystified by the mass media.
ICRSC The ICRSC was founded about four months ago by International Socialism and the London distinction between it and the Northern Ireland branch of Peoples Democracy. The main Civil Rights Association (NICRA) with whom Clann Nah 'Eirein (Sinn Fein) and the Connolly Association (a predominantly C.P. organisation) are working in an uneasy alliance is that the ICRSC is an activist campaign. By touring round factories, building sites and Irish residential areas, with or without Bernadette Devlin, it has tried to involve the Irish Workers in Britain.
It is worthwhile comparing briefly the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRS) and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC).
a) The struggle in Vietnam was and is the most significant struggle in the world today between Imperialism and the advancing proletariat. British •HOL directly involved, but British complicity is well-established.
b) The Vietnamese leadership is conducting this struggle in a fully conscious Marxist manner. c) The VSC was the first movement since the war able to radicalise something approaching a mass base in Britain on clear Marxist slogans and, furthermore, slogans which were in complete harmony with the aspirations of the Vietnamese people.
With the ICRSC on the other hand:
a), The struggle in Ireland is not pivotal in the world revolution. b) But it is very important in the British class struggle because British Imperialism is directly involved in and responsible for the NE CLON c) There is no Marxist leadership in the North or South of the island which has won the people's confidence.
Pd) the possibility of sharpening the class contradictions in Britain itself is furthered by the presence of over a million Irish workers in this country who could become directly involved Revolutionaries working through the solishould support all existing darity campaign mass struggles in Ireland, no matter how weak tionary's point of view, so long as they are a their perspectives may be from a revoluagainst the forms of British Should educate participants in the campaign into the exact nature of the struggle with a thorough marxist alalysis.
and attack imperialism's the Should expose the shifting situation is presented and propagandised in direct opposition to the lies and deceit of the mass media.
Finally without ceasing to support the to build a unified revolutionary party continue and develop the struggle against capitalism in other related struggles.
All support to the Irish Civil Rights fighters Expose, British Imperialism and its die hard In August a citizen of the United Kingdom was jailed for three weeks and fined ten pounds for being in possession of the constitution of a political government that arrested him, Northern Ireland's, the party. The man, Francis Cambell, was Irish, the constitution was Sinn Fein's the political party whose military arm is the I.R.A. At his trial Cambell denied being a member of the Party and claimed that he had found the Sinn Fein constitution on a pile of rubbish, he pleaded "I have not read the booklet".
This wretched story contains many of the key elements to the present crisis. The gross injustice of a totalitarian state, the active and provocative role of the Unionist Party who have always controlled the state apparatus, the political backwardness of the L.R.A.; and the clash which underpins the situation, Republicanism versus Union with Britain. This may suprise readers who have been fed reports of religious rioting. But politics, the question of Ireland's relationship to between Protestants and Catholics. England is the substance Religion is only of the clashes the language with which battle is fought and religious institutions are only one of the means of organising For an outsider the present situation is astonishing. An old industrial city of over half a million inhabitants, proud possessor of the world's largest shipbuilding crane is torn in pieces. During August and part of September over 10,000 of its population lived behind barricades. Two weeks ago on their way back from work in Mackies, a skilled engineering plant employing 6,000 men, workers casually burnt out a Catholic family that was still living in devastated Cukor Street. Last week the British Army, or 'the military' as the Sinn Fein call them to distinguish them from their own Army, erected over half a mile of barbed wire 'peace' barrier!
