Irish Marxist Review 9

ISSN 2009-647X (Print) ISSN 2009-6499 (Online)

Editor: John Molyneux Deputy Editor: Dave O’Farrell Website Editor: Memet Uludag Editorial Board: Marnie Holborow, Sin´eadKennedy, Donal Mac Fhearraigh, Tina MacVeigh, Paul O’Brien, Peadar O’Grady Cover Design: Daryl Southern Published: February 2014 SWP PO.Box 1648 Dublin 8 Phone: John Molyneux 0857356424 Email: [email protected] Website: www.irishmarxistreview.net

Irish Marxist Review is published in association with the Socialist Workers Party (Ire- land), but articles express the opinions of individual authors unless otherwise stated. We welcome proposals for articles and reviews for IMR. If you have a suggestion please phone or email as above.

i Irish Marxist Review 9

Contents

Editorial 1

Is the Irish State Racist? Memet Uludag 4

The Resistible Rise of Golden Dawn Nikos Loudos 17

The Permanent Crisis of 21st Century Ulster Unionism Se´anMitchell 27

The Precariat: New Class or Bogus Concept? Kieran Allen 43

Irish Tories and social bandits of Seventeenth Century Ireland Ruair´ıGallagher 54

Oppression, Intersectionality and Privilege Theory Karl Gill 62

Review: Sabby Sagall, Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Geno- cide John Molyneux 69

Review: Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: the Secret Origins of the First World War Roy H W Johnston 74

Review: Gary Younge, The Speech, the story behind Martin Luther King’s Dream Conor Kennelly 77

Review: Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights Jim O’Connell 80

Review: Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare - Killing by Remote Control Michael Youlton 83

Review: Brian S. Roper, The History of Democracy Stewart Smyth 85

ii Contributors

Memet Uludag is a Turkish - Irish socialist in Dublin, active also with the Anti-Racist Net- work and the Irish Anti-War Movement who writes regularly at http://minordetailsnews.net

Nikos Loudos is a regular contributor to Socialism from below in Greece and a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SEK). He is author of a book on Resistance in the Middle East and a pamphlet, What SEK is and what it ﬁghts for.

Kieran Allenis a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at UCD and author of numerous books including The Politics of James Connolly, Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism and, with Brian OBoyle, Austerity Ireland.

Karl Gill is a recent Social Science graduate from University College Dublin and is currently a local election candidate for People Before Proﬁt in Dun Laoghaire.

Se´anMitchell is an activist and socialist based in Belfast. He is the author of a forthcoming book on the 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots.

Ruairi Gallagher graduated recently with a BA (Hons) in Irish History and Politics at the University of Ulster and is a socialist activist in Derry.

John Molyneux is editor of Irish Marxist Review and author of a number of books including The Point is to Change It! An Introduction to Marxist Philosophy and The Case for Socialism in Ireland, with a blog http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.ie/.

Roy H W Johnston is a veteran Marxist, physicist and former member of Sinn F´ein.He is the author of Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the Twentieth Century in Ireland.

Conor Kennelly is a socialist activist in Dublin South Central.

Jim O’Connell lives in County Cork where he is active in anti-fascism, anti-racism and support for Palestinians. He is a member of the Socialist Workers Party and an organizer with the People Before Proﬁt Alliance.

Mike Youlton is a Greek socialist in Dublin who is active with the Irish Ant-War Move- ment and the Peace and Neutrality Alliance.

Stewart Smyth lectures at Queens University Management School, Belfast. He writes on the neo-liberalisation of public services, including housing and grass-roots tenants campaigns.

iii Editorial

Climate change gets real like Bangladesh where many millions of people live on the banks of the countries three On a global scale the most important polit- great rivers and where a one metre rise in sea ical development over the last year, indeed levels would permanently flood one fifth of the over the last couple of years, has been the land, home to 15 million people. All this will transformation of climate change from a well- hit a country where people already live in ex- grounded scientific prognosis to a palpable treme poverty and many literally starve on present reality. the streets. Its neighbour, India, is presently This has included not only the familiar, constructing the Indo-Bangladeshi barrier, a but rapidly increasing, melting of the artic ice 3,406 kilometres (2,116 mi) fence of barbed but also a heat wave in Alaska in June, fero- wire and concrete nearly 3 metres high, al- cious temperatures of over 50ôC in Australia, legedly to prevent smuggling of narcotics and the terrible Typhoon Haiyan in the Philip- already operates a shoot to kill border policy pines, and the combination of heat wave and that has claimed 1000 lives. drought in California with the Polar Vortex across middle America down to the South. While this kind of scenario is becoming Now climate change has come to Ireland and an imminent prospect around the globe, the Britain with the exceptional storms and floods long term prospects are, of course, even more of recent weeks. catastrophic. What will make it so deadly is Meanwhile the scientific evidence accumu- not the change to the climate in itself, though lates. Here is a graph which shows what is that will be extremely serious, but the com- happening to ocean temperatures: bination of this with a class divided capitalist system that ruthlessly subordinates people to profit. Vast areas of land will become infer- tile or uninhabitable, water and food supplies will be hit and the price of both forced up, generating conflicts, wars and refugee flows in the tens of millions which will be met with, at the least, callous indifference and, more likely, vicious repression. Those who rule our planet, both the owners of the giant corporations and the governments of the major powers, are well aware of all this and have been so for many years if not decades. They have access to all the As the oceans heat up so storms become scientific data we do and much more be- more frequent and more intense. The trajec- sides. They have been repeatedly warned tory shown above guarantees that in the com- by their own (very cautious) expert commit- ing years (and not just later in the 21st cen- tee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate tury) we will see many repetitions, and worse, Change and indeed politicians such as Barack of the extreme weather that has ravaged Cork, Obama, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Chi- Limerick, Somerset and the Thames Valley nese President, Xi Jinping, have all acknowl- in the last month. In many cases the places edged the reality of humanly generated cli- affected will be enormously more vulnerable mate change. than modern Ireland or Britain and the hu- Yet they have done and are doing nothing man consequences will be immensely more about it; or to be more precise they are doing tragic. One has only to think of a country nothing effective. The essence of what needs

