Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point  however  is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science  Review
[P&P  Bulletin Publications,   PO Box 50. London  SW17 9NL]  [Post  Office  Regd]
No 913    Tuesday August 12 1997                                                                                                      10p

Red Rebel (MLSS, PO Box 77008, Edinburgh, EH11 2YF) has sent a very spirited and interesting reply to EPSR's mixed welcome, but only informally so far. Hopefully, a published reply will appear in Red Rebel No 2, to which EPSR will be eager to respond.

Historic victory over imperialism for Ireland's national self-determination will at last help free British workers from the shackles of chauvinism, fulfilling Marx's prediction. Imperialist decadence is swept aside by determined revolutionary struggle. Nationalism remains limited, but bogus 'lefts' who can only see defeat in Ireland and all around them, are much more of a deadweight. Doomed imperialism comes out second best in the guerrilla war, the political struggle, and the peace diplomacy. The new settlement will bury the old discredited colonial set-up for good. Subjective Trot muddle only exposes its own treacherous inadequacy. The Marxist grasp of history is vindicated.

It is a triumph for the Irish national-liberation struggle that a new constitutional arrangement for Ireland will be put to a referendum next May.

Unionist threats to veto the proposals which eventually emerge, will be ignored. The London, Dublin, and Washington governments will have to call the bluff of any 'No Surrender' Loyalist attempts at armed resistance.

The intelligent calculation is that the new settlement, at last recognising the constitutional rights of the whole Irish nation in Ireland, will also win substantial support from the ex-British colonial community in the north because it guarantees peace.

Thus the die-hard Orange fanatics who are currently screaming that the suggested talks process 'has given in to every IRA demand' will easily be outnumbered in the vote.

In spite of disloyal splits and leaks from British Establishment circles in the Northern Ireland Office and other reactionary quarters, the nettle has finally been grasped of refusing to allow the Unionist 'decommissioning' stunt to delay progress any longer.

Sinn Féin's final clarification demands were that there was to be no question of any weapons being surrendered until substantial developments towards a final settlement were in place.

The pathetic game by backward Unionist leaders to imply a 'defeat' for the IRA by having weapons handed in before an agreement has been reached, has been seen off.

Gerry Adams statement calling for an IRA ceasefire spelled it out that "the decommissioning issue would not be allowed to block negotiations", - a British government assurance, as is the release of more Republican prisoners-of-war as a "confidence-building measure".

Adams also stressed that "Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Irish government, and Irish-American opinion shared commitment to significant and substantial change" in Ireland, and also to eventual "equality and demilitarisation".

"There will be no return to Unionist domination" Adams added.

This shows that the ultimate perspective is for British police/army rule to end in Ireland, and a formula will be worked out to let the Irish in the north feel they are constitutionally a part of Ireland while allowing any British colonial diehards to feel that they are still constitutionally a part of Britain. 

The eventual outcome clearly, however, will be a reunited Ireland, exactly as Sinn Féin's national-liberation struggle has fought for. 

All-out civil and military revolt was renewed in 1968 by the Irish national-liberation struggle to bring down the British colonial statelet mischievously labelled 'Northern Ireland'. 

First the illegitimate colonist regime had to be suspended, replaced by the power reality of a British police-military dictatorship, repressing the Irish population openly instead of more covertly as before.

Now a completely new settlement for Ireland is to be worked out, which will replace the old 'Northern Ireland' monstrous tyranny, burying it for ever.

This triumph for the Irish national-liberation struggle contains colossal lessons about the whole of modern world history.

For various reasons and in various ways, all sorts of half-hearted or bogus 'socialists' either seek to completely deny or misrepresent this Sinn Féin/IRA victory, or else seek to play it down.

These purely subjective responses in turn reveal more valuable lessons about current elements in the international balance of class forces which make up the modern world.

The EPSR will consistently explain how its attempted Marxist-Leninist scientific analysis of the overall situation affecting the Occupied Zone of Ireland has led it to successfully identify from the start the slow but sure development of this national-liberation triumph and its enormous international significance, - exposing fake-'left' and other petty-bourgeois propaganda which relentlessly wrote off Sinn Féin/IRA as 'isolated', 'pointless', 'sold out', or 'defeated', and even as 'reactionary'.

The 'socialists' who do not think this victory over colonialism worth mentioning are simply revealing their parochial smallmindedness. They lack imagination.

Although not on the epic scale of the combat, suffering, and inspiration of, say, the victories over imperialism in Vietnam, Algeria, or South Africa, - - the heroism of resistance and sacrifice demanded by the Irish struggle was at times and in places every bit as great, and the political and operational ingenuity was always outstanding.

Hunger strikes and guerrilla-war 'terrorism' have seldom been first-choice tactics of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary struggle, but the courage and determination of this nationalist fight in Ireland properly captured the entire world's imagination and attention, backed up as they were by overwhelming political success in organising Irish working-class resistance to the British military occupation, and to the continuing colonial establishment and propaganda. 

Against phenomenal odds and disadvantages not least from the treacherous opportunism of most of the British 'left', Sinn Féin nevertheless won the international ideological conflict with Britain, whose imperialist decadence simply could not defeat the IRA or outsmart Sinn Féin's politics.

Guerrilla war put up a challenge which British imperialism could not ignore or cover up. Sinn Féin's phenomenally energetic political organisation and, to a limited extent, its ideological combativeness ensured that British colonialism's failure could not be hidden from the world.

