Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.

‑V. I. Lenin

Economic & Philosophic Science Review

No 1101   August 7 2001 

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The attempted propaganda spin to turn the Good Friday Agreement into a stunt to malign the very "terrorist weapons" which made peace possible in the first place (by defeating the bigoted Orange fascist 'Northern Ireland' dictatorship), fails again. If this week's promised police reforms finally transform the old RUC, the one real 'terrorist' problem in the Occupied Zone, ‑  then all-round decommissioning processes will at last have a chance of beginning. The British capitalist press's open expressions of humiliation and dismay at these further negotiated triumphs for the revolutionary national-liberation struggle tell the whole story. The long colonisation of Ireland is deservedly ending in rotten lies and tyranny, all now collapsing. Game, set, and match to Sinn Fein and the IRA. Fake 'left' anti-communism lands in the counter-revolutionary mire yet again. The symbolic defeat for imperialist backwardness in Britain via the reunification of Ireland remains usefully on course.

No EPSR next three weeks.

Unionist colonial reaction has been sent reeling by the De Chastelain Commission's acceptance that IRA plan for eventual disarmament (once the Good Friday Agreement to dismantle 'Northern Ireland' has been implemented in full), is consistent with the national-liberation struggle’s obligations under the GFA.

Trimble and his bigoted Orange-fascist co-thinkers in "No Surrender," 'Loyalism' kept hoping to lessen their humiliation at having to share power with Irish Republicanism by imposing a propaganda stunt on Sinn Fein and the IRA in obstructing all further progress in GFA implementation until some of the triumphant guerrilla-war weaponry had been symbolically 'surrendered' for destruction.

But now the London-Dublin 'final offer (which gives the national-liberation struggle nearly all it wants out of the GFA), plus the De Chastelain "satisfactory progress towards disarmament" verdict, has shattered Trimble's "decommissioning now or I resign" bluff. The bigoted dictatorship that was 'Northern Ireland' was defeated by heroic self-sacrificing revolutionary struggle (political and armed), and remains so defeated, now for all to see.

Decrepit British imperialism limped away from a war it could not win, and has refused to be shaken from its determination to dismantle its moribund colonial power by Trimble's bluster or the recent upsurge by last-ditch 'loyalist' anti-Irish thuggery and murder, threatening UDI (unilateral declaration of independence) as the Rhodesia outdated colonial fascists imposed at gunpoint in 1965. Tory rags are seething:

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But yesterday proved that the Army Council has not even begun to test the limit of its powers. The indication of a mild refinement in the Army Council's stance on retention of its arsenal forced London and Dublin to retreat once more from their insistence on decommissioning and command Ulster Unionists to join them in their surrender.

It is important to appreciate just what the IRA promised and, more importantly, what it did not promise. Far from pledging at last to put its arms beyond use, the IRA only indicated the method that it might condescend to employ in the event of eventually proceeding to disarmament. The IRA has done no more than indicate that it would, say, incinerate a few Armalites rather than bury them under concrete if it came to decommissioning. But it has not come to decommissioning yet.

Still, the British and Irish Governments united to sing from the same rebel songbook by acclaiming this "very significant step forward".

Which is what the IRA refuses to extend, because it knows its power rests on the retention of its arsenal. And  it will not, absolutely will not, surrender it until it has got everything that it can from the "`peace process". 

It is the retention of that armoury, and not any "mandate", that makes Gerry Adams not just the indispensable partner in Northern Ireland's governance, but its literal dictator. Other parties committed to constitutional upheaval, with much better mandates, do not enjoy invitations to the White House, guaranteed  seats in government and the right to decree British Army dispositions.

The Army Council would be mad to surrender its arsenal before final victory.

Just last week John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary, caved in to a series of IRA demands designed to give the organisation's terrorists greater freedom of manoeuvre. Dr Reid agreed to eviscerate the main anti‑terrorist police resource in Northern Ireland, the RUC Special Branch. He agreed to IRA membership of the board that will supervise Northern Ireland's new police force. He agreed to demolish two army observation towers and destroy one major army base, promising in future to expedite "the vacation, return or demolition of the great majority of army bases, the demolition and vacation of all surveillance towers, no further army presence in police stations and the use of army helicopters for training purposes only."

As one republican joked to The Guardian, citing the promise on helicopters: "You'd almost think it was the Brits who were surrendering!" Never was a truer word spoken in jest.

In 1993 Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister, said that there had to be decommissioning before republicans could even enter talks. "We are talking about a handover of arms, there can be no equivocation," he decreed.

Oh yes? Since he spoke we have had nothing but equivocation from republicans. Guns were to be given up before talks, then during talks, then before going into government, and then during government. But consummation came there none.

Instead, the IRA first said that it was minded to talk about decommissioning, then it did talk about decommissioning, then it showed a tiny, rusted portion of what it might decommission.
At every point in this process each indication of a potential future handover has been used by republicans to demand another down payment for the final delivery to come. But it never comes.

It is, of course, easy to condemn the IRA's moral squalor. But the real ethical lapse has been that of our own Governments and Ulster's democratic parties. We decided, weakly, wrongly and in a spirit of appeasement, that we could not beat them.

And so we have joined them. Joined them in pretending that equivocation is decommissioning, in equating empty words with concrete actions, in elevating killers to statesmen, in confirming that power grows from the barrel of the gun. How do you join the IRA Army Council? The sad truth is that we already have.

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The hardline Ulster Union1st MP Jeffrey Donaldson last night accused the British government of moving the goalposts over decommissioning to make it easier for the IRA to agree to terms with Gen de Chastelain. "It is emerging that the government prepared a. new decommissioning scheme last week before the careful choreography between the IRA and General de Chastelaine,"  he said.

