Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
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No 1067 Nov 21 2000                                                                                                                                                           25p                       
Bristol seminar Sat Dec 2   2pm

The retreat from acknowledging the conscious role to be played in the anti-imperialist struggle by the fight for revolutionary theory is a philistine aspect of the affluent material conditions produced during class-collaborationism's dominance in Britain. Cynical suspicion that Marxist-Leninist consciousness only reflects material conditions, rather than influences them as well is just another variant of defeatism, provoked by an inability to get theory right, or from having only found unfavourable soil in which to plant it. Stalinist-revisionist mistakes, in Spain and elsewhere, must be outed.

The ever-sharpening worldwide class and national struggle against imperialist crisis is being undermined from two directions by the workers movement's weakness in Marxist-Leninist science.

A general understanding is growing fast that capitalist society is disintegrating under the influence of its own contradictions and conflicts, relentlessly frustrating and alienating everyone within it. But one major retreat from Marxism on the 'left' just refuses to even consider the problems of imperialism in terms of revolutionary crisis, preferring to just continue with 'left reformist' pressure as a pretend way towards socialism.

A further problem is that among those in the workers movement who are still ready to talk about imperialism in terms of systemic revolutionary crisis, there is a colossal reluctance to spell out exactly what lessons need to be learned from the failure of the Soviet socialist camp to stay the course in opposing imperialism and in building the workers states.

Both attitudes doubt the role of revolutionary consciousness in human history. The defeatist fake-'left' does most 'Marxist' posturing but its petty-bourgeois sense of self-preservation always prefers to opportunistically tailend the prevailing majority outlook on the 'left' of the labour movement, - pursuing 'practical questions' (reformist delusions, i.e.) and leaving 'revolutionary perspectives' to the once-a-year 'summer university' hot-air chat, if considered at all.

The cynics are just as hesitant about real revolutionary possibilities but cover up their retreat with a smokescreen of philosophical fatalism, projecting forwards to the future and backwards to the past.

The 'Socialist Alliances' are one of the more unpleasantly prominent disguises for the basic petty bourgeois defeatism of the fake-'left'. They play along with 'democracy', the capitalist system's prime weapon for sucking the proletariat into class-collaboration with bourgeois dictatorship, (the sole underlying reality of 'free-market' society and, without revolution, unchanged (and unchangeable) for as long as capitalism has ruled – but without once telling the working class that the money-dominated electoral racket is purely being taken advantage of to provide a revolutionary tribune from which the real anti-imperialist message can be pronounced: That if voting ever changed anything, it would have been abolished long ago, and that workers must prepare for the revolutionary collapse of imperialist crisis in war and trade-war if the alternative socialist way of organising society is ever to be taken seriously.

Indeed, not only does 'Socialist Alliance' propaganda not once spell this out to the working class, but 100% of all the canvassing agitation around this 'socialist' electoral challenge enthusiastically tries to con workers on the doorstep and in the High Street that voting for 'Alliance' candidates is the serious answer to all the national and international problems of capitalism and imperialism.

It is, of course, the most disgusting confidence trick, and the only objective judgement on such opportunist High Street posturing is that yet another in a long line of 'reformist' diversions over the past 160 years, is being inflicted on the working class.

First, the obvious historical point that no bourgeois electoral system has ever allowed a genuinely 'socialist' alternative to be voted into office and to carry out its mandate, is simply ignored. The bourgeois media do a better job of warning people that the imperialist system will continue to viciously boss things whatever any 'electoral verdict' tries to say.

Such candid admissions as this week's in the capitalist press, are quite routine, -  here about the killing of Salvador Allende in 1973 and the overthrow of his Socialist Unity government by fascist-military coup masterminded by the American CIA, (an eerily named government in the light of Socialist Alliance dangerous naïveness), which likewise failed to warn the Chilean working class that if it voted for socialism, it would have to be prepared to do revolutionary battle for it. As a result of the criminally-negligent stupidity of the various 'left' socialists and revisionists who formed or trustingly backed Allende's 'socialism through the electoral process' programme, thousands of workers were butchered or ended up in Pinochet's concentration camps:

While the US efforts to overthrow the democratically elected Allende and support Gen Pinochet are hardly secrets, the details show the extent to which US officials were willing to abuse Chilean sovereignty. A CIA memo prepared three years before the 1973 coup states: "If civil disorders were to follow from a military action, the USG [US Government] would promptly deliver necessary support and material, (but not personnel).'

In a state department memo written weeks after the coup that put Gen Pinochet in Power, Jack Kubisch wrote: "The junta does not appear to represent a threat to our major national interest. No overriding national objective seems to me to be served by supporting opposition to it."

The documents' declassification was a result of Gen Pinochet's arrest in London in October 1998. The Spanish investigating judge Baltazar Garzon had compiled evidence that Gen Pinochet and other Chilean army officers had organised a transnational hit squad known as "Operation Condor". The US response was to declassify thousands of documents and let Mr Garzon and other foreign magistrates peruse the information.

The documents are allowing historians to piece together the secret diplomacy used by the US to set the stage for a coup, then to prop up the military junta leader Augusto Pinochet throughout his 1973-1990 rule. They include previously unknown details about the workings of the Pinochet regime, including the dictator's role in foreign assassinations and his troubled attempts to travel abroad as the legal net tightened around him in the early 1990s.

