WORLD

Have the
Provisionals
turned left?

Thirteen years after the Provisionals broke away from the Republican Move-
ment, the debate with the forces of the national struggle of the Irish people
continues unabated. This assessment in a recent issue of the Irish Socialist,
newspaper of the Irish Communist Party, will help Tribune readers grapple with
the complex issues behind what continues to be a major story. ae

By CORMAC O’RYAN

The ghosts of 1969 must surely have
been hovering around Dublin’s Mansion
House last month when Provisional Sinn
Féin held its conference, a conference
which saw the departure of Ruairi
O’Bradaigh from the presidency and the
further consolidation of their positions
by Gerry Adams, the new president, and
those associated with him.

There is undoubtedly a process of
change and development going on inside
the Provisional ranks, but there are still
sO many inconsistencies and contradic-
tions that no definitive judgment can be
given as to the significance of the changes
involved. :
The most glaring example, of course,
is Adams’ unequivocal condemnation of
no-warning car bombs, a method orig-
inated by the Provisional Irish Repub-
lican Army (IRA) and adopted more re-
cently by the Irish National Liberation
Army (INLA). But barely had Adams’
condemnation been made, and with Mar-
tin McGuinness of Derry having just
similarly condemned an INLA no-warn-
ing bomb in Strabane, than the Pro-
visionals answered Adams’ own speech
with a no-warning bomb in Armagh in
which a Unionist councillor and Ulster
Defence Regiment (UDR) major, but
reputedly a man with a good record
against sectarianism, was blown to bits.

What made this death most ironic was
the fact that the dead man, to the bigotted
f fury of the Paisleyites, had just spoken in
i condemnation of the sectarian murder of
Adrian Carroll.

Clearly, there are elements still
strongly entrenched within the Pro-
visional ranks who disagree with this _
latest new departure.

British trooper holds riot gun which
fires either CS gas or plastic bullets.
Scores of people, including six chil-
dren have been killed and injured by
such weapons.

And obviously the Adams’ wing will
be mindful of the lessons of 1969, and
anxious to avoid provoking a split by
trying to go too far too fast. So, it is
probable that there are aspects of state-
ments which are made to ensure the

broadest appeal of the ‘‘political’’ ap- :

proach now being adopted.

Lesson of 1969

But, it should also be remembered that
it is highly unlikely that Adams or his
closest collaborators really have that
clearly worked out a strategy. They
themselves are in the process of
development, and their ideas will un-
doubtedly mature as experience teaches
its own harsh lessons of life.

But having entered on to political ter-
rain the Provisionals must now confront
those realities on the ground, and it is in
the manner with which they either con-
front or avoid those realities that the real
significance of their left direction can be
found.

Certainly, there was much to remind
us, listening to the speeches at the Pro-
visional conference, of the very same
speeches, sometimes made by the very
same people, made to the Split con-
ference of 1970. The issues of abstention,
the facing-up to the reality that the
Southern state, despite its strongly en-
trenched Free State inheritance, is not
entirely synonymous with the British
puppet set up in 1921, and the recognition
of relating the struggle for national unity
and independence to the day-to-day so-
cial and economic problems of the
people were exactly the questions which
provoked the Provisionals to break away
from the Republican Movement in
1969/70.

Cautions Sympathy

And so radicai republicans and
socialists will be cautiously sympathetic
to these latest developments, just as they
were sympathetic to the emergence of
the Officials over 10 years ago.

But there is one major difference be-
tween the two developments. The. Of-
ficials recognized and made acentral part
of their practice the fact that the Protes-
tant section of the Irish people could not
just be ignored or written off. There is as
yet no similar recognition from the
Adams’ wing.

And while New Eire’s federal propos-
als may have been utopian, they con-
tained at least a rhetorical gesture to the
Protestants. By contrast, the best that
Adams could offer in his presidential ad-
dress was a vague commitment to the
Protestants’ right to be involved in shap-
ing an independent Ireland after that in-
dependence has been secured.

And despite all the talk of political
orientations, there is no real awareness
evident of how damaging the armed
struggle is to that very objective of
achieving unity and independence.

Let Adams’ words speak for them-
selves: ‘‘We support the use of force in
the struggle for Irish independence, but
once this is secured the shaping of that
independent Ireland is a matter for the
Irish people. The Protestant people have

Combining the social and national questions facing Ireland is the only sure
road to progress, writes O’Ryan, a minority will not win a military victory over
Britain. Photo: Irish Children talking to British troops in Belfast.

as much right to a fully and equal
involvement in this process as any Other
section of the Irish people. ...”’
Adams certainly seems to be conced-
ing that the armed struggle alienates the
Protestants. We would add that by doing
so it strengthens sectarianism, makes
united action by the working class more
and more difficult to achieve, and iso-
lates republicanism not just from the
Protestant minority, but from the large
majority of the Irish people as a whole.

Revulsion to Armed Struggle

The reaction in the South to the armed
struggle, as the Communist Party
pointed out at its 18th National Con-

_gress, is overwhelmingly one of revul-

sion and non-comprehension. While,
British atrocities do stir public feeling,
the armed struggle continues to divert
that feeling into quiescence and resig-
nation.

At its most basic, a minority will not
win a military victory over Britain. Only
a united people could hope to do that.
With the Protestants uniformly hostile,
with the South largely apathetic, the
Provisionals have never even been able
to enjoy majority support among North-
ern Catholics. Even if they succeed in
replacing the Social Democratic and
Labor Party (SDLP) as the dominant
voice of the Northern Catholics, the Pro-
visionals cannot still realistically hope
for military victory.

Now possibly some of the more think-
ing elements, associated with Adams,
may recognize this reality. But until the
Provisionals as a whole face up to the
reactionary impact of the armed struggle,
all the other positive features of their
recent development will count for little.

And the Provisionals will need to do

_ some serious thinking about the Protes-

tants, before their radicalism can be said_
to be on secure foundations.

Of course, there are other weak-
nesses. The commitment to radical social
and economic policies is vague and with
little concrete understanding shown of
the complex interrelation of various as-
pects of imperialism. But the Officials
were equally vague in 1970 and many
would argue that they are as vague to-
day. If the Provisionals are genuine they
will learn from experience, and become
sharper in the presentation of their
views.

But the strongest warning that the

Communist Party would give to the
working class in evaluating the Pro-
visionals is that traditional elitism of

republicanism. The Workers’ Party, for
example, has ceased in all practical
senses to be republican at all, but it is still
elitist, still hostile to co-operation with
other forces, still Ourselves Alone.

And this is even more true of the Pro-
visionals. The examples of the H-Block
campaign and of their approach to long-
serving community activists show that
the advancement of the organization
quite often takes precedence over the
advancement of the issues on which they
campaign.

But the working class must realize that
the only sure road to progress in our
country is through the organized working
class movement itself. We cannot tail
behind other class forces. Our task is to
politicize our own organizations, such as
the trades unions and tenants’ asso-
ciations, to combine in the only really
meaningful way the social and national
questions in principled unity of action.

Common Market Threat

And this means that we c::nnot sacri-
fice basic principles because of some
semi-mystical abstentionism within the
Provisionals. For example, the Common
Market is a powerful threat to the rights
and interests of the Irish people; any
extension of its role in Irish life, such as
an extension of the powers of the Com-
mon Market Assembly is a direct threat
to our own, albeit truncated, democracy.

How then can we evaluate the Pro-
visionals’ decision to take seats if elected
in this most foreign of foreign parlia-
ments. By pledging themselves to take
seats in the Common Market Assembly,
the Provisionals, for all their verbal
opposition to the Common Market are
helping to strengthen the status of Com-
mon Market institutions in Ireland.

And they do this, not because they
believe in it, nor because they don’t
understand the implications, but for
internal opportunist reasons: this is a
way of by-passing the abstention policy
vis-a-vis Leinster House (the parliament)
and of maintaining maximum political
pressure on the SDLP.

We communists do not take a negative
attitude to the developments inside the
Provisionals. But we believe that it
would be wrong to over-estimate the
significance of what is taking place, and
doubly wrong to forget that the working
class must play its own role in the na-
tional struggle, and a leading role at that.

Reprinted from Irish Socialist,
Dec. 1983

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 15, 1984

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