The government confirmed last night that it had agreed to a request from Gen de Chastelain to introduce new regulations on decommissioning to give the commission more flexibility, but denied that it was a "stunt"; 

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The revelation that the IRA has decided how   ‑ but not when to decommission its weapons has landed like a metaphorical hand grenade in the midst of a confused Ulster Unionist party, which had just tentatively reunited around its old mantra "No guns, no government":

While the two governments lauded as highly significant the statement from General John de Chastelain's disarmament body, it was clear that a timetable would have been more useful to UUP leader David Trimble. Indications, however, are that republicans want similar time frame guarantees on police reform and demilitarisation before they are prepared to go further.

The party was deeply divided over the Good Friday agreement, with some prepared to swallow the bitter pills of the early release of IRA prisoners, Sinn Fein in a coalition government, and changes to the RUC, and others totally opposed.

The old wounds and divisions continue to smart. The weapons issue, however, is still the rallying cry, with the power to bring the party together or tear it asunder. Ethically, unionists argued, decommissioning was central to democracy. Parties with access to a private army which could, at the drop of a hat, revert to tactics of blackmail and terror, could not sit in the power-sharing Stormont administration. The deep divisions within the wider unionist community were underlined by the DUP, whose leaders met General de Chastelain last night. DUP leader Ian Paisley said: "This document is the last-ditch attempt by a discredited government who has entered into partnership with the people who have brought mayhem, murder and genocide to our province.'

Gary McMichael, leader of the Ulster Democratic-Party, which is linked to the loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association, said unionists still could not accept the two governments' blueprint. "Until republicans spell out in detail their intentions on disarmament, the proposals will not gain unionist support; he said.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams yesterday hailed the IRA's agreement with the independent commission for decommissioning as a "hugely historical breakthrough" in the context of republican history. The deal was  he insisted, "fiery, very firm proof of the IRA's commitment and ability to keep promises".

"Once again the IRA has demonstrated its commitment to the search for a lasting peace. The other parties need to match that commitment and should respond positively and constructively. The [commission] and the armed groups should be allowed to get on with the job of resolving the issue of arms."

"The issue of IRA weapons has been made a pre-condition for progress on all other issues," he warned at the time. "This is in direct breach of the Good Friday agreement ... It is worth reminding ourselves that there would not have been an IRA [ceasefire] if that matter had been made a pre-condition:'

There would be no giving in to British or unionist "terms or on the basis of threat, veto or ultimatum"; he warned.

All weapons, including those held by the RUC and the British army, should be included in any settlement.

But there was speculation that a majority of the IRA's army council were either at Weston Park or staying in a house nearby in order to authorise a deal with the British and Irish governments.

Secret contacts between the Provisionals and British intelligence, which led to yesterday's landmark announcement, date back a decade.

When news of the contacts leaked out in late 1993, the inevitable question arose: were the Provisionals genuinely preparing to end their campaign and give up their weapons before the establishment, of their ultimate goal  ‑   a united Ireland?

Sinn Fein, the political wing of the movement, has argued that what is important is that weapons should be put "beyond use":

Handing in guns to the "occupying British forces" was always likely to be seen by republicans as a concession too far. And Sinn Fein knew it was always possible to smuggle in new weapons [for] the Provisionals' paramilitary expertise and personnel infrastructure.

Overcoming suspicions and calling the first ceasefire in 1994 meant persuading the republican movement that its united Ireland aspirations could be realised through political means.

The Irish foreign minister, Brian Cowen, sat down with Sinn Fein on the final day, of talks at Wesson Park, Staffordshire, last month to try to rescue the Northern Ireland peace process. For four and-a-half hours the two sides discussed in detail the reform of policing in Northern Ireland, a key Sinn Fein demand.
Mr Cowen's detailed grasp of the police reforms proved vital at Wesson Park. He sat down with Sinn Fein at 8.30am and finished at 1pm.  

Groundwork

The Weston Park talks were g much of the media  as a failure but the groundwork had been done and Sinn Fein.
	persuaded. The final paper produced by the Irish and British governments on policing runs to 80 pages.

When the British and Irish governments set out their proposals last Wednesday on policing, decommissioning, demilitarisation and stability of institutions, the Irish government laid it out to Sinn Fein in plain language. "We told them This is it. We cannot do any better than this.

The proposals set out by the British and Irish governments, combined with the IRA move on decommissioning, represents  a huge gain for Sinn Fein.

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All the pressure is now back on the despised and isolated 'Unionist' political leaders, now abandoned to helpless further humiliation because of New Labour feebleness in refusing to slap down the Orange-fascist "we never surrendered" fantasies much earlier, ‑  because of the Blairites own delusions in their 'manipulative imperialist grandeur, play-acting at 'world statesmen' without the slightest real grasp of just how bankrupt British imperialism really is.

The seemingly endless saga of Good Friday Agreement negotiations is solely designed to save British imperialist’ face, just as the obscene joke of the Hague 'War Crimes Tribunal' is purely aimed at diverting attention from the West's international imperialist world control system  (which is permanently ruining the lives of millions of people daily, and whose insane and hated 'competitive ethos' is the ultimate cause of ALL war crimes.)

As the EPSR has explained almost every week for 22 years, the dying fate of British colonial-might within the general decadence of the doomed world imperialist system) meant that in spite of all the propaganda to the contrary, the British imperialist establishment was resigned to losing 'Northern Ireland' to the Irish national-liberation struggle led by Sinn Fein and the IRA.

The only condition placed on the decided-upon means for getting out, ‑  an almost interminable withdrawal at snail's pace, ‑  was that mass public opinion should never suspect that the "No Surrender, British for ever" supposed 'separate state of 'Northern Ireland', (presumably "established for all time" by the monstrous Partition imposed on Ireland in 1921 at British bayonet point), ‑ was being toppled basically by the undefeatable struggle of a smallish group of determined nationalists, armed with guerrilla war capability but even mote potently armed with revolutionary anti-imperialist political understanding.