Sheer hard political work plus ferociously gutsy working-class resistance to non-stop terror-intimidation by the British colonial state and its 'loyalist' armed-fascist supplementary brutality, - provided an international demonstration of how magnificently the anti-imperialist fight can be fought.

Particularly for Western Europe, the sheer dimensions and quality of Sinn Féin's political achievements in agitational propaganda and organisation among the Irish working class should have captured everyone's imagination, regardless of the head-start which the nationalist orientation gave them.

Sinn Féin's sustained political argument has been of the highest order of discipline, and has produced some impressive leaders. The British 'left' has always preferred opportunist manoeuvring to correct political argument, and its poverty of organisation and its confusion of direction shows this only too clearly.

The limitations of Sinn Féin's nationalism are obvious to Marxism-Leninism, and the EPSR has never lost sight of this or ignored referring to it.

But opportunist criticism of Sinn Féin/IRA by the British 'left' has always been even further from a real grasp of Marxism-Leninism than has nationalism.

The Irish national-liberation struggle has to be judged both on its own aims and on the pattern of possibilities, within the actual anti-imperialist campaign as it developed in the Occupied Zone, and in its historic international context.

It is utterly useless academic posturing, posing as 'Marxism', to try 'analysing' the colossal impact on (and reflection of)the international balance of class forces by the struggle in Ireland through infantile dismissals of Sinn Féin's aims and achievements as 'not revolutionary socialist'.

They were not meant to be. The dream was to topple the British colonial statelet against the most enormous odds and under the worst possible conditions imaginable.

With the cunningly vile partitioning of Ireland already accepted ancient reality, and with the establishment of the great postwar boom, unprecedented in all capitalist history,- the anti-imperialist struggle in the Occupied Zone faced a seemingly impossible task.

The population of the southern Republic was completely dead to any further disruptive anti-imperialist fight. World opinion, brainwashed by anti-communist propaganda, was disposed to ignore repression of all revolutionary or 'terrorist' struggle, no matter how brutal the clamp-down. 

The workers movement in Britain, under its Labour-TUC leadership, went along with Labour's automatic vicious hostility to the Sinn Féin/IRA fight. The misnamed 'Protestant' working class in the Occupied Zone (the proletarian contingent of British colonialism) was even more reactionary than the British working class on this subject. 

And the Irish in the Occupied Zone were made backward by their Catholic domination north and south, by the class-collaborative lethargy emanating from Dublin, and by their own limited share in the postwar imperialist boom, reflected by the SDLP's dominance of Irish politics in the Occupied Zone and by the normal chaotic and philistine confusion on the 'left' reflecting the whole muddle of West Europe and of world revisionism.

Against all these colossal odds, and despite their fight having been written off as 'finished' more times than can be counted, it is the national-liberation struggle which has magnificently prevailed.

The peculiar decadence of British imperialism and its historic crisis are specific to this dramatic outcome, but there is much in this Sinn Féin/IRA triumph to reflect on the international balance of class forces in general.

With the end of Empire and the end of Britain's serious participation as a leading independent rival for international imperialist hegemony, the troublesome British colonial toe-hold still on Ireland, - to 'guard the back door' and to 'deny Ireland to any rival power as an ally', etc, - became a daft anachronism.

When increasing economic difficulties for Britain meant that the military-industrial value of the Northern Ireland colony was becoming more of a burden than a help, and when political ferment in the Occupied Zone began to grow really costly, - the questions began to be asked in earnest: 'What do we need this cross to be borne for?'

'Loyalty' to the 'loyalist' population was the last consideration. Mutual contempt was growing fast as Britain's imperialist twilight deepened gloomily.

The main problems were how to get out without letting it be seen to be a victory for the national-liberation struggle fought as a revolutionary guerrilla war; and how to get out without playing into the hands politically of Orange-colonist intransigence which could make any amount of chauvinistic trouble for any government seen to be 'betraying British national interests' or 'abandoning British people to terrorism' or 'reneging on a solemn promise of eternal Britishness, forged in blood' or 'capitulating a region of Britain to the tyranny of a benighted Catholic state', etc, etc.

Time, and the sheer determination of the Sinn Féin/IRA fight has finally forced British imperialism's hand, urged on to a 'settlement' by the rest of Western imperialism which likewise hates the thought of a revolutionary national-liberation struggle victory but fears an even more radical revolt,- and more widespread than just in Ireland, - could follow if British repression does not stop soon or cannot be camouflaged better. 

The rival imperialist powers also have no problem with Britain having to admit to yet another humiliating defeat, thus undermining its international reputation and political/economic positions even further, to their own advantage.

Hence, finally, all the ultimately irresistible pressure for a 'new settlement for Ireland',— which basically means that the old 'Northern Ireland' colony-partition racket will be no more, abandoned in favour of some sort of dual-power condominium by London and Dublin which will temporarily allow the Irish in the north to feel that they are again living in part of Ireland, but allow the diehard British remnants of colonial-mindedness to still posture and feel that they are part of Britain.

The name 'Northern Ireland' might live on for a brief while, as a final gesture to quieten reactionary colonist sentiment to prevent any danger of an armed UDI (unilateral declaration of independence) by the more extreme 'loyalist' gangsters and their Orange-bourgeois mentors, - but only temporarily will the reunification of Ireland as one independent Republic be delayed.

All of which has been clearly signposted since the early 1970s, and all of which has been accurately analysed each week by the EPSR since its foundation at the end of the 1970s.