1 to be done is simple and well understood: the climate change already built into the ecologi- world economy, not you, not your community, cal system by past emissions, it will be neces- not Ireland but the world economy, which sary to break capitalism. means its major players - USA, China, In- This is regardless of whether there is a dia, the EU, Russia etc - have to switch from mass movement against climate change. Ob- being driven by greenhouse gas emitting fos- viously such a movement is desirable and sil fuels (oil, coal and gas) to using renewable should it emerge we will be an enthusiastic and sustainable sources of energy such as wind part of it, but it will not be a question of per- power, solar power and tidal power. This has suading or enlightening our rulers. It will be to happen on a huge scale and it has to happen necessary, on pain of fascism and barbarism, quickly. Nothing else and nothing less will do, to overthrow them and replace production but this is precisely what is NOT happening. for profit with planned production for human Despite all the talk of sustainability and envi- need which can only be done through working ronmental awareness global carbon emissions, class struggle internationally. far from falling drastically, are rapidly rising. All of us, all of humanity, are being walked towards utter disaster. The rise of racism It is of vital importance to understand The picture is mixed but overall the last clearly why this is happening. It is not ig- year or so has not been a good one for that norance, it is not even lack of compassion. global class struggle. Certainly the stunning Compassion for ordinary people is clearly not momentum of 2011, with the Arab Spring a characteristic that distinguishes our planet’s and the general Occupy movements has been rulers but its absence is not the main reason beaten back, most obviously in Egypt, and for their inaction. It is that, without excep- one consequence of this is that in a number tion, they are locked into capitalism, not only of countries such as Thailand, Ukraine, and ideologically but politically and economically France it is the right that have been able to and capitalism is locked, by its very nature, seize the initiative on the streets. With this into competitive capital accumulation. has come an inevitable rise of racism, though This means that faced with even a small it has taken different forms in different coun- downturn in economic activity, say negative tries. production of a couple of percent in a year (a Ireland, though it has not experienced the recession) they are obliged to try to restore dramatic political swings of some parts of the economic growth. It means that faced with a world is not immune to this process. The fact threat to the interests of their major compa- that over 5 years the working class movement, nies - like Exxon Mobile, BP, Shell, Toyota, crippled by its Labour and reformist leader- General Motors etc. all of whom are com- ship, has not been able to offer a successful pletely wrapped up in and committed to fos- challenge to austerity has meant a predictable sil fuels - they are compelled to defend them. tendency to look for scapegoats, most obvi- Not one of the significant governments in the ously in the shape of ‘foreigners’ and immi- world is prepared to buck this iron logic. So grants. for all the talk, for all the scientific reports, The fact that this is predictable does not conferences and climate summits at Kyoto, mean, however, that socialists can passively Copenhagen, Rio and so on, nothing real hap- accept it or just shrug their shoulders. Be- pens. cause racism is such a mortal foe for the work- Socialists have to face up to this reality, ers’ movement we have an absolute duty to difficult as it is. We have to grasp the grim combat racism and wage an ideological and fact that both to prevent catastrophic run- political battle against it. For this reason away climate change in the future and to deal the question of racism dominates this issue with the very damaging consequences of the of IMR.

2 We lead with an eloquent and powerful de- concepts. Both Allen and Gill understand nunciation of the racism of the Irish state by why these concepts have a certain purchase in Memet Uludag. The issue is of great impor- the present situation and do not reject them tance because racism is widely portrayed as a out of hand, but they also show how - like phenomenon deriving from ‘lack of education’ so many academic trends - they point away and, by implication, from the lower work- from a perspective of class struggle and working class. Uludag demonstrates clearly that ing class self emancipation. racism in Ireland, which possesses a strong anti-racist popular tradition, comes from the History top and is embedded in many of the practices of the state. IMR is also committed to an ongoing engage- This is complemented by an equally pow- ment with Irish history and in this context we erful analysis of the rise (and decline) of the have Ruairi Gallagher’s study of ‘Irish Tories nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece by Nikos and social bandits of the 17th century’, which Loudos from SEK. Ireland is very fortunate follows on the work on the Whiteboys by Sean in not having (yet!) a serious fascist party or Moraghan in IMR 6 and Roy Johnston’s re- movement. Loudos article, as he himself says, view essay about the Larne/Howth gun run- serves as a warning against the complacent nings of 1914 partly based on the book Hidden idea that ‘it couldn’t happen here’ as well as History: the Secret Origins of the First World a guide as to how we can fight back. War by Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor. These two major articles are comple- The latter requires a word of explanation. mented by book reviews by Conor Kennelly Roy Johnston is a veteran Marxist and of Gary Younge’s excellent analysis of Mar- we are pleased to publish his contribution tin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ but we have reservations regarding the ex- speech and by Jim O’Connell of Marek Edel- tent of the British Government’s involvement man’s classic account the Warsaw ghetto up- in these events, which is his central claim. rising and John Molyneux’s extended review However we agree with Roy Johnston that of Sabby Sagall’s newly published Final Solu- this subject is worth further research as is the tions which offers a new approach to under- wider machinations of the secret state in the standing the phenomenon of genocide. events the led to the outbreak of the war. So Sectarianism in Northern Ireland is not in the best tradition of debate we have pub- the same as racism but it is clearly related and lished this article and hope it stimulates the so it is highly appropriate that we also feature interest of writers and historians of the pe- SeánMitchell’s outstanding analysis of how riod. We shall, of course, be returning to the the recent rise of sectarianism in the six coun- question of the First World War in this an- ties is a product of the combined crises of the niversary year. economy and unionism. This is a long article If the First World War was dominated but will repay reading and deals with a sub- by the horrors of trenches, today’s technol- ject of crucial importance for socialism in Ire- ogy permits the different horror of imperial- land. The perceptive reader will notice that ist slaughter by remote control by means of Uludag, Loudos and Mitchell share a common drones. Mike Youlton reviews US anti-war underlying Marxist approach. activist, Medea Benjamin’s recent book on That same approach underpins Kieran ‘Drone Warfare’. Allen’s discussion of the idea of a ‘precariat’ Finally we have Stewart Smyth’s welcom- and Karl Gill’s critique of ‘intersectionality’ ing review of Brian Roper’s Marxist history and ‘privilege theory’. As Allen points out the of democracy which develops on themes ex- academic world resembles the clothing indus- plored by Tina MacVeigh in her IMR 8 article try in its penchant for new and fashionable on ‘Their democracy and ours’.

3 Is the Irish State Racist?

Memet Uludag

For revolutionary Marxists, there is an in- tions the lack of political attention and under- extricable link between racism and capitalism. standing of state/institutional racism is de- Capitalism is dependent on racism as both a scribed as follows: source of profiteering, but more importantly as a means to divide and rule. Racism is nec- Direct racism and overt expres- essary to drive a wedge between workers who sions of racism have dominated otherwise have everything in common and ev- the debate on racism in Ireland ery reason to ally and organize together, but in recent years. Racially moti- who are perpetually driven apart to the ben- vated attacks and discrimination efit of the ruling class.1 occurring in pubs, buses, restaurants and accommodation are ap- The term racism refers to prejudice and parent in the reports from the discrimination against people on the grounds Garda´ıand the National Consul- of their real or presumed ethnic origin. The tative Committee on Racism and main form of racism in the modern world has Interculturalism. These attitudes been, and remains today, ‘White’ European and behaviours of the individu- and North American racism against ‘people als who perpetrate the behaviour of colour’ such as Africans, Asians, Native are, conceptually, what many re- Americans (‘Indians’) Arabs, Iranians, Poly- gard as racism. The idea of ex- nesians etc. and their descendants. Some- amining racism as being state en- times, like today, this racism has also ex- gineered or institutional is less tended to certain Europeans such as the Pol- accepted.2 ish, Bulgarians and Romanians and, there have been times, especially in Britain, when Today, there is hardly any state or gov- there was strong racism against the Irish. The ernment in the world that will openly de- focus of this article is state and institutional clare itself and its institutions as racist. In- racism, this is because of the nature of the deed many states have signed up to vari- capitalist state is a more complex and there- ous regional and international agreements and fore more difficult to expose and confront. It treaties, such as various United Nations and can be the most powerful form of racism as European Union (EU) treaties whose focus is it can enable all other forms of racism to find to eliminate racial discrimination. However, ideological and political arguments to justify around the world, and especially in West- their racist acts. ern Europe, state/institutional racism today From the beginnings of modern capitalist is more evident than ever. Especially within states; along with various state and national the EU institutional racism is taking the form institutions, emerged the practical implemen- of a joint, multi-state policy centrally imposed tations and the ever developing complex poli- via EU level policies and practices. cies of institutional/state racism. In the Irish State/institutional racism is indeed the Centre for Human Rights and National Uni- most complicated and difficult form of racism versity of Ireland, Galway report BREAKING to expose and confront because, unlike racist DOWN BARRIERS: Tackling racism in Ire- gangs on the streets, or the actions of racist land at the level of the State and its institu- political groups, it is not always easy to 1Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, ‘Race, Class and Marxism’, Socialist Worker, 2011 2Louise Beirne and Dr Vinodh Jaich, Breaking Down Barriers: Tackling Racism in Ireland at the level of the State and its institutions. Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway

4 recognise. State/institutional racism does not the progressive and non-ethnic constitutional carry flags decorated with symbols of hatred. right to Irish citizenship for babies born in It cannot be banned; a state won’t introduce Ireland with a nationality and ethnicity based laws against itself. Its own police force won’t racist law. With the changes, children born on arrest and lock it behind bars in its own pris- the island of Ireland to parents who were both ons. It is not easy to physically confront on non-nationals would no longer have a consti- the streets and smash. You cannot sit down tutional right to citizenship of the Republic of with it and try to change its mind by putting Ireland. forward reasonable arguments against racism. Why? Simply put, because it is not a group of human beings but a multi-dimensional sys- Before the changes, Kieran Allen argued tem. What is more, you cannot ignore it by ‘the citizenship and the rights that go with it turning your back and walking away from it. [were] bestowed on anyone who is born in [Ire- It is not delivered by a simple-single act but as land]... But Justice Minister Michael McDow- a process of complex, intermingled procedures ell [had] discovered a ‘problem’. He [claimed] affecting different aspects of peoples’ everyday it gives foreign mothers an incentive to give lives. As Ronit Lentin argues: ‘Yes people can birth here, causing crisis in maternity hospi- be individually racist, but by and large the is- tals. Like a tabloid editor, he [had] coined a sue is the state, because the state is the only new phrase - ‘citizenship tourism”4 body that has the power to actually exclude and include in racial terms [...]’.3 In the EU and the wider Western In various countries such as Denmark, Europe, states have initiated various na- France, Belgium and Switzerland, govern- tional campaigns and introduced various ments have introduced - or attempted to in- anti-discrimination laws but the issue of troduce - various legal bans on burqa and state/institutional racism has not gone away. niqab that Muslim women wear. Although Today, state/institutional racism has been there were no social or political problems proven to exist at various levels and in var- caused by a tiny minority of women wear- ious forms in social and political life of ing the burqa or the niqab these governments 5 nations. As socialists we must recognise made every effort to change the laws. state/institutional racism in every aspect of social, political and economic life to success- In many countries, non-citizens have little fully identify its causes - the capitalist system or no basic political rights, such as the right to and the state - and build our fight against it. vote or to be an elected representative. In Ire- land non-citizen residents are entitled to vote Legalising racism - Racism in in local elections but they have no say in elect- Legislation ing members of the Dáil- the Irish Parliament - who will legislate in the areas of immigra- This involves the introduction of laws and leg- tion, migrant workers, citizenship etc. The islation that discriminate against certain sec- Irish state ‘legally’ excludes non-Irish / non- tions of the society or minority groups. One EU minorities from having their say in na- of the most significant examples of legislative tional elections while these very same people racism being introduced into Ireland was in have all the same economic duties and legal 2004. The Citizenship Referendum changed responsibilities as the Irish citizens. 3Ronit Lentin, http://theliveregister.tv/blog/ireland-a-racist-state 4Kieran Allen, Citizenship and Racism: The Case Against McDowell’s Referendum. Bookmarks Ireland, 2004 5Memet Uludag, ‘School banned a Muslim girl from wearing the hijab’ 2013, http:// minordetailsnews.net

5 Delivering racist services - people, hair and eye colour was enough to re- Racism in Executive and State move the children from their biological families. Bodies Racism and discrimination exists in various Racism in the Courts and Le- institutions and public services such as the gal System police, health service, education system and various other public/national institutions. In There is widespread evidence of prejudice, Ireland, in many schools and hospitals, the disbelief and disproportionate conviction in cultural, lingual and religious needs of mi- courts and racially biased rulings by powerful norities (who are often the non-Irish, non- judicial authorities as well as failure to deal Catholic people) are not catered for. In hos- with hate crimes. Seeking asylum is not a pitals, patients who will undergo operations criminal act yet many asylum seekers report are offered Catholic spiritual services but for that they are treated like criminals. The so- a Muslim patient to demand such a service cialist Paul D’Amato argues that under cap- would be impossible. According to a report italism we are encouraged to see crime as from the Integration Centre ‘Almost 90 per- something quite simple. He writes: ‘Laws are cent of [Ireland’s] 3,300 primary schools are made so that society can function smoothly. Catholic and, while migrants are not all non- Steal or kill, and you are punished; disobey Catholic, religion is the only grounds which these laws, and you pay a price. This superfi- schools can legally use to discriminate when cial view fails to explain some glaring contra- it comes to enrolment.’ The Integration Cen- dictions in the law and its application, or the tre wants equality law changed so that schools social context in which crime is defined. As with high demand for places can no longer Rosa Luxemburg once wrote, bourgeois jus- give preference to children of a particular faith tice is ‘like a net, which allowed the voracious or refuse to admit a child on religious grounds. sharks to escape, while the little sardines were It said there is a trend of immigrant children caught.’ Laws and the violation of those laws going to certain schools and white Irish at- (crime) reflect the interests of the dominant tending others.6 class - both what is defined as crime, and how In Ireland, in 2013, the forceful removal of the law, which gives the appearance of fair- Roma children from their families exposed the ness, is applied in practice.’7 collective, deep roots of bigotry, prejudice and The class nature of the criminal justice racism in various state institutions, namely system is evident in every prison in every the HSE child services, the Garda´ı and the country: There are no rich people in Moun- legal system. From the beginning there was tjoy prison. In the United States the class an assumption made by the state institutions nature of the racist capitalist system is par- and the authorities involved in the case, that ticularly obvious. The US puts more of its the children were not the biological children of population behind bars than any other coun- the Roma parents. The actions following this try in the world. ‘But the number of incarcer- racial profiling exposed deep racism in some of ated African Americans is the scandal within Ireland’s key state institutions. There was no this scandal’. In 2009 there were just under crime, no evidence of child abuse but because 2.3 million people in prison and more than the ‘suspects’ were Roma people and because 900,000 of them were Black (that is 40 per- the social services and the ‘law enforcement’ cent, or more than three times the percentage had a manufactured racial profile of Roma of African Americans in the population as a 6‘Faith-based schools may ‘fuel racism’ ’ http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/faith-based- schools-may-fuel-racism-224489.html 7Paul D’Amato, ‘Crime and punishment under capitalism.’ http://socialistworker.org/2010/ 08/05/capital-crime-and-punishment

