Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! no. 14 November/December 1981
On Friday 9 October an important debate took place in Conway Hall, London between the RCG and the CPGB. Over 100 people attended the meeting which was chaired by Alistair Logan.
In South Africa, El Salvador, Ireland and throughout the world imperialist rule is in crisis as the oppressed and revolutionary peoples fight to throw off the yoke of domination. Here in Britain forces are emerging in the working class to challenge and defy the imperialist state. Striving to hold back the development of a revolutionary movement in Britain are the imperialist Labour Party and trade union leadership. Nowhere is the test of a revolutionary anti-imperialist organisation more clearly shown than in its attitude to the Irish liberation struggle, a struggle that strikes at the heart of British imperialism.
The RCG’s position is well known – full and unconditional support to the Irish struggle and its vanguard, the Republican movement. The defeat of British imperialism in Ireland is vital both as the precondition for the emancipation of the Irish working class and also the key to the socialist revolution in Britain. We call for self-determination for the Irish people and troops out now. The CPGB, on the other hand, attacks the Republican movement on the grounds that its struggle divides the working class and sets back the struggle for socialism in Ireland. The CPGB does not call for troops out now, but for an end to repression and for various reforms on the part of British imperialism. Recently many CPGB members and readers of the Morning Star have become disturbed by this and by the apparent contradiction that the CPGB supports the ANC’s armed struggle in South Africa but not the IRA’s in Ireland. The CP has been forced to try to explain this in the Morning Star, in letters to Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and now in this public debate.
Speaking for the CPGB Chris Myant began, as is customary, by declaring the support of the Communist Party for the right of the Irish people to self-determination, but went on to denounce the actual struggle being waged to achieve self-determination. He soon revealed the real concern of the CPGB when he said
‘the British government has not been able to find any stable basis upon which to build some alternative authority to run that area’.
The CPGB cannot admit that the only ‘stable basis’ for British rule in Ireland is the crushing of the opposition to that rule. The CPGB is critical of British repression but its criticism is that British repression far from crushing that opposition creates ever greater revolutionary threats to its rule in Ireland.
He repeated the petit bourgeois fantasy that since the early 1960s British imperialism has been trying to reform its rule in Ireland. This merely spreads the illusion that British imperialism is capable of reforming itself when the fact is that British imperialism is not capable of playing a democratic or progressive role either in Ireland or anywhere else.
Declaring that partition is the basis of the division of the Irish working class he went on to denounce those who are fighting against partition – the IRA, whose military campaign had, said Myant, ‘consolidated and deepened the basis on which partition rests’. His alternative? ‘Political’ campaigning around issues which could create unity with Loyalist workers. To reconcile the irreconcilable Chris Myant argued firstly that the reactionary standpoint of Loyalist workers was simply a matter of wrong ideas and secondly that there were other ‘issues’ which could unite Nationalist and Loyalist workers. He never said what these issues are. This is not surprising because they do not exist. His argument amounts to a call on the Nationalist workers to cease fighting partition and submit to imperialist rule, in order to unite with the agents of British rule: the Loyalists.
He denounced the H-Block campaign and the armed struggle on the grounds that it made unity around these phantom ‘other issues’ more difficult, and prevented the development of ‘mass politics’. The mass politics of the armed struggle and the massive support throughout Ireland for the hunger strikers was obviously not the type of mass politics Chris Myant wants to see in Ireland.
That Chris Myant and the CPGB were concerned to cover up the reactionary role played by the British Labour and trade union movement was finally confirmed when he said that only by ‘political’ campaigning on issues which unite the working class in the Six Counties would it be possible to
‘develop solidarity actions of a meaningful character in this country and unlock the power of the British Labour movement which in the past has played such a fine role in assisting colonial nations to achieve their national liberation’.
The British Labour and trade union movement has never given meaningful assistance to any national liberation struggle and has consistently betrayed the cause of the Irish people throughout this century. To call on the Irish people to cease their struggle for national liberation whilst waiting for the CPGB to unlock the power of the British Labour movement is nothing short of a surrender to British imperialism.
