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1984-1

The Democratic Socialist, Vol. 1, No.3, Jan - Feb. 1984

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~in this issue:---.... page , SOCIALISTS AND THE CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE-EAST Manus O'Riordan 1 .. "REPARTITION" AN OPTION? John Minihane 8 "COMMITMENT OF THE MILLIONS"- A YUGOSLAV VIEW ON WORKERS' CONTROL 11 REVIEW: THE "FIELD DAY" PAMPHLETS John Minihane 13 THE W.P. IN PERSPECTIVE Philip O'Connor 16 DSP SUBMISSION ON THE "KENNY REPORT" 20 LETTERS: 1. Politics and "rigorous analysis" 2. Farmers' incomes 23 PERSPECTIVES ON EUROPE'S DEFENCE Stephen McCarthy 24

Discussion Journal of the D.S.P. Price £ 1 D.S.P. MIDDLE EAST POLICY IN PERSPECTIVE Denis O'Connor's article in the first national conflict. One of the corres­ issue of The Democratic Socialist ponding right-wing curse-words which contains one mistaken quotation in leaves me equally unmoved is "terrorist". respect of Resolution E2 (which both of My objection to the P.L.O. is not that us supported at the February 1983 DSP it employs "terrorist" methods of Conference), and several misconceptions struggle, but that the ultimate objective • regarding the content and purpose of of that struggle is the liquidation of DSP Policy Statement E3 on the Israeli­ the State of Israel. If the P.L.O. was Palestinian Conflict (against which he genuinely prepared to limit its objectives spoke at that Conference). to the establishment of a West Bank State guaranteeing both peace and As regards resolution E2, DSP proposal security to the neighbouring State of (f) as adopted by the Conference, Israel, the P.L.O. 's use of "terrorist" actually reads as follows:- methods of struggle against the Israeli occupation would not in the least deter "The return to the Arabs of territories me from supporting them in their occupied after the 1967 war, thereby pursuit of such a revised objective. providing the land on which the Unfortunately, however, the P.L.O. has Palestinian people are entitled to set its face more firmly than ever establish a state of their own". against any such revision.