6 whole)8 cases to find out about the capital cities of An editorial in the US socialistworker.org the countries the asylum seekers are coming powerfully described the nature of the racial from. That would be the least they can do in State in the US: delivering a ‘just’ verdict. The U.S. justice system is a Hogan’s claim reminds us of the find- machine that victimizes Blacks, ings of the Irish Refugee Council report Dif- especially young Black men. ficult to Believe: the assessment of asylum According to The Sentencing claims in Ireland 11. The report found that Project, African Americans, who the refugee application process takes many are 13 percent of the population years with an extremely high percentage of and 14 percent of drug users, ac- rejection at the first instance and that ‘over a cording to surveys, account for 37 third [of the asylum seekers] have been in this percent of the people arrested for system [refugee application process] for more drug charges and 56 percent of than three years’. Waiting periods ‘of seven those serving time in state pris- or eight years are not unheard of’ and ‘it is ons for drug offenses. As a re- unsurprising that anxiety, depression and ill sult of these disparities, the fed- health are widespread.’12 eral government calculated that The Office of the Refugee Applications the odds of a Black male born Commissioner (ORAC) is the key state in 2001 going to prison during agency for refugee applications. In the official their lifetime was one in three– mission statement its role is defined as: ‘to compared to a one-in-17 chance investigate applications from persons seeking for a white male.’9 a declaration for refugee status and to issue The Irish criminal justice system is also appropriate recommendations to the Minister deeply racist. In Ireland, judges claim to face for Justice and Equality’. In other words, it is a ‘difficult task’ in asylum cases and complain ORAC that decides whether an asylum seeker that [they] are faced with resolving two con- will be granted the refugee status or not. Re- flicting public policy options. But they are fused applicants can refer their cases to the not shy of expressing a political choice as per Refugee Appeals Tribunal and ultimately to the states position on asylum cases and depor- the courts. But the Irish Refugee Council’s tations as a ‘legal’ fact. Judge Gerald Hogan report raises serious issues regarding the ex- remarked: ‘We must not lose sight that there tremely low levels of acceptance by ORAC has to be, regrettably, a system of deporta- and the racist, disbelieving and the dismis- tion if you are going to have an asylum sys- sive attitude of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal tem.’ Hogan also admitted that judges were towards the asylum seekers. Sue Conlan, the asked ‘to adjudicate on stories from coun- CEO of the Irish Refugee Council said, ‘What tries where they barely know what the capital disturbs me about our findings is the fact that is.’10 Surely it would not be a very difficult many people who appear to have legitimate task for judges who are given the responsi- claims appear not to be receiving a fair exam- bility and the unlimited authority in asylum ination of their claim and are as a result being 8Editorial. ‘We have to win justice for Trayvon’. http://socialistworker.org/2012/03/21/we- have-to-win-justice-for-trayvon 9ibid. 10 Judges face ‘difficult task’ in asylum cases, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ ireland/irish-news/judges-face-difficult-task-in-asylum-cases-1.1661085 11‘Difficult to Believe: the assessment of asylum claims in Ireland’ Irish Refugee Council http: //www.irishrefugeecouncil.ie 12Gavan Titley, ‘Asylum seekers in Ireland languish in the Magdalene laundries of our time’. www.guardian.co.uk

7 denied protection.’ we have a former minister who was part of The ‘culture of disbelief’ among tribunal the FF government’s asylum/refugee policies members is a direct result of institutionalized that forced so many asylum seekers having to racism. Claiming refugee status in any coun- bring their cases to the courts, and on the try is not an illegal act, and the burden should other side we have his wife who earned huge not be only on the asylum seeker to prove sums from these cases. And in all of this, it his/her circumstances to the state. The Irish is we, ordinary people, who paid the ministe- state, as the facts and figures show, has a pre- rial salaries and the huge legal bills of their determined mind-set about the refugee appli- partners. This is truly a case of profiteering cants. The ‘culture of disbelief’ is not some- from an institutionally racist and extremely thing that the asylum seekers should have to discriminatory asylum system. This is a mil- - or even can - deal with so that they can lion Euro earned to get some people deported get a fair process and a just decision. While, back to misery they had run away from, while on one hand, the state claims to have a well- the hubby pretends to work for people. defined and managed process in place, on the other hand, the actual decisions, which have real consequences for people’s lives, are made based on the beliefs of ‘powerful’ and unques- tionable people. This is exactly where the Racism in Immigration and racism in legal institutions lies. Yet for some figures in the legal business Asylum Policies the refugee application process can be a lucrative source of income. Journalist Jim Cu- At both a national and a European level, the sack of the Irish Independent reports that in implementation of immigration control poli- the past five years barrister Sinead McGrath, cies and the general lack of care and duty to- who happens to be the wife of former Fi- wards asylum seekers and migrants mean that anna Fail minister Barry Andrew, received creation of a culture of discrimination against e1,140,832, from the Attorney General’s of- migrant workers and the creation of inhumane fice to fight asylum applications. Some of the living conditions for asylum seekers. Anti- other sums paid to various barristers fighting immigrant racism serves the ruling class of so- asylum cases over the past five years are as fol- ciety very well. It provides a very convenient lows: Husband-wife team Emily Farrell and scapegoat on which to blame all the problems Daniel Donnelly e3 million, Siobhan Stack: of society, thus diverting and deflecting work- e2,346,064, Sara Moorhead: e2,090,043. The ing class anger away from themselves and at total payment to just 5 individuals is over the same time it is part of a strategy of divide e8.5 million.13 and rule setting one section of the working In 2008, Barry Andrews was appointed as class against another. The idea that we must the Minister of State for Children. He lost his limit immigration is widely accepted, includ- seat in 2011 and became the CEO of GOAL in ing by many people who would definitely not 2012. Between 2008 and 2012, during most of consider themselves to be racist. The case for which Andrews was a government minister, immigration control is based on the assump- the Irish government has fought a hard and tion that immigrants are, in one way or an- viscous battle against asylum seekers. What other, a ‘problem’ for the host country. There we have here is a cosy situation between the are two ways in which immigrants can be seen government, the legal system and the private as a problem: in terms of their numbers or in businesses of legal practitioners. On one side terms of who they are. 13Memet Uludag, ‘For some the state is a lucrative family business; making millions in keeping asylum seekers out’ http://minordetailsnews.net/article/some-state-lucrative-family- business-making-millions-keeping-asylum-seekers-out