Fake-'left' posturing has consistently got everything wrong. Half of the Trots, eaten up with their Labour-loyal opportunism or their anti-communist posturing as academic 'Marxists', have written off this titanic anti-imperialist struggle as thoroughly 'reactionary', on the grounds that the so-called 'Protestant working class' could never respond to Irish nationalism.

But if this community is more properly described as the colonist proletariat, then there is no reason ever to expect them to respond to an Irish nationalist appeal.

So how can they be made anti-imperialist, - i.e. Anti-colonialist?

There is only one obvious way, and that is through the defeat of the British colonial toe-hold as it stood.

Presumably, all sorts of class combinations might have defeated British imperialism's colonial anachronism in Ireland. Presumably, all kinds of 'lefts' could have led such a liberation war.

In practice, only the Provisional Sinn Féin/IRA movement did manage to lead and organise a really serious anti-imperialist struggle. The die was cast. The anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland would henceforth be dominated by the profound significance of the Sinn Féin/IRA national-liberation war in the Occupied Zone and on the British mainland.

But still the reactionary 'left' objections persisted: How could such nationalist struggle lead to any wider acceptance for the possible outcome of greater Irish independence?

Obviously through one of the classic developments of all anti-imperialist struggle, - through the defeat of imperialism.

Only with the humiliation of Britain and its ridiculous colonial vestiges is it possible to imagine the ex-colonial proletariat in the Occupied Zone enthusiastically taking up a genuine anti-imperialist struggle by moving on to what might subsequently emerge as desirable and possible in the post-colonial settlement, - namely a move towards a socialist revolution which alone at last can obviously satisfy the aspirations of everyone living in Ireland.

But weirdly, the one thing which the entire fake-'left' usually agrees on is to avoid seeing any serious defeat for imperialism in the Irish situation.

As ever, all the Trots start, continue, and end with their own subjective prejudices, not with objective reality. If the reality of actual outcomes of world political situations does not suit their prejudices, they simply distort the record or implications of the reality. Never has a Trot ever been found to reconsider the basis for their anti-communist prejudices as a result of world developments.

Thus, Militant and Spart versions of Trotskyism, for example, will continue in this period to see the triumphant national-liberation struggle against imperialism as merely a reactionary leg-up for 'green nationalism' which can only be to the 'terrible detriment' of the misnamed 'Protestant working class'.

The CPGB-type Trots, on the other hand, simply see continued imperialist domination and no victory for anyone but Washington's 'new world order' dominance.

But the prejudices are really identical, and unchanging, whatever actually happens in the world.

Ultra-left posturing of the Trotskyite 'perfect permanent revolution' variety only thrives on the renowned petty-bourgeois class mentality of defeatism.

For the endless posturing of these 'super-revolutionary' armchair socialists to be all the time 'correct', then every other struggle against imperialism must of necessity always end in 'failure'.

Lo and behold, the Russian Revolution was a 'failure', the Chinese Revolution a 'failure' before it had even started. The Cuban Revolution has never been able to drag itself out of the 'failure' league. The 1984-85 Miners Strike was 'obviously a failure'. The SLP is already a 'failure'. No surprise at all, really, that the Irish national-liberation struggle must be accounted a 'failure'. After all, the historic national-liberation movement which ended the era of direct European colonies in the Third World, did ultimately end only in 'failure', because 'perfect socialism' has not even remotely been started anywhere yet, so 'there's the proof' etc, etc, to the end of time, presumably.

But real history works completely differently, of course. The working masses of the world rejoiced at the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution, and cheered even more at the success of the Chinese Revolution 32 years later, with the international communist movement still growing for long after, until revisionist petty-bourgeois ideology once again reconquered the workers movement completely.

After 70 years unbroken advance by the ideas of revolutionary communism, a brief temporary relapse has set in based on the ability of the exceptionally-1ong-running postwar imperialist boom to finally convince the weakest revisionist minds in the communist movement that the 'free market' was a better instrument all round for human progress than was centralised state economic control.

Once that ludicrous thesis has exploded in everyone's faces during the near future, then communist revolution will resume its surge forward again, including the recapture of previous gains temporarily lost.

The international revolutionary movement has never been motivated on 'failure'. The Paris Commune can be said to have 'failed', and Marxism had to learn some crucial lessons from the setbacks.

But never has Marxism ever presented the Paris Commune as anything other than a magnificent step forward for mankind.

It is crucial to learn from all the mistakes made. But it is even more crucial for mankind to be inspired by the sensational advances made by communist revolution and the workers states which have been set up in the 20th century, pushing the capitalist-imperialist system aside.

But the petty-bourgeois mentality which cannot appreciate the triumph of the Irish national-liberation struggle which it has actually lived through, is never going to have the imagination to grasp the mighty historical significance of the communist revolutions which have transformed the 20th century and undermined imperialism for good.

The CPGB's latest prejudices putting down the Sinn Féin/IRA achievements start out from their anti-communist fixation that the workers-states history of the 20th century has only left imperialism in command of total global domination, imposing settlements on everyone at will.

National liberation movements the world over have been forced to sue for peace. In Ireland too freedom fighters gave up all hope of driving the British occupying forces out of the Six Counties, instead seeking to reach an accommodation which would allow them to end their resistance with honour intact.

Any 'progressive' who can write this insane defeatist bilge (as the CPGB did on July 24 after the IRA had captured the world's imagination with another generous ceasefire offer in return for British imperialist guarantees that this time, there would be purposeful talks about a completely new settlement for Ireland), - is just a daft reactionary.