As regards the DSP Policy Statement, What does it mean to say that the D.S.P. Denis O'Connor sums up his criticism of Policy Statement is "pro-Zionist"? If it as follows:- "Zionism" is taken to mean the continued Israeli occupation and settle­ "In summary the presentation of the ment of the West Bank, well then the subject in E3 is essentially pro-Zionist D.S.P. would have to be described as and anti-Arab." decidedly "anti-Zionist". What if the term Zionism is more realistically Sincethe charge of being "pro-Zionist and widened to embrace the policies of the anti-Arab" has been used by both the Opposition Labour Party? That Party trendy New Left and the pro-Soviet Old calls for Israeli withdrawal from the Left for the purpose of inducing a very West Bank but also speaks of the definite reflex reaction among resulting Arab sovereignty over the socialists, one might be tempted to regained West Bank territories as con­ defend the DSP Policy Statement by stituting part of a Jordanian-Palestinian indignantly and immediately denying any State which must embrace the East Bank such charge - lock, stock and barrel. as well. Accordingly, it would still In order to highlight the complexities be a total misrepresentation of the of the issues raised however, I will D.S.P. Policy Statement to describe it limit my immediate response to a quite as "pro-Zionist", since our Party is emphatic denial that the policy can in quite explicit about its support for the any respect be regarded as anti-Arab. principle of an independent Palestinian The charge of being "pro-Zionist" is in State on the West Bank. But Zionism effect a more meaningless one, rather cannot be given even that limiting akin to the charge that the DSP Policy definition. Zionism per se is notbing on Northern Ireland is "pro-British" or more or less than the belief in an even "West British". It is, however, independent Israeli State. It is an worth looking at some of the wide Israeli's attitude to the corresponding variety of possible meanings of the issue of an independent Palestinian "pro-Zionist" charge before deciding on State which then defines what kind of whether or not such a description has Zionist he/she is. For example, the any actual application to the DSP Programme of the democratic socialist Policy Statement. Shelli Party for Peace and Equality, which was confirmed at its Congress in WHAT DOES "PRO-ZIONIST" MEAN? May of this year, states the following set of principles:- "Pro-Zionist" has now become one of those stock left-wing curse words that "Zionism is the national liberation is more often than not designed to movement of the Jewish people. It silence an opponent rather than encourage expresses the will of Jews to concentrate an un-biased examination of what in their homeland and to live and to political developments are required for prosper as a part of the family of a just solution to a very complex nations. It expresses the wish to have 2. self-sovereignty in the State of Israel A POLICY STATEMENT FOR AN IRISH AUDIENCE The Shelli Party sees itself as a The fact that the tone of the D.S.P. full partner to the Zionist aims ... policy statement avoids the use of Shelli thinks that the Palestinian language which could be used to generate people have an equal right, as do the an emotional involvement on either side Jews, for self-determination •.. The of the conflict is perhaps another • Jewish members of Shelli are Zionists. factor which leads Denis O'eonnor to some Their immediate aim is to rescue Zionism misconceptions concerning the character from the chauvinistic right wing that of that policy. He objects .' • drowns it in an ocean of settlements in that the quotations which it contains the conquered areas, and in annexations take no account of "the grievances The Arab members of Shelli are suffered" . That is not true. There is Israeli citizens by their status and explicit reference to the grievances Palestinian by their natiOnality. They currently being suffered by the identify themselves with their people's Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied wish for self-determination alongside West Bank, when we denounce the Israeli Israel •.• " government for purSUing "a policy of increased repression of its overwhelm­ " ..• Shelli sees the conflict in the ingly Arab majority alongside a plan for Middle East and in particular the more and more JewiSh settlements, Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dis­ having as its Ultimate objective the agreement between two national movements formal annexation of these Palestinian that have the same country as their Arab territories". territorial base. Shelli thinks that this dispute can only be solved by It is true that the Policy Statement partition of the country .•. The does not contain a recitation of thOse political solution shall be based on the Palestinian grievances suffered forty mutual recognition of the national years ago, but neither does it contain rights of both peoples. Shelli desires any mention of that unique crime of peace on the following lines:- An forty years ago, the Holocaust inftkted Israeli recognition of the Palestinian on the Jewish people. Our policy state­ • right for self-determination and its ment was for the purpose of influencing right for a state of its own side by Irish public opinion on the requirements side with Israel; ... As part of the for Middle East peace, and it took the peace agreement Israel will hand back to strength of grievance on both the the Palestinians the territories which Jewish and Arab sides as given. Had we were conquered during the Six Day War in been directing our policy statement at a the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, so primarily Jewish audience we should they will have the possibility to build certainly have highlighted Zionist their own state there ..... injustices to the Palestinian Arabs in previous decades, including the 1948 Now perhaps a case could be made for massacre of Deir Yassin Villagers describing D.S.P. policy as "pro-Zionist.. carried out by Begin's forces. Had we in the Shelli sense, since both demo­ been addressing an Arab aUdience, there cratic socialist parties believe in a would have been an even greater need to similar peaceful solution which would draw out the full implications of the result in a Palestinian West Bank State Holocaust, including the support given alongside the State of Israel. But an by the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, equally strong case could be made for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, to describing D.S.P. policy as "pro­ Hitler's "Final Solution of the JeWish Palestinian nationalist" in line with Question". the thinking of the former P.L.O. leader Issam Sartawi, who was murdered earlier Since the D.S.P. was in fact addressing this year. In reality, while concerned an Irish audience, we took account of with finding a just solution that will the fact that Irish pUblic opinion is recognise the rights of both peoples, the already very much in tune with the D.S.P. policy is not bound up emotionally Palestinian sense of grievance as well with the national sentiments and aspira­ as of the fact that the Workers' Party tions of either side. I would still and most other Irish left-wing groups maintain that our policy remains "non­ are not only uncritical supporters of Zionist", even in the Shelli sense. the P.L.O. but are also hostile to the 3. very existence of any Israeli state. forty years ago was a crime of genocide Moreover, ever since the pro-P.L.O. without parallel. As a result of the statement made in Bahrein by Brian Jewish people's struggle to guarantee Lenihan in his capacity as the their future survival in a state of Fianna Fail Government's Foreign their own, Palestinian rights were Minister, both Ireland and Greece indeed violated by Zionists. But to have constituted the European Community's present ._ .. .' those violations, or even two member states that are most suppor­ the emergence in 1948 of a half million tive of the Palestinian cause and most Palestinian refugees during the course responsive to the Arab lobby. Irish of the first Arab-Israeli War, as an Government policy continues to uneqUivo­ injustice that was unique for those cally advocate the right of the years, would be quite misleading. It Palestinians to have their own sovereign was in fact the expansion of the Socialist state. As the Coalition Government's States for purposes of both territorial Foreign Minister Peter Barry stated in aggrandisement and security that created the Dail on July 3 of this year:- the overwhelming bulk of the refugee problem that followed from World War 11. "Our diplomatic efforts, through Far more violations of human and national European Political Co-operation and at rights have been perpetrated in the name the U.N., have in recent times of of Socialism than Zionism can even be necessity focussed upon the urgent charged with. The Socialist label is question of the rights of the Palestinian perhaps one requiring an even more people ... We accept the right of that detailed response from a Democratic people to self-determination with all Socialist Party as to how it reconciles that that implies. The creation of a its socialist principles with respect Palestinian homeland, a state - the for democratic rights. precise model is a matter for negotiations and for the Palestinians themselves - THE POLISH ROAD TO SOCIALISM is an essential element of a solution I am totally opposed to the Zionist that would be just and lasting •.. occupation of the town of Hebron on the Israel's rights do not extend to the Palestinian West Bank, even though implantation of settler colonies in the there had been a continuous Jewish West Bank and Gaza". presence there until a pogromist massacre by Arabs first obliterated that presence In fact the Irish Foreign Minister fifty-odd years ago. But in 1945 parts professed a very definite emotional of Germany that had been nothing but entanglement when he also proclaimed German for over a thousand years, as that outside of Europe and North America well as other areas that were predominant­ "no part of the world is closer to us in ly German, were "emptied" of their terms of geography or of political and indigenous populations and planted by trading links than those countries which Slav settlers. Three million Sudeten together make up the Arab nation". He Germans (as well as 700,000 Hungarians) argued that "the links between the Arab were uprooted from their ancestral home­ world and Europe are older and lands by the Czechoslovak Government. A deeper than any forged by a twentieth further ten million Germans were driven century oil crisis". out of territories annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland. The historic German Would it have helped matters if the D.S.P. city of Konigsberg, famous as the birth­ Policy Statement had also worn our place of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, emotions on its sleeve? To be fair, if was "emptied" of its 300,000 men, women we had provided ample quotes on "the and children so that it could be trans­ grievances suffered" we would have to formed into the Soviet city of Kaliningrad. had done so for both sides. If that The German city of Breslau became the were so, Denis O'Connor's own references Polish city of Wroclaw, Danzig became to "the awful flight of European Jews" Gdansk, etc. On May 20, 1945 the and to "the Jews escaping oppression in Communist Party leader Wladyslaw Gomulka their own countries" could hardly be summed up the policy of the new Socialist taken as adequate recognition of both Poland as follows:- the enormity and unique character of the Holocaust. The scientifically planned "Resettlement:- Polonization is and methodically executed "Final important, because the acquisition of Solution" of six million Jews a mere the western te.rritories is one of the 4. arguments we are using in seeking the forcibly uproot eight million men, women support of society. If there is no and children from their ancestral home­ Polish population there, the administra­ land in Eastern Germany and drive them tion will be in the hands of the Red Army. westwards beyond the Oder and Neisse We must expel all the Germans because rivers of Central Germany. As he summed countries are built on national lines and up on May 21, 1945.upon the conclusion not on multi-national ones ••• During the of that Party debate:- current year the entire German population must be removed ... We must settle there "The Western Territories:- A guard must three and a half million Poles •.." be put on the frontier, the Germans must be expelled and those who stay must get Other Polish communists were anxious to the kind of treatment that will not go rather further, but Gomulka demurred:- encourage them to stay ..• We should simply clear out the Germans and build a "Another area where sectarian errors have national state". developed is Security ... Comrade Korczynski in Gdansk is preparing crema­ As for other minorities in Socialist toria for Germans. This is Gestapo Poland, Gomulka also went on to warn in tactics .•. " the very next breath of that same speech, delivered in the immediate aftermath of frhiS was but a mild rebuke from Gomulka the Holocaust:- to one of his closest comrade-in-arms, whom he was always at pains to protect. "The work of the Personnel Department Korczynski had commanded a partisan group must be improved and the party purged of Polish communists during the Nazi The director of the Personnel Department occupation. But not just against the in Krakow took in two thousand people, all Germans. It was only in the late 1940s, obviously Jews by their appearance and after Gomulka had been ousted from the speaking Polish with a poor accent. This Party leadership, that a Jewish communist was a cheap trick, but it is difficult to in the Polish diplomatic service felt say to what extent it was sectarianism secure enough to reveal another feature and to what extent sabotage " of Korczynski's approach to the "national • question". A Jewish partisan group, that Yiddish had indeed been the native lan­ had also been engaged in guerilla warfare guage of the Polish Jewish community against the Nazis near the city of Lublin, which numbered three and a half million sought assistance from Korczynski's people in 1939. But that community had larger Polish group. His response was been rooted in Poland for many hundreds to order the slaughter of all forty of years. Three million of them perished Jewish guerrillas. The future diplomat in the Holocaust. In 1968 Gomulka, ably alone had survived by pretending to be assisted by Korczynski, mounted a vicious dead. As a result of these revelations anti-semitic campaign under the guise of Korczynski was tried in camera and "anti-Zionism". The thirty thousand imprisoned - but only for a few years. surviving Jews who had remained on in In 1956 Gomulka returned to power and Poland and who were overwhelmingly ordered his immediate release. After­ Communist in their loyalties, were wards he was rapidly promoted and reached finally expelled by their Socialist the position of Deputy Minister of homeland. Defence. In December 1970 General Korczynski repaid the debt by carrying HELSINKI SOLUTIONS AND AGREEMENTS out a job that this time Gomulka himself Perhaps a more favourable comparison for had particularly commissioned for Gdansk. the Palestinians might be dispossessed When a wave of strikes broke out all over Finns rather than dispossessed Germans. Poland in protest against massive price For over a century Finland had been an rises, Gomulka entrusted Korczynski with oppressed nation within the Russian directing the repressive measures to be Empire. In 1917 it took advantage of the taken against the workers. Hundreds of revolutionary turmoil in Russia in order Polish workers were massacred as a result.] to regain its independence. In 1939, Gomulka felt that Korczynski's proposals however, the Soviet Union sought to for the mass extermination of German enhance the security of Leningrad by civilians would not be necessary in demanding the annexation of the nearby either Gdansk or any other annexed German Finnish province of Karelia, even though eth~ic territory. He argued that it would be there was no basis for any such quite possible and sufficient to claim. When the Finnish Government refused to yield up its native territory, 5. the Soviet Union bombed Helsinki and are an oppressed nation. Denis O'Connor invaded Finland. At a U.N. Conference on argues that we should not "tar the Refugees in 1958, the Finnish delegate oppressed with the same brush as the explained what finally happened the oppressor". If our approach to politics natives of Karelia:- had been imprisoned by that over-riding concern neither Socialists Against "In 1944 the 3,300,000 people who lived Nationalism nor the Democratic Socialist within the present boundaries of Finland Party itself would ever have been founded. had to receive in a couple of weeks' time After all, certainly since 1798,Protestant around 440,000 displaced persons, all Ulster was never an oppressed nation Finnish citizens who had left their home­ whereas Catholic Ireland was. Protestant steads after the new frontier line had Ulster has never once experienced cut off some 13 per cent of our territory oppression at the hands of Catholic from the rest of Finland". Ireland, it has "merely" been threatened with such oppression. And for fifty years European Socialism - while it might it could be said that the Catholics of qUietly acknowledge that millions of Derry were denied full democratic rights Germans and Finnish civilians had indeed by those very Ulster Protestants whose suffered such grievances and injustices ­ right to self-determination both SAN and has nonetheless set i~s face against the DSP have been most insistent on any agitation to restore the rights of being recognised by all Catholics, whether the dispossessed. Any claims for a past victims of discrimination or not. return of such annexed territories to We adopted that approach precisely their original inhabitants have been because we were not the patronising left, denounced as revanchist warmongering. but on the contrary a socialist movement Finland's Social-Democratic leader which was prepared to honestly confront Kekkonen was long ago placed on a Peace the fact that even though the RepUblic's Movement pedestal for steadfastly refus­ annexationist claims to Northern Ireland ing to harp on any Finnish version of the in Articles 2 and 3 were unlikely to be "oppressed nation" tune and for concluding actively pursued by any Irish Government instead the 1948 Soviet-Finnish Treaty of and would in any case be impossible to Friendship and Mutual Co-operation. West enforce, their retention in our Constitu­ Germany's Social-Democratic Chancellor tion was a major cause of the Northern Willy Brandt was similarly hailed as conflict. peacemaker when he journeyed to Warsaw in 1970 in order to sign a Treaty with THE DEAD-END OF "REVOLUTIONARY" RHETORIC Gomulka which confirmed German acceptance Does an uncritical attitude towards the of the territorial integrity of the new claims of oppressed nations help or hinder Poland whose western frontiers extended them in achieving reasonable national to the Oder-Neisse rivers. The 1975 objectives, such as the return of the Helsinki Agreement on European Security West Bank to Arab sovereignty? During took absolutely no account of the past the 1967 War no left-wing group had been grievances of either "bad" Germans or more vehemently anti-Zionist than the "good" Finns when the States of Europe British and Irish Communist Organisation, agreed to recognise and freeze all exist­ which even denounced the whole tradition ing national frontiers, inclUding the of the Israeli Labour Movement as territorial integrity of Poland and the "social-Fascist". When B & ICO publica­ Soviet Union which was based on massive tions began to come to terms with reality aIDlexations a mere thirty years previously. rather than rhetoric on such matters, A few years ago, when Socialists Against there was an indignant reader's letter Nationalism was established as a precursor pUblished in Communist Comment on of the Democratic Socialist Party, Denis November 21, 1970. The reader protested:- O'Connor was among those most insistent that SAN should invoke the principles of "I was extremely disappointed with the the Helzinki Agreement as a key argument article by John Harkin on Palestine in for "freezing the Irish border as well. the September 19, Communist Comment. It would seem to me that with regard to I do not believe in one set of standards an anti-imperialist struggle ... the for Europe and another for the Middle first task is solidarity with that East. I think it would be inexcusably struggle ... The 1947 U.N. Partition patronising for democratic socialists to resolution (unfortunately supported by refrain from condemning the P.L.O. the Soviet Union) setting up the State of Covenant's objective of completely liqUidating the State of Israel, on Israel, violated the right to self­ determination of the Palestinians by account of the fact that the Palestinians 6. g1v1ng it to a people who were not speech which would call for the expansion entitled to it ... The fact is that the of a dialogue with Israelis and which State of Israel must be destroyed for the would declare support for a compromise Palestinians to return home and exercise peace whereby both Israel and the P.L.O. their right to self-determination. The should each recognise the other side's struggle at the moment is for the right right to independent statehood. Through of self-determination for the oppressed a parliamentary manoeuvre, however. nation - the Palestinian Arabs. It is Sartawi was denied his right to speak only in the context of support for this before the Council. Resigning from the struggle that one can then raise the P.N.C. in protest. Sartawi declared:- question of self-determination for the "It was outrageous that all of the oppressor nation. Support for the former secretaries-general of the different struggle must not be conditional on P.L.O. organisations painted a picture of acceptance of the latter position". Lebanon as a glowing Victory. Lebanon was a disaster. I bow my head to the Such "revolutionary solidarity" did courage of the people who fought there. sweet damn all to help the Palestinians But if Beirut was such a great Victory, achieve the only objective that was then all we need is a series of such realisable - a Palestinian State on the victories and we will be holding our West Bank prepared to abandon all further next national council meeting in Fiji". territorial claims on the State of Israel. In April of this year Sartawi was I was the author of the particular piece murdered by a Syrian-based Palestinian of New Left gobbldegook that is quoted faction who proudly acknowledged their above, at a time when my primary political "achievement". Unable to confront even involvement was in assisting Palestinians this reality. Yasser Arafat attributed with denunciations of Israel's very Sartawi's murden to "Zionist agents" existence at various meetings on the rather than blame Syria. Two months American East Coast. It took me qUite later Syria took over the P.L.O. units some time to break free from the legacy in Syrian-occupied Lebanon and roundly of that type of sentimental solidarity, trounced Arafat's men. which was utterly counterproductive for the people in whom false hopes were THE D.S.P. AND THE PEACE STRUGGLE • thereby perpetuated. Indeed it was only The purpose of the D.S.P. Policy Statement with the greatest reluctance that I came on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is to around to ultimately agree with the pinpoint the two-states solution as the policy statement on the Jewish-Arab only just and democratic outcome possible; conflict which the B ICO formulated in & to assess the intransigent dogmas on both December 1973, in an attempt to persuade the Jewish and Arab sides which stand as left-wing opinion to recognise a two an obstacle to such a solution; and to states solution to the conflict as the recognise those forces that are contribut­ only attainable objective. ing towards movement in the direction of that just solution. Until another Sartawi Where has all the uncritical "solidarity" emerges on the Palestinian side, it is with P.L.O. objectives left the Palestinians regrettable that there will be no Arab except in a greater predicament than ever eqUivalent of Israel's "Peace Now" before? When they were being either movement. Denis O'Connor is quite wrong bombed or massacred in Beirut. Syria and to suggest that Begin's concept of West the rest of their most rhetorical Arab Bank "autonomy" is compatible with the supporters stood idly by. Could the "Peace Now" programme. On the contrary, P.L.O. absorb any lessons from'this that programme requires a complete experience? There was one P.L.O. leader surrender of Israeli sovereignty over the who attempted to do so. Issam Sartawi is West Bank territories which should be believed to have been among those who returned to Arab sovereignty following planned the "Black September" massacre of re-partition. The broad-based "Peace Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics Now" lDovement has made the maximum in 1972. Four years later. however. he possible contribution towards mass proved to be the only Palestinian leader mobilisation for a just solution. It is. willing to engage in meaningful dialogue of course. necessary for its individual with an Israeli group that unequivocally political components to push the issues champions a Palestinian West Bank State still :further. (As a supporter of "Peace alongside Israel - the Council for Israeli­ Now". the Israeli Council for Israeli­ Palestinian Peace. When the P.L.O. 's Palestinian Peace continues its own Parliament. the Palestinian National Council, met in Algiers in February of independent, radical campaign for a West Bank Palestinian State). The principal this year. Sartawi planned to deliver a party behind "Peace Now" is the United 7. Workers' Party - Mapam (with six Jewish wing of Palestinian nationalis~ on the M.P.s and one Arab M.P. in the Israeli occupied West Bank, as well as to the Parliament). The Mapam Party's own Mapam and Shelli Parties, "Peace Now" and "Peace Platform" as confirmed in the Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace February of this year states:- in Israel. D.S.P. Resolutions El and E2, calling for a Palestinian State on the "Mapam will strive for a solution based West Bank, have been reproduced in full upon two independent, sovereign countries; in New York's Jewish Socialist newspaper, one, the State of Israel and the other a the Morning Freiheit. The D.S.P. 's two Jordanian-Palestinian state. The state arguments have also been presented majority of the population of Jordan is in Ya'ad, an EngliSh pUblication of made up of Palestinians. They and their Young Poale Zion (youth wing of the brothers and sisters in the West Bank Labour Zionist Movement). More signifi­ share the same language and tradition cant has been the request by a Mapam and their family ties are many and pUblication, Israel Horizons, for an extended. The expanse of such a exposition of the D.S.P. approach. In Jordanian-Palestinian state would make the final paragraph of my article for it possible for the Palestinian people Israel Horizons, I sum up:- to realise its right to self-determination, to preserve its unity, to absorb its It goes without saying that while the refugees and to observe the right of D.S.P. gives full recognition to the broad Israel to secure and recognised borders progressive character of "Peace Now", our through security agreements and a own support for the establishment of a demilitarised zone. This would not be Palestinian State on the West Bank, living possible if a third state were established in peace side-by-side with Israel, would between Israel and Jordan. With the lead us to adopt a more critical attitude accomplishment of peace, Israel will not concerning the inadequacies of the main determine the political life of the parties of the Israeli left in that respect. Jordanians and Palestinians and she will This criticism would apply to Mapam as well respect their democratic decisions in as to the Israeli Labour Party. If everything pertaining to their indepen­ Palestinian politics can develop to the dence and sovereignty within their borders point of recognising and guaranteeing peace " to the State of Israel, it will be no business of democratic socialist politics in Now this platform contains many contradic­ Israel to suggest that the West Bank and Gaza tions. While in the first part it views should constitute part of a Jordanian­ a separate West Bank State as illogical, Palestinian State rather than exist as a in the second part it implicitly quite separate Palestinian State. We would recognises that such a separate state fUlly support the call by Meir Pa'il in the might indeed emerge subsequent to March-April 1983 issue of Israel Horizons ­ Israeli withdrawal. A separate West Bank that in the event of any Palestinian leader­ State is illogical only if it is assumed ship being willing to negotiate with Israel, that the Palestinians have either the there should be a declaration that "the will or the way to also achieve majority State of Israel views with favour the rule on the East Bank of the Hashemite establishment of a Palestinian state on the Kingdom of Jordan. But the P.L.O. is not West Bank and Gaza Strip". HopefUlly such a a revolutionary organisation. If a viewpoint will gather further strength among Palestinian leadership would settle for Israeli socialists so that a more forceful self-determination on the West Bank alone, struggle can be waged for partition as the and would be content to leave the East only valid democratic solution which will Bank's Palestinian majority under King guarantee the right to self-determination Hussein's minority rule, its wishes would of both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs". have to be respected. The Mapam platform is inadequate but it is at least D.S.P. Policy on the Middle East has been subject to extremely Vigorous criticism established for less than a year, but in my and a political struggle to radicalise view it has enabled us to make a more serious it still further, not least in Mapam's contribution to the political struggle for Own publications. recognition of the Palestinians right to independent statehood than has the decade A final note on where the D.S.P. Policy and a half of uncritical support for the Statement and Resolutions have gone in P.L.O. which most of the Irish left has that context. While primarily aimed at given in line with its traditional fondness an Irish audience, they have also been for counterproductive rhetoric. communicated to contacts among the left- Manus O'Riordan Dublin Central/North West Branch October 19R3 -8-