The British army, for once the victim of its groups of frightened determined and armed workers Imperial injustice, is trapped between two massed who greatly outnumber it. They are tentatively and slowly attempting to gain unified political military control over the entire area without upsetting anyone too much. A delicate and ruthless operation which they know will take time and patience. Their colonial history has prepared them for this kind of job, indeed some of the troops there have only known action troops are keeping the two groups apart they are not against civilians, in Aden and Cyprus. Although the playing a neutral role in the situation. The contradic dominant contradiction at the LIOH between Catholics and Protestants moment, but it is the strictly a secondary one incomprehensible outside the context of the national question. If Britain wanted to keep the old order it would be an easy matter for it to have turned the troops against the Catholic barricades.
cry IRA vandalism when one of them got shot, and put the whole country back firmly into the hands of the Unionist clique. But Britain no longer has any interest in doing this. Its troops are there to guard the factories and to impose a new policy upon the Unionist Party A policy of reform which will pave the way for a political reorganisation of Ireland more convenient and profitable to British capital. The Southern Government also wants this solution They have pressed for reunification and have insisted that there shall be no return to the status quo. This would give Lynch and his ruling party Fianna Fail a place in the history books and take the burden of Ulster from Wilson's shoulders. (It would also help proportion of Irish Catholics, to win the coming Wilson, general election.) Thus Dublin have put as much external pressure on Wilson as they can, by going to the United Nations and moving troops to the border, without forcing him into the hands of the Unionists.
- The Origins The origins of the current situation lie in the partition of the country after the first world war Ireland was partitioned because uneven economic development between the North and the South divided the working class and the bougeoisie. Whilst the rest of the country remained almost pre-industrial Belfast's factories ensured capitalist support for the Orange aristocrats who led the political and military battle against home rule. Belfast, for historic reasons associated with the Protestant settlement, was the only region in Ireland where large scale industrial development took place during the nineteent!
century. By the turn of this century it was dependent on access to Britain and the Empire's markets, whilst the Southern petit bourgeoisie demanded protection and tariffs to develop indigenous manufacturing.
Protection would have ruined the Northerr capitalists. The two reached agree assistance and under the sovereignty of Britain, which then and still exercises conomic domination over the whole country. Protestantism was used to integrate the Belfast workers into a political alliance with their santan the nackie because completely to economic imperialism. By doing so they have dismantled the economic basis of partition.
same time the North's economy has collapsed. Its two great industries, shipbuilding and At tne linen which were the backbone of the Ulster economy, used to employ 55% of the manufacturing workforce after the war, now they employ less than 25%. New industry, attracted in by massive grants and aid have failed to keep up with demand and have only just managed to create as many jobs as have been lost •Male unemployment is now 10%, the average wage is just over £10 a week. The North is suffering a chronic economic depression.
Acute depression, and worse, relative economi decline, is at the core of Protestant and Catholi protest and has divided Belfast between two hundre barricades. Both Paisley and the Civil rights supporter want economic and social equality with Britain. In double reaction to the decline, Protestants have see!
the collapse of their historic role as the economic an social vanguard of anglo-saxon virtues, while Catholics suffering twice the rate of unemployment and fa worse wages desperation a 'fair deal" and conditions have demanded Political crises are the result of politics no economics. The resentment created by the depressio was transformed into the present fratricidal divisio by the Unionist Party's attempts to reform itsel Under pressure from Whitehall and some of the larg international companies and as the South moved in line in preparation for joining the Common Market the same time as Britain, the Unionists attempted modernise the political and social structure of t country. The pious hopes of reform are in ruir Protestant extremists, lead by Paisley and urged on opposing the new line of the Party. Of necessity, i Unionist M.P.s exploited the growing resentment the Unionists are the party of the Protestant worki class, and the allegence of the Protestant worker:
essential to Unionist rule For their part middle class Catholics supported t new drift of reform by advancing demands for ci rights, in particular an end to gerrymanderi Socialists, taking advantage of the fact that lo government voting was still based on house owners!
demanded more houses and then more jobs. For first time Catholics had found a legitimate mean:
political expression within the condition of the counties. citizens. The Protestants were enfuriated. At the demanded their rights as moment that their own living standards had sunk
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"At the head of the whole people, and particularly of the peasantry-for complete freedom, for a consistent democratic revolution, for a republic! At the head of all the toilers and the exploited- for Socialism."
actions or lack of them before and during the struggle so that a clear alternative analysis of
original struggle shuuld attempt to show to the radicalised members of the campaign the need