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Bob Armstrong

CP Policy in Ireland

Socialist Appeal Supplement, Mid-August 1944

Copied with thanks from the Workers’ Republic Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

“... The Communist Party proposes that the Labour Movement makes clear where it stands on the question of partition by declaring that its policy is to recognise the present constitutional position and to establish a Labour Government in Northern Ireland that will fight to maintain and vastly improve the present social services.” Statement by CP Secretary published in Unity, organ of the Irish Communist Party, June 29th.

In the autumn of 1941 the southern section of the Irish Communist Party dissolved. It had lost confidence in itself. Its campaign to end neutrality and drag Éire into the wake of Britain’s war machine had met with such ill success among the workers, that the disheartened CP members had soon abandoned even the pretence of carrying out party activity.

In Ulster the Stalinists made headway only among a section of Protestant workers who, while ready for a social change, could still be deceived for a time into accepting the “tactic” of collaborating with the Brooke and Churchill Governments. Among the nationalist workers anger and contempt was evoked by the CP’s servile cringing before Imperialism and Orange reaction. As these workers form an important section of the working class the Stalinist Party was loath to forfeit all influence over them. From time to time, therefore, they dropped hints and half-hints designed to fool the nationalists. “Wait until the war is over, until after Russia’s victory”, they boasted, “and then you will see it is we who are the true revolutionaries.” Meanwhile, they scoldingly appealed to the Imperialists to undergo a change of heart and act like true democrats. They condemned the name “Imperialism”, all the while continuing to serve the system under the guise of furthering the democratic war effort.

Recent diplomatic events, however, have forced the Stalinists to desist from even this poor and unconvincing show of shadow-boxing at Imperialism, and to emerge demonstratively into the open as the avowed upholders of the British occupation. On July 23rd the new pro-partition policy was officially sanctioned by the Party. The Stalinist leaders have set themselves the goal of immediately winning 250 new members. How many existing members they will lose they do not predict.
 

Who Benefits By Partition?

Partition operated exclusively in the interests of reaction. In the first place, it is the most convenient method whereby British Imperialism can maintain a bridgehead in Ireland. Secondly, partition is necessary for the Ulster employers who thrive on British subsidies and Imperial orders; and it brings a further financial gain and political advantage through the division it creates among the workers. Even the Catholic Church derives a measure of benefit from the partitioned condition of the country, although it must perforce make a show of passively opposing partition in order to avoid running counter to the nationalist aspirations of its members; for every weakness and division among the workers strengthens the authority and influence of the Church. To a degree also partition brings advantages to the de Valera regime which, while genuinely fearing the bridgehead in the North, knows how skillfully to divert the attention of the workers away from the domestic class struggle.

To the workers, partition is an unmitigated evil. To the Northern nationalist workers it has always meant pogroms, police repression and job victimisation. Without the existence of a nationalist minority, with its alleged threat to Protestant interests, the Tory Unionists could not have maintained their long monopoly of power. Toryism, therefore, deliberately foments acts of violence and fosters the spirit of republican rebellion through its system of persecution and discrimination in order to keep at bay a still more formidable opponent – a united working class which before long would thrust them from the citadels of power.

The gains derived from partition by the Protestant workers are of a purely illusory nature. It is true that social services are maintained at approximately the British standard and that the level of Ulster employment depends largely upon the orders placed by the Imperial State. Against these gains, however, must be set the enervating working-class split which ensures the dominance of an employers’ Government at Stormont. The Protestant workers feel they would starve in a capitalist Ireland divorced from the British connection. But it is absolutely false to pose the question to the workers as though their only choice lies between Imperialist Westminster and de Valera’s Dáil. Mass pauperisation is inevitable under any and every form of capitalist rule. Internationalism socialism alone can ensure a fresh upswing of the productive forces.
 

A “Progressive” Labour Government

It is among the Protestant workers that the Stalinists hope to win favour for their new partition policy. But they are reckoning without their host. True enough, the erstwhile leader of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, Midgeley, was able to gain a victory over his Tory opponent in the Protestant constituency of Willowfield in 1942 by combining pro-Partition speeches with reformist demagogy. However, the political psychology of the workers is not something fixed for all time. A few years hence 1942 will seem like a century ago. The colossal post-war unemployment will set the task of completely reconstructing society urgently upon the order of the day. Only the most radical solutions will satisfy the workers who are not prepared to starve on the pittances doled out to a partitioned province by an impoverished Imperialist exploiter.

The unfolding social revolution in Europe which will sweep away all State frontiers will give them encouragement and a programme for Internationalist socialist co-operation. It is towards this glorious end that the thoughts and activities of the genuine communists, the Trotskyists, are directed.

The Stalinists, on the other had, are preparing to assist in the ghoulish work of maintaining the decrepit capitalist system. But like the reformist Labour bureaucrats they are compelled to cover up the counter-revolutionary nature of the work under the guise of doing things by stages, of not leaping too far ahead and alienating the backward workers and the middle class. Right now the Stalinists unswervingly support the sectarian Brooke Government. After the peace, however, they promise to return to the arena of the class struggle by working to secure the victory of a progressive Labour Government. If the Labourites make it clear that they are against going back into a united Ireland, say the Stalinists, the Protestants will have no cause to vote Tory. This tactic of beating the Tories at their own game by posing as ardent defenders of the Ulster border is worthless even from the narrow and unprincipled standpoint of vote-catching. The most backward section among the Protestants will still vote Unionist; the moderately advanced sections among the Catholics will abstain; while the really advanced workers on both sides of the community if they can be persuaded to vote at all will do so gritting their teeth.

The Stalinist demand for a progressive Labour Government has nothing in common with the Trotskyist slogan of Labour to Power which is designed to win the advanced workers away from the Labour bureaucracy by exposing its refusal to carry through a genuine socialist programme. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of a progressive Labour Government which will uphold partition, for partition aids only the reaction. A Labour Government elected on a pledge to maintain the present constitutional position of Ulster will be forced to employ the same ruthless measures as its Tory predecessors. Those who elect it to office and those who uphold it through grants and financial subsidies will insist upon this. Nor will a Labour regime at Westminster alter things. Shinwell, a semi-leftist, has recently sworn to defend Britain’s right to the spoils of Empire against all comers. A Shinwell type of Government will surely insist upon the maintenance of law and order on the Ulster bridgehead.
 

The Real Reason For A New Turn

Decades and even centuries of peaceful cohabitation, and collaboration between Imperialism and the Soviet Union are envisaged by the leading Stalinist spokesmen such as Earl Browder. A lasting post-war partnership between Stalin and British Imperialism is anticipated. It is here, in the diplomatic strategy of the Russian Government, that the true key to the new turn in Stalinist policy in Ireland is to be found. In brief, the pro-partition policy is not a clever scheme thought out in the fertile brain of some Ulster Stalinist ‘tactician’, planning to cadge the Tory vote by means of a trick, but presents itself logically as the Ulster CP’s contribution to this prospective Anglo-Russian alliance.

Workers! Fight in the ranks of the Fourth International for a United Workers’ Ireland and a Socialist United States of Europe!


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