REPARTITION

Repartition in Ireland is inevitable. It The Unionists and Nationalists do not is no longer a question of whether: it is share a political experience. It is not a question of when and how. Ideally, all possible to describe Northern Ireland in the Nationalists would be brought in a a way that significant sections of both peaceful and orderly manner under the communities will recognise as valid. For authority of the Irish Government, while example, is Northern Ireland a colony? all the Unionists remained citizens of the Protestant Northern Ireland most certainly U.K. Politicians in Britain and Ireland is not a colony: it is an integral part should aim to approach this ideal solution of the United Kingdom. Catholic as closely as possible. Northern Ireland most certainly is a colony: it is occupied Ireland. Again, The Unionists cannot be forced into a how should one describe the British Army? United Ireland. The Nationalists cannot In Woodvale and Larne it is the national for very much longer be forced into the defence force. In Ballymurphy and Creggan United Kingdom. Only a settlement which it is a foreign army of occupation. guarantees each community its national freedom can be just or effective. An There is no political force in Britain or attempted settlement on any other basis will Ireland which can exert sufficient only make matters worse. attractive power on both Northern Communities to offset their mutual The two communiti~s have incompatible notions repulsion. A few.years ago, when it was of freedom. Any political system where they not clear what would emerge from the social are forced to co-exist will give liberty ferment in Britain, it was possible to without security to 60% and leave 40% think that the British Labour Party might oppressed - as is the case at present - or become such a force. The idea that it vice versa. Liberty for one is bondage is ~ such a force, even in its pitiful for the other. Unless they are free of each aimless condition, is the illusion of a other the Nationalists and the Unionists liberal Unionist fringe. It is an illusion cannot both be fre~. that the vast majority of Unionists, whether liberal or not, do not share. No system to which both communities belong Many of them take some interest in the can truthfully be called democratic. In campaign for Labour Party organisation in reality it will be a system of apartheid Northern Ireland, but only because it can where the state either openly promotes, or spoil a forum for Nationalist propaganda tacitly sanctions, the subordination of in Britain. one separately developing community to the other. Such an apartheid system exists today In case there is any ambiguity in the way in Northern Ire.land, despite the fact that I have presented the problem up to now, there is a well-developed Unionist democratic I will spell it out again. Northern Ireland process. Such an apartheid system would is ripped apart, and made nonsensical not exist in a United Ireland if that only as a political unit but even as a political unit could be constructed. province of any single political unit, by a conflict of national allegiance. In recent times at least, the state has not favoured apartheid in Northern Ireland, Between 900,000 and a million Unionists but is powerless against the popular demand wish to remain part of the United Kingdom for it. Both communities are busily c~eating and will not accept a United Ireland. facts. It is by no mere habit that Unionists Between half a million and 600,000 and Nationalists go to school, work, worship, Nationalists wish to be part of a United socialise, play games, organise politically, Ireland and will not accept the United reside and marry apart. During the past Kingdom. Catholics are Nationalists and fifteen years they have applied themselves Protestants are Unionists. Politically with enthusiasm to destroying the patches of the few exceptions do not count. common ground that previously existed. What has happened in mixed residential areas is Northern Ireland is the territory where well known. A less obvious example is the the British and Irish nations are fate of the NILP. Socialist Unionists and intertangled. Although I follow the common Socialist Nationalists no longer find it practice of calling the communities possible to share a flag of convenience, as Nationalists and Unionists, in fact both they did previously. the communities are nationalist, though -9- they give their commitments to different Perhaps one tenth of the Catholics are nationals. The Nationalists are Irish content, then, with the Union. Was nationalists; the Unionists are British there ever a colony where one tenth of nationalists. Throughout modern history the natives did not prefer to make the the national identity has always been best of the colonial regime, rather than cherished in each community as prior and to suffer the hardship and disruption superior to class interest, common Chris­ that attends revolution? Far more than tianity, common Irishness or whatever. a tenth of the Irish Catholics were One may safely expect that this will not content with the Union in 1918. When change in the near future. one considers the uniquely vulnerable position of the Northern Catholics as a It is futile to question either community, colonised people in the midst of a free whether seriously or ironically, about what majority, the portion of them seeming composes its national identity. The content with the Union is amazingly small. national political system of one community cannot be shaped in such a way as to placate It is sometimes argued, glibly, that or to smother the national aspirations of Nationalist votes have no meaning; the other. Nationality is not something Nationalist violence alone counts, because that can be summed up in one or two social violence alone has any prospect of and cultural features. (A fallacy on which achieving Nationalist aims. The the New Ireland Forum is based). It considerable decrease in violence since courses through all channels of life in 1973 is then taken as evidence of a Northern Ireland, replenishing the hostility corresponding waning of Nationalist of each nation for the other. feeling among tDe Catholics. It is not evidence of any such thing. The national conflict tends to intensify as time goes on. It is not abated by the The rhythm of the Provo war necessarily process of secularisation, which takes changed when it became evident that no place separately in each community without early success was to be expected. They forging any alliances across the divide. could not expect to sustain a 20-year For example, the elected representatives of blitz. In the early '70s, on the other the Northern Nationalists expressed them­ hand, Northern Catholics generally selves as follows on the recent anti­ thought that with 'an intense effort they abortion amendment: Sinn Fein, against; could win their United Ireland very SDLP 50/50 for and against. It is plain quickly. Taking into account their that these parti s have been influenced disillusion on discovering that it wasn't by secularist thinking without being softened so easy - a product of this disillusion in their attitudes to Unionism. being the Peace Movement - and the acute dangers they face from armed Unionists, There are Unionists who claim that large I think that the combination of military numbers of Catholics are content with the and political activity which the Union. The DSP policy Statement repeats Northern Cathoiics h~ve sustained is' this claim, which is entirely bogus. If impressive testimony of their unbroken there were large numbers of Catholics who Nationalist will. were content with the Union, as a matter of course they would vote for the Alliance There are two effective choices in Party which was set up precisely so that Northern Ireland. It is possible to Catholics who were content with the Union continue the status quo, namely the need no longer be disenfranchised. And construction of an apartheid system if for some reason they chose not to vote with British democracy as its incon­ for the Alliance Party (but why?) they would, gruous outer coating. Something could of course, abstain. be said in favour of this course of action if apartheid could proceed, as In this year's Westminster election the SDLP now, without more than sporadic and got 20%; Sinn Fein 13%; the Workers' containable violence. But, as Harold Party (still identified by both communities, McCusker (Fortnight, Jan '83) has correctly in my view, as nationalist), about pointed out, this will not be possible 3%. That does not leave a great deal of indefinitely. The two communities on the Catholic vote that could have gone to, the ground will continue creating facts, the Alliance Party (plus Gerry Fitt, for but they are not so positioned that whom Alliance stood down). 3% - 4% of there can be automatic agreement on just the total vote, perhaps; at most one which facts are to be created. It can tenth of the Catholic vote. only be a matter of time before some local conflict sets off a chain reaction. -10-