And congenital Trot pessimism has a quick bucket of water for any notion of British imperialism being forced by the renewed national-liberation struggle of the past 17 months to resume all-party negotiations but this time without the built-in frustrations to a new settlement which London encouraged last time. 'There is no progress. It is reaction all the way' these defeatists declare:

A united Ireland brokered by Bill Clinton and magnanimously handed down by imperialism would be quite a different thing from one imposed on it through a military victory or a revolutionary uprising. It would guarantee that reaction would prevail, just as it did when an orderly transition to home rule was negotiated in 1922 and anti-imperialists defeated.

A straight 'military victory' by a tiny nationalist population (half a million) fighting within the country of the metropolitan power itself (population 55 million) is just fantasy-gibberish by total airheads, of course.

But on the much more realistic scale on which the Irish national-liberation struggle-has actually been fought, it was precisely a 'military victory' and a 'revolutionary uprising' of sorts which precisely lay at the core of British imperialism's undoing.

The monstrous police-military dictatorship over the Occupied Zone for nearly 30 years including concentration camps (years-long detention behind barbed wire at The Maze without even the semblance of a trial); jury-less 'courts' convicting for 30-years sentences in prison for mere suspicion of IRA involvement, voiced anonymously; torture barracks at the Gough military headquarters which even the imperialist European Court had to denounce; midnight terror raids systematically on every nationalist community in the Occupied Zone; terror—massacres such as Bloody Sunday, Loughgall, Gibraltar, Killtown, etc; inhuman frame-ups for 20-year prison terms on mere 'suspect Irish' on cooked-up 'evidence'; random repressive tyranny on any Irish demonstrations via plastic and rubber bullets; etc, etc; --- none of all this has been able to smash the IRA into submission or to terrorise the Irish population in the Occupied Zone and beyond into abandoning support and protection for the national-liberation struggle.

This was Irish nationalism's 'military victory' and 'revolutionary uprising' all rolled into one, and registered by the steady political advance made by Sinn Féin on every front, even trouncing British imperialism at its own bent 'parliamentary democracy' electoral racket.

And it is simply a ludicrous historical falsification to merely describe 1921 as 'reaction prevailing' and 'anti-imperialists defeated'. In 1921, British imperialism was still all-powerful in worldwide colonial matters, and at that point had only accepted one 'defeat' in its entire imperialist history, losing the American War of Independence in 1776.

Nowhere else had the British Empire been forced into total defeat and retreat, - until 1921 in Ireland when the triumphant war of national-liberation forced British imperialism to concede independence to the Republic of Ireland (as it became) in 26 counties, managing to hang on to only the gerrymandered boundaries of six counties because of the strength of the colonial British population there. 

In the same year, not all the 500 million population of India could force the British out, being slaughtered into submission again. But the tiny Irish nation triumphed in spite of the utter barbarism and murderous scorched-earth tyranny which British imperialism inflicted all over Ireland, eventually accepting a failure to win militarily however.

Did it matter? The Irish national-liberation was a colossal symbol to anti-imperialist struggle the world over. Only people without the slightest regard or capacity for objective reason could sum up Ireland's first national-liberation war of the 20th century as "a guarantee that reaction would prevail".

Only the incurably prejudiced could so distort reality purely to suit their own current subjective posturing as being a 'reliable political leadership', naturally of the 'super-revolutionary' kind.

This relentless self-justification of the CPGB's own naïve & pathetic misunderstandings comes out blatantly further on.

Idiotically, these Trots decided during the first IRA ceasefire that the 'peace process' was nothing but a cover for a complete capitulation to US imperialist domination, and an utter defeat for the national-liberation struggle. Adams & Co were described as having sold out completely.

When the guerrilla war was dramatically resumed, wiping out Canary Wharf and later the centre of Manchester,- these maniacal subjectivists then fumbled out the phrase "peace bombs" to hide their own silly embarrassment and confusion.

Even more idiotically, these poseurs now try yet another cover-up over their 'defeat' stupidity, returning like a dog to its vomit.

Despite the huge damage done to the British establishment - both materially and morally - we described that explosion as a "peace bomb". The purpose was to force Major's hand, not resume a full-scale offensive.

This must be as near insanity as it is possible to get without being certified.

Was the national-liberation struggle's aim to wage war on British imperialism until it conceded the death of the partitioned 'Northern Ireland' tyrannical colony, - or was it the IRA's purpose just to carry on bombing British town centres until there was not one left intact?, - which is the only possible meaning of these crazy self-justifying remarks.

Further expressing their complete philistine amateurishness as supposed 'Marxist theoreticians', these criminally-irresponsible middle-class dilettantes spew up even more filth in their latest 'analysis', infantilely lumping one anti-imperialist nationalist struggle with another, and producing utter confusion:

Given its entrenchment in the imperialist peace process, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation can no longer act as any progressive expression of the Palestinian people, but rather can only act as imperialism's policeman in the area.

Similar developments cannot be ruled our in the Six Counties. The actions of the Continuity Army Council have been more modest and contained than Hamas.

Undeniably the peace process retains overwhelming support. But a revolutionary culture is entrenched in the masses throughout the north of Ireland. It is for this reason that the IRA is embedded in the nationalist working class, acting as its militia against the forces of the state and its loyalist supporters. It would not be difficult for it then to use its prestige to move against any discontent that arises with the peace process. Turning that organisation into a police force for imperialism rather than against it.

This sounds like support for genuine 'sectarian terror' in backing some tiny group of nationalist extremists against the main Sinn Féin/ IRA national-liberation movement.