The sick contradiction always at the heart of this nastily motivated face-saving is now coming to full poisonous flowering, the sulphurous dog-in-the-manger reluctance (or impossibility) of the local 350-year maintainers of the 'No Surrender' British mastery, ‑ the misnamed Ulster Unionists' (i.e. land-grabbing colonists), ‑ to fit in with London's withdrawal plans, even at such a snail’s-pace of restoration of Irish sovereignty that the reunification-of-Ireland aspects of the Good Friday Agreement have remained publicly imperceptible. Foolishly, Trimble & CO have been allowed to overplay their face saving propaganda hand of "forcing decommissioning on a reluctant IRA" which was designed to salve the hurt consciences of the bitterest "No Surrender" Orange-Protestant colonial bigots by giving the shallowest fiction to claim a 'British victory' of some sorts at least.

But the national-liberation struggle proclaimed its own cease-fire at the height of its powers (after  the London Docks and Manchester bombings) and put forward the GFA peace process as a way for British imperialism to get off the hook of a damaging war it could not possibly win; and it is the IRA which has kept its own guns silent for this mutual political agreement to be allowed to complete the national liberation at its own snail s pace. No enforced decommissioning is needed or called for in the GFA, which asks "all participants" to "use any influence they may have" to achieve decommissioning "in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement" The heart of the GFA is the North/South Ministerial Council to "bring together" the governments of the two parts of Ireland "to develop consultation, co-operation and action within the island of Ireland" through "implementation on an all-island and cross-border basis' The Annex to this Strand Two(of the GFA) proposes "cooperation and implementation" on:

" 1) Agriculture: animal and plant health. 2) Education: teacher qualifications and exchanges. 3) Transport: strategic transport planning. 4) Environment: environmental protection, pollution, water quality, and waste management. 5) Waterways: inland waterways. 6) Social Security/Social Welfare: entitlements of cross‑border workers and fraud control. 7) Tourism: promotion, marketing, research, and product development. 8) Relevant EU Programmes such as SPPR, INTERREG, Leader II, and their successors. 9) Inland Fisheries. 10, Aquaculture and marine matters. 11) Health: accident and emergency services and other related cross border issues. 12) Urban and rural development. 13) Others to be considered by the shadow North/South Council.".

On top of this huge "agreed" impetus to the practical reunification of Ireland, the GFA specifically instructs the new North/ South Council leadership to "identify and agree at least 6 matters for cooperation and implementation in each of the following categories: (i) Matters where existing bodies will be the appropriate mechanisms for cooperation in each separate jurisdiction; (ii) Matters where the cooperation will take place through agreed implementation bodies on a cross-border or all-island level".

In other words, all the parties to the Good Friday Agreement (pointing the finger at Trimble) were instructed to get on immediately with at least 12 areas of all-Ireland government cooperation to start the "implementation" with a bang, ‑  precisely to create a completely new political climate in Ireland of trust and cooperation whereby the genuine decommissioning of the war footing between colonists and the conquered Irish could begin.

But all that Trimble has done "in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement" as the First Minister of the government of the North is notoriously prevent the two Sinn Fein ministers from ever attending any all-Ireland cross-border meetings on their Health and Education ministry matters, meanwhile banging on about decommissioning. This deliberate obstruction of the GFA is trying to replace "decommissioning in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement'' with "decommissioning instead of the implementation".

Equally, nothing at all has been done about the GFA Safeguards Strand to guarantee the Irish in the Occupied Zone "the right to freely choose one's place of residence', and "the right to freedom from sectarian harassment". The pogrom of the Irish in areas of Belfast, etc, where they are outnumbered by "loyalist" colonial-fascist thugs, continues unabated, with blockades of Catholic primary-school entrances, fire-bombings of Gaelic sports associations, pipe-bombs endlessly hurled at Irish housing estates, and just plain brutal street murders of anyone remotely suspected of being a Catholic.

On policing to enforce the GFA, the Patten Commission was duly enrolled to report on complete reorganisation, ‑ ‑  and its entire recommendations have just been binned. Nothing has been changed about the RUC, the biggest and best-armed terrorist organisation in the whole rotten mess of colonised Ireland; and only now is London finally going to publish more new legislation details to replace the idiot failure of Peter Mandelson to do anything worthwhile when the relevant minister.

And wisely, in response to Blair's latest imbecile "deadline" for the parties to the GFA to "take it or leave it" on the latest "ultimatum" about "further progressing the GFA", the Sinn Fein and IRA reply is to first insist on hearing the. new precise details of how "democratic authority" is supposedly to be imposed on an allegedly "new" Police Service of Northern Ireland, promised later this week.

Virtually nothing has been done. Trimble & Co have basically done nothing but obstruct and object to any implementation context whatever, thereby making the idea of the IRA being able to decommission just a joke.

It goes without saying that a promised virtually brand new system of justice in the Occupied Zone, totally governed by the priorities of the United Nations model Human Rights legislation, as implemented by the European Convention on Human Rights, has not even remotely come into view yet.

Yet the shallow sound-bite British politics and capitalist media output around the latest London-Dublin ultimatum has nevertheless still all been allowed idiotically to concentrate on "the failure of the IRA to decommission" as the nub of the problem, ‑  merely stoking up difficulties more and more for Trimble & Co when the national-liberation movement refuses to capitulate to this farcical propaganda try-on.

And a few more cosmetic demilitarisation gestures by the British Army, long an utterly reluctant participant any more in this hopeless mess of failed colonisation that is 'Northern Ireland', will not fool Sinn Fein and the IRA either, or create any public opinion hostility to Adams & Co to force their hand.

Action to further practically dismantle the former 'Northern Ireland' colonial dictatorship is what is required to get decommissioning started, ‑ ‑   exactly as all parties agreed to in the Good Friday Agreement, as signed.

The most farcical thing of all about this sick propaganda game the British bourgeoisie are still trying to play, even as they are obliged to admit to capitulating further and further to the clear-cut national-liberation victory that this whole peace process has so obviously been from the very start more than 15 years ago (since before Thatcher herself was forced to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty virtually giving up all further British claim to the colonial territory),  ‑ ‑ is that even the capitalist press admissions, agreeing more and more openly that that Good Friday Agreement implementation means game, set, and match to Sinn Fein and the IRA, ‑ still attempt to put an "anti-terrorist" sneering gloss on everything.