Alternatively, it is possible for the British and Irish governments to plan, negotiate, win their Northern co-nationals to accept, and oversee, a thoroughgoing repartition, inyolving the orderly transfer of minority communities of Unionists and Nationalists to those areas where they have majorities. The outstanding problem is West Belfast, and I believe that the only disposal of West Belfast which could be just and democratic, and would offer hope of peace and stability, is essentially what is advocated by Arthur Clery in his article written in 1905 and reprinted in this journ~l.

The idea that there must be one single political system which both Unionists (or "ex-Unionists") and Nationalists (or "Catholics") can fit into dies hard. Along with the daunting practical diffi­ culties this is the reason why repartition is not yet discussed in public, though it is extensively di~cussed in private. But all the time the communities in Northern Ireland carry on cr ating facts.

Only a thoroughgoing repartition will work, and it is tempting to conclude that a thoroughgoing repartition cannot be achieved without appalling violence. In fact, it has a better chance of avoiding appalling violence than any other political arrangement. If approached by the two sovereign governments in th(' spirit of giving each community justic' it could bring out a constructive splrit and goodwill towards settlement in each community. And unlike those futile "solutions" which require what is dearest to one or other community to be trampled on, it would give each community the essential substance of its historic demand. It would mean Bits Out of Ballymurphy, and it would mean No Surrender in Ballymena.

The DSP has contributed good deal to public awareness in th Republic that the Nationalist solution cannot be imposed on the Unionists. Unfortunately, DSP policy entirely lacks the other n cessary insight, that the Unionist solution cannot be im­ posed on the Nationalists. If that insight also is incorporated into its policy, the DSP. could bring some badly needed clarity into discussion of Northern Ireland ­ including, perhaps, in the Forum.

- JOHN MINAHANE - -11-

COMMITMENT OF THE MILLIONS

It took no more than a century, not a long of the millions, above all because of the period historically, for an originally awareness that there is no socialism with­ distant objective to become the reality. out democracy, neither democracy without This refers to Marx's vision of a free the full participation of the working men association of associated producers, which in the making of all essential decisions in the form of socialist self-management, of importance for a society's development.. originated in Yugoslavia in the 1950's. Self-management trends, still rather Marking the centenary of Marx's death. restricted in volume, are becoming Yugoslav communists may justly say with­ increasingly present all over the world. out false modesty. or self-content, that Many of the communist and workers's they had historically spearheaded the parties which had in the beginning denied materialization of Marx's idea of self­ self-management, in recent years have management. been trying to alter such an attitude as is seen in a large number of meetings and "The contribution of our revolution to studies dedicated to self-management. the Marxist theory and socialist practice Moreover, certain communist parties in stretches far beyond the mere reaffir­ the West refer to self-management as an mation of the 'factory to the workers' orientation even stated in their documents. slogan. We were the first to begin to In the like manner, some countries with build up a social!st society in which communist parties .in power also show self-management spread from the factories mounting interest in self-management and to cover the entire organisation of the demonstrate firmer and firmer trends towards society", said, among other things, the expansion of direct democracy forms. President of the Presidency of the Central For the developing countries, too, Committee of the League of Communists of according to debates at the many meetings Yugoslavia (LCY) Mitja Ribicic on the on this subject, self-management accounts occasion of marking the centenary of for a vigorous process in which they find Marx's death. encouragement for their overall social emancipation. In recalling that self-management in Yugoslavia, in spite of all hardships, All this, naturally, presents evidence has a greater strength than that of an about the huge diversity: in the experiment, that it has its intrinsic practical materialisation of the idea of logic and reasonable institutional self-management as well as in the structure and that it gives many, theoretical approach to what is a class although not all answers to the question in the world today. But, questions of future development, Mitja regardless of what is being discussed: Ribicic added that "in world proportions" self-management as the 'social relation' self-management is the "factor that now applied in Yugoslavia alone, or the cannot be ignored, no matter that it has varied forms of participation, today not yet become the dominant idea of the already self-management is not a 'futurist' world today, because other ideas also idea, for, it is in the different places have their impact and power". that the different-intensity demands for self-management are being made. Such FROM DENIAL TO APPROVAL demands originate from the different theoretical sources and rely upon .the What Ribicic said certainly is supported heterogeneous social foundations. by the fact that concerning the development and perspective of contemporary socialism INNUMERABLE STUDIES AND PAPERS hardly any other idea than that of self­ ON SELF-MANAGEMENT management has been the subject of virtually countless discussions and Yugoslavia's historical decision to debates within the communist and workers' embark on the road of self-management, movement. The idea had been denied in irrespective of all denials, certainly the beginning some thirty years ago when did not leave indifferent anybody within its practical application began in the communist and workers' movement. The Yugoslavia (explanations such as "do movement's majority readily took the not nurture delusions," or "do not be downright adverse and denying stand, carried away by outdated concepts" were but there were also others who understood heard). Today, however, this is the the "Yugoslav experiment" as an incentive idea that has grown into the commitm811t: to reconsider what had been "an almost forgotten idea." No longer than three -12- years after self-management induction, THE WORLD SATIATED WITH 'MODELS' representatives of some major workers' parties from the West began to arrive Yugoslavia has never regarded its self­ "to study what is going on in Yugoslavia". management as a 'model' for other countries. "All of us are satiated with long-lasting As the communist and workers' movement was aspirations to offer 'ideal models'," it changing its relations, and as the socialist was said a few years ago at the Cavtat self-management was achieving results, the Round-Table Discussions on Self-Management. interest in Yugoslavia's experience was "It showed up that a small country can mounting to wide proportions. Statistics create its own road to socialism without reveal that in the thirty odd years since simultaneously shutting itself in, but on the introduction of self-management in the contrary•.• to be able democratically Yugoslavia, more than 250 studies and to solve its inner contradictions and to about 180 scientific papers hav~ been pub­ interpret the profo~ndly contradicting lished in over 75 countries in nearly and complex present time." every major language area across the world. More than 20 scientists defended their Through its own practice of self­ doctoral theses on the participation of management, and in spite of all hardships Yugoslav workers in decision-making. in the relevant development, Yugoslavia Countless seminars were held, while refuted a theory on "short-lived self­ several thousand pages were pUblished management." Hence, too, the vast interest in the newspapers and periodicals about among the world general public in Yugoslavia's experience in self- Yugoslavia's experience and practice of management development. self-management. This, naturally makes Yugoslavia particularly responsible before From among the many books dealing with its own working class and before the whole the range of Yugoslavia's socialist self­ world to carry on finding fresh answers management, a study by the French author to self-management development as its own Yves Durier may be singled out. By road to socialism, being a community with entitling his book: "Tito's Heritage the historical mission to take apart the as the Necessity of Self-Management", alienated centres of economic and he announced his basic thesis that self­ political might. management is the natural path of Yugoslavia's development, stemming from The class-humanist tenor of this the entire work of Tito's. Having dis­ "historical process" was in a simple way cussed the plurality of self-management defined by Kardelj in his notable study interests integrated within the socialist "The Directions of Development of the political system, the author concludes Political System of Socialist Self­ that the different interests at times Management," when he said: display themselves also as crises, that at times even 'short circuits' or "Neither the State', nor·a system, nor a· misunderstandings occur, but all this political party can bring one happiness. only serves him as evidence that self­ Happiness can be created only by oneself••• management does solve the actual This is self-management." problems of the society and its members. It proves that it is not In the turbulent world of ours everybody just a 'model'. is entitled to their own path towards happiness. Yugoslavia chooses -- self­ The large mosaic of texts about Yugo­ management. This is the self-management as slavia's experience in self- was defined by Tito in his noted address management development naturally to the National Assembly of Yugoslavia pictures the encountered difficulties, when the Law on the introduction of too. "Yugoslavia has not overcome all Workers' Self-Management was enacted on problems, but it grapples with them 27 June 1950. "Today we are building openly and fearlessly. Contradictions socialism in our country ourselves, without and internal weaknesses do exist. None­ employing any patterns, but being guided theless the successes and dynamics by Marxist science and following our road, of Yugoslavia's road to socialism taking into account the specific conditions show that decentralisation and existent in our country••• " development are not incompatible. Moreover, Yugoslavia proves that Self-Management socialism has demonstrated decentralisation can be the vehicle of the untenability of the image of a uniform development," wrote the influential model. Its vitality and reputation Mexican paper "Novedades". depend predominantly on the ability of the -13-

Yugoslav working class to expand its FIELD DAY range and to reassert its strength ­ through the system that has brought about Field Day, a group of poets and playwrlghts the emancipation of labour and man. Here, based in Northern Ireland, has recently the objectives'in mind are: the future issued three pamphlets written by Seamus development of socialism in Yugoslavia, Heaney, (An Open Letter), Seamus Deane and the development of socialism as a (Civilians and Barbarians) and Tom Paulin world-wide process. (A New Look at the Language Question). The· common theme is discontent with the cul­ tural relationship of Britain and Ireland.