8 services, a new Immigration Bill is planned to make it easier to remove people from the UK by limiting rights to appeal and tighten- ing the use of human rights law.’15 This came shortly after the anti-immigrant and racist party, UKIP, made significant gains in the local elections. This is yet another example of a government using the immigration card to re- spond to the rising racist political rivalry and Members of Anti-Racist Network protesting in Dublin to prove to right-wing voters that they can be as hard a racist party like UKIP. At the start of 2014 in Britain there was Without exception every state implements a media-wide hysteria about Bulgarians and a form of immigration controls. However at Romanians - and eastern Europeans in gen- times of economic crises or serious domestic eral. They were consistently depicted by the political turmoil this subject is brought up tabloid media as destitute throngs swamping and used as a distraction from the real is- the country intent on living off the British tax- sues. A sense of critical urgency and panic payer. Mainstream politicians have done pre- is injected into to the public minds to stop cious little to confront such stereotypes and, the ‘floods’ of migrants coming from abroad. in the Tories’ case, have actually fanned the This ‘urgent need to implement immigra- fire with militant rhetoric. In truth, there tion control measures’ is a strategy of well- is overwhelming evidence that migrants from choreographed political hysteria developed by the EU’s ‘new member-states’ make a net con- the political rulers. For example, in 2010, tribution to the British economy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her ad- The conditions for asylum seekers in Ire- dress to young members of Christian Demo- land - and in many other EU countries - cratic Union party said: ‘German multicul- have never been humanitarian or fair at the turalism has utterly failed The idea of peo- most basic level. There are a number of le- ple from different cultural backgrounds living gal/practical conditions that are designed to happily ‘side by side’ did not work The educa- isolate people waiting for the completion of tion of unemployed Germans should take pri- their refugee process, and ensuring that these ority over recruiting workers from abroad’14 people never feel at home or at ease during the Merkel clearly ignored the fact that migrant years of extreme uncertainty. These condi- workers had been in Germany since 1950s, tions are not only inhumane but also provide invited in by the German state to work in the political and practical basis for easy and mines and factories, and, what is more, she consequence-free removal and deportation by neglected to mention that Germany never had the Irish state: a national, inclusive, well defined policy on integration of migrants to begin with. • The first and foremost condition trap- In Britain, ‘wide-ranging measures to ping the asylum seekers in the long tackle ‘illegal’ immigration and restrict for- process of refugee application is the eigners’ access to health services are at the legal ban on taking up employment. heart of the Government’s legislative agenda Many young, educated, skilled adults for the coming year (2014), which was laid out are banned from taking up employ- by the Queen at the State Opening of Parlia- ment opportunities, even during the ment in 2013. As well as blocking access to time where labour shortage was an issue 14Angela Merkel cited in ‘German multiculturalism has ’utterly failed”. The Guardian http: //www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed 15Philippe Naughton, ‘Immigration curbs at heart of Queen’s Speech’ The Times. 8 May 2013.

9 in many different sectors. native, migrant and illegal that will create divisions among them and enable capitalists to • Unavailability of access to third level more easily exploit and intimidate workers. education. Such measures also give capitalists the flexibility to control the flow of workers depending • Direct Provision and accommodation on the circumstances such as the boom and centres instead of employment and ed- bust times in economy. Workers and migrant ucation rights. As per the direct pro- workers are seen as fully flexible resources that vision system, adult asylum seekers are the capitalists can fully control. kept in accommodation centres, fed and A specific immigration control measure are given a weekly sum of e19.10. This the EU applies is the ‘Readmission Agree- provision was introduced in 1999 and ment’ signed between EU and third-party the actual amount has not changed non-EU countries. This agreement is another since then. There is little or no free- step in EU’s ’fortress Europe’ border and im- dom for asylum seekers living in these migration policies. The latest country to sign accommodation centres that are run by this agreement is Turkey. According to this private companies and many have inad- agreement, the EU will consider easing-off the equate facilities and services. visa regulations and procedures for Turkish citizens and in return Turkey must accept the The EU constantly invents new ways of deported ‘illegal’ immigrants who had entered keeping the legal and ‘undocumented’ mi- the EU via Turkey. With this new agreement, grants out. Shaun Harkin argues that ‘In we see the EU/Frontex border control policies many respects, governments are doing less in action again. EU is now setting up partner- and less to regulate the flow of trade and fi- ships with countries like Turkey to outsource nance between nations, but they are taking in- the issue of migrants instead of looking after creasingly tough action to restrict the flow of people and providing them with free, legal and people across borders. More restrictions will safe passage, and proper procedures for ap- never stop migration - the economic impera- plying for documented migrant and residency tive for workers struggling to feed themselves status. and their families will force them to cross bor- Migrants and asylum seekers are increas- ders, no matter what the risks. But the re- ingly viewed by EU governments as ’crimi- strictions can make this much more dangerous nals’. During last two decades there have been and oppressive, by forcing the most vulnera- more than 20000 migrant deaths at sea. As ble people in society into relying on smugglers EU continues to militarise its borders using and human traffickers, not to mention the ex- the border control agency Frontex, this ‘Read- ploitative businesses where they end up work- mission Agreement’ is a reaction to its failed, ing.’16 inhuman immigration and asylum policies. In The militarization of the U.S. border with 2013, we have seen the horrific tragedy in Mexico and the EU border control agency Lampedusa (Italy) where more than 350 mi- Frontex are prime examples of how nation grants died at sea. Since this tragedy, there states increasingly tighten their borders. On have been at least five similar incidents. Un- one hand capitalists are dependent on migra- fortunately, such tragedies rarely get reported tion across borders to employ them in their widely and the little media attention paid to factories and businesses but on the other hand such tragedies never goes deep enough to anal- they also use the state’s immigration control yse the real situation. mechanism and restrictions to create a com- As the EU leaders and bureaucrats con- petition among workers, to define workers as tinue to bang on the drums of ’immigration 16Shaun Harkin, ‘Solidarity has no borders’, SocialistWorker.org, http://socialistworker.org/ 2013/05/01/solidarity-has-no-borders