Of course the IRA is an authoritative force within the nationalist community. How could it be anything else in the midst of a war against imperialism?

Of course it is possible that Sinn Féin may support, or even help form, part of a new hybrid-state authority under the new settlement for Ireland. But that has been the fate of every national-liberation struggle in history.

What these 'super-revolutionary' Trots wish to imply, but never want to say out openly, is that really all national-liberation struggles are a reactionary waste of time, by their own posturing ultra-left standards. Is it possible to utter more infantile and deceitful nonsense??

Their 'justification' for obliterating the entire national-liberation epoch of modern history as being virtually worthless comes closes to open admission in the following childish 'reasoning':

In previous issues of this paper we have indicated that imperialist-negotiated settlements have very little to do with any genuine ending of conflict - a permanent feature of imperialism, any 'peace' being merely the prelude to another war. Thus rather than acting as cheerleader for the process, as much of the left has done, we have encouraged revolutionaries to address the post-settlement tasks.

So, the imperialist epoch is one of wars and revolutions. Already it has lasted at least 120 years by the minimum reckoning. Worth a detailed analysis or two? "No, not really. Just tell them there will be another war along in a minute, and then get onto the really good bit about how socialist revolution is the only final answer to it all". So much for 100 volumes of detailed Marxist history of the significance of national-liberation struggles, pre-national-liberation struggles, other tortuous national questions, other independence struggles of all kinds, the Jewish question, modern imperialist states and cultural-national autonomy, the impact of colonial wars, the element of anti-colonialism in inter-imperialist wars, the rights and wrongs of supposedly 'progressive' imperialism versus 'reactionary' imperialism, the notions of 'super-imperialism' and 'aggressive' imperialism as opposed to 'decadent' imperialism, the shake-up to imperialism by neocolonialism, etc, etc, etc, ----- - all Marxism-Leninism is 'a bit of a waste of time, really,' - imply these Trots. 'Just listen to our advocacy of the socialist revolution. That's all you need', seems to be the message of these ivory-tower dwellers.

For the record, the historical position of decadent British imperialism in Ireland is clearly not remotely comparable with the circumstances surrounding US imperialism's 'chosen race' hit squad newly colonising Palestine.

In the context of unending inter-imperialist conflict, there is just room temporarily for British imperialism to individually fade out a little further without too much damage to the world order. Both Hong Kong and Ireland can be seen as highly symbolic in their own ways, but not crucial.

An Arab revolutionary national-liberation victory over Zionist imperialism would be dynamite for the struggling US imperialist 'new world order', however.

Clearly, in one sense, the PLO can be described as temporarily acting as imperialism's policeman against further Arab revolt.

But for how long? And when, and to what extent, will the insult of a token derisory 'Palestine autonomous area' nevertheless turn into its opposite because the pressures of the Arab revolution will eventually prove irresistible, even if Arafat starts going kosher.

Further revolutionary and imperialist—war turmoil is inevitable throughout the Middle East, and it will be a major historic turning point.

More revolutionary turmoil is not at all ruled out in Ireland and the British Isles generally. But are the circumstances there remotely usefully comparable to the chaotic and explosive Middle East situation?? Not really. But it suits irresponsible Trot smallmindedness to pretend so, because it gives them a sneaky chance to imply Gerry Adams as a neo—colonial policeman, the way they somewhere loosely, vaguely and inaccurately try to write off the PLO's current confusion and paralysis threatening real harm to the Palestinian position.

Sinn Féin has spread no such chaos in the way it has outmanoeuvred British imperialism and genuinely soft and compromising Irish nationalism of the SDLP variety. All this Trot drivel is utterly bankrupt and useless, - or genuinely reactionary.

Long having suffered total censorship by the bourgeoisie, Sinn Féin could do without further misrepresentation by the fake-'left' petty bourgeoisie. It speaks excellently well on its own behalf, and any serious-minded workers organisation struggling to build a socialist anti-imperialist movement in Britain would not hesitate to give great publicity to the national-liberation struggle's achievements:

SINN Féin took another step towards next month's negotiating table when Gerry Adams held two-and-a-half hours of talks at Stormont with the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam.

It was Mr Adams's first face-to-face meeting with a government minister since the new IRA ceasefire was called and he used the opportunity to tell Ms Mowlam that he was looking for a united Ireland, but indicated that joint sovereignty would be an acceptable down-payment.

"We want an Ireland free and independent. Sinn Féin enters negotiations as an Irish republican party seeking to promote the broad nationalist objective of an end to British rule in Ireland," he said.

"Partition is wrong. It is a failure of the past which must be put right." In his view, the claim by the British of sovereignty in Ireland "is the key matter which must be addressed in negotiations."

He said: "An internal six-county arrangement cannot work. There has to be fundamental constitutional and political change. The status quo is unworkable."

Mr Adams urged the British government to play a constructive role in "persuading" unionists to reach a democratic agreement on Irish reunification — a role Tony Blair has already declined.

Mr Adams added that unionists had nothing to fear. "Sinn Féin is not threatening unionists' heritage or identity. Unionists are an intrinsic part of Ireland. "Republicans don't want you to leave it, nor do we wish to dominate you," he told them.

After the meeting, Mr Adams said the main item had been the ending of the Union. "We will keep this issue on the agenda until it is resolved," he said.

Mr Adams, who led a five-member delegation, including party strategist Martin McGuinness, said the discussions had been "businesslike" and a step in the right direction. It was "now certain" Sinn Féin would be included in the talks process when it resumed in September, he said. Although he had shaken Mo Mowlam by the hand and welcomed her as the first woman to be British Secretary of State, there was a sting in the tail.