The Chilean government says it will formally protest at the US interference, and the leading newspaper El Mercurio has tried to limit the fallout from the revelation that it received about $1.6m ($1m) in covert support from US agents.

El Mercurio was a leading critic of the government of Salvador Allende, and a crucial cog in the CIA's propaganda machine.

The documents - many of them heavily censored - released by the US state department, the defence intelligence agency, the CIA, the FBI and the justice department are the fourth and last round of disclosures ordered by President Clinton.

They cover US activities in Chile in 1968-1991. Approximately 1,400 CIA documents were released after the Clinton administration spent months overcoming the reluctance of the agency's director, George Tenet.

"The CIA as an institution suffers form a pathology of secrecy," said Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, a research institution in Washington. "It is as difficult for them to give up a document as it is for a child to share a toy"

Gen Pinochet is under court supervision in Chile, where he is being investigated for nearly 200 criminal offences. The new documents may also prompt the US to request his extradition, since they include evidence of his direct role in the car bombing of the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.

The release of 16,000 secret documents from US intelligence agencies has set Chile's Christian Democrat government coalition scrambling to explain the millions of dollars in covert support it received from the agencies between '1964 and 1974

Many party leaders from that era are still in powerful government positions.

President Ricardo Lagos, a socialist, who is not implicated in the scandal, is under pressure from congress to investigate current CIA activities in Chile.

"I'm not naive. I know that intelligence practices - to put it elegantly - or spying are as old as humanity," he said. "But I would hope that this is a throwback to the cold war, and it doesn't happen any more, because it can affect relations between countries."

The imperialist system, controlled by 'the world’s greatest democracy' the USA, inflicted exactly the same fascist retribution through the Contras’ counter-revolution on Nicaragua throughout the 1980s for having dared to back the Sandinista programme for socialism, likewise undermined by foolishly falling for the Western intervention stunt of submitting that programme to 'parliamentary elections for approval', - a racket dominated by billions of subversive US dollars.

The same brutal military coup methods were imposed on Iran in 1953 by CIA billions and direct intervention to overthrow the social-democracy revolution behind the nationalist Mossadeq which the whole people supported.

Elsewhere since 1945, fascist-coup skulduggery, - inspired, organised, and financed by the West, - has butchered or brought down the Lumumba independence government in the former Belgian Congo; the Cheddi Jagan administration in British Guiana; the New Jewel Movement regime in Grenada in 1983; the Noriega nationalist government in Panama in 1990; tried to bring down the hugely popular Castro government in Cuba; physically wiped out the million-strong communist opposition party in Indonesia in 1965; installed Saddam Hussein by military coup against the populist Kassem regime in Iraq; undermined the first Obote and Nkrumah governments in Uganda and Ghana; militarily destroyed the Jacobo Arbenz populist government in Guatemala in 1952; etc, etc, etc, etc. Regardless of how any electorate has ever voted, Western imperialist-fascist domination has inspired, financed, or organised literally hundreds of other coups or putsches all round the world since 1945 to get its own safe stooges into positions of power. The CIA's billions are endlessly influencing the leadership succession of political parties, trade unions, influential media, and other political or social institutions in every country on earth, including and especially in Britain.

All of which should make it crystal clear to any 'socialist' with even half a brain that the imperialist bourgeoisie has never had the slightest intention of ever allowing its 'democracy' racket to be used by the proletariat to introduce a truly socialist society where the overwhelmingly dominant economic power and political influence of the capitalist class would be at an end. But relentlessly, the 'Socialist Alliance' fake-'left' goes on hoaxing the working class that a cross on a ballot paper at local or national elections is going to 'bring socialism'. Just 'electoral support' is all that is ever mentioned as being needed. Nothing else is required. Just vote for the 'Alliance' candidates, and life under capitalism will start being transformed immediately; It is all a monstrous, criminal deception on the working class, quite deliberately inflicted by this 'Socialist Alliance' petty bourgeoisie who hate and fear the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism, and want to bury it without trace, even more than the big bourgeois ie do.

Secondly, whatever weird and wonderful 'electoral promises' are made by these Socialist Alliances everywhere, not one word of all that is uttered has the slightest connection with any serious programme for socialism. Despite every glorious thing on offer, the crucial question of what is to be done with state power, - and who will control it, - just never gets mentioned. The central issue now hammered away at for more than 150 years by Marxist science as the key to socialism, - namely, which class rules, which class owns all the capital, wealth, and property, - has disappeared without trace. The matter of monopoly-imperialist wars for world economic and political domination, - the major historical essence of the capitalist system of society for more than 100 years, - and what to do about them, is no longer the principal source of concern to mankind, these 'Socialist Alliance' electoral campaigns are now telling the working class. But over whose eyes is this simple-mindedness pulling the wool? So whose side are these 'Socialist Al1iances' really on? And is this ludicrous Mickey Mouse distortion of reality really the result of simple-mindedness, or is this a case of petty bourgeois class bias deliberately trying to disarm the working class to keep it forever in the position of an exploited proletariat? Is this fulltime fake-'left' dilettantism in fact the outlook and activity of a section of middle-class-minded people who are actually quite comfortable being perpetual do-gooding 'reformist' busybodies around the capitalist system??? A look at who they are explains more.

