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From Socialist Worker, No. 106, 25 January 1969, pp. 2 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
THE CIVIL RIGHTS movement in Northern Ireland has come to the parting of the ways.
The frustration that was building up week by week and was dramatically unleashed in Newry two weeks ago can no longer be contained within moderate demands and dignified protests.
Newry was a classic case of a moderate leadership vainly attempting to siphon off and channel the militancy of the rank and file in a ‘safe’ direction.
Before the Newry march they insisted repeatedly that they would not recognise any ban or accept a re-route by the police.
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Then, when confronted by the inevitable police barricade, they advised everyone to return to the starting point ‘where prominent speakers will address you’.
The result was the burning of the tenders that had been used to block the route, the attempted occupation or public buildings and the traditional late-night baton charges.
Reactions have been predictable. The moderates’ line is that the government, by allowing this to happen – and there is no doubt that the cops watched cheerfully as the tenders blazed – has successfully discredited the civil rights movement.
Already there is talk of ‘purging the movement of “extremists” and “revolutionaries” who are using the civil rights for their own ends.’
What the Left must do now is clearly to define its political difference with the moderates.
A ‘more militant than thou’ stance is meaningless unless we communicate to the rank and file precisely what it is we are being militant about.
The problem is that, given the historical legacy of religious sectarianism, it is difficult to get across the point that the struggle is an issue of class, not creed. (And articles such as Paul Foot’s in Socialist Worker of December 21, in which he examined the unemployment problem in terms of ’catholic’ towns and ‘protestant’ towns do not help.)
The Left should make demands that demonstrate the the line of class division and direct a considerably greater proportion of its energy and activity towards the protestant workers.
To do this it is necessary to deliberately shatter the facade of ‘unity’ within the civil rights movement.
The catholic middle-class leadership cannot support socialist demands which pose as great a threat to themselves as to the open enemies of civil rights.
The unity they speak about is sectarian itself. They relegate or ignore class demands and therefore rule out the achievement of the only unity socialists should be interested in at this point – unity of our class against its enemies, Green as well as Orange.
Unless the break is made we will continue like the Duke of York: marching towards battle, realising as we approach the front line that the ‘enemy’ is largely working-class protestants, deciding that strife between workers is a bad thing and pulling back in confusion.
This silly zig-zagging is caused by the fact that those leading ‘our’ side cannot and will not- tolerate appeals to the ‘enemy’ on the only basis that holds any hope of success – on the basis that, as workers, they have to suiter unemployment, low wages, bad housing, high rents and disfranchisement in local government elections.
The instinctive militancy of radical socialists will, in the nature of Northern Ireland society, achieve its greatest immediate response among the catholic working class. We cannot wipe out the last trace of religious bitterness from working-class consciousness overnight.
There can be no doubt that the voices of moderation will cry to the heavens about the danger of bloodshed and civil war ...
Our answer must be that it is ‘moderation’ and ‘liberalism’ which, down through the years, have prevented any assault on the system that provokes the possibility of civil war.
It is the same moderates and liberals who are today struggling desperately to keep control of a movement that, under their leadership, has done nothing to lessen sectarianism.
And it is they who wish to expel the only people and ideas that might successfully realise struggle along a non-religious axis.
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Last updated: 15 January 2021