The Guardian especially tries to leave the counterrevolutionary boot in while accepting in the vaguest terms that it is a question of imperialism being forced out:

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Start with republicans. Privately they admit to enormous satisfaction with the blueprint document presented by the two governments earlier this week. Promises which were implied or half-baked in the Good Friday agreement have been fully fleshed out now, producing a text which is about as green a document as nationalists and republicans could have hoped for. It promises demilitarisation, the scaling back of the British presence, as well as full implementation of Chris Patten's report on policing, rather than the diluted version enshrined in law by Peter Mandelson when he was secretary of state.

Sinn Feiners can barely conceal their joy at having won on almost every demand, bar one technical aspect of police oversight.  (They are particularly pleased at the enhanced role for Tom Constantine, the former US law enforcement official who will oversee the implementation of Paten.) One republican official cited the British promise to use helicopters only for training . purposes: "You'd almost think it was the Brits who were surrendering!"
They believe the last few weeks mark the crossing of the Rubicon for their cause. They saw Tony Blair as a British prime minister desperate to be shot of art issue which had drained too much of his first term arid who had effectively delegated the task of negotiating with republicans to Dublin.  Irish sources speak in similar terms, suggesting that Blair trusted Irish premier Bertie Ahern to do whatever it took  ‑  making whatever concessions were needed ‑ ‑ so long as he won the key prize of IRA disarmament.

Republicans say that is an outcome they can live with. So long as they get the full implementation of the agreement the IRA will come through with arms. One source was even prepared to talk about the mechanics of decommissioning. tie envisaged an imminent statement from John de Chastelain's decommissioning body, announcing further IRA action on the three dumps already opened to outside inspection. Those dumps would be destroyed either filled with concrete or, more likely, incinerated. (The latter would be more elegant, says the source: avoiding the need for "cement mixers travelling up and down Co Kerry".)

Attached to those deeds would be words, an IRA statement tying the dumps' destruction to the agreement's implementation. "After that it would d be quid pro quo all the way through," say republicans. More implementation by the governments, a few more dumps put beyond use,  advancing bit by bit until the Good Friday agreement had been realised.
 
Will that be enough? Unionists say not. "The time for gestures and fiddling about has long past," :rays one senior official. Unionists need to .hear the IRA say they have finished with violence completely and forever and that they're "quitting the violence business" for good.

In other words the gradual, quid pro quo approach envisaged by republicans will not be good enough for a unionist community.

Republicans talk of complete disarmament eventually, once this week's promises by the two governments have been made real. (They note that IRA statements have promised "complete and verifiable" decommissioning since May 2000, but unionists don't seem to have noticed). Unionists want complete disarmament, too, but they want it explicitly promised and-verifiably begun now.

The timing of the blast sent another message: that the Real IRA reckons the Provisionals are poised to make a historic move on decommissioning – an act hardliners will regard as treachery. But it also serves as a reminder of what critics have long argued: that decommissioning should never have been allowed to become an issue in the peace process  ‑ let alone the deal-breaker. The Real IRA has proved once again that what matters is not whether a movement has weapons – but whether it has the urge to use them.

As even MI5's most senior intelligence officers will tell you privately, decommissioning has almost no bearing on security. Guns handed  in on a Monday can easily be replaced on a Tuesday:  ;for those who know where to get it, weaponry is freely available both in Britain and abroad. The kind of massive bombs used to stage so-called "spectaculars" often consist of nothing more mysterious than agricultural fertiliser. The IRA could decommission but -‑ if it was in bad faith  ‑  it would make no difference.

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The last paragraphs reproduced are presented (in first place in the original) to pretend a 'great discovery' that the decommissioning timetable is of no importance after all. In other words, it is creepy Guardian 'liberals' way of letting the British petty-bourgeoisie's constipated anti-communism declare the propaganda war lost (making IRA decommissioning the issue) just as their war was lost originally which hoped to defeat the revolutionary national-liberation struggle both militarily and politically.

In other words, the British (and especially the English) bourgeoisie are now history's hopeless losers in virtually every endeavour, its defeated and fading imperialist glory (especially on the international economic front) fast making it the 'sick man of Europe' but now on a globalised scale.

The 'intellectuals' of petty-bourgeois 'democracy' absolutely seethe with hatred at every notion of revolutionary struggles triumphing on earth, ‑  as shows painfully between every line of this wretched Guardian confession to a fraction of the real truth about the Good Friday Agreement.

Earlier in the summer, the Times deputy editor put the raw, wounded hurt of the British bourgeoisie far more on show:

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David Trimble is, understandably, tired of being a headbanger. For the past three years Northern Ireland's First Minister has been hurling his skull against the IRA's brick wall.

But it must now be obvious to the meanest intelligence, and it is certainly all too clear to the first-class mind within  Mr Trimble's cranium, that the republican movement is still intent on stonewalling over disarmament. The report from General John de Chastelain's decommissioning body yesterday confirmed what every sane observer of Ulster always knew‑  the IRA has no intention of moving, the bricks remain in place, the mortar is primed and ready.

Since the peace process began the republicans have never been forced to choose definitively between terror and politics. They have never had to face relinquishing their private army as the price of continuing their march towards power.

The republicans were told arms had to be given up before they could enter talks, then it was agreed they would be given up during talks, then it was decreed that they should be given up before, entering government, then it was accepted that they could begin handing them over after entering office. At every stage Irish democrats,  ‑ in Dublin and the SDLP, made excuses for republicans. And all the while the republicans were making fools of Ireland's democrats.