Thirdly, the 'Socialist Alliance' candidates are 100% reliable anti-communists, most of them from groups with the most vicious anti-Soviet records of Cold War provocations on behalf of imperialist warmongering, and all are 100% proven philistines about the crucial role for civilisation of Marxist-Leninist science (see the last 1,066 Reviews for full chapter and verse on every major anti-communist propaganda hysteria manufactured by Western imperialism and eagerly taken up by Trots and revisionists of every description in the modern era).

Every 'reformist' tradition of Trot and revisionist opportunism shares the same rotten record of either posing as 'communists' but endlessly backing Stalin's abandonment of the continuous development of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory as the only guarantee of completing the world socialist revolution; or else posing as 'anti-imperialists' but endlessly helping imperialism to stab the Soviet workers state in the back at every propaganda hysteria twist by the West to undermine international support for the first proletarian dictatorship in history, struggling to survive perpetual economic sabotage, armed intervention, Cold War isolation, and counter-revolutionary treachery. And all the time, every Trot and revisionist tradition was steadily re-ingratiating itself with the majority basic 'socialist' stance in Britain of 'left reformist' pressure from 'trade-union militancy' and 'left-Labour' posturing, - all ending up as complete stooges of 'left-Labourism' from the CPGB to the Militant.

The cynical retreat from Marxist-Leninist science is even more slippery to deal with, accepting as it does the rightness of the role of revolutionary theory in words, but forever doubting that any specific battle for consciousness could aver have been judged crucially won or lost so as to transform history. Fatalistically, the weight of material historical conditions is always deemed decisive, which while true, can only ever partially convey the whole picture, and can never adequately explain reality as dialectically influenced by conscious human decisions, freely chosen as representing what appear as historically necessary or historically inevitable social developments 

That freedom to consciously agitate for changed understanding, and the freedom to be influenced by that agitation, - while never more than dialectically relative because of the overwhelming influence of infinite material conditions, - is precisely demonstrated on some of the most vexed questions of labour-movement history which cynicism loves to be most sceptical about ever resolving.

For example, all theoretical suppositions about blame or credit to the Stalinist world-communist analysis and proffered leadership in the 1930s Spanish Civil War have undoubtedly only gained or lost credibility with the benefit of hindsight, underlining the need to take historical conditions into account when judging the overall record of the long and ongoing struggle against fascist imperialism. But the very possibility of such a changing perspective, claiming, for argument's sake, clearer proof than ever before from Gorbachev's 1990 revisionist self-liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat (the Soviet workers state's sole foundation) of how wrong was the Stalinist Civil War stance of believing that rallying international 'democratic' support could be the real saviour of the Spanish Republic and could halt fascist-imperialism in its tracks, - shows how conscious struggle changes things as well as materially reflects changes in conditions. The accumulation of experience is precisely the very essence of theoretical conflict, - trying to make practical progress out of the lessons of the past. It is exactly the still-widespread mentality of museum Stalinism which sees greater merit in continuing to stress the epoch-making achievements of the Soviet workers state to the exclusion of collective clarity about what went wrong.

The battle against the stock bourgeois anti-communist slanders against Stalinism and the Soviet workers state can only be hindered, not helped, by a continuing failure or refusal to reach agreement about exactly what revisionism was, where it came from, and how it failed. All attempted analyses, the EPSR's included, need to be torn apart or else proved valid. Doubting how crucially the role of theory might ever be able to affect mass consciousness in given historical conditions is not a real answer.

Evading the issue, as also in such specific historical questions as blame or praise for the communist movement's role in the Spanish Civil War, - is in itself a form of defeatism, with similar class-mentality origins to the Trot anti-communist variety. It is an instinctive yearning for labour-movement solidarity, and it reflects the colossal influence of academic intellectualism on the British labour movement. The paradoxical result of this liberal erudition is anti-theory scepticism, or philistinism. But its spiritual home is the worst kind of abstract culture-mongering, - a huge tradition in the British CP which long championed a wholly stylised symbolic notion of Soviet proletarian dictatorship but which degenerated into screaming anti-communism as Western Cold War propaganda-hysteria started hammering away (from Hungary 1956 onwards) about the brutal reality of workers states defending their very existence from counter-revolutionary pro-imperialist upheaval.

The Trot verdict on Spain was 'counter-revolutionary Stalinist treachery'. The CPGB's stylised culture put the emphasis on 'heroic sacrifice to try to stem the advance of fascism, fully vindicated by the final joint victory over Nazi Germany in 1945', and analysed no further. Cynicism says 'world conditions were decisive; a weak Soviet Union had no alternative. And if that is not the verdict, it must mean that Trotsky was correct in his criticism about Soviet misleadership and betrayal'.

Not just starting with hindsight, the EPSR has tried to argue that the crucial role that correct revolutionary theory will have to play in the final vital development of civilisation from class-society conflict to classless communism (as exemplified in the 100 volumes of Marx, Engels, and Lenin's practical contributions to that understanding) has been demonstrated throughout the Spanish Civil War episode as well as by everything before or since.

What was clearly wrong about the Soviet/CP role in Spain was in giving birth to the idea that the international capitalist system's drift towards fascist-imperialist warmongering could be halted by the combined efforts of all right-thinking people on earth, - 'collaborating together whatever our differences in order to defeat a far worse scourge which threatens us all', etc, etc, - an outlook supposedly vindicated when precisely a wartime alliance of the USSR and the US-UK-France 'allied' imperialist powers led to the final defeat of the 'axis' imperialist powers of Germany, Japan, Italy, etc.