Speaking for the RCG Terry Marlowe began by stating that the war in Ireland is the central political issue facing the British working class. He explained that the world was divided between the imperialist nations and their supporters on the one hand, and the oppressed nations, and the Socialist countries on the other. Communists stand with the oppressed in their fight against imperialism and in so doing oppose all those elements within the working class that defend imperialism. Only by uniting with the oppressed people fighting imperialism can the British working class defeat its ruling class and win socialism. Imperialism creates not only revolutionary opposition amongst the oppressed but also a layer in the working class movement which is tied to imperialism by economic, political and social privilege: the labour aristocracy. This layer acts as a staunch defender of British imperialism within the working class.
He pointed to the example of the 1913 Dublin lockout in which it was the Labour Party and trade union leadership which destroyed British working-class solidarity with the Dublin workers and therefore aided the ruling class in defeating the Dublin workers. Today as in 1913 the struggle of the Irish people against British imperialism strikes at the very basis of not only imperialist rule but also of the very existence of this privileged and treacherous layer in the British working class. Therefore British communists give full and unconditional support to the struggle of the Irish people for self-determination. The CPGB had abandoned this and adopted instead the position of the labour aristocracy itself – for a ‘socialist colonial policy’. First put forward in the international working-class movement by Bernstein at the beginning of the century the argument for a ‘socialist colonial policy’ has been consistently exposed by communists as racist and reactionary.
In answer to Chris Myant’s demand for ‘peaceful mass politics’ he pointed out that the Irish people had tested this in the early Civil Rights movement and were beaten off the streets by the RUC/B-Specials/British army. They were therefore forced to take up the armed struggle in order to pursue their legitimate struggle for self-determination. Sectarianism was not a matter of wrong ideas but based on the material and social privilege granted to Loyalist workers in order to maintain their support for British imperialist rule and partition. The only way that the division of the Irish working class could be overcome was by destroying British rule and partition: the basis of that division. The IRA and INLA were therefore correct in pursuing the armed struggle to destroy partition. Imperialism can only rule by force and repression, it cannot be reformed, only destroyed. Its ‘democracy’ only exists so long as the results suit British imperialism. In the election of Bobby Sands, when the rules were changed to prevent other prisoners being elected, and in the 1918 election when Dáil Eireann was suppressed, this was proved. The only basis for progress in Ireland, and in Britain, is the defeat of British imperialist rule in Ireland.
By opposing the immediate withdrawal of British troops, denouncing the struggle for Irish national liberation and covering up for the imperialist Labour Party the CPGB had abandoned the communist position on Ireland and sided with reactionary British imperialism. Communists oppose any form of imperialist oppression, support the struggle of oppressed people against imperialism, whether it be the IRA in Ireland or the ANC in South Africa. They fight for the unity of the British working class with the Irish people against British imperialism and its agents in the British working-class movement.
The discussion that followed continued the sharp battle between the communist position and that of the petit bourgeois left. The first contribution from the RCT-Party exposed the unity of the Trotskyist petit bourgeois socialists and the CPGB – both placing conditions on their support for liberation movements. For Mike Freeman (RCT-P) this consisted of having a ‘responsibility as communists to point out the inadequacies of the programmes of the liberation movements in Southern Africa’ and their ‘tendencies to compromise with imperialism’. Loud cries of ‘Shame’ greeted this. Ironically, the IRA was excluded from RCT-P criticism on the grounds that the working class in Britain was already hostile to it! His final racist act was to exclude black people from the British working class by saying that the RCG had ‘turned away’ from the British working class and instead had turned to ‘Irish and black people’. Bert Ward the CPGB’s Irish organiser, said that the ANC’s armed struggle was justified whereas the IRA’s was not. In South Africa hundreds of people were murdered in police stations. ‘That’s not the situation and never was in Northern Ireland’. The British Government in 1977 promised not to use torture again and ‘you wouldn’t get the South Africans saying that’. Of course the CP ‘wasn’t satisfied’ with the police in Northern Ireland and believed there should be ‘better supervision’. The audience was aghast at these statements. But Bert Ward ploughed on telling them of the ‘greater possibilities for political action in Ireland than South Africa’. He quite ‘forgot’ the 14 shot in Derry – quite aside from Diplock Courts, Long Kesh, plastic bullets and Castlereagh torture centre.