10 crisis’ and ’problems caused by the asylum Racism of Political Leaders seekers’ we should remember a few points: and Public Representatives Firstly, the history of Europe is also the history of all sorts of migrations, including eco- Public statements by mainstream political nomic migration. Migrants are not new to personalities, inflammatory comments, racist Europe and nothing that has gone fundamen- jargon and speculative arguments create a tally wrong in Europe is due to the incoming false public debate and shape the public per- migrants or asylum seekers. Secondly, seek- ception on minorities and immigrants. It has ing asylum is a right and a very natural re- long been an aspect of the right-wing bour- sponse by people to terrible conditions in their geois political system to popularise racism by own countries. Migration and seeking asylum spectacular outburst of racist statements, fol- must be seen, above all, as a humanitarian sit- lowed by playing the ‘freedom of speech’ card uation and must receive a humane response. and then claiming to be misunderstood. Here There is nothing more understandable than are a few examples of such racist outbursts a mother’s attempt to create a better/safer from political figures and public representa- life for her children, families running away tives: from extreme poverty, people running away 2009: Fine Gael Mayor of Limerick from wars, torture, oppression and dictatorial Kevin Kiely, ‘Send home jobless nation- regimes etc. Packing a boat by 4-5 times of als’: ‘I’m calling for anybody who is living its capacity and hoping to cross the vast sea is in the State and who can’t afford to pay for not a lifestyle or an easy choice for these mi- themselves to be deported after three months. grants. It is also not an act of blind madness. We are borrowing e400 million per week to It is a necessary response to their objective maintain our own residents and we can’t af- conditions. Thirdly, the EU has never imple- ford it. During the good times it was grand mented inclusive, welcoming and accommo- but we can’t afford the current situation un- dating policies for migration. Asylum seek- less the EU is willing to step in and pay for ers are always stigmatised and marginalised, non-nationals. I’m not racist but it is very migrants are always seen as the ‘others’. At simple, we can’t continue to borrow e400 mil- times of crises, migrants and asylum seekers lion a week and the Government has to pull are always attacked as the easy targets. a halt and say enough is enough unless the Today, for many asylum seekers and mi- EU intervenes and pays some sort of a sub- grants there is simply no democratic, safe and vention.’ 17 legal way to come to Europe. Migrants must 2011: Fine Gael’s Darren Scully first make it into a EU country by whatever quits as mayor of Naas over his com- way they can before making an application for ments about ‘black Africans: The mayor protection. That is why many people have of Naas Darren Scully told the Kfm radio sta- no choice but to trust the human traffickers tion he found ‘black Africans’ to be aggres- with their lives and the lives of their chil- sive and bad mannered. Cllr Scully was ac- dren. Don’t these migrants know the dan- cused of racism after the interview in which gers of crossing the sea in an overcrowded old he said: ‘I’ve been met with aggressiveness, boat? Of course they do. But instead of dying I’ve been met with bad manners and I’ve also from poverty, war, torture back at home, they been played the race card.’ When asked, ‘It’s at least want to die trying. It is not a pleasant been said, ’you would help white people but journey these people are making but a ’jour- you don’t help black people’.’ He went on to ney of necessity and hope’. What would you say: ‘After a while of this I made a decision do if you were an Iraqi, Afghan or a Syrian that I was not going to take on representa- civilian who lost everything? tions from Africans. I’ve said that I would be 17http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/local-news/mayor-of-limerick-quot-send-home- jobless-nationals-quot-1-2190575

11 very courteous to them and that I would pass Myers. Both of these worked for The Indepen- on their query to other public representatives dent and both had as part of their brief the who would take their concerns It saddens me regular stirring up of racism. O’Doherty has that people would call me a racist because I’m written that ‘If every junkie in this country not. I know what I am as a person and I’m not were to die tomorrow I would cheer’, and that any of those things.’ Darren Scully re-joined gays are ‘sexual deviants’. Among his spe- Fine Gael in 2013. 18 cialities has been attacking Muslims arguing 2014: Former Lord Mayor of Cork, that Islam is ‘the biggest threat to the West Fine Gael councillor Joe O’Callaghan: since the end of the Cold War’. For this he A ban on the Burqa and Niqab is ‘com- was rewarded by RTE with invitation to make mon sense’: In an interview with Niall Boy- a documentary called ‘Now It’s Personal’ in lan on Classic Hits 4fm, Joe O’Callaghan said which he spent a week with a Muslim fam- Irish people are ‘sometimes afraid of our own ily in Dublin. The documentary began with shadows to say things that might not be pop- footage of 9/11 and of an extremist Muslim ular’. He went on to say that ‘This has noth- threatening to take over the world. In other ing to do with religious freedoms. The Ko- words it was calculated to reinforce the asso- ran doesn’t even state that women should ciation of Muslims with terrorism. have to wear the Burqa or the Niqab’ he said. Kevin Myers writes things like, ‘A hugely ‘Whether it’s a balaclava or a burqa, we don’t disproportionate amount of rural crime is by go along in this free secular liberal republic a handful of Travellers... they have gener- state of anyone hiding the wearers identity. I ated an atmosphere of terror in rural areas would say it’s probably a medieval system.’ unlike anything Ireland has experienced since The councillor said he wants ‘everyone who the 1920s’ and that ‘no one can deny this lives in this country to be free and safe so any unassailable truth: our unemployment ﬁg- detachment from that, we should face up to ures have been made immeasurably worse by it and say look this doesn’t make sense’.19 the large numbers of immigrants who poured unchecked into the Celtic Tiger economy’. In Racism in the State/Private July 2008 Meyers wrote an article entitled ‘Africa is Giving Nothing to Anyone - Apart Media from Aids’ in which he asked, ‘How much The racial stereotyping of people using the morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child power of media and imagery is widespread from starvation today?’ He attacked an anti- in our society. It creates fear and anxiety malaria programme sponsored by Bill Gates in society by presenting unproven, baseless saying: ‘If his programme is successful, tens of arguments and media driven speculation as millions of children who would otherwise have facts. In Ireland and elsewhere, contrary to died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he their own claims the media is not an indepen- boasts. Oh good: then what? I know. Let dent set of institutions. Overwhelmingly it is them all come here. Yes, that’s an idea.’ owned and controlled either by big business Of course O’Doherty and Myers are not or by the state. If capitalists and the state typical but that they are given major plat- have a shared racist agenda then the media forms in the media is not accidental. Also will too, and in fact it plays a crucial part in alongside this overt racism there is a lower spreading racist ideas. level but consistent tendency in the media One way this operates is through the as a whole to reinforce stereotypes with sto- employment and promotion of ‘controversial’ ries such as ‘A gang of Romanian criminals columnists such as Ian O’Doherty and Kevin is behind a sinister prostitution racket that 18http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/fine-gaels-darren-scully-quits-as-mayor-of- naas-over-his-comments-about-black-africans-26794755.html 19http://www.thejournal.ie/burqa-cork-mayor-1309582-Feb2014/