It was, of course, all the most damaging theoretical nonsense from start to finish, creating the subsequently unchallengeable platform of Stalin cultism and mindless theoretical dogma which allowed revisionist complacency and stupidity to degenerate all the way to the final insane Gorbachevite self-liquidation, a relentless deterioration into a complete misunderstanding of the world coupled with unsatisfactorily explained perspectiveless routinism which was never challenged correctly but which saw former adherents regularly drop off in despair and incomprehension, party after party from the 'official' pro-Moscow world communist movement and from the Socialist Camp.

The real enemy to the further progress of civilisation remained the same throughout - the system itself of world political and economic imperialism, collectively inflicting a million times more death and destruction on mankind through brutal domineering than the total devastation allegedly solely blameable on 'fascist' imperialism in that last outbreak of open inter-imperialist confrontation which saw the 'axis' aggressive-grouping setting a new pace and style for imperialist powers throwing their weight around for only a dozen years or so. Capitalist-imperialist brutality overall has been imposing regularly worse death and destruction continuously for more than 200 years all over the world against every people or nation that has tried to resist the Western colonial diktat. And the slaughtering and destruction has gone on far more viciously since the brief challenge from the Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini regimes to Anglo-US imperialism's domineering pace-setting role in who is allowed to zap who in this world, and how hard, etc, - crushing Vietnamese resistance, for example, more brutally than anything the Third Reich could ever have dreamed of for East Europe, massacring millions and devastating an entire land with napalm and Agent orange dioxin poisoning. Others of more than 400 acts of aggressive warmongering by Western imperialism since 1945, have over briefer periods inflicted even more intensified butchery and destruction. And the total heartbreak caused, regularly goes off the scale of pain and suffering.

So the 1945 'vindication' of the Popular Front nonsense-perspective in Spain only served to cement the total revisionist degeneration of the socialist camp/world CP movement, culminating in the Gorbachevite insane self-liquidation which offered US imperialism sole superpower control of the world, laying mankind at the mercy of the 'good' imperialism as opposed to the 'fascist' or 'bad' imperialism. The people of Iraq suffering genocidal destruction systematically since 1990 from imperialist bombing and blockade, would be one of the first to question this 'theory' in some amazement. The Palestinian nation, all living in one giant concentration camp for more than 50 years now, and regularly bombed, beaten, starved, and shot for showing too much resistance would be another. And the list could go on being added to endlessly, and will continue to do so.

Imperialist nastiness could not have been halted from 'world destructive ambitions' by stopping fascism in Spain, no matter how successfully accomplished. Even the victory of fullscale communist revolution in China in 1949 did not stop imperialism's destructive, bullying, domineering world role. Hoping for any kind of success with the Popular Front formula against the onrush of imperialist warmongering and counter-revolutionary subversion was the most lunatic pipedream, based on Stalinism's already galloping misreading of how the development of the world would go with increasingly strong workers states within it. All that was achieved was helping to turn more of the world communist movement into adherents of the 'left reformist pressure' delusion, ultimately most ludicrously expressed in the 'peaceful road to socialism' imbecility, and the equally naff notion of international disarmament and permanent peaceful coexistence.

Fighting for a socialist revolution in Spain might have been the best perspective for rallying the strongest class forces against Franco and his fascist backers, but in those historical conditions, the whole of imperialist power together would have put the boot in to make sure it didn't succeed, not just Germany and Italy, with the rest of the West silently egging them on by pretending to 'non-intervention' as did happen to throttle the Spanish Republic. And the USSR would then have needed maximum smart diplomacy to avoid being the war target for all of imperialism combined, a fate it cleverly avoided by the 1939 non-aggression pact with Germany following the Anglo-French sellout of East Europe to German conquest ambitions at the infamous Munich scandal in 1938, - the only tragedy being that Moscow did not stick to this grasp that all imperialisms were as murderous and treacherous as each other, and that all would have to be destroyed by revolution one day.

Forgetting that lesson was central confusion created by the CP Spanish Civil War policy. Learning it is as important and relevant today as it ever was. The retreats from the crucial role of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory are a bigger danger to the international working class than they have ever been. Build Leninism. EPSR

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

'Loyalists' turn incurable philosophy of colonial violence onto each other having failed to keep Ulster captive

Bound and gagged, Sean Monaghan's body was discovered in the early hours of 14 August 1994. He had been shot four times in the head at close range and it was some hours before he was identified as a young man from Albert Street off the Falls. The details of his ordeal only emerged during the trial of his attackers.

Abducted near Divis Street, Sean was first taken to a flat in Disraeli Street off the Shankill but managed to escape through a window. He sought refuge in a nearby house, the home of a pensioner who had just returned home after a church meeting.

The pensioner telephoned her daughter, who came to the house with her boyfriend. The couple told Sean they would take him back to their home in Bray Court. The daughter claimed he could escape by climbing over the back wall into Ardoyne.

A 32-year-old man from the Shankill told Sean that he would get him a taxi to allow him to escape but instead he handed the young Catholic father of two back to a UDA man from the area and others who later shot him.

Subsequently, about 20 people were questioned about the killing, including a 67-year-old mother of a disabled child. A bail court heard that the pensioner who lived in the home in which the victim had sought refuge had "sat in Castlereagh for two days with a Bible in her hand, denying Monaghan was ever in her house".