"We also want her to be the last British Secretary of State, we want to see Ireland free of British jurisdiction — that is our goal and aim," he said.

The Secretary of State emerged separately to declare the meeting constructive. She welcomed the IRA ceasefire as a positive clear step.

"The first two weeks have been very positive and the advice is that it is holding very well," she said.

She had "urged Sinn Féin to work to achieve the earliest possible decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons". Sinn Féin has already said the IRA will not hand over a single bullet until a peace settlement has been signed.

As for Mr Adams's agenda of a united Ireland, she said Sinn Féin was able to bring any proposal to the negotiating table, just as she expected unionists to do the same.

"We will have a whole host of views on the table. The nature of the talks process is to negotiate and discuss and do what I hope will happen, which is reach an accommodation on a constitutionally balanced statement."

Mr Paisley lambasted Tony Blair after they met in Downing Street yesterday, accusing ministers of being in cahoots with Dublin and Washington.

"Such a government is not in itself free, but rather a slave to the blackmail of IRA violence," he said. "The fact is that the IRA/Sinn Féin has bombed its way to the negotiating table and nothing less than the empty chairs of the unionists at that table will demonstrate the rejection of this Iscariot act of betrayal." 

Mr Blair last night resigned himself to rejection of the decommissioning document but officials will be working on resolving differences until the last minute.

But the small loyalist parties linked to paramilitary organisations angrily accused Mr Paisley of betraying the unionist people.

David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, said: "If unionism is prepared to run away when it is most needed, at a time when Northern Ireland is in its greatest need... it's a shame."

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, admitted that a defeat over the decommissioning paper would be a setback but on BBC Radio 4 The World at One she stressed. "I am hopeful we can still move the process forward." 

In the Commons, Tony Blair said: "I know why members of the Unionist parties felt they had to vote against the decommissioning agreement, but I am pleased that the leader of the Ulster Unionists is not walking out of those talks. We're going to try to find a way through."

But Mr Paisley declared the process over. The only peace train running was the one for Dublin.

"There is nothing there for Unionists or its people and those who believe in law and order. The gunmen have taken over the process. The battle lines are now drawn. The Government has surrendered to the IRA."

The Sinn Féin chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin, said he regretted the Unionist decision but he believed there would be substantive talks at some stage. "The peace process is alive. I think the attitude of the Unionist politicians is at variance with their own community. Those who refuse to engage in negotiations threaten the process," he said.

The Ulster Democratic Party, which is linked to the Ulster Defence Association, earlier called for the vote to be suspended. But afterwards spokesman David Adams said: "It is back to the drawing board. We have to put our heads together to find another way forward."

The IRA can make its own mortars, landmines, rockets and grenades and has developed sophisticated triggering devices, using radio, light and radar. Just before the 1994 ceasefire it had perfected a new, more powerful, explosive, combining finely ground agricultural fertiliser, icing sugar and diesel fuel.

As Sinn Féin spokesmen often say when ridiculing the decommissioning debate: "How do you decommission icing sugar?"

The intelligence and security services, including senior MI5 and RUC officers, privately adopt a pragmatic approach. They say the IRA has demonstrated that homemade bombs, backed up by Semtex explosive, pose as much of a threat as arms.

Explosives, rather than weapons, have caused the damage in recent IRA attacks on the mainland.

Though the RUC has a broad idea of the extent of the IRA's arsenal,  security sources also point to the difficulty in measuring the significance in practical terms of any decommissioning programme.

There is some evidence of a change of attitude within MI5 under its new director general, Stephen Lander. Security sources are acknowledging that there is no security solution, only a political one, In Northern Ireland.

They have even expressed concern in recent months about  the difficult position Sinn Féin leaders such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were facing with elements in the IRA Army Council.

The establishment bourgeoisie in Britain have no reason to consider the Irish national-liberation struggle with anything but fear and loathing. But now that British imperialism is being forced to do a deal with Irish nationalist militancy, then some sneaking admiration for Sinn Féin is beginning to creep into the capitalist lie machine:

Six months after the first ceasefire, Adams urged Republican activists to direct their energies to a new front; the "sound of angry voices and marching feet". In response, residents' coalitions were established in Nationalist areas through which Orangemen marched. Before then, Orange marches were tolerated by a peaceful but resentful Catholic population. But portraying Nationalists as victims of British-backed loyalist supremacy is essential to keep the Sinn Féin band-wagon rolling.

Judging by a recent conversation between Adams and Sinn Féin members, the purpose of residents' coalitions was to face down the Orangemen — and to wind them up. Adams said: "Ask any activist in the north did Drumcree happen by accident and they will tell you no... three years of work on the Lower Ormeau Road, Portadown (Drumcree) and parts of Fermanagh and Newry, Armagh..."

This year, residents' coalitions everywhere apart from Drumcree did face down Orangemen, forcing them to cancel or re-route marches. By avoiding confrontation, Unionism then occupied the high ground. Adams wrested it back by announcing another IRA ceasefire was imminent. British officials have long respected Adams for his tactical brilliance.

The Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble threatened to pull out of inter-party peace talks, claiming the Government had shifted its ground on decommissioning. Trimble wanted guns handed over before and during substantive peace talks. The Government required the IRA only to consider handing them over during talks. If Trimble votes against the de-commissioning proposals this Wednesday, he, not Adams, will be called the saboteur of peace.