These authors are very vulnerable to ridicule. One could easily say that Tom Paulin is uneasy with the'English language, Seamus Deane doesn't like Irish jokes, Seamus Heaney can't stand being called a Brit, and there are also a few million people in Ireland whose troubles are not imaginary. Such a comment is not adequate, however,

Seamus Heaney has been included in the Penguin Book of Contemporary British verse, and he protests in '26 verses that they've given him the wrong label. He is on terms of familiarity with the people he reproaches. His last line reads, "Yours, Seamus". One feels that the real injury is this: when they labelled him they weren't trying to get under his skin, they were matter-of-factly describing a well­ known part of the British literary scene.

His 26 verses do not really make it clear why he may not justly be called a British poet. In calling him British there need be no question, any more than when the same description is applied to MacNeice, of denying the importance of being Irish. But then MacNeice was a Unionist, and the recognition of Irishness' which is suffiCient for a Unionist is not sufficient for Heaney as a Nationalist. Literature which elucidates why this is so can be interesting, but Heaney is really only at the stage of stating the fact. He did, after all, develop as a writer during the '60s, when Ireland was awash with illusions. This poem of his, bad and all as it is, ~s a step in the direction of solid ground.

Heaney writes in one of Robert Burns' favourite verse-forms - with envy no doubt. Burns was a big hit in London but he didn't. lose his composure there. If a publisher had described him in print as a British poet it would hardly have bothered him; but most of what he wrote had such an emphatic national stamp that to call him anything but "a Scottish poet" would not be natural. He never developed a crisis of personal identity: he was as likely to develop a monastic vocation. -14-

Of course, the political question was literature) --- has learned to be sub­ sorted out for Burns. He could indulge missive to --- the modern political his heart and glorify Bruce and Wallace machine (which engages in) --- concentrated and even Bonnie Prince Charlie; and far manipulation of the --- audience's reaction from rubbing salt in old wounds, every­ to --- the criminal type and, above all, thing he wrote 'in this manner helped to the politically criminal type, your cure them. Scotland had already forged friendly neighbourhood terrorist. her unique and stimulating relationship with England. But the relationship of This stereotype has all the classic faults Ireland, or at least that part of Ireland of the barbarian as seen from the view of to which Heaney belongs, with England, is the English civilian " intolerable; and aside from some natural genius, that is the difference between In Deane's view, the H-Block campaign Heaney and Burns. exhibited this stereotype in its extreme form, and brought it to the point of Seamus Deane's essay is, thankfully, not exhaustion. It remains, though, to be so personal. He argues that for four overcome. "Of all the blighting dis­ centuries the British have seen themselves tinctions which govern our responses and as the bearers of civilisation, embodied limit our imaginations at the moment, none in the rule of their particular law. By is more potent than this four hundred year contrast they have seen the Irish as bar­ old distinction between civilians and barians to the extent that the rule of barbarians. We may well ask, with Bishop British law does not encompass them. Berkeley in The Querist, whether the Illustrating the points, he quotes from natural phlegm of this island needs any Sir John Davies, Edmund Spenser, Coleridge, additional stupefier?" Hazlitt, Horace Walpole and Southey. Unfortunately, Dean has confused the In nineteeth century Ireland, "the various question he is dealing with. It is a vast state-run enterprises --- in health, --­ question, and here I will only mention the education, --- cartography through the most basic deficiencies of Deane's Ordnance Survey; in policing, --- in law, pamphlet. --- had a highly Spenserian aim in view ­ the civilisation of the wild natives. All The civilians/barbarians distinction is not of these schemes were, in effect, pieces of four centuries old. It is eight centuries preventive legisldtion. A whole range of old. "A rude and untaught people," Pope conditions - like the condition of being Adrian IV called us in the mid-12th drunk, or illiterate, or from somewhere century, and in the famous Laudabiliter unheard of or unknown, or vagrant, or he praised the intentions of Henry 11 "to disaffected - was now realised as being enter the island of Ireland to subject that beyond (not exactly against) the law". p ople to laws." Another Pope, Alexander Ill, wrote three letters to Henry in 1172 on.the The rise of the modern state system "(dating subj ct of Ireland. His main concern was from the early nineteenth centure) has to get his fair share of the loot, but he enormously increased the ideological rift thought that the civilising of the Irish between the competing discourses of the could not begin too soon: the Irish civilian and the barbarian. ~or the "marry their stepmothers and are not ashamed romantic nationalism which was born in that to have children by them; a man will live utilitarian century gave to certain as­ with his brother's wife while the brother is pects of "barbarism" a privileged status. still alive; one man will live in con­ In literature, for instance, "barbarism" cubinage with two sisters; and many of became "primitivism" and represented a them, putting aside the mother, will marry Vigour lost to the sophisticated art of the daughters. And all from time to time the civilised world. On the other hand, eat meat in Lent ---". the same nationalism insisted on the high degree of civilisation it had attained Against this distinction of civilians and socially, although in some of the tem­ barbarians, the Irish forged their dis­ perance debates both O'Connell and Davis tinction of natives and usurpers (or, give us a version of Irish life which those who are here by ancient right and seems to have been modelled on some of the those who lately came here by force and more saccharine p ssages in Dickens. The with no right at all). The condition of essential issues have, however, been Ireland was most eloquently expounded in "displaced" into literature in such a manner these terms by Donald O'Neill, King of that their reality has been further Ulster, in a letter to Pope John XXII in lttenuated --- The audience (of this 1317. In the course of a wide-ranging and -15- complex argument O'Neill adverted to the to the True Faith. Among many reasons for civilians/barbarians view of things and the plunge into Catholic enthusiasm, this tried to prove that it had no validity is an important one. (See Irish Historical Documents, ed. Curtis Subject, then, to the proviso that the and McDowell) . next world took precedence over this one This powerful distinction of natives and and the primary distinction lay between usurpers, also, survives to govern res­ the True Church and the heretics, one can • ponses and limit imaginations. Although say that the Irish asserted during the 19th complicated a great deal by what happened century to the civilian/barbarian stereo­ in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was type of the English. That they assented available still in the 20th century for the in peculiar ways, perverse and irrational Irish-Ireland movement (the school of ways to English thinking, is not the point. thought which developed around p.P. Moran's That, to English thinking, the more journal, The Leader) to recharge it with civilised they became in the sense of meaning. Desmond Fennell is the most acquiring modern habits, the more they considerable present-day exponent of this seemed to regress in the sense of resenting thinking. But it is no longer typical the English form of government, is also not thinking, and this raises an important the point. They did assent, hastily and question. unreflectingly and finally. During the 19th century the Irish were most un­ When, and in what way, did a shift occur reflective; only the Anglo-Irish reflected. in Irish psycholo~y making the civilians/ Then, at the beginning of the 20th century, barbarians distinction meaningful to the the Irish-Ireland movement reformulated Irish? Up to a point, it may have been that old distinction of natives and meaningful for Hugh O'Neill, the great usurpers, and they looked back towards the Earl of Tyrone. O'Faolain argues that he world of Donald O'Neill with a desolate recognised the fatal weakness of Gaelic feeling, a puzzled resentful sense of Ireland, its lack of any principle of infinite loss. development (The Great O'Neill). Never­ theless, the man who had been educated Much remains to be written about the at the court of Elizabeth, England's most frightful century after the Flight of the glorious monarch, could return to lead Earls; Sean O'Faolaln's biography of Gaelic Ireland aguinst here in war. There O'Connell (King of the B'ggars) is the is no reason to think that, whatever else best account available now. That century, it lacked, Gaelic society then had a high the 18th, is the century of the great self-esteem which was proof against fracture. Between Celtic Ireland and modern Ireland runs a great fracture that English stereotypes. sends trc "lors of pain down into the present Only at a much later date did the Irish and will be felt a long way off in the assent to the values of modern civil­ future. isation in its contiguous (English) form. They asserted with resolution and finality, Dean's view that the 19th century develop­ but also - as it seems afterwards - with ments "enormously increased the ideological reservations so deep that almost a century rift between the competing discourses of elapsed before they could ever be voiced. the civilian and the barbarian", is the They became possessed with a special dis­ exact opposite of the truth. On the content, a profound and mysterious resent­ contrary, the rift disappeared. One ment which seeps through all the Field discourse intermeshed with the other. They continued to be distinct, but for the Day pamphlets. first time they communicated. Civility It seems reasonable to take the adoption and barbarism now become, rather than two of the English language as the crisis of uncommunicating discourses, two moments the development. Language was the passport of the same discourse, two aspects of the to the English way of life in practical Irish mind. And even in English thinking, • matters, but at the same time as they the Irish henceforward had two aspects: adopted the language the Irish rebelled our neighbours who are becoming civilised/ violently against England in philosophy. the Irish at their worst. This trans­ These newcomers to the world of Industrial formation and "splitting" of the Irish Revolution did not merit much dignity personality is observed in Deane's account, according to any school of thought in­ but it is precisely what makes the digenous to that world; on the other hand, cultural relationship of England and the Catholic religion conf rred dignity on Ir Innd an emotional minefield. them unconditionally, once they belonged p r pec THE FOLLOWING IS A SPEACH GIVEN BY PHILIP O'CONNOR TO A PUBLIC ~EETING IN TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, ORGANISED BY THE nUULIN UNIVERSITY DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST SOCIETY, ON THE SUBJECT OF "THE WORKERS PARTY AND DEMOCRACY" • ON NOVEMBER 9th LAST.