Despite being relatively recent, the sectarian killing of Sean Monaghan does not evoke the same memories of fear and loathing within Belfast's nationalist communities as the earlier sensational atrocities of the UVF's 'Shankill Butchers'. This particular UVF gang's reign of sectarian terror lasted for almost a decade and became notorious because of the gruesome nature of the killings carried out.

And yet it is perhaps Sean Monaghan's story that most clearly exposes the way in which loyalist violence has poisoned the fabric of life in the Shankill community. It is against this backdrop that northern nationalists will be judging the current bloody feud between the UVF and UDA on the Shankill.

And it is not surprising that a popular figure to emerge on the Shankill has been Johnny Adair. The popular appeal of his brand of sectarian thuggery sufficiently upset the balance of power on the Shankill to plunge the area into bitter feuding.

The ruthless manner in which organised loyalism has now turned its violence in on itself holds no surprises for nationalists. They've been terrorising us for years. For many nationalists, the loyalist feud has evoked a curious déjà vu. The media has been full of the familiar images of loyalist attacks and intimidation.

Over 180 families living on the Shankill have been forced to flee from their homes. One woman resident was reported as saying, "words can't describe what it's like to be driven from your home". There have been pipe-bomb attacks on local politicians and spokespersons and attacks on taxi depots, pubs and a prisoners' centre - all favoured targets by loyalists when they're laying siege to the nationalist community rather than their own

There have been hatchet attacks, knife attacks, attacks with baseball bats and pickaxe handles. There have been petrol-bomb, pipe-bomb, nail-bomb and grenade attacks. Shots have been fired and three people have died. Many more have been injured and even more are living in fear.

One victim of  a bomb attack, Sandy Rice, is a former loyalist internee who runs a boxing club in Bangor; as well as being head of security at a local nightclub. Rice was driving a Ford Transit van in Bangor town centre at around 10am on Monday morning when a bomb exploded beneath the vehicle. The critically injured man was taken to a hospital in Dundonald, where he underwent surgery for severe leg injuries. Two men travelling in the vehicle with Rice escaped with only minor injuries.

The attack came in a week which saw no let up in the ongoing loyalist feud. An explosion blasted through the offices of a UDA prisoners' centre on the Shankill Road in the early hours of one morning. The building suffered severe damage but the premises were empty at the time of the attack and no one was injured.

The attack unwittingly exposed a UDA arms cache hidden in the centre. The tail fin for a mortar, component parts for pipe bombs, balaclavas and combat clothing were later discovered in the bombed out building. Another pipe bomb thrown at a house in the upper Shankill failed to explode and was later defused. A petrol bomb thrown through the window into the downstairs living room ignited and caused some damage but the house on Ballygomartin Road was unoccupied at the time.

Shots were fired and a device thrown in Malvern Way on the Lower Shankill. PUP member Billy Hutchinson blamed the attack on the UDA and LVF and accused the two rival paramilitary groupings of ''upping the ante". Shots were also fired on Monday night at a house in Joanmount Gardens in the Oldpark area of North Belfast. A couple in the house at the time escaped injury.

During the sectarian killing spree. which followed the killing of LVF founder and leader Billy VVright in 1997,  it was widely believed that many of the attacks claimed by the LVF, were either carried out by the UDA or with the UDA's sanction and help. Before Wright's death. UDA leader Johnny Adair courted the LVF leader while both were jailed in Long Kesh. Earlier this year, at the height of the Drumcree protest. Adair was present during an LVF stow of strength in Portadown.

But while all this has a kind of Lewis Carol 'through the looking glass' familiarity, there have also been some bizarre anomalies. After an attack on a taxi depot, black taxi drivers from the Shankill took refuge on the Falls Road. A loyalist family, whose UVF flag flying from their home enraged their LIDA neighbours, fled to Dublin.

Last week, around 400 women from the Shankill marched behind a banner demanding an end. to the loyalist feud. "We want peace," their banner proclaimed. May Blood, a Shankill community worker recently honoured by the British monarchy, described the community's frustration. "We have pleaded to their good sense but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference," she said

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

INTELLIGENCE RECORDS SUGGEST THAT COLLUSION BECAME INSTITUTIONALISED WITHIN THE BRITISH ARMY
With news that the Stevens Inquiry team may be about to arrest British agent and UDA quartermaster Brian Nelson, further embarrassing information detailing how British Intelligence officers viewed loyalist killers gang as tan operational arm' of the British Army is emerging.

UDA KILLER and former Force Research Unit (FRU) agent, Brian Nelson, faces arrest and questioning by the Stevens team about dozens of deaths in the North of Ireland, it has been revealed. The British agent, who served half of a ten year sentence after being convicted of five charges of conspiracy to murder in 1992, is currently living outside Britain under a new identity.

Detectives from the Stevens team are set to ask the British Ministry of Defence to hand over details of Nelson's new entity and location. On the eve of his trial in 1992, Nelson struck a deal after the DPP dropped the most serious charges against him. The FRU agent pleaded guilty to lesser charges in a deal which protected both his handlers and their political masters in the British Government.

But the killing of Belfast human rights solicitor Pat Finucane has haunted the British Government ever since. In the face of overwhelming international support for an independent public inquiry into the killing, the British Government ordered a further probe by John Stevens, now one of Britain's top policemen.

Apart from the arrest of William Stobie, an RUC Special Branch informer, the Stevens team appeared to be making little headway, faced with the tight-tipped secrecy that surrounds the covert activities of one of Britain's most secret army units, the FRU.