David Reed for the RCG denounced the rank imperialist chauvinism of both the RCT-P and the CPGB for placing conditions on their support for anti-imperialist movements. He declared that communists cease to be communists if they refuse to support those who are fighting imperialism. He showed how this reactionary position had existed in the British working-class movement right back to the days when Marx and Engels combated those in the British movement who wanted to dictate and impose conditions on the Irish movement. He argued that the failure to support the democratic right of the Irish people to self-determination meant that the British working class was unable to defend its own rights, citing the existence of more than three million unemployed, bans on demonstrations and the complete failure to support the black and white youth being attacked and imprisoned following the summer risings. ‘Comrades’ he ended ‘we sign our own death warrant the moment we start insisting we will not support those comrades who are fighting for fundamental democratic rights, in this case the democratic right of self-determination . . . We destroy ourselves.’
Tom Durkin attempted to defend the CPGB claiming that they would call for the withdrawal of British troops . . . under certain conditions . . . to be laid down by the CPGB! Maxine Williams for the RCG attacked Bert Ward’s call for ‘better supervision’ of RUC torture asking who was to do the supervising? According to the CPGB none other than British imperialism. She denounced the racist ‘Big Brother’ attitude of the CPGB comparing it with that of Bill Sirs who wanted to go to South Africa to drag the black people of South Africa ‘out of the dark ages’. It was Bill Sirs and the CPGB who were in the dark ages because they were in the same imperialist camp. An Irish comrade from SLTOM bitterly attacked the CPGB’s constant obstruction of any attempt within the trade union movement to build support for the Irish people and condemned the CPGB’s refusal to support the hunger-strikers. Applause and laughter greeted his final remark that ‘I don’t understand why when I went to America they asked me if I was a member of the Communist Party . . . I’d have thought they would ask me to be a member of the Communist Party’!
Summing up Terry Marlowe accused the CPGB of using its membership to prevent the emergence of a solidarity movement in Britain. When was it ever a communist position to say to workers that we will only support armed resistance when imperialism has killed more than a certain number of people? Oppressed and revolutionary peoples throughout the world understood and supported the Irish liberation war but the CPGB used left phrases to cover up for imperialism and to tell Irish people that they should unite with their oppressors and support their own oppression. Chris Myant then retreated into the vaguest of vague phrases about ‘complex situations’ and ‘wider issues’ in a last-ditch attempt to defend the CPGB’s reactionary stand. The loud applause which greeted the RCG’s speaker left no doubt that most of the audience supported the revolutionary communist position.
It is not surprising that the Morning Star censored this significant debate by not printing any report. The contrast between the real communist position and the sham communism of the CPGB could not have been clearer. Moreover the CPGB is in deep crisis; riven by division, collapsing Morning Star sales and large numbers of resignations. On the question of Ireland the crisis is so acute that the EC dared not even put forward resolutions on the subject to this year’s Congress. Nor is the crisis confined to the Irish question. It slanders the Soviet Union, condemns the uprisings of black and white youth in Britain and dangles the illusory Left Alternative Programme as a solution to unemployment. It is not merely in relation to Ireland that the CPGB believes British imperialism can be reformed and progressive. This standpoint is the essence of all its positions and those in the CPGB who want to build a genuine communist movement must understand the connection between all its reformist positions – it has taken the side of British imperialism.
The CPGB’s days are numbered. Real revolutionary forces are emerging in Britain who will sweep the sham communists aside and, united with all oppressed peoples, build a genuine communist movement.
Trevor Rayne