Adams's hardline stand on de-commissioning was the last of his four conditions for a new ceasefire to be agreed by the Government. Sinn Féin also demanded admission to peace talks afterwards, a deadline for talks and confidence-building measures. Tony Blair agreed Sinn Féin's entry to talks only six weeks after a ceasefire, set a deadline of next May for talks to be completed, and promised to repatriate 10 IRA prisoners to the Irish Republic. 

Adams had faced down John Major, who relented on his refusal to meet the demand for clarification of the Downing Street Declaration. After the ceasefire, the Government said Sinn Féin would not be admitted to talks until the IRA changed its pledge of a cessation of violence to "permanent". Three months later, Major had made the working assumption that the ceasefire was permanent

GETTING to the peace conference table on the IRA's terms has been one of Adams's major goals since he devised the Long War strategy in the 1970s. By broadening the IRA's appeal into politics with the Armalite and the ballot box, Sinn Féin became so popular it threatened constitutional nationalism in the SDLP.

This led to the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement which ensured a consultative role for Dublin in the running of NI, while guaranteeing Unionists that it would remain part of the UK. Publicly Adams attacked the treaty as a sell-out. Privately he hailed it as the most important development since partition in 1921.

Adams persuaded the IRA that the struggle needed to be broadened further with its 1994 ceasefire backed by a pan-nationalist alliance of the SDLP, Dublin and Washington. When the IRA laid down its arms so far short of the goal of a united Ireland, an ex-British Army general saluted Adams for his courage, as did the former NI Secretary Peter Brooke. They had in mind the fate of IRA commander Michael Collins, who in 1922 settled for partition and was assassinated. What no one realised was that Adams must have also agreed to follow the IRA back to war if that's what it wanted.

What appears to be the real strategy was set out in a document circulated before the ceasefire, called Tactical Use of Armed Struggle. It suggests the IRA's first ceasefire was merely a tactic to get to the conference table, and that the IRA will retain the option of a return to violence in the event of major blocks at the peace talks; presumably why it has deliberately not prefixed the new ceasefire announcement with the word "permanent".

Having got the IRA to the negotiating table with its armoury intact, Adam's position as overall head of the Republican Movement now seems unassailable. There will be no split as long as he leads it. The IRA must be confident that the supreme commander will continue to advance steadily on all fronts, however long it takes.

First there was a joint paper from Gerry Adams and the SDLP leader John Hume, familiar language for peace process watchers, except with an added twist. "We regret that despite our collective efforts, inclusive and meaningful negotiations were not put in place and that the unprecedented opportunity created by the IRA cessation of August 1994 was wasted.

"Our principal concern is that this dreadful mistake is not repeated," the two leaders of Northern Ireland's Catholics said. The blame for the past 18 months of IRA bombs and killings therefore lay with John Major.

In Dublin prominent Irish American figures such as the New York publisher Niall O'Dowd had gathered once more, just as they did in August 1994. The symbolism of their presence did not go unnoticed: The pan-nationalist alliance that Mr Adams had put together three years ago was rebuilt, with support from America and Dublin.

The active involvement of President Clinton, who has had to authorise personally a waiver of entry restrictions for Mr Adams seven times, is again crucial. Meanwhile, Mr O'Dowd waited impatiently in his Dublin hotel room for the announcement everybody wanted to hear.

Then came the statement from Mr Adams that together with Martin McGuinness he had provided "a detailed report and assessment to the IRA" and had urged the IRA leadership to restore the cessation of August 1994.

Mr Adams again blamed Mr Major's government for "reneging" on its commitment to inclusive peace talks, but he also put the boot into the former Irish taoiseach John Bruton, accusing him of making mistakes. With both the villains of the Irish peace process removed from power, the prospects of rebuilding it improved considerably.

The peace process slithered slowly downhill, with the downfall of Mr Reynolds's government in murky circumstances and his replacement by the anti-Provo Fine Gael leader Mr Bruton. 

Republican experts all agreed that Mr Adams and his comrades required sensitive handling, qualities with which the inheritors of the pro-Treaty legacy were never equipped.

It was obvious Mr Adams never believed that decommissioning would be allowed to grow into the beast which it became, but then he had not budgeted for the fact that in constitutional politics there are no safe bets. If Mr Reynolds had survived, doubtless he would have exerted pressure on Mr Major to rethink. After the IRA ceasefire ended in a cloud of Canary Wharf smoke, Mr Adams faced a much steeper hill to climb than he had in 1994. First of all, the volunteers had a much clearer idea of what was on offer in return for an end to the violence.

But there was the prospect of a form of covert joint sovereignty, or at least a stronger and steadily increasing input from Dublin into the affairs of Northern Ireland. This could lead, through political work alone, to the effective dismantling of the British state in Ireland over a period of some 10 years, the grassroots were encouraged, somewhat optimistically perhaps, to believe. There were the rising electoral fortunes of Sinn Féin, once just an adjunct to the IRA, a cheerleader on the sides, now a formidable political party breathing heavily down the neck of the moderate and greying SDLP. Three separate election tests resulted in dramatic successive rises in the number of Sinn Féin votes cast. Today nobody scoffs at the prospect of Sinn Féin supplanting the SDLP as the main voice of northern nationalism by the next Westminster election.

In the late 1970s Mr Adams was among those republican leaders who formulated the idea of "the long war". Today that concept persists, if it has been radically modified.  A campaign of military attrition alone will not sap the will of Northern Ireland's Protestants to believe themselves to be British, nor did it ever have a hope of convincing London to depart regardless of Unionist feelings.