However in recent months, the co-operation of a former member of the FRU, who approached the Stevens team after a series of media revelations, appears to have added impetus to the, investigation. After a tip off, the Stevens team were able to seize secret documents which detailed ft activities of the FRU, as well as just who knew what about what

The documents enabled the team to identify 30 former members of the FRU, two of whom they have already arrested and questioned. The documents revealed details of the killing of Francisco Notorantonio, ordered by the FRU to protect one of their agents. Brian Nelson is believed to have passed information, including Personal details, about Notorantonio to his loyalist killers.

But most significantly, the Stevens team is believed to have uncovered evidence that some British Military Intelligence officers regarded loyalist death squads as 'an operational arm' to help them with their war against the IRA.  Intelligence records suggest that collusion became `institutionalised' within the British Army.

One British Army officer and former member of the FRU, who is at the centre of the allegations, was moved out of the Six Counties as soon as the Stevens Inquiry began. Known as Captain M, she was involved in handling Nelson and is to be questioned about her role in the Notorantonio killing.

According to the media, Captain M is currently working as an instructor at British Military Intelligence headquarters in Bedfordshire and is expected to be questioned along with Brian Nelson in the next few weeks.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Collusion happened by design. It was about terrorising that section of the population that the British believed gave support to their enemy. It was about isolating and marginalising and demonising and killing its opponents

One conservative estimate puts the figure of those killed directly and indirectly by the British state in Ireland at over 1,000, or almost one third of the total killed.

And when one considers -  as the evidence proves  -  that the figure of those killed through collusion with loyalist death squads also runs into many hundreds then the enormity of exactly what the state has been involved in during the conflict begins to impact.

Collusion is nothing abstract. It's something very real - very dangerous and thousands of families are living with the legacy of a policy pursued over 30 years in Ireland by successive British Governments.

The political context in which collusion was born and thrived must be understood if we are to properly deal with its consequences and in particular its survivors.

In 1970/71 the British Government, locked into the colonial mindset that has dictated British policy toward Ireland for centuries, looked to its generals and spooks - the securocrats - for a military solution, a military victory. The militarisation of the conflict inevitably led to a deepening crisis and a vicious war, one which evolved into a war of attrition between the powerful, professional soldiery of a world power, and the amateur forces of the IRA.

Into this situation the British deployed all of their experience and resources. That included, as the British Army's training manual  'Land operations, Volume 111 - Counter-Revolutionary Options'  "liaison with, and organisation, training and control of, friendly guerrilla forces operating against the common enemy". This is the context which saw collusion take shape in the North.

Very clearly, collusion didn't happen by chance. It happened by design.

It was about terrorising the population, or particularly that section of the population that the British believed gave support to their enemy.

It was about isolating and marginalising and demonising and killing its opponents.

It was about training the RUC in torture techniques, shoot-to-kill tactics, surveillance and intelligence gathering, and creating a sizeable political police ,wing in the Special Branch.

It was about establishing counter gangs who were then trained, armed and given information gathered by the RUC. British Army, UDR and RIR, as well as the various British Intelligence agencies.

It was about establishing groups like the Military Reconnaissance Force or the Force Research Unit to run agents, and through them the gangs that would kill.

It was about giving these groups the access they needed to carry out their actions.

Throughout the 1970s and early '80s, there were frequent allegations, mainly by republicans, of collusion. Some journalists and writers at different times lifted the lid slightly on the sordid world of informers, the MRF (Military Reconnaissance Force), of British agents and double agents, and of links between the various loyalist groups and British Intelligence. But even against the backdrop of the Dublin Monaghan bombs and other actions by loyalists and British forces, collusion was largely a non-issue dismissed as propaganda by a media and political system conditioned into seeing only republicans as the problem.

The discovery in early 1988 that the DUP founded group Ulster Resistance, along with the LIDA and the UVF had succeeded in bringing in a large shipment of weapons through South African connections brought a renewed locus on the links between loyalists and the British. As the Catholic death toll rose sharply, as these new weapons were used, allegations of collusion grew.

However, it was the killing of Loughlin Maginn in Rathfriland in August 1989, which saw the collusion debate take on a new impetus.

Within weeks over 2,000 photomontages of nationalists were released by loyalist groups to the media. The British were forced to establish the Stevens Inquiry. At its conclusion in June 1991,  28 loyalists had been charged by Stevens but not one member of the RUC, the main ,source for much of the material, was ever charged.

One person who was arrested and whose case may yet open up this whole can of worms is Brian Nelson. He revealed how as a double agent, working for the FRU -  Force Research Unit - he had planned the importation of weapons via South African contacts, and as the UDA's most senior intelligence officer, provided the death squads with the information which led to many deaths. These included Human Rights lawyer Pat Finucane, Gerard Slane and Terence McDaid. His information came from his handlers in British Intelligence.

Young Damien Walsh was killed by loyalists in 1993 using weapons imported into Ireland by UDA chief intelligence officer and British double agent Brian Nelson.

Since the shipment of weapons arrived and was distributed to loyalists In January 1988, up until this year. loyalists have killed 277 people. Many more have been wounded. The majority were killed with the weapons Imported by Nelson.

Disclosures are continuing about the role of Nelson and others. The enormity of collusion explains why the British have steadfastly rejected calls by the Irish Government, the UN, Amnesty International, members of the US Congress and many others for independent inquiries into the murder of Pat Finucane and collusion in general.

