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In
the southern Irish elections of May 17, Sinn Fein
increased its parliamentary seats from one to five
and came close to winning several others. In local
government it has rapidly increased its elected positions
in the past few years. In the north of Ireland, the
party has now overtaken the middle class SDLP as the
chief representative of the nationalist community
and is a part of the Stormont government. These substantial
electoral gains have seemed to confirm that the end
of the republican armed struggle for Irish freedom
and the effective disarmament of the IRA, pioneered
by the current leadership, have paid big dividends.
In
Republican Voices, half a dozen former IRA
activists, each of whom served substantial prison
sentences for their activity, discuss the ‘new
departure’, along with aspects of the struggle
in the 1970s and 1980s. The book is arranged in five
sections, each dealing with a specific topic presented
in the form of a conversation among the participants.
Early
sections of the book provide very welcome counters
to the banality and downright falsehoods of so much
writing about the IRA and the motivations of those
who joined. Writers such as Kevin Toolis, for instance,
have presented IRA members as being motivated by some
bizarre desire to shed blood for Ireland. These six
activists, who are typical of a generation that joined
up in the late 60s and early 1970s, explain what actually
led them into armed struggle, what they did, and how
they view it all now.
Although
the original idea was to have a range of republican
viewpoints in relation to the current course of Sinn
Fein and the IRA, the top leadership dissuaded a number
of people from participating, with the result that
four of the six are opponents of the current course.
Given
that opponents of the ‘new departure’ are
scarcely heard within mainstream discourse and that
the Adams group have been fairly effective in shutting
down dissent within the movement, the slant of the
book is no problem. It merely helps redress the balance
a bit.
Moreover,
the dissidents include legendary figures like Brendan
Hughes, who was on hunger strike in the notorious
H-Blocks for 53 days and was OC of the IRA prisoners
there before Bobby Sands. Other participants are Anthony
McIntyre and Tommy McKearney, both of whom served
16 years in the Blocks, with McKearney also being
on hunger strike for 53 days, former blanketman Tommy
Gorman, and longtime POWs Eamonn McDermott (13 years)
and Micky McMullen (18 years). The latter two are
supporters of the ‘pan-nationalist’ approach
of the current leadership.
The
critics, however, are not mere knee-jerk militarists.
They recognise that the armed struggle had gone as
far as it was possible to go and that there is no
point in a resumption - the path followed by the Continuity
IRA and the Real IRA, groups which have come out of
splits over the past 16 years. Rather, the dissidents
in Republican Voices suggest that a socialist strategy
is needed.
They
argue that the turn of the republican leadership towards
pan-nationalism is a turn away from republicanism,
which had been about radical socio-economic change
as much as national independence. By contrast, pan-nationalism
seeks to unite people across the class divide on the
basis merely of ‘Irishness’ and to do deals
with corporate America, the British state and the
corrupt political establishments on both sides of
the Irish border. These deals are supposedly about
advancing reunification, but really mean that the
Republican Movement - Sinn Fein and the IRA - are
being drawn into helping stabilise and run the status
quo.
This
view is put incisively by Anthony McIntyre:
Those
in the Sinn Fein leadership who accepted the Good
Friday Agreement have led the republican Movement
to a major defeat. The Agreement specified the conditions
of republican surrender. The leadership. . . is
in reality rendering republicanism obsolete whilst
attempting to retain some of the vocabulary. Dublin
has abandoned its constitutional claim (over the
whole of Ireland - PF), Britain has committed itself
to stay as long as the Unionists want it, and no
amount of sophistry by the leadership can obscure
this. There is less in this deal than was on offer
at Sunningdale in 1973.
The
last word is given to Brendan Hughes. He points out
that none of the fundamental issues have been resolved
and the goal of a socialist republic is now rarely
mentioned by the Adams leadership. As for the decades
of struggle since the late 1960s, he states:
Was
it all worth it? When we bring about the removal
of the British and a democratic socialist thirty-two
county republic, when the wealth of this country
is handed back to the people, when there is justice,
freedom and equality - then I’ll say it was
worth it.
The
big question, however, is how this goal is to be advanced
now. Unfortunately this question is not really asked,
let alone answered, in the book.
The
dissidents, however, do have a number of interesting,
but primarily literary, projects underway - journals
such as Fourthwrite and The Blanket,
for instance. They have spoken at well-attended public
meetings to promote their criticisms of the current
course and the need for a socialist-republican political
alternative. At the same time, the Irish Republican
Socialist Party has been reorganising and there have
been some interesting splits and developments in far-left
groups outside of republicanism. Hopefully, the people
behind this book will now look at how to begin drawing
these strands together in order to develop not merely
a literary critique of the new reformism of Sinn Fein
and the IRA, but a revolutionary organisational alternative
to it as well.
In
the meantime, this book is especially highly recommended
to all those outside Ireland who want to gain a real
insight into what drove the republican struggle in
recent decades and what has become of it.
Philip
Ferguson was a former member of Sinn Fein from 1986-94
Republican
Voices
edited by Kevin Bean and Mark Hayes
Published by Seesyu Press. 142 pages.
Available from Republican Voices, PO Box 31, Belfast
BT 12 7EE.
Cost Stg£5 or Irl£7.50 (+P&P £2)
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