The republican movement is in for the long haul. It will never relinquish its objective of breaking the constitutional link with Britain, but it is more prepared now to work for it by other means. So when the Provisional IRA ceasefire is declared its ardent supporters can be confident that the republican movement is in far healthier shape than it was in August 1994.

Three years ago, the IRA had abandoned its precondition of a time-frame for political talks. Today both governments agree it is a good idea. Three years ago there was no commitment to address the issue of what to do with the hundreds of paramilitary prisoners languishing in jail. 

Today there is.

And three years ago Northern Ireland did not know the taste of life free from the daily grinding cycle of murder, reprisal and counter-murder. 1995, the year of the imperfect peace, reawakened a dormant appetite on both sides of its divided community.

Peter Robinson, the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionists, said: "Why would the IRA not declare a ceasefire? They have got everything they have asked for."

He said any cessation of violence would be merely tactical and extract further concessions from the Government. He added that he had no intention of sitting at the negotiating table with Sinn Féin if they were included on the basis of a ceasefire called in these circumstances.

Ulster Unionists want the peace that existed for Northern Ireland's first 50 years, when Protestants controlled every state job, almost all council housing, gerrymandered the electoral system, armed the notorious B-specials and had their country described by their prime minister as "a Protestant land for a Protestant people".

The problem for those Unionist leaders is that their Protestant land now looks very different to most Protestants than it did 20 years ago. At that time, a proud Unionist father could say to his son: "Come with me to your Uncle Frank in the Orange Order and he'll sort you out a job." Now he can only say: "Come with me to your Uncle Frank in the Orange Order and he'll sort you out a bowler hat. You can wear it to the dole office." So most Protestants have less and less reason to support the Union. Which is why, whereas in 1974 the Ulster Workers' Council could mobilise virtually every Protestant in the Province, now Orange marches appeal to a few hundred, and if likely to face opposition can be called off.

And a British bourgeois willingness to accept that the national-liberation struggle has won and that a new settlement is now the sensible solution, putting the redundant Orange-colonist mentality in its place, - is now being openly expressed:

In 1997 the political situation is very different, and a strong new government in London is much better placed to call the Unionist bluff. There is a recognition that the IRA's sting will not be drawn before the talks produce an agreement, if indeed it can ever fully be drawn at all, and that only a real agreement will ensure that the IRA does not return to violence.

Sooner or later, it is going to be necessary to challenge the strand of Protestant politics and opinion which absolutely rejects all compromise with Catholic Northern Ireland as a sell-out and surrender. Mr Blair knows this, and so, even better, does Mr Trimble. There will never be a perfect time to take on Ian Paisley, because the outcome will always be messy. But now is probably the least worst time that we are likely to get. There is a new and determined British government. There is now an IRA ceasefire. Mr Trimble's party is in the ascendant over Mr Paisley's and there are no elections in the offing. The small loyalist parties with paramilitary connections are in favour of the talks, not against them. And the Orange Order has already shown that immediate rewards can be won by pressing the case for compromise. Mr Paisley's brand of rejectionism has not run out of steam, but it is huffing and puffing. Mr Trimble cannot escape being denounced for joining the talks, yet if he keeps his nerve he will emerge the stronger for doing so — and so shall we all.

It can now be seen more clearly that calling the Orange bluff, or grasping the nettle of Orange intransigence, - is the key to a way forward in Ireland.

The great obstacle to the longstanding wish by sectors of the British Establishment to get out of Ireland and get out of the endless humiliation and cost of not being able to defeat the national-liberation struggle,- has been the Unionist threat of UDI, creating a more bloody armed mess than is there already. The former British-colonial settlers in Ulster, the 'Loyalists', have extremists who might fight.

But the majority of the mis-described 'Protestant' population know that the Partition of Ireland at British-army bayonet-point in 1921 to preserve some colonial privileges over the native Irish in the northeast corner of the island was a cruel injustice to the war of National liberation fought and led by Sinn Féin and the IRA from 1916 to 1921 to free most of Ireland. It was also a messy compromise which was bound to cause more trouble, which it has done, non-stop, ever since. Like the whites in South Africa or the whites in Rhodesia, these descendants of colonial settlers will only go so far in risking destruction by resisting majority rule (of the Irish over the whole united island) eventually.

Before long, the 'catholics' (i.e. the Irish) will be in a majority in the northeast six counties as well, - so why bother wrecking the country and themselves by refusing to give way partially now to what must inevitably be accepted in due course?

Total chauvinist bigots like Paisley and Patton say that giving up tradition's Orange marching routes means immediate total surrender to Papal domination from Dublin and to Fenian violence.

It may come to a war of UDI. But some Orange minds seem to be prepared at last to admit that this old colonising bluff has now been called, and has shown the whole 'resistance' project to be completely out of date.

They are triumphalist, not tradition, marches,- rubbing the colonised Irish noses in the dirt.

The British Empire cannot maintain this costly war-torn toe—hold domination of part of Ireland any longer.

And world opinion says that British military resistance of the national-liberation struggle is wrong, - and that the civilian paramilitary back-up by the Orange marches, is wrong too.

Blair and Mowlam are out of their depth, - fooled by RUC diehards over Drumcree, but still desperate to do the bidding of the Washington, Dublin, EU consensus of a New Settlement for Ireland which will open the door for ultimate reunification.

Irish national-liberation steadfastness is achieving a massive triumph over imperialism.

Douglas Bell