For our part, Sinn Féin has sought to highlight collusion at every opportunity. In recent years I have presented the British Prime Minister with a detailed report on the Brian Nelson affair. I have also raised the issue with the Irish Government and with the US Government. I believe this issue goes to the heart of Britain's war in Ireland and I have therefore raised it at almost every meeting I have ever held with Tony Blair. Several weeks ago I again wrote to him asking him specific questions on the role of the FRU.

We are constant in our support for the relatives' demand for an International inquiry.

This will not be easily achieved. It is an understatement to describe the matter as the British state's `Watergate'. But Britain's fear of the truth must be our incentive to relentlessly pursue the truth and to seek and secure justice for those who died and for those they left behind."

Following the recent release of the last large batch of political prisoners to be freed under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, many commentators, and some politicians, concentrated exclusively on articulating the hurt of those people who had suffered as a result of the actions of the prisoners. While some of this was understandable, it is equally clear that there were those who sought to exploit this issue to attack the Agreement. With a few honourable exceptions, what they all sailed to do was to focus any time or effort on the forgotten victims and survivors of state and state-sponsored violence.

And this is not a minor matter involving a small number of victims and relatives. It is important to realise that there are hundreds of victims and thousands of relatives who are personally and deeply affected by this. The RUC and the British Army are directly responsible for killing 357 people, 75 of whom were children. The RUC was also responsible for investigating itself as a consequence of these killings.

Understanding that explains why there was an absence of prosecutions and convictions in these cases. The manipulation and distortion of what passes for a criminal justice system points up very clearly the need for a fundamental and deep‑rooted reform of this system.

The fact that there was no justice in these cases does not mean that there should be a sense of amnesia about these killings, or that the feelings of these bereaved are any different from ally of the many other victims of the conflict. However, the efforts of the state to ignore these cases, and the failure of the media and most of the political establishment to treat these cases as equally deserving of concern, has compounded the feelings of anger and alienation which many of the relatives of the 'Forgotten Victims' share.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

US House says:   IMPLEMENT PATTEN IN FULL

A RESOLUTION urging the British Government to implement the Patten Report in full, passed in the US House of Representatives unanimously on 26 September.

The motion read that: 'HR 547 calls on the British Government to "fully and faithfully" implement all of the Patten Commission's policing reforms'. A similar resolution is awaiting mark-up from the Senate Committee on International Relations.

Vice President and Presidential hopeful, AI Gore added his voice to the call to full implementation. saying, "I want to make: clear my position on the Patten Commission's recommendations for police reform in Northern Ireland. I urge the British Government to fully and expeditiously implement these recommendations.

The third-highest elected official in the United States, Speaker of the House, Dennis Hasten, also called on the British Government "to fully implement (the Patten) reforms." The Speaker added. "The path of peace in Northern Ireland must travel through comprehensive policing reforms. Too many citizens in Northern Ireland simply do not trust the RUC. It must be overhauled in such a way that builds trust in both communities."

The Sinn Féin President gave a warm welcome to the unprecedented support. Adams said: 'I would also like to welcome today's statement by the speaker of the House of Representatives Dents Hastert. He echoes once again the call for the full implementation of the Patten proposals. His intervention is of crucial importance.

'There is unanimity across the political divide in the United States in support of the full implementation of the Patten recommendations. Political leaders and Irish America understand the critical importance of policing for the future and its centrality in terms of the Good Friday Agreement. US politicians are in no doubt about where the blame for the current crisis lies with the British Government'.

On 22 September, the commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (The Helsinki Commission), made up of senators, representatives, administrative appointees, and others held hearings entitled: "Protecting Human Rights and Securing Peace in Northern Ireland: The Vital Role of Police Reform."

Chairman Chris Smith informed the hearings that the Chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, and a witness recommended by the UUP were invited to testify at the hearings but declined the offer. The Chair of the Human Rights Commission was also invited.

In attendance were Congressman Donald Payne, International Relations Committee Chief Investigator, John Mackey and the point person for Human Rights .and Democracy for the Administration, Harold Kho, who came to express the Executive Branch's continuing "concern for the need to fully internalise, into the ongoing work of the police, the recommendations of the Patten Report. "

Congressman Benjamin Gilman, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, was unable to appear in person, but did address the Commission via a teleconferenced phone call. Gilman said that "there exists, for the first time, the opportunity to create a Police Force that is acceptable to both sides of he divide in Northern Ireland. The Policing Bill, as drafted, sadly undermines the 'after Report and the Good Friday agreement. The chance for change can be lost, but ought not to be. Let us hope Parliament can still get it right.

"I have urged President Clinton to encourage and work closely with the British Government to ensure the full and complete implementation of the Patten Commission policing reforms. The President responded to these calls on the 27 June, 2000, by letter, in which he made clear to me that both Tony Blair and Bonito Ahem, of the British and Irish Governments respectively, are aware of his strong interest in this issue of the full implementation of the of the Patten Report recommendations.