I was asked to come along and introduce a discussion on the extent to which the Workers Party is democratic or not. As a democratic Socialist, this issu of democracy is of course central to my politics, and in the old socialist d~bates between Social Democrats and Communists, I side totally and unequivically with the arguements of the Social Democrats. While this is an issue which of course does not only concern those in socialist politics, I would still consider it an ."internal" issue of what is still a small force in Irish politics - the socialist movement. I would like to make this point clear from the start. While I might have strong criticism and reservations about the WP, I have an everi stronger affinity with many elt'ments of that party. I have more in common with the socialist wing of the WP than I have with, say, any section of Fianna Fail and with most of Fine Gael. II oun PHOl3LEMS parties went to seed. At bottom eve they were no longer the "forums of My view is that a crisis in Irish the people" they previously claimed politics developed throuRhout the confidently to be. People were no 1970s. One can look back on Irish longer flocking to them in self­ history with dismay at the collapse sacrificing idealism and the 'cream of promising labour politics in the of the nation', as someone like late 1920s, and the failure of an Desmond Fennel m~ght put it, were Irish socialism or social denocracy exercising their talents elsewhere ­ to develop since. This collapse, and usually not in politics at all • • t1w raj lurCH of this movement through­ These parties became a hindrance to out this century, are our own the development of the country in ~ problcms, problems of the socialist many ways. People in literature and movement. The same can be said of the arts, a growing liberal tradition the broader secular and liberal . a more rational l~bour movement, traditions which also collapsed in these were all ahead of the parties, this period. It is no good blaming and could only find backward the Church or anyone else for this expression through 'them. What had bee situation. the vanguard of the nation - the Dail PRESENT CRISIS now became its rearguard. The basic values of the nation had fundament­ But what occurred in the 1970s was ally altered, but the parties had not a collapse of the old, self-confident cought up. a~d thoroughly successful philosophy Of the main body of politics in the Such a crisis could of course only be country - Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. of a temporary nature. The 1970s saw these parties trying to accomodate to However much one might have opposed the new rea lities. Lynch's pseudo­ them at the time, or sought to create Social Democracy of the late 70s and a different approach to the country's Fine Gael's Social Justice society . prOblems, it cannot be denied that were the straws grasped at. these parties fashioned the new nation in their image and likeness and, While this crisis continues of course, vica versa. When de Valera essentially, its high point was the said that he had only to look into period from mid-19B1 to the end of his heart to see what the' rest of us 1982, from the H-Blocks to the wrre thinking, he was only speaking Referendum. And it was in this the truth. period that a real alternative presented itself on the stage, with By the 1970s, the state which these a number of socialists being elected parties had set up with such zeal to the Dail: the democratic ha~ been established, and th~rgoals socialist Jim Kemmy, the republican (wlth the exception of the First socialist Tony Gregory and the half­ ~3tional Aim) had been achieved. The way.house between the two of them L I -of-fhe-Worker-s-p'arty TDs-.-I am socialists also organised along convinced that the failure of these similarly secretive and conspir- deputies to form a cohesive groupin~ 'atorial lines - backed up by the in the Dail set this development so-called "Industrial Section" way back. This has given time for organised by Eoin Harris and FG to regroup and to reappear with Eamon Smullen.The name-change to a dynamic image and growing Sinn Fein - The Workers Party in ~credibility as the "new party of 1977 was the first major break­ 'urban Ireland", and for Dick through for the "new liners" as Spring to bring the'decline of the they were then known. The growing apparat Labour Party to a halt. strenght of the new wing, especially as the party's growing electoral MISSED OPPORTUNITY successes were obviously a result There is no doubt in my mind that of its new politics, saw the final Jim Kemmy was head and shoulders change to THE WORKERS PARTY in above the others in ability and 1982. maturity of outlook. Even in Dublin at the time, his name became better GENUINE CHANGE known in some working-class areas The internal conflicts, debates than that of Garret Fitzgerald. His and contradictions were not of proposal to form an alliance of all, course that straight-forward or five deputies caused a sensation simple. There were - and still are ­ and could have been a turning a multiplicity of factions, groups point in the emergence of a truely and alliances in the party. And the relevant and vigorous socialist rise of the New Socialism has movement in the country. It was the infected the party thoroughly, cohesion it would have given that and in the process various formerly would have been decisive. Gregory contradictory outlooks have was willing, but the WP was not, amalgamated and given their and in the WPs rejection of the ~stamp to the new programme. People idea was its entire accumulated like Prionsias de Rossa and Tomas history and outlook, which I will McGiolla have genuinely developed now look at. in their outlook and politics and SINN FEIN COMMUNISM cannot be looked at.si~ply as . ationalists in sOClallst clothlng. The original Sinn Fein movement ¥ndeed nothing could betfartther ,which eventually gave birth to from tfie truth 01 the sl_ua~on. -. the WP was one with which few - The rise-of socialism-in the I;larty socialists could have had much in has increasingly meant a partlcular icommon. It was stridently national­ kind of socialism, one that finds ist and even at times pro-nazi and itself at home with many.a~pects of anti-semetic in its past. It was the more traditional POll~lC~ of the ardently catholic too - Sean South, party. The democratic soclal:sts one of Fr Fahy's militants, is who played a prominent pa:t ln the still a hero in some quarters of transit-ion of the seventles are now the party. In the late 1960s, some little in evidence. The party's British Communist Party intelect­ socialism has become increasingly uals saw the emerging national identified with many who were conflict in Northern Ireland as a formerly the backbone of the. . great opportunity to launch a nationalist rearguard. It was lronlC social nationalist movement and that the re-organisat~on of.the party to dream of a Vietnam-style which took place earller thlS Year, development for the quaint island. and which was heralded at the time The "social wing" of the movement as the "democratisation" of the grew in strenght, especially a~ter party has basically not only Official Sinn Fein called off ltS cemented the leninism (or "democratic I war effort in 1973. More and more, centralism") of it, but also seen ,socialists joined the party as a retrenchment of the "old liners" the best vehicle available for in power. The two committees socialist advancement in Ireland. established to organise and run the Throughout the 1970s, the basic party are dominated by former old­ conflict in the party was between line members. The socialism of the ,the nationalist wing and the new emerging WP is ever more that of socialist wing. The nationalists a communist party. The party machine were still organised along is one which 'educates' new members, conspiratorial lines, backed up by expels "erring" ones and vilifies 'the ominous Army Council. In outsiders as neo-fascists or ,taking on this old structure, the "trotskyites". ~fany people might di~l~lissing the idea of an effective say, "well, .50 what?, it's about alllance. But people in Ireland time that wc had a well-org:anised and are more impressed by results ef!pctive party of the left in and this type of politics of ' Ireland". d~s~~n~ent ~ill fi~d it has a very 2.~)Cstttl;cncy ~10VEMENT llmlC(;Q ir. the long run.'! 'i'HE PAHTY IS ALL ANn TIlE De Rossa des8ri~es the WP as a ' IS NOTHING! "revolutiona.ry p2.rty"; aiming at Eduard Bernstein, one of the great "transJerr'ing power from the social democratic theoreticians, once capttal ist class to the wor~ing class·! said that "the movement is all and the The objective of this party, Rccording cnd is nothing". By this he meant to de Rossa, is to "establish a concentration on the gradual socialist democratic republic", somethi improvement of society within a genera]which "it's not possible to do .... outJook and perspective, and the futurEthrough a social domocratic party". will ta!,e care of itself. TIH~ communist ~1AnXlSM outlook is the exact opposite of this. The "l11o\'el11cn t" becomes a tool towards Many social democratic supporters of the WP sec'this type of talk as mer~ the glorious end of an ill-defined "socialism". For the movement to stay "rhetoric", claiming that in its on the rails, a leninist would argue, practice the WP is essentially "labourist". The rhetoric should not be it cannot be trusted to its own ins~inc~s taken too seriously, they argue. There and abilities, but is is no doubt however, that the increas­ displaced by the "disciplined" PARTY ing use of s'..tch rhetoric .- :l:1d practicf_ as the exclussively legitimate I wOll!_d :~:q,;'~,e .- h:ts gi\fen :12\'/ spiri t an "engine" of movement, ann embodiement gusto to the thec~eLicians oC the party of progrc'ss The publishing cl.: Cl.;].ss Politics - a ty "WOH1\: I NG-CLi\SS PAllTY" o:!.' Irist 1,1al'xis::. '~'-:;;;.::"'/ - is ~'. significC3 develo[.;1:8nt in i :;s3~i~ In the i3di toriaJ ThuS, policies, outlook and political of the i.':!..::·2t ':'2SU~: 3:~itOl' Des O'Hagen development are subordinhtcd to the t::~~:~ tl~.:; ir~tends PARTY. The central leninist thesis ~s states 17"::::.g:-.zir.e to ~he reSC~:3 t!r.. :·;·:is:"'! :c::':)"':' "vnl~a!' Marxism, that what is bood for party is -:~(~!: (,;is~. d:)r;~T.:, peo~J10. '..:::.t:::r.. ..tism and cultism". "ubjectivl"ly" good for the But this task is ~ot ~ithout its problE Even if something is obviously pro~ressive in itself, but independent ::,.pparc~ltJ.y; "Rescl~ing the ! rish revolutionary or" the party, it will be fought (the tradition from the bloody grip of "trotskyist" Anti-i\mendment Campaign). fascist and ultraleftist Inter- I Th~ WP's hostility to the AAC was prctutions is of particular lund:tml~nta.l to i.ts outlook, as was ur~ency in the light of claims its wa.rn ing to Dub 1 in members not put Ior"':urd by nco··fascists anel to g~t involved because of the type troLsLyists, to be within that of "eh>mLnts" associated with the t ra.di t ion. \'/():!:!~ 0 l' that' nature ca.mp:' ign. Disregardlng tho polit ieal has long s~nce needed to be mp1'its of holding an effective Dail und8rtaken in truely Mu.rxian balance of power, de Rossa was f2shion, h~vi~Z ~8~ard for the S~)sequently disarmingly honest po:liticc-~1ist'.: r'.~cG'.J, context WIll'a he outlined the reason [or the \'/il~'ir: r;hidl !:hn I)'ll:;h rovolut- WP l'l'j e~ "We t ing an allianee: are :~on::.:·.~ :l~~.. ~_lj:.; :-::~ ~.I}~ .. S rO!·~!,8( .!!ere not looking to get people to join H.:::; r'" ~ ,. c.:: ~~ :.~ [~~~: ~ ;-; 1' ~" ~~ r~ t i !1 S t :'"1 () t Jim Kl'mmy' s party or the IRSP". c;r:] y .:~~~. ~~.. -~'2 :.-~~~. .\.~ ,.(l.~:(1!10S!:; of l0.:.~:~Jt.on interview, Oct/Nov 1983). t8r.~.:_·~_~_'t :~~. ";:-::~!.«~:' bllt r~1.~o Prionsias de Rossa is the party's ~'-rr"'.::'~l~c···· ;~::: '; :~ .:".~:; ~'-~':; ef !31'it ish most impressive public figure, ano. 2~:~~~~:L:...w:_ :;~.s:···. /'. -;.. ;.:~"\.~.. '. t311 i i: Si1::;\!!(] no doubt its future leader. He has outl~ned on several occasions th8 ·"l·:~.~i.~' ,:"3 ~_.: :..:s : -: ::Jth r'ir~ht- basic outlook of the WP, and ".:.~."" r:: ::.=-:::': .. :'.::.,: (; ::... ::ci ~L·Jyal::.:; t should be taken special note of. :.:L~::(~,: ..' ::' - ':;':.. : .::,rl(E~' f:':10q:!:b there lie annunclates in the clearest :!•.l'G ~;::: ~.~ '.:::0 \·.'cu:~cl cl:".im to be fashion the belief that what is c:-: 1:1':8 :'!:r·.:'dlefV' \'!1~8 nIso sub­ needed is for the Party to get s(~rjl~e ·~o t11is most anti­ into Pow~r, and in the process tl!(:o~:8i.:ic:,.1 oX all r-h:!.losophical the main aim of tax equity campaigns ~s'~ is not so much to achieve reforms of \TiQ·:/.:J('ii!"l -;';:Il' ~ys~l':.• ;~s to "1'a1::;0 class c~)n::;ci0usn8ss". The sume not t i. t uC:(' L:h. ': '.. 1, :'.' f"hp n:1 i 1 was ltlso n f:.'l.etor j n in ng n uepce on e_ The important eature n e er . planninJ; process. Planning .4-,.still -option is that the State would _ the mosl:_important fune! ~Q~-l~f-.t - -. - -hold th,e ri~ht to acquire. -. -to" local' go. ve!n~en.t. -:. - ~~: ~ ~ -~_~_ _ possession of bui ldin~ ~,anri ·.... 11en .- and where required Q. \, a, ~r;ic~, tha~t, 4. It is unjust that th~-~G~lth would r~flect existi1 use value. "-<.rea-tecd- by expanding comnmni.t :t"es·, 6 in' the -fcrm-g T ,?1'~i9 investment-· - D. The DSP eeli.evr.>s, therefore, that i.l ph..ysic{~Tintr·~:;truc·ture'such tbe Kenny 'Committee"s majority: as ro_ads ~.... t\,: o:>::w:,.';=-. shoul1.·accrue recommenda ... .1.Vll ;:01..:1'"' 'form Ll)e'. " .... - in landfa-ll-f,9:shion to a tiny·... basis of an ·acceptable solution to -nlinori.ty of f_ort-unate lan.go~Iler8w thp., PJ"oblem, ~rovided that the fo-:::VWl.rl~~:i.lIi~,:,lrt~nt m()(iifi.~aticns • H,)llsin~ is a basic ri.:f',llt ·01' all- ~r~~ ;I~<.lU_~ 'I~~'son:::;, ,1 t. shau lrr t hoiefofe be' .. .. ". .' .-i." :': .. ' .•.... , , '. 1. 'Phc tn:::L v': .d.... ;j ~il1l! c~, 'l-.iing- lan; ',::, 0 ,nC t 1 '" ...... S1. h a definiti.G' .vou/le'. .1. .. al ~~ :t' The cost of bUilding lanct t.o lar,rl within a built-up area an We'll 'the COlnr.''',·d':'Li at large and to l~~d zoned ~~~ building purpos~~ on -+:;,0 indi"iG~aJ.. :lUu::;ebu:,pr mu-.>t be t~p fring~ T~e ~r0ti~ems creat~a ~y ~~ reduced.. ,'ncontrolled market ~.i bUildir.g land a~ 'Ll~~. ~Ul1 ~: b) Tlh" oppOrl.Ull':'~J f~r .::;~C',I.. latloP.. occur just I iil ..'¥" ,,E l)ar. in buildin ..... :'.c .~, r~~~'. t .... rr;r..Qvcd. districts whp,_ M~e ~~~_C-" ~~. ~~nd This Deans that th~ e~cessive 's~eculation can lead ~o widespre~J 1o~r]i('tio"'. "::~~r- __-::-: :"0' .':-L', ~:..... ~.Y~::'ce