Negotiating. with the benefit of a private army, equipped with the glamour and dynamism which attaches to a bully none dare face down, they established themselves as the most effective, because most fearsome, voice of Irish nationalism. They increased their electoral support in Ulster and the Republic, they secured the dissolution of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, they oversaw the diminution of the British Army presence in the Province; they enjoyed the effacement of Crown symbols on the institutions of government, they won new employment and discrimination laws which entrenched group rights while undermining individual freedoms and, of course, they took their place in the administration of part of the United Kingdom with ministers running the two largest government departments in Northern Ireland.

Irish nationalist voters, recognising that blackmail had secured these rewards, saw no reason not to reward the blackmailers. Last month, Sinn Fein overtook the SDLP in the North, claiming more votes and more seats. It humiliated the Republic's Government in the Nice referendum, positioning itself to hold the balance of power in the Irish Parliament after the next election and stake a claim for ministerial positions on both sides of the border.

Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera fought to subdue those armed subversives who could not relinquish the gun. They knew that no State can rest secure while parties back their aims with the threat of violence. The current Irish Labour Party leader, Ruari Quinn, has said he would never share power with a party which had access to a private army. Why can't his fellow European socialists in the SDLP now make the same pledge?

Unless Dublin and the SDLP remind voters of the dear moral distinction between themselves and Sinn Fein their support will face further erosion. Unless they show the courage to distinguish between their unambiguous commitment to purely democratic means, and the republicans' use of threats and intimidation to secure power, how can they expect the voters to make the right choice?

If Ireland's democrats don't force this issue now, then every issue in Ireland's future will increasingly be decided by force.

End Quote

The frantic gloom of the final point goes beyond the near hysterical humiliation from relating the triumphal progress of the armed revolutionary national-liberation struggle to the nightmares which eat so deeply into the petty bourgeois soul of horror-perspective to come when revolutionary example shows the way to win EVERY battle against the clapped-out and Collapsing world Western-imperialist 'democratic' economic order which provides this 'Britain' with its lifestyle.

Astonishingly, it took the former Tory rightwing minister John Selwyn Gummer, writing in the latest weekly issue of Estates Gazette, to more frankly come to terms with the real issues facing Britain's Ireland disaster:

"Somehow the whole people must confront their past. It is not that the Irish have long memories, it is that they have long selective memories. Each community has a different version of almost every event in the past 500 years .... The Unionists forget that it was by their guns that Northern Ireland was created.

"So too we on the mainland conveniently ignore the prime responsibility that we have for the whole sorry mess. Britain's record in Ireland is as bad as any conquering power in history. A story of massacre, murder, and theft of which none of us can be proud. That's why we should all be praying that Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern succeed. Only if they get the fragile peace process back on track will Northern Ireland resume its growth.

"The populist manoeuvrings of Unionist MPs Donalsdon and Burnside" [who denounced Trimble's negotiations last week, saying they would have nothing more to do with the outcome] "became all too clear in their uncompromising and uncomprehending TV appearances. They condemned the British and Irish governments proposals even before they had been made. The self-righteous tone with which they blasted the efforts to build a lasting peace makes English Unionists, like me, despair," Gummer declared.

The placing and the emphasis in Gummer's remarkable acknowledgment of imperialist-system rottenness will raise an obvious smile, but in fact the Estates Gazette devotion to capitalist property interests turns Gummer's plea from the wallet into an even fuller and better story.

It was precisely when the Occupied Zone was a directly-controlled property interest of British colonial-imperialism (shipyards, aircraft factories, fanatically 'loyalist' population for the huge Empire demands of worldwide military service, supposedly 'vital' base areas for defending Britain's 'back doors' from potential all-comers, etc) that the collapsing international imperialist economic and political UK power made the expensive subsidising of all this imperialist activity, and the ambitious geo-political scope of the 'defend Empire' illusions, no longer worth the cost of keeping it going, or the political infamy of keeping the colony going in the face of a totally justified (and increasingly formidable) national-liberation struggle. British imperialist economic interests had to scale down to strictly profitable and legally sustainable business ventures. Hence the strategy of the snail's-pace withdrawal consistent with the smooth transfer of constitutional powers in line with restored Irish sovereignty, and the recasting of business interests in the cosmetic direction of 'normal marketplace relationships'.

It still remains economic imperialism, of course, but in a form which Gummer is happy to embrace, as is the whole British imperialist state now that its colonial rottenness has been defeated.

Gummer goes on:

"This all matters significantly to the property industry. Northern Ireland has been growing faster than the rest of the UK. It is a real success story that needs only stability to continue. The cranes are much in evidence in Belfast with exciting new developments getting under way. New flats and offices have transformed Laganside in the heart of the city, and physical renewal is evident for all to see. What is missing still is the renewal in the hearts of the people. The fear of a return to the gun and the bomb is real.

"Much of the hoped-for investment is on hold in these difficult days.

"There is therefore only one thing that stands between the province and sustained development, and that is failure of the process of rapprochement. If Belfast is to reach its potential and complete its regeneration, there must be no retreat into the laager. That would indeed mean disaster for far more than the property industry. Donaldson and Burnside's blast from the past does no good for the future of Ulster, and they should receive no encouragement from this side of the Irish Sea."

Britain's wider ruling-class dimensions for a safe peaceful deal are more to do with international political face than directly commercial interests, but Gummer's plea from the wallet points to other relevant factors in this ludicrous propaganda muddle that New Labour counter-revolutionary servility and anti-colonial faint-heartedness has paralytically spawned. Half of the orange bourgeoisie has already toned down or abandoned its 'No Surrender' intransigence and 'loyalist' bigotry in order to get in quick at the trough of what promises (at least temporarily) to become an extension in the North of the 'Celtic Tiger' recent rapid economic expansion in the South.

London has the clear option to push the other half in the same direction speedily, by threatening Trimble & Co to work with a new selected Ulster Protestant business leadership to run the government in the North if the official 'Unionist' political circles (of now very limited ambitions and influence) still insist on playing their ridiculous obstructionist propaganda game of "force the IRA to decommission".