12 has turned a well-known part of Limerick city with statistical lies and political perceptions into a red-light district, a Sunday Independent that are presented as fact. investigation reveals’. The media repeatedly How do you kill in Iraq the same num- present stories about immigration in terms of ber of people as the population of Dublin or immigrants ‘flooding’ into the country. The displace in Afghanistan the same number of use of the ‘flooding’ metaphor has become so people as the population of Ireland? How regular that it passes without comment. do you justify assisting imperialist powers to use your civilian airports on their way to kill Racism in Foreign and Interna- civilian people? Fuelling Islamophobia, in this manner serves to create the popular sentiment tional Affairs of the State that action is required for the greater good The ‘war on terror’ has produced a corre- and the survival of modern, superior democ- sponding rise in Islamophobia with various racy and western style freedom and life. states initiating legal, legislative and executive platforms against Muslims. EU leaders Economic Racism - Cuts breed who constantly talk about the ’crisis of illegal racism immigration’ are also the same leaders who started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who Cuts to minority support programs, such as supported and sold arms to Middle-Eastern/ the Traveller, language support services for African dictators, who grabbed ever bit of migrant children, along with reduced funding fresh water sources and fertile land in Africa for various institutions working in the area and with the help of local rulers, forced IMF of equality, anti-discrimination and racism, policies and privatisation upon the poor na- forces various economically vulnerable sections of the world. These are the very same tions of the society to compete with each other leaders whose policies are killing the planet and creates the myth of welfare tourism or and causing ’not-so-much’ natural and envi- ‘jobs for citizens’. ronmental disasters and destroying the lives Since the beginning of the global financial of millions. Why do we have drought and crisis the people who matter least to the cap- famine in Africa? Is it all because of gods’ italists and the state are always the poor, the anger? Why are there 5 million displaced peo- working class people, migrants and minori- ple in Afghanistan and 2 million in Iraq? Why ties. All that matters is the financial losses of are western governments and arms companies speculative investors and the wider economic selling billions of Euro worth of arms to some protection of the wealthy elite and big busi- of the most oppressive regimes in the world? ness. In Ireland in the past five years have The EU leaders and governments are not seen relentless cuts and austerity applied to suffering from a memory loss. They are just all sorts of essential public services and ser- hoping that we won’t remember all these and vices needed by the poor and dispossessed. that we won’t ask these questions. What were While hundreds of thousands of working class they expecting? That the killing zones of families are pushed into poverty, single par- Iraq, Afghanistan, or the dictatorial African ents, the unemployed, special needs children, regimes not to have an effect in number of asy- the sick, the elderly and the asylum seekers lum seekers and migrant coming into Europe? are left to fight for scraps to survive. School Millions of Nigerians live under 2 Dollars a places and hospitals beds have been reduced day. Many of the farmers in Central African to a bare minimum, while funding for various countries have their natural water sources groups running anti-racist campaigns; provid- taken away from them by multi-national cor- ing support to victims of torture and various porations. And despite all of these, there is NGOs such as the Equality Authority have not and there never was, an immigration crisis been slashed to almost nothing. Every vulner- in Europe. Each and every decade we are fed able section of society has been forced to fight

13 for their very survival. The crisis showed us Divisions among the rich and the poor become that the ‘small’, ‘unimportant’ people do not a more evident. The capitalists and the rul- matter to the ruling classes of the country. As ing elites use any means to divert the atten- teachers and medical staff are reduced, fam- tions of the workers and the poor from the real ilies are forced to compete for school places sources of the miseries they endure. Thus, by while the sick are left to wait for months for a cuts they breed racism; a much useful tool for medical procedure. Asylum seekers, the inhu- the rulers to further advanced their economic mane direct provision system, and other vul- and political agenda. nerable groups are suddenly presented as a Racism is not just a mistaken idea or even burden on the ordinary citizens of the country. a morally wrong one; for working people it is This environment also gives rise to divisive a deadly enemy. It threatens to divert, de- and racist debate where political leaders have rail and divide the resistance working class stigmatized the ‘lazy social welfare addicted people put up to austerity, cuts, the bosses young people’, ‘the welfare tourist migrants’, and the government. And the state and its ‘the foreign workers that take Irish jobs’ and institutions play a central role in organising ‘the single parents that refuse to work’. and promoting racism at various levels. Na- While more than e100 billion were given tion states promote the idea of national bor- to bond holders and bank bail-outs, Travellers ders, nationalism, national culture and unity and their basic economic, social needs are la- against the ‘others’ while within the same so- belled as a cost that the country cannot af- ciety the rulers at the top continue to ex- ford. As more jobs were lost and more pension ploit the masses at the bottom. The ex- schemes were closed, migrant workers are pre- ploitive, unequal concept of national or eth- sented as the people who steal the jobs from nic ‘US’ against ‘THEM’ created by official the native Irish workers, ‘Irish Jobs for Irish state policies enhanced by state/institutional Workers’, only if these jobs existed. Social racism hides the fact that workers of different housing has been reduced to almost nothing; nations, different colour and ethnicity have a the housing schemes have been replaced with lot more common with each other than with the rent assistance system, thus making the their own respective ruling classes. Getting waiting lists huge, while blaming the foreign- working people to accept racist ideas and turn ers for getting into the queue ahead of the their anger on ‘foreigners’ (or Travellers, or local people. Roma etc) makes them putty in the hands Austerity and cuts are not just hard eco- of unprincipled right wing politicians and the nomic attacks on ordinary people but they right wing newspapers. It turns them, in the also serve to create a political atmosphere words of Bob Dylan, into ‘Only a Pawn in that breeds anxiety, demoralisation, fear, their Game’. anger, division and ultimately racism. Aus- terity is not some unavoidable fact of life but Is the Irish state racist? the result of economic and political choices made by the ruling elites on behalf of the na- The question whether the Irish state is racist tional and international capitalists. or not needs to be answered. Let’s think of some quick points and concepts and see if we The ruling elites not only attack the work- can come up with an answer to this question: ing class and every vulnerable sections of the society with hard economic policies but also • Years of discrimination and finger with a political system that lacks democracy pointing at Roma people. and creates social issues as part of the capitalist response to the crisis. During times of • Asylum seekers and the direct provision capitalist crises, the disadvantaged sections of system which traps them in inhumane society become even more vulnerable. The ex- conditions without the right to work ploitation of workers increases on many fronts. and higher education.

14 • Well documented, harsh, and anti- no state, unless it is a fascist or an apartheid democratic refugee application and ap- regime, will admit being racist. Even then, peals process. it would be a miracle to hear this voluntary admittance of being racist. While the state • Secret deportations of asylum seekers will reject in every possible way that they are under harsh conditions. racist, they will also introduce laws that discriminate against certain people in the society. • Various racist statements from national The legal system of the state is fundamentally and local politicians about Africans, non-transparent, anti-democratic and in the eastern European workers and others hands of an elite section of the society. minorities. States also play the nationalist game • The famous referendum of 2004 to re- and introduce physical and political borders. move the constitutional right of citizen- These borders will be very useful in terms of ship to the children of non-nationals liv- controlling the people’s migration as well as ing in Ireland. creating an artificial common national goal and national identity. These borders will cre- • Numerous examples of politicians, state ate a sense of belonging and they will help in bodies and media propaganda against defining the ’us vs. the others’. Immigration migrants and non-nationals with the control will be a useful tool in manipulating claim that they are committing social the society. Exclusion of rights, based on ar- welfare fraud and draining the funds. bitrary human characteristics such as place of birth, colour of skin, religion etc. will become • A specific example of racial profiling at important aspects of nationalism. These will the airports: Passengers on some flights ultimately feed into racist state actions. coming from certain countries are pass- The state will directly or indirectly support checked at the gate of the plane port wars abroad that will ultimately create before exiting it instead of the normal a huge refugee crisis somewhere around the passport control desks. This is to be world. Following that, the political rulers will able to push the ’unwanted’ passengers have no problem to compartmentalise the is- back into the plane to send them back sues and direct all their attention on incoming to where they came from. In this way war refugees. But ultimately state will pro- they cannot come into the country and tect the ruling class and to do that it will arm ask for asylum. Ongoing ’war on terror’ itself with propaganda machine, police force, in Afghanistan, the related Islamopho- spin doctors etc. These forces will always be bia and Ireland’s support to it via the useful to protect the outer fence of the state use of Shannon by US military aircraft. machine and the beneficiaries of this ring- • And finally, the economic crisis and the fenced privilege. But they will also assume political-economic decisions of the gov- roles such as child protection, law enforcement ernments to cut many of the social- and social order that the state needs have in public services which are much needed place to operate in peace. by the poor, minorities, and the deprived sections of the society. These Conclusions are all the conditions in which fear and hatred can thrive: Job losses, family I would argue that the most important as- break-ups, emigration, housing crisis, pect of the fight against state racism is to ex- cuts etc. are only some of these. plicitly and clearly expose the capitalist state and its racist institutions. The fight against If you agree with these points you prob- a racist/fascist street gang that is attacking ably agree that the Irish state is racist. But people may require some different urgent ac-