of ~~,,~.:. '.' .... r- .,").;' ~ .... ri il·~"'·:._:.:1tural '2. 'i,; .. ..: pril1c~I).l~ 0.1 r~.l8.+l.ng thc'pr'l-~~ ~e reduce~, ;~ land must well as of property to its currenl: U5~ "'r.~~_"': the equally excessive differentlul is central to any at tempt to hr:';.~ l.letween the various categoI'~I~S of about a ration~l market in buiJuing" building land. land. c) Whore a local a~~horl~YI or any The Kenny Committee's recommer.dal".ion t n \1('1' l.~ public body, ::'nvcsts .:...ollpensate landowners for "use VI.! 1 1..:, infrastructure, it is they who pILlS 251>" needs, h()\I1c>'.':r .- OP Jodif'iE thel)(~·I~"\.·'ilt s!lOuld recoup vf th? The 25% differential need not ho ~:;lifo in\'est 1:1 C n t . Any such differential Should ~~-t~~rl t ~.L) Tho reasons given by the uetermined on principles analogous ~~ K~"nl1\' -Committee for the rejecti.on those obtaining to workers "he' arc ~aG 0: most of the o~tions cons~dered -';dundant, ie lenght. of tenure, b\' it are soun-d. Opt iOl! B; _ replacement cost and ayailability of however, on the nationalisaXio.n ef suitable alternative properties, are all building land and payment of examples of the factors which should b eOF.1pc'nsa t ton I is d i:::;missed too taken into account in determining the hi i b r\' . differentials. - I t w:~ no t necessary. for pxamp le, fOl' the Committee to assume that 3. Any steps taken to increase the use all building land wou'~ ~eed to'be value of land about to r ~cqu-ir-:(! ­ n'lt';(')n" ')" cod anr! 'Amnnnc:;at: -·n ,\:-. ... SUbSf'''llent T'(') a Not·,..", t'" Trea .- .... (.\, - -) . paid for it, in an instant. be ignored in determining the evel of Furthermore, the problem of . compensation payable. . - , _ defining- what is building land E. It has been suggested that measures t must also be faced if certain relate. the price of bUildiRg land 1 1 1 o'ther options are chosen, including use-value might be declared ~avoured the option in the majority unconstitutional on the grounds tt t report. they would discriminate-between t 2) In es~en"'o, ;~ ~"~7 case, the owners of L~ila1ng land and owner option chosen by the majority other, mainly agricultural, land, Kenny Committee~is not dissimilar It must be pointed out however, t. t tt to-that of nati9~al~~ation. --.-- 22 price of agricultural land is in fact very closely relate9 to its use-value, and that jt rise~ ~n~ !~lls according as ­ farm incomes ~ise and fall .. The effect of our proposals would merely be to extend the principle of use-value to all markets in land. F. The "Democratic Socialist Party believes, therefore, tha1 there are no impossible . \,J 3tac .lP~ ,-v ',ne impJ ~1I1entat ion of it~ p~oposals other, perhaps, than _the la~k of the political ·will necessary to their introduction.-The. Pafty calls, a~cordingly, fQr the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Building Land to rcco~nend.the adoption of these proposals, an& for the Go "ernment to.implement them ir.'..'11edia tely. -Dublin Urban Affairs • ~ommittee, DSP { 'THiS ARTICLE IS A COpy OF THE --i }I~~~ D~~FT·ONLY OF THE DSP , -- ~UBMISSION TO THE OIREACHTAS I, rC;0AITTEE. DUE TO RECENT i [l'F"TELOPMENTS IN THE CONTROVERSY srJRROU1-iI!ING THE KENNY REPORT, THE; uLJJjMI~S.1.vl'i 111\::> wL.t.l'~ .a~,","'l.1"-IED··I·· : .....-.. ". . THY:; !'it.A.I.' r:'..:.J:-: 0:"dl~ U.td\'JlJ\"'hhT~L: I SO~IALI~'!' llT,T'LL CARRY DETAILS or . I TIlli·-AMEI~JJ .. c,·as. I "FIEUJ L.i:,Y" REVJFW - rontd from p:"'15: Politics brings rancour in~o all thes~

argu,nents - i ,.,tn T)eane I s pamphlet toe. Field uny cOffiprises the main Northern writers who fall on the Nationalist side of tl..; -hake-out; hence it is inevitahle that L~lese pan,phlets should have a r.ationa:i.ist leaning. If they simply decided that ~hcy want to clarify ineas for a nationalist audience, rather than a British Isles audier~~, they might shed more light.

- JOHN MINAHANE -

•

:.

_. -- - "- 23 , .

D. ~:J:; '- (q l-t;.side Limerick) .t 0 a political A~~ALYSIsr1' POLITICS AND "RiGOROUS sec-':.-;I::_ca;:·lt help-thinking that DRve., _ ,lvey'wo.·;.:(ln~t thin~: ".'lch_, '""0~.L.eve CP1~t::.1"~ a1-1; g_ ,'.e bad thi:u,:.:..> ~ ,Io"old "'like, if I may, t9 Li1.1r,E;.; -.rOt:le bric" If ";i.l.r _=ar-ty is to grow..{never mind get . c.'eunents' on'D'ave 1\.lveyi s article I Prop-: J ocal A':1d nat~O!]-al publi~ representatives <1':'=~':~ ~'lra' j +~~ -:;.:~ond i33-\;..~ &. ,rr:' in.. .01: p ...... ,.od '0"''--1'' J .1' . TT ,. , el_,-, _ - ~1r:: ,.0 ... " J.'- '" :J:lY) ,1;r:en en ergo ,..... ~ I 'T'.II~ D.~;.:CC":L·WIC SCCIA.uIST. - <;13c~0_~\1 ·""0J.~ _~r""~-"";,v nt">co~:..' .:; ~ ..... +-.7;) ...... __ \04 • , ~.l..l.~ .\.,.. .. ~~,o ~C" ~ .l..Y u '.--""1 ./ .·~r+ ~")'r C .:j+ ...... - .... .;~-, ..... c... ,~ __ ..., __ ~ .L.e .....J:l tJ cY'·;+';c.i--~ ~,~. .~..... _...... - c - ::; v -' - • ve-~ ~ , .....::) od 1; sone articles (uu~ of which, he :;;£Q+,ej -fr.rt;a1.is-4-:~.-: a+,t~tude ~o th" ':l~rke:ts l-arty.

which appeared recen~ly in th= local D.:.:? p paper the DUN LAOGHAI3E TRIBITrE. Dave A:v~~ he DoS:_: nay ?r May no~ suceed L':1 cutt~>6 I! rej ects the charge made by some Party mem- ,out an In_J uent,~3l place in Irish Parlia­ bers t~t the articles in questio:l f~vO\)""eJ. ~p.n+,:ry ~oli~i:es -, wl:'.-:lt. is cPrt3~n., if' \Ve .respec+,~vely,the Wo:-kers Parf;y and the opt 0 ~]t. on ,he s1.de ,1Jnes drc:n:me-out Labour Party and t.hat therefore they ShOUllr' ~r(,:1?-~J.~es Of, "irery rJ,gorous Cl.u'\lysis" , n'~ ~:; been published in an essentially :hp. D.), • w?n t .play any role in cr.nng- I :J ,)p·w~l\u.ist Party periodical. J..r)~ or con-!;J 1 butme to Irish socip<",:;y. th~.t n.3.~o II· his reply,Alvey states CC- the Fr,d;ernnlJJ-' " ~r~ 1-'3 c, """"putation for (1"";:':1!; 11 0 0 1 ',':"-::te3 I ·.vl~~~· -inhibLedly discuss a given polj-l;. ­ .I.. ;?1 sktuation", :J:k :?urt,yl s propag3.'1.da ~~"'vU'I' " •••tole::"?"':c .n.J. 'lcuU!'age oropag- r~.C1< which aspires to obj e~"':~--.·; analysis" ~1.:':; ~ Ci~~ .J • ...... :1 when it reflecr... 'u 1') "':.:?.

r 'II,..;'d have no qualr.ls in agre " >5 with \,- .\.., ...... ;:.p + ""r' T'\ ~.~ in "")(t ,.' .. { ..... "" ... r • f :jr-i ....-;...... '. 1·, ...... 1 ~l·. :,ropa:..> mdist newsl~t.!;er lik~ the : ~ORZ or F..:E3 FHESS. As ~h'J b;:;nch in nues.\;ic:· dc~~'~,'!;hen the '~I3mr2 is obliged to' f'.llfill the licitel bu.\; necessary role of . S(~~~v pUblishising the Party anci i~~ He ~as raised impo;tant points no' ·cies. I ".1 :ab,:'lll- vuoI' product i vity in the Indeed,I Vlould h8,{8 thoug' 1• .;~,e ",:...:' ;::t.gr1cultural sector and t~ ..... !':.2 -..' ~r1" tLl' __ .JJ:l ~ozhaire clJ,{ls~i-l;ue:lcj' provided ":11S'J.bst~'1Hal reform. But his article 1:9. <>. wHh a creJi.!; '01,:- vo.!;e in ':he 1-·,::.. c~~ta]r..s an ~sse::ti<:>n ~hich is simply gener 1 elec';.icn would .onl~r u.r.":; ~rli."ill +he _j~I '- ng an? Wh1ch 1t 1S 1mnortant to nece"si"ty,urgency a'1d v.?ll--~ 0': push:ipg ":"~ I:?~::ec:. 1f w~ are to f<:>rmulate a I "'~ ~8.""t. ev~Y''' ~"".l-10n r +.;'p .• -,I- ,,.,,..._.v~.... J""'-";..;:'I o.c..L J 1. ... ., .r .... l:t <... , ..... - J ..oO""'1.'b'=--_ ~:tv _ ..L.__ __ ..... _ pOl1Cy on agr1cul ~ ural • occasion.' - :~- - .=-. He states that "farmers have . '. " ,enricl1' d themselves by doing next to :Bu~ per1"..aps we.. can.. best unde:-s-t n what ~3 nothing". He also says that m t f b ' . d T\ 'I r h d I 0 enl.n ...,ave 'r.. vey s th'"J.0JC~'1.g w••en we rea fhe EEC agriculture- budO'et ' os "'"h_~r ~:I:P-_. hi t',~c,1 hi .. I'~c t. l:) 1S fu.I. r J s, ar e, 3 c r.. >:!.'ac ,or: devoted to "making sure farmers COT:'.nents on wl-.at ne considers should be ave a 'decent' income regardless of D.S.P. strategy. . ow hard they work and even if '-}1pv _ 'du not work l'lt all" While saying,on -+;he me ha'1.d,that :in the areas where the D.S. P. has established".···l The Agr1,:yl' :t ural Inst i tute' s a pre§ence.in electoral work~ ••+his should ~a::m Management .Surve for 1981 has· be .. ccntinued and build on" ,nevertheless, th1S. t~ say on farm incomes in that since the Party has oi3,ed the bus,D.S.P. ear., In all provinces except Uuns-t.r members should " ••• devo~e less energy to he h1ghest proportion of full time electoral work". The end result of arms fell into the £2 000 - 3 000 such' a policy would inevitably reduce the category (munster's being the -' ... , IR£3,000 ~ 4,000 b ... ouPJ anO ~nen _ ' _ 'udged against income distributic ~ or any other sector of the work I______~ -~~_ opulation, this represents a __ 24 low level of achievement. It points to a situation where for many farms, A Perspective on 'standards of living would be mi miserably low without income Europe's Defence supports from outside farming". The Institute also says that "The real value of the 1981 average family DECISIVE WEAPONS income per farm was still about 40~ Between the last two world wars below the 1978 level" (Counting farm it was assumed that the new strategic incomes only). weapon was the airplane. That That is not enrichment. And it assumption was wrong. It was the is nonsense to suggest that farmers tank. A few military planners saw are provided with a decent income the value of the tank correctly, "even if they do not work at all". but with one exception were not A farmer who does not work at all taken seriously before June 1940, will have no income at all unless after the fall of France to the he lives in one of those counties Nazis. "Boney" Fuller and Liddel in which the farmer's dole is Hart in Britain, de Gaulle in payable, and that is means- France and Heinz Guderian in tested in the case of new applicants. Germany were the tank specialists The old system which abolished the in the 1930's. By a fluke, means-test for farmers in certain Guderian's plans for a massed counties is itself being abolished armour invasion of France, through at present. And of course, the the Ardennes, came to Hitler's scheme only existed in a minority notice, and was approved. This of counties. strategy of concentrating tank armour was what led to the As for the assertion that demolition of the French army in farmers have been doing"next to three weeks, and this despite the nothing", the Agricultural Institute fact that the German High Command has estimated that milk production disliked the plan and kept has increased by nearly 50% in the trying to dilute it, and even past decade, although the amount of Hitler wavered in its execution, • land devoted to it has declined at Dunkirk and later in Alsasse . slightly. And according to John All of the decisive battles of ~ Mordy's figures - Table 1 in his article - net agricultural output World War 2 were tank battles. It increased by 17% (31% gross) isn't that the airplane wasn't between 1970 and 1981 .. important, but that the capacity to get beyond static warfare and That was during a period when allow scope for strategic flair we went through one recession and was su~plied by tanks. One of the the start of another, when inflation more interesting aspects of soared and when interest rates this story is that both the went through the roof. Of course military specialists and the agriculture should have done a great disarmers got it wrong.The deal betterduring the decade - but prevailing orthodoxy up to June to accuse farmers of doing "next 1940 was that armies would to nothing" is misleading. qUickly bog down into trench war­ fare, and that the cities behind Yours Sincerely, the lines would be absolutely destroyed with their populations Padraig O'Morain by air raids. William Plummer summed up the politics of it in his poem "Between the Wars": j 'The belief that we should SUBMISSIONS, COMMENTS ON ARTICLES disarm AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ARE and at the same time fight, WELCOME AND SHOULD BE SENT TO THE And that Moscow, ofall places FOLLOWING ADDRESS: was the sole source of light'. The Editor WORLD WAR III THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST Very similar attitudes are P.O. Box 806 prevelent today. The likely defeat Dublin 8 of Western Europe's armies in a war with the USSR in Europe, and 25

anu the horror of imagining the Naturally enough, the military results of a nuclear exchange, hav planners started to produce led the military strategists alternative strategies - this after (although this isn't true of all all is what they are paid to do. of them) to a greater reliance on Enter theatre and tactical nuclear . their nuclear armoury, and the weapons, and continued nuclear war I peace campaign to a defeatist Iscenarios. position. Both sides.,.are agreed on The grea t est d e ft'ec ln these the absolute stra"teglc lmportance strate g'les from a European s tan d- I of the nuclear bomb, and the commo p 'nt' tha t th k 't I scenario for World War III goes I d?~f' lS t ~y mal e 1 ~edry l'k th' , 1 lCUlt 0 serl0us y consl er I ~t: l~sinvasion ~he I of the North European defence without US. I -:::--...... p-. , . But a Europe that was serl0usly German Plaln by masslvely superlo 't t d' l't' I 't ! tank divisions of the USSR. I ln eres e ln po 1 lca un~ ~ , i 2 B f f' I d f t f would have to take responslblllty i Step . e ore ,lna e,ea 0 I for its own defence. Western conventl0nal forces, threats or actual use of theatre EUROPE'S ROLE or tactical nuclear weapons. Without any doubt that defence Step 3. Escalation to full nuclea must relate to the Soviet Union. exchange, or not depending on And there is much to be defended in your side of the fence, and or Western Europe; political democracy climbdown by one of the beligernt freedom of th individual and of It must be said that the defeat the press, independent trade unions of the West's armies envisaged in I and political parties etc. ~ll of Step 2 is never officially I these items were central planks admitted, but given the West's I in the socialist movement's

inferiority in material, its I platforms prior to 1914. They are problems with reaction time and just as important to us today. co-operation between different The calls for disarmament which national armies, and the required don't tackle the question of how American atombic jump, that defeat we should defend ourselves can at is more than likely. Many other variants can be introduced into best only be described as weak­ this war game, including one or minded and at worst as a Soviet • other side deciding early to get inspired propaganda exercise. A the jump on the other and deciding state which wants to continue to exist must be prepared to fight for ~o skip a step in the game and go straight for the big guns. All of its own existance in a world of political conflict. The absense of these are possible but beyond the " realm of cogent thought. this willingness to defend itself acts as an' invitation to other Interestingly enough, General . states to mop it up, and could be 's solution in his book i far more disruptive of the peace the "Third World War" depends on al than the armed detterent. A revolution in Eastern Europe to Western Europe distanced from the allow the West to Win. Not some­ US would have certain progressive thing one would want to rely on! effects and advantages. The . US TRADITIONAL ROLE European political tradition would be seen as quite different from and The escalation to nuclear healthier than the US's, a more we~pons, the maintaining of the effective brake could be put on right to 'first strike' are all America's interference in 3rd dependent on the view that the World national liberation struggles West's conventional forces would and that sort of Europe could be defeated. seriously act as 'honest broker' to the two superpowers. To some extent this strategy had already become unbelievable in These things could develop in the early 1970's. After the US's a Europe independent of America, defeat in Vietnam, Nixon's but only of course if we can impeachment, and milksops like defend ourselves. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in the White House, who could believe WHICH WEAPONS? that the American President had As said above, while our the bottle to push the button. conventional ~o~pes are no match