As usual, the mercenary-minded Tory petty bourgeoisie like Gummer are quicker to grasp international class-war reality about the general climate of imperialist humiliation and defeat than the ideologically-buggered 'left' petty-bourgeoisie like the politically-correct CPGB Trots, for example, whose Weekly Worker now embraces every aspect of anti-communist 'Marxist' posturing, especially a dementedly-exaggerated respect for imperialist strength and survivability (worse even than the crazed class-collaborative depths to which Stalinist Revisionism sank under Gorbachev) which notoriously, three years ago (along with all the other fake 'lefts') pronounced the Good Friday Agreement as "a peace imposed on a failed national-liberation struggle by the US imperialist New World Order", summarising it as "the 'peace' of the oppressors has overcome the violence of the oppressed", quite carried away by self-regard for their own verbal 'brilliance'.

There has been a very small (and unacknowledged) creeping away from this junk recently, but only to express this fundamental counter-revolutionary defeatism (the standard 'left' petty-bourgeois mentality) in a different way.

The above 'overcome' aphorism clearly stated that imperialism won via the GFA, and that Sinn Fein and the IRA had sold out.

Now, there is begrudging admission of how triumphantly Sinn Fein has stuffed everybody in taking advantage of the GFA provisions, north and south, but while no longer described as 'overcome' the following slimy picture is inserted instead of such Republican progress being quite pointless since nothing will basically change in "Northern Ireland" (minus the derisive commas).

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In the last analysis this 'neither war nor peace' situation stems from the Good Friday agreement, which ended 30 yearn of war but institutionalised the sectarian divide through its bureaucratic provisions. Such a constitutional settlement can never provide the basis for a democratic peace because it leaves intact a Northern Ireland statelet which imprisons within its carefully calculated borders a large and unwilling catholic-Irish minority. Nor on the other hand will a democratic peace be brought about through Sinn Fein's scheme to let demography ‑  in the shape of a growing nationalist population in the Six Counties ‑ take its course. In the meantime, however, SF will play the peace process and its institutions for all they are worth, banking on a steady increase in its own support both north and south of the border. A democratic peace can only be achieved through a united Ireland based on the voluntary agreement of both national communities. That requires a united Ireland within which a British‑Irish province would be guaranteed the right to self‑determination. Only by championing this perspective, infused with an internationalist vision of socialism, can antagonisms be reduced and give way to trust and solidarity.

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For the unversed in the sectarian brain-warps of fake 'leftism', the pernicious proposal reiterated as 'self-determination for a British-Irish province within a united Ireland' is in fact the utterly reactionary provocation by these Trots for the colonial fascists like MadDog Adair & Co to "claim their rights to a new mini-Partition of Ulster" where these sick imperialist "loyalists" will still be able to lord it over just three of Ulster's nine counties.

To present such insane encouragement to a bunch of demented killers as "a real defeat for imperialism" (presumably), inspires thoughts of men in white coats rather than the CPGB's 'Marxist' credentials.

The EPSR's serious attempts at Marxist methods of fighting for revolutionary theory have, on the other hand, no need to hide the historical record.

Consistent with the pattern of 22 years of analysing the changing international balance of class forces and the opportunities for revolutionary anti-imperialist advance that every new stage of capitalist crisis brings or every new conflict with Western global authority presents, the Review immediately continued its longstanding examination of British colonialist retreat over Ireland from the first publication of the Good Friday Agreement on April 14, 1998, ‑ expanding the conclusions repeatedly reached in the long run-up to the GFA, and further expanded many times since as further factual historical developments have confirmed the original assessments, ‑ exactly as would have to be done if corrections or more precise conclusions were made necessary by the subsequent unfolding of the actual reality.

EPSR 946 argued, among other things, that:

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'A huge propaganda attempt has been made to imply that Sinn Fein had to give most ground in the final negotiating flurry, and ended up very far from its United Ireland ambitions.

This deliberate confusion-mongering entirely misses the point of the whole historical movement taking place. Yesterday, 'Northern Ireland' was the sole reality, ‑  an unquestionable part of the British state for all time, established by British bayonets in 1921, enshrined in British law, and governed ever since by utterly intransigent British colonial ruling-class whose religion was "No Surrender any further to Irish nationalism".

That reactionary gerrymandered imperialist fortress, ‑  a by-word for brutal discrimination and non-stop judicial terror against Irish nationalist dissent by the persecuted minority, ‑  has now crumbled irreparably. That is the movement of history. That is what has climaxed in a new settlement this past week.

How much immediate progress has been made towards Ireland's reunification, ‑ the only ultimate justice, legitimacy, and sensible administration, is a different question, and small negotiating points may not have all gone Sinn Fein's way for the moment.

But what has been achieved is a victory which can only be described as one of the most miraculous successes ever by a national minority in a revolutionary stand and armed guerrilla-war. This has sensationally routed the minority 'democratic' rights with which imperialism tried to fob off Irish nationalism, which could only have meant continued injustice and frustration under the stifling orange-colonial tyranny, permanently set.

Now the door has been forced open wide again for the completion of Ireland's legitimate national aspirations for reunification of all its territory in the not-too distant future.

Yet the one thing which reactionaries of EVERY description promised time and time again was that NEVER would any further concessions be made to Irish nationalism as a result, of guerrilla‑war actions by armed revolutionaries and their political representatives in Sinn Fein.

To look at what Sinn Fein and the IRA have allegedly 'not yet achieved' is to have missed the plot utterly on Ireland. Only the middle class, with their instinctive hatred of all seriously successful anti-imperialist revolution this century, ‑  the bourgeois out of dislike of any violence disturbing the status quo, and petty-bourgeois Trots out of their anti-Stalinist fear of proletarian dictatorship, ‑  will hate acknowledging this Irish national-liberation triumph.
The long-term overwhelming general impression on international working-class opinion, however, will be that British colonial-imperialist decadence has been monumentally defeated.

What emerges is that Trimble & Co, facing certain defeat whatever they did, opted to put the best spin possible on the least immediately painful deal possible, and then nervously hoped for the best, Blair & Co likewise.

But the strain of the humiliation of all past arrogant bombast now destroyed  ‑ ("we will NEVER sit down to negotiate with representatives of armed terrorism until every last weapon and ounce of semtex has been destroyed", etc, etc) ‑ has split the Ulster Unionists all ends up:

For this is not just the end of this illegitimate dictatorial colonial paradise for the gerrymandering Orange bourgeoisie who will now have far less guaranteed (protection for the unchallengeable permanent rule which they relied upon previously (see below). This is also the shattering of the ages-old British imperialist mythology and dreams. British imperialism has been soundly routed yet again. Not only does the sun now no longer 'never set' on the British Empire. With the dismantling of this final internally-contested colony in Ireland, it can now be stated that the sun no longer ever even rises on the British Empire any more, anywhere (meaning the bully-boy Empire where the natives required periodically repressing to 'let them know their place'. Not in the Occupied Zone of Ireland any more.)

Trimble can boast all he likes about 'the Union being preserved', but it isn't so. Temporarily, 'Northern Ireland' was always going to continue for a while as transitional new arrangements for Ireland get under way, but British citizenship is all that is being preserved (for those that want it), ‑ which was always guaranteed anyway. "The territory of Northern Ireland as an inalienable part of Britain" is no more.

The six counties ripped out of Ireland at bayonet point in 1921 and run thereafter by an Orange-colonial dictatorship will now increasingly come under joint rule by Unionists and Irish in the local assembly, by Belfast and Dublin as far as the extensive new cross-border developments are concerned, and by Dublin and London on all matters of supreme legislative authority, ‑ as the Agreement itself makes abundantly clear:

Trimble's other boast of establishing the principle of consent is just mischievous nonsense.

In the first place, there has never existed any realistic programme for bulldozing the colonist community into the Irish Republic without any consultations and negotiations at all. The idea of paying the Unionists back for their own past tyranny by such ruthlessness might please children’s adventure book notions of come-uppance and justice, but more then one million utterly hostile (and armed and dangerous) Unionists in an all-island population of only 4 million would seem like a daft recipe for just more endless aggro,  ‑ IF the ending of the British colony could be negotiated in any other way.

Thus the more consent which can be wrung out of the disillusioned and demoralised parts of the Unionist community, the better it will be for the future all-island development of the new Ireland.

Secondly, the Unionist diehards real point about 'consent' was in fact their determination to continue a VETO on any change whatever to the colonial status quo they have enjoyed behind a police-military dictatorship since 1921. If they did not want any change, then there ought not to be any change. That is the foul nonsense the Unionists used to mean by 'consent'.  And it has been utterly obliterated.

In fact, the boot is now on the other foot entirely. It is the Irish nationalist interests in the occupied Zone who now hold the veto. If the Unionists do not cooperate sensibly with the new all-Ireland developments under the North-South ministerial council, then all activities in the assembly (where the Unionists will temporarily hold a majority, albeit only exercisable with at least 4C% minority consent), ‑  will come to a complete standstill.

Thus it is the nationalists who have the 'consent' veto, and in fact a double one.

And it is all of this which clearly made Trimble's party the nervous losers throughout the final negotiations, ‑  threatening to walk out, saying they could not touch the Agreement with a barge pole, and finally splitting anyway when no significant changes were made.

A lot of lying disinformation has been put out about Trimble's supposedly successful last-ditch intransigence which hack brain-drivel implied had won the Unionists huge last-minute concessions.

A more sober reading of the capitalist-press admissions shows this to be exaggerated nonsense:

But Trimble's propaganda antics and the support the capitalist press gave him only fooled the most gullible.

The smaller print of the bourgeois coverage admitted more of the truth, and Trimble's own Unionist constituency is making little secret of how crushed and humiliated it feels:

But all such threats of renewed 'loyalist' violence sound mostly like demoralised despair. British imperialist paralysis, stubbornness, and decrepitude has been the key to Unionist intransigence, and that has now been broken for ever by the masterly Sinn Fein political organisation and diplomatic fight, and by the unbeatable armed guerrilla war by the IRA; in its final years blasting Britain's major cities at a totally unacceptable cost in terms of damage, humiliation, and lost prestige and business confidence. Blair had to agree.

The bourgeois Orange ruling class seem to be taking their cue from London too, leaving the Unionist firebrands, and the shamefaced sour losers alike, out on a limb:

In spite of all this evidence that the old colonial regime is indeed on its way out for good, ‑  quite like Smith's Rhodesian colonial supremacists and De Klerk's South African colonial supremacists beforehand, ‑  some bourgeois ideological idiocy is still trying to insist that it is Sinn Fein/IRA who have given up, and that the nationalists gave way on every contentious issue, such as 'abandoning the Irish constitutional claim to the occupied territory in the north', etc.

This is more academic gibberish, particularly favoured by the Trot petty bourgeoisie. Every contested negotiating position was a win for the nationalists, since every single change is an advance on the previous colonial-dictatorship status quo which has prevailed since 1921. And the point about the re-drafting of the Irish Constitution to include the notion of reunification of Ireland by consent is utterly irrelevant. The Green Tory guardians of the Irish Constitution have done nothing to finally drive out British imperialism and end the colonial status of the north. It has been the entire triumph of Sinn Fein and the IRA. The Irish Constitution has played. no part, and rewording it to embrace 'consent reunification' makes no difference to anything. It is purely academic.

Again, the capitalist press's own score of 'points won and lost', ‑  all false because all the changes are solely a victory for nationalism, nevertheless fails to hide the whole broad picture of British colonial retreat:

Unabashed, Trot defeatism relentlessly ploughs-on insisting that 'all-powerful' imperialism has forced IRA/Sinn Fein to give up the fight. The CPGB Weekly Worker report presents the entire historic change as just the achievement of Mitchell, Clinton, Blair, and Ahern. Sinn Fein and the IRA apparently have had nothing to do with it, incredibly enough.
 
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For anyone who doubts the imperialist sincerity of the British government. just take a stroll around the castle buildings at Stormont or the government quarters in Dublin. British and Irish officials are burning the midnight oil. The current level of diplomatic activity has been described as "feverish". 

"More work has been done in the past week than in the previous umpteen months,". Tony Blair is now in Belfast to help the final push for 'peace'.

It has not been an easy ride for Mitchell or the forces of imperialism. The 'peace' process is inherently volatile. Crisis, setbacks and delays can surface at any time. This is clear. Hardly surprisingly. the US senator has been less than happy with the conduct over recent day,, of Blair and Bertie Ahern. The Irish prime minister.

It requires some very deft manoeuvring on behalf of the British and Irish governments. Just one clumsy move there, one awkward or badly formulated phrase here. and perhaps ... 

But bit by bit. talk by talk. deal by deal. the forces of revolutionary nationalism ‑ and those of counterrevolutionary loyalism ‑ are being drawn into the diplomatic net. After years of hardship and frustration. the carrot being dangled by Mitchell and his backers might prove too hard to refuse. Lord Alderdice of the 'non-sectarian', pro-union Alliance Party summed up the collective desires of the pro‑imperialist bourgeoisie in Northern Ireland: "Not only are most of the outline agreed. most of the detail is too. We are looking to get there. It's looking good". Even David Trimble sounded upbeat and positive:

Many are dubbing the current negotiations 'Sunningdale II'.

However, the differences far outnumber the similarities. The general world situation has changed out of virtually all recognition. The ignoble collapse of the 'socialist bloc' left only one superpower on the map  ‑ US imperialism. Naturally. the vastly increased clout of American imperialism narrowed the scope for manoeuvre for national liberation movement. Hence the defeat or ‑  usually ‑ the integration of revolutionary nationalist organisations (ANC. PLO. etc) into the imperialist framework. Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat arc now loyal accomplices to the imperialists' plans and schemes.

Crucially. at Sunningdale the paramilitary forces were on the outside. frowning and scowling in. Now they are talking from the inside.

Sinn Fein/IRA might well acquiesce to an imperialist-driven deal. The pressure is immense.

As a petty bourgeois nationalist movement it is inevitably pulled between the rock of guerillaism and the hard place of secretive. back-handed diplomacy with the imperialists  ‑  with the oppressed masses acting as pawns. 

As pan of the overall imperialist package, a snap referendum will be held on April 23 both north and south. with elections to the assembly this summer. The Blairite passion for rule by referendum  ‑ i.e.. from above ‑  continues.

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This is all the most insulting counter-revolutionary idiocy, sneered out by cringing petty-bourgeois anti-communists whose purely academic 'revolutionary' posturing only gets its own conceited satisfaction out of carping at all serious anti-imperialist struggles in the world, past and present.

The imperialist input has been solely to authorise acknowledgment of the national-liberation victory and put as much propaganda spin as possible on the developments to play down the revolutionary defeat of British colonialism, especially its armed guerrilla-war aspects by a determined theoretically-astute minority movement.

The long-drawn-out decline of British imperialism, ‑ self-deluding, sclerotic, and paralysed, has caused a huge embarrassing problem for world monopoly-capitalism by getting embroiled in a brutal but failed colonial war against the Irish national-liberation movement. Having accepted defeat finally, world imperialism was on hand to help Britain quieten the outraged colonial diehards, and cover up the message of the armed revolutionary 'terrorist' triumph as best possible, ‑  for the sake of what little of the tottering 'New World Order' is still in place, besieged by uncontrollable world imperialist economic crisis and potentially catastrophic inter-imperialist trade-war upheavals, to be followed for certain by devastating slump and massive revolutionary unrest everywhere.

Bourgeois nationalist achievements are obviously not the final solution against imperialist crisis, ‑  neither in Palestine, South Africa, or Ireland. But no one ever said they were, merely an inevitable stage in those cases on the way towards a proletarian socialist revolutionary ultimate settlement of accounts with decaying imperialist domination and economic exploitation, everywhere.

But only posturing counter-revolutionaries could fail to honour the tremendous achievements of national-liberation struggles when they occur, as in Ireland now. And the greatest value of all from this long-inevitable victory (as the EPS Review has explained and chronicled for 18 years) is the emancipation at last of the British working class from being corrupted partners in ongoing colonial repression of Ireland, which would have guaranteed for eternity their own continued repression and exploitation. Socialism can now move forward in Ireland and Britain. Build Leninism. '

EPSR 946 (14/4/98)

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Three years later, the drift of the Good Friday Agreement towards Irelands reunification is not yet established fact, but the direction dictated by the historical balance of class forces becomes visibly clearer all the time.

But face-saving remains a huge concern for imperialism as the world economic crisis deepens relentlessly towards a renewed communist revolutionary epoch. Anti-communist propaganda will pour out more biliously than ever, plus stunts like the Hague Tribunal for allegedly catching 'War Criminals' to take attention away from imperialism's everyday exploitation barbarism blighting hundreds of millions of lives on every continent, and preparing to drag them into trade-war turmoil and inter-imperialist shooting-war savagery at almost any moment, ‑ all courtesy of the "Western way of life and its high ethical and moral standards, and its honourably democratic way of sorting out all human problems without violence", etc, etc.

Picking on Balkans civil-war brutalities (wars which imperialist economic intervention unleashed in the first place to deliberately break up the Yugoslav Socialist Federation and to blitzkrieg to destruction its main protagonist Serbia, and main obstacle to an imperialist economic takeover) is an obscene joke while the US, French, and British political and military authors of colonial-war barbarism on Vietnam, Algeria, Malaysia, and 400 other acts of imperialist domineering invasion, counter-revolution, and coup-making in modern times, with literally millions of brutalised victims, ‑  still not just walk free but still rule the world.

Anti-communist propaganda has brainwashed the entire fake 'left' on all subjects. Instead of an answer to counter-revolution, their confusion helps breed and protect counterrevolution. Build Leninism. EPSR