'The President assured me that once the legislation at Westminster has been adopted and its impact evaluated he will assess whether he can make the certification on Patten's implementation as we required in last years State Department Authorisation Bill. If not, there will be no FBI training for any new police service in the North of Ireland'

First to testify was Gerry Lynch, a member of the Patten Commission. He began by expressing Chris Patten's approval of his appearance at the hearings. Lynch stated that "the Recommendations of the Patten Commission were unanimous. It is crucial that the recommendations not be cherry picked, but be implemented in a cohesive and constructive manner. It was clear that the politicians could not solve the issues of policing, the Independent Commission was approved in order to implement the Good Friday Agreement. As Chris Patten has said on numerous occasions, what did the politicians think we would do? It there was to be an Independent Commission that looked at the best practices throughout the world and come up with a blueprint for a new beginning, would we simply continue the present situation with some modifications? Of course the answer was resoundingly, 'No'. The people of Northern Ireland deserve no less than this new beginning to policing. Any significant modifications will deprive them of their long awaited Police Service, which is capable of sustaining support from the community as a whole.'

Lynch was joined by Brendan O'Leary, Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics, Martin O'Brien, Director of the Committee on Administration of Justice, and Elisa Massimino, Director of the Washington Office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

Prof O'Leary informed the Commission that while the Patten Commission's Report, "did not and could not meet the hopes or match the fears of all; it "undoubtedly met its explicit terms of reference," as prescribed by the Good Friday Agreement. 'The UK Government welcomed the Patten Report and promised to implement it. However, the Bill presented to Parliament in the spring of 2000 was an evisceration of Patten, and was condemned as such by the SDLP, Sinn Féin, The Women's Coalition, the Catholic Church, non-governmental human rights. organisations, and CAJ. It was also criticised by the Irish government, the US House of Representatives, and a range of Irish Americans, including, apparently President Clinton.'

Prof O'Leary continued his testimony by highlighting some of the most obvious examples of the departures from the Patten Report in the Policing Legislation, including symbols, disbanding of the Police Reserve and the lack of a commitment to basic Human Rights. He labelled the bill as a 'parody' of the Report.

"Patten recommended a Policing Board to hold the Police to account, and to initiate inquiries into police conduct and practices. Mr Mandelson has prevented the board from inquiring into any act or omission arising before the eventual act applies. I believe this is tantamount to an undeclared amnesty for past police misconduct, not proposed by Patten. As you have emphasised yourself, Mr Chairman, the Secretary of State will now have the extraordinary power to prevent inquiries by the board, because they would, 'serve no useful purpose,'  a power added at the report stage in the Commons, and needless to say, not in Patten.

"The Secretary of State will additionally have the authority to approve or veto the person appointed to conduct any inquiry. The UK Government's line is roughly the following, in nature - 'look how much we've done to implement Patten, look how radical Patten is by comparison with elsewhere.' This spin is utterly unconvincing. The proposed arrangements effectively seal off past; present and future avenues through which the police might be held accountable for misconduct. And Patten is not radical. Canada and America have long made their police democratically accountable and socially representative. Patten is only radical by the past standards of Northern Ireland."

Addressing the issue of the Ombudsman, the Professor said: "Patten recommended that the Ombudsman should have significant powers and should exercise the right to investigate and comment on police policies and practices, whereas in the modified Bill, the Ombudsman. may make reports, but not investigate. The Ombudsman is additionally restricted in their retrospective powers, once again circumscribing the police accountability for past misconduct."

Martin O'Brien, Director of the Committee on Administration of Justice spoke next, bringing another issue to the Commission's attention - the delay in the appointment of an oversight Commissioner.

"This recommendation was accepted by the (British) government, but Tom Constantine (the appointed oversight Commissioner) was not appointed until the 31 May, 2000 - almost nine months after the Patten Report was published. This tardy appointment meant that the Commissioner was excluded from scrutinising the draft legislation, played no part in the detailed implementation plan prepared by the existing policing establishment, and has still to take on public profile and produce his first report. Given this delay, any change that has taken place to date has been dictated by those who have been responsible for policing over the last thirty years, and who have resisted change in the past," O'Brien said.

"If government does want to implement Patten, as it says it does, why is it still resistant to a whole range of important safeguards which Patten called for? Why is it impossible to get government agreement to include explicit reference in the legislation to a broad range of international human rights norms and standards? What reason can there be for the government denying any role to the NI Human Rights Commission in advising on the police use of plastic bullets? Why are effective inquiry powers for the Policing Board consistently opposed? Why is the Secretary of State so adamant that the Police Ombudsperson cannot have the powers to investigate police policies and practices that Patten called for? Why was the appointment of the Oversight Commissioner so long delayed, and why is his term of office so curtailed in the legislation?"

Elisa Massimino was the last to testify, raising wish the commission the tack of reference to International Human Rights guidelines in the Policing Legislation.

"Although the British Government has repeatedly asserted that it 'recognises the importance of human rights'," she said, "its ongoing resistance to inserting reference to international human rights standards into the language of the Police Bill raises serious questions. The conduct of police in Northern Ireland has been the subject of numerous reports by non-governmental human rights organisations and UN bodies, including by Dato' Param Cumaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. Many of these reports have concluded that police conduct in Northern Ireland violates internationally recognised human rights standards. Chairman Patten, in his statement accompanying the release of the Commission's report, highlighted the central importance of human rights standards to the Commission's approach to police reform: "We recommend a comprehensive program of action to focus on policing in Northern Ireland on a human rights-based approach. We see the upholding of fundamental human rights as the very purpose of policing, and we propose that it should be instilled in all officers from the start - in the oath they take, in their training, and in their codes of practice and in their performance appraisal system.

Massimino concluded her testimony by providing the Commission with updates on the investigations into the murders of Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson.