Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

Unwelcome visitors

A Chairde,

I was delegated by the Troops Out Movement to observe the contentious Orange Order/UVF march along the Springfield Road on Saturday 28 June.

I was among the 50 or so allowed through the very intimidating police line that kept the nationalist residents from their own street, while the Orange Order/UVF marched through that same street displaying UVF emblems and carrying UVF flags (that were banned from the march). Then again, they were also banned from stopping at intervals and from playing their music (they ignored those bans too).

The Parades Commission placed restrictions on the march and the Orange Order/UVF did as they pleased.

The march passed off peacefully thanks to the patience and fortitude of the beleaguered residents. On the day itself, Tom Hartley, Sean Murray and Frances McAuley were a reassuring and much appreciated presence for the residents.

It was a day I'll never forget. The ugliness of the contorted, aggressive faces of the marchers compared to the weary, exasperated faces of the residents was striking to behold.

There were shouts of abuse from loyalists across the small field on the Springfield Road as we left and a couple of them made sure that we saw their two fingered gestures. It was comforting to observe that not one of the targets of this abuse reacted to it.

My lasting memory of the day will be the declaration of willingness to enter into dialogue shown by the residents, displayed by their 'Orange - it's Good to Talk' banner, compared with the overt, blatant, bigoted triumphalism shown by the Orange Order/UVF marchers.

Jim Murphy
Troops Out Movement

Engaging with civil society

A Chairde,

I have noted with great interest the recent debate in An Phoblacht sparked by Justin Moran's article, Left Turn Needed. This debate is indeed healthy and necessary for our struggle at all times but particularly at this critical period, when our activists are preparing for power across the island - local power and political strength in the short term and eventual national power in the medium to long term.

I believe Declan Kearney's contribution best summarised and articulated our immediate task as activists engaged in the various sites of struggle. It is critical that we as activists can strategically relate our individual efforts to the overall collective objective of our struggle, a socialist republic.

Let me elaborate. The Italian socialist, Antonio Gramsci, understood as far back as the 1930s that the ruling classes controlled society with the consent of civil society. Prior to the advent of universal suffrage, the ruling classes had ensured their hegemony through outright oppression and subjugation of the working classes. However, the evolution of complex, democratic forms of governance posed a new challenge.

Gramsci noted that the ruling classes had now ensured their primacy by throwing the crumbs from their table to the pillars of civil society, the churches, the community sector, the trade unions, the sporting and cultural organisations etc, in order to buy their consent. Seventy years on, not much has changed.

Gramsci observed that in order to reverse this hegemony and particularly in our contemporary Irish context, we must win back civil society. He put particular emphasis on the use of language by revolutionaries to convince the various components of civil society to come on board their struggle. He argued that the language of the revolutionary must not threaten those we wish to convince. Our language has to be inclusive.

Of course, there are those in civil society who will never subscribe to the vision of An Ireland of Equals, but there are many more who are energised and enthused by the application of our struggle. Remember that for a brief moment in June 2001, we Irish republicans had reversed their hegemony in the first Nice referendum. OK, it was a short-lived victory but nobody said it would be easy.

Republicans across the Island of Ireland need to internalise this concept. Every time you reach out to a unionist, a trade unionist or your local community group, you are advancing the overall struggle. As Bobby Sands said when referring to our prison struggle, "What we win in here, we win for the Republic".

So comrades, while we may use a different language at times or apply different tactics, our ultimate objective remains. Tá an lá ag teacht.

Cllr Pádraig Mac Lochlainn
Buncrana
Co. Donegal

Right to reply times two

A Chairde,

In response to Chris Guthrie (Mala Poist, 3 July), he asks if Sinn Féin wants to follow the route of the Independent Working Class Association and Red Action (www.redaction.org - well worth checking out). In actual fact, it is Red Action who are following in our footsteps, building a working class base through community work. The IWCA have achieved startling success (far more than the Socialist Alliance), including polling ahead of the SSP in Glasgow at the recent council elections.

Indeed, the SSP may have six MSPs, but that figure, inflated by the 'list' system, belies the lack of solid local support that is reflected in the fact that the SSP has only two local councillors across the country. This indicates that the support it attracts is a transient 'floating' vote that will return to Labour when the leadership of Blair is ended. Indeed, the SSP may be a rag-tag bunch, and proud of it, but I wouldn't be wrong in saying there is a serious schism opening up within the party, instigated by the Socialist Workers Party, who joined the SSP en masse, and who seek to monopolise every organisation they join. I would be interested to hear how Chris proposes this be dealt with.

In response to James Moore, I am not suggesting that we woo the middle-class. I am in fact suggesting that we speak to the working class in a language that does not evoke the tyranny of the Soviet Union, or the incompetence of other 'socialist' parties.

Let us look at some of the parties who espouse socialism: there's the Socialist Workers Party, a sloganeering, politically infantile outfit, seemingly with no raison-d'Ítre beyond consuming and expunging a steady stream of guilt-ridden middle-class kids. Their concerns are not the concerns of the working people, but rather the patronising and elitist concerns of the dogmatist, the ideologist, and the moral judge. They are more concerned with bluster and rhetoric than with addressing the urgent concerns of ordinary people.

There is the Socialist Party, an organisation so enamoured of itself and its impeccable militant credentials that they will not even join a protest on level terms with Sinn Féin, preferring to call us bourgeoisie nationalists.

Rather than allow ourselves to be goaded into defending our radical credentials by the bedfellows of Orangeism on this island, we should concentrate on exploiting the very real opportunities that exist for the left to flourish and grow, and for its principal agitator, in the form of Sinn Féin, to build political strength. We can thus to deliver the real change that is so urgently required, rather than bicker about the one issue which the public couldn't give two hoots about - ideological purity.

It is a terrible pity that it should be so, but the notion of socialism is now a notion that is almost exclusively attached to parties like those mentioned above. As a result of their totally misguided and useless activity, the public (and I'm talking here of the working class) now sees socialism as a weak, irrelevant and inoperable system, whose proponents should be kept out of government at all costs.

I am a socialist, but I don't have a problem in jumping from a sinking ship. The real litmus test of our radicalism is in the policies we propose to implement. Let's get that right, and not be worrying about what to call it!

Brendan Hogan,
Dublin

Oil wars

A Chairde,

I believe that it has become clear that the main threat posed by Iraq appears to have been the possibility that the UN was going to lift sanctions and that the oil embargo was a failure. The stage was set for Iraq to flood the world market with cheap oil.

This would have been a relief for most Americans, and I am sure, most Europeans by providing lower fuel prices. This same relief would be a nightmare for the over-extended, inefficient, archaic and unresponsive petroleum companies. The corrupt governments of the Middle East would also have come crashing down as their only source of revenue dried up.

All of this would spell disaster for big oil companies and even Britain, which is apparently heavily dependent on income from British Petroleum and North Sea Oil. Without artificially high prices, the fragile British economy would shatter.

In my opinion, Mr Blair would need to broadcast that Iraq did possess chemical weapons, but apparently they were in the form of oil, kerosene and gasoline, and he would not need to tell us that.

BP has gasoline stations at nearly every highway exit on the eastern seaboard and in the midwest of the US. BP controls nearly 80% of the oil reserves in the State of Wyoming, Mr Cheney's home state. BP has huge operations in Texas.

Alfred Lee Brock
Canton MI
USA