15 tions but when it comes to state racism, the It will help us to understand how it operates task at hand becomes a lot more complex and will aid us in our fight against capital- and deep and is part of the ongoing strug- ism. Only then, we can make direct links be- gle against capitalism. The reason for expos- tween the state and the suffering of the people ing state/institutional racism being extremely in the hands of its racist institutions. Only important is not because of the pleasure of then, we can clearly see that the institutional some ‘intellectual achievement’, but because racism is not just a matter of state depart- of the necessity to turn it into a real, flesh ments making some occasional mistakes, but and blood enemy and bring it out of its hiding that they are acting according a very clearly places such as the state departments, court defined political setup. We can then see the rooms, police stations, schools and indeed the link between state racism and all other forms news channels. of racism and realise how the racism on the Many decent people and organisations de- street feeds off the racism of the state. For nounce and distance themselves from the ha- Marxists, the point is not just to understand tred and violence. But what is really needed all of this but also to change the whole sys- is a grass-roots response and a working class tem. Unless our attempts to analyse and un- struggle which links opposition to racism to derstand the state racism goes hand in hand a fight against the conditions in which they with dismantling the racist system, all of this thrive, in other words, capitalism. The ex- hard work could make a great PhD thesis or posure of it as a ’physical evil of capitalism - a great article but it won’t have any impact and imperialism’ will also enable us to start beyond the point of an intellectual argument. questioning its origins and its real objectives.

16 The Resistible Rise of Golden Dawn

Nikos Loudos

The meteoric electoral ascension of the with what they called ‘Judeo-Christian tradi- Nazi party Golden Dawn in Greece sent tion’.1 Their sub-culture worships hate, ‘pure shockwaves all over Europe. Up from the blood’, violence, guns, and martial arts. Their marginal 0.29% it polled in the elections of annual youth festival was called ‘Festival of 2009, Golden Dawn gathered just under 7% in Hate’. Their internal regime is not one of a the national elections of May and June 2012 political party; their para-military apparatus sending 18 Nazi MPs to the Greek parliament. with their members following orders from su- This, combined with the fact of Nazi squads periors up to the level of the ‘Führer,Nikos operating in neighbourhoods, with repeated Michaloliakos, has been much more important organized attacks, some of them murderous, than their political faade. Their public ap- on migrants, trade unionists, gays and ac- pearances echo the German Nazi Party with tivists of the Left, raised the spectra of the torches, dark uniforms, and goose stepping. threat of fascism in a way that had not been In their internal procedures and their publica- the case for decades. tions they have been using the swastika, while their members enjoy using the fascist salute. In their local chapters they have been prac- ticing street fighting, arms use, and stabbing. Apart from these details, the majority of their local chapters form part of local criminal networks selling protection to bars, cabarets and brothels, and - most important of all- have been acting as local gangs attacking migrants in buses, in the streets, in their houses, steal- Golden Dawn; ‘straight out of the sewers of history’ ing, beating up, humiliating and murdering. I felt forced to provide all this information, Golden Dawn does not resemble what not because in itself gives us any clue about used to be called Euro-fascism; they are not the factors leading to Golden Dawn’s appear- fascists with ‘suits and ties’, they are not ance nor about the way to defeat them. But ex-fascists masquerading as populists. They they are proof of the scale of the political crisis come straight out of the sewers of history; and the speed with which things can change their leadership have been consistent Hitler because of the acute economic crisis. This is admirers for decades. They are not Holo- the kind of party that that has intervened in caust deniers but Holocaust nostalgics, openly the political scene, and which, according to 2 racist, calling for the annihilation of the ‘infe- many polls , may be the third largest party rior races’. Their ‘alternative history’ model after the next elections. The destabilizing ef- dreams of Greece having joined the Nazi Axis fects of the crisis are something that we all in World War 2 and ensured the establish- have to take into account, in whichever coun- ment of the Third Reich. In the ‘art’ sec- try we may live. Greece is not an exception; tion of their publications, along with poems on the contrary it can be a warning. dedicated to the leaders of the German Nazi Actually, there have been many voices party, one could find also hymns to Satan inside Greece, even in the last years while and black-metal music targeting Jesus Christ, Golden Dawn was already developing as a po- the Virgin Mary and anything having to do litical phenomenon, saying that fascism would 1One of these black-metal ‘artists’ is now a Golden Dawn MP, Giorgos Germenis. 2We should be sceptical of these polls, for reasons I will explain later.

17 never be able to get out of the margins in this ideological affiliations of the government. country. They put forward a number of arguments: the experience of Greece as an oc- After the German invasion, though, a big cupied country during the war; the important part of the Greek ruling class moved to col- anti-fascist tradition of the ’40s (Greece ex- laborating with the occupation forces and do- perienced the most important general strike ing business with the Third Reich. During under the German occupation, a strike that this period of collaboration, the Greek govern- managed to stop the conscription of Greek ment created the ‘Security Battalions’, armed workers as forced labour in Germany); the re- groups aiming to suppress the Resistance (by cent experience of the military dictatorship of far the most important organization of which 1967-1974, the living memory of mass emigra- was the National Liberation Front (EAM), tion which was supposed to make the Greeks controlled by the Communist Party). The immune to racism, etc. All these have been Security Battalions recruited what Trotsky important factors in the trajectory of fascism called ‘human dust’: people who were ea- and anti-fascism, but as is now obvious they ger to kill and betray just for some pocket- didn’t stop Golden Dawn from seizing the op- money provided by the government or the portunity of the economic crisis to make its Nazis. Along with them, in parts of the coun- mark on the political scene. try, more openly pro-German or clear Nazi or- In order to see how and why, we have to ganizations appear, having anti-communism examine the specific way the economic crisis as the central tenet of their ‘ideology’. In lo- made the political system implode in the last cal massacres committed by the occupation years, providing the space for Golden Dawn. forces around the country - in some cases en- Nevertheless, it’s important to note that tra- tire villages were annihilated after some act dition does matter, and despite the ‘national of the Resistance - it was these fascist groups myths’, fascists have been present in Greece who did the dirty work. The Germans in most for almost a century and in crucial periods of the cases were acting as soldiers. Tortur- they were not just ‘in the margins’. Any- ing, rape, burning or burying alive people was way, they were not born ex nihilo during the a ‘privilege’ for the Greek fascists. present crisis. Even during the 1920s, there were cases However, the Resistance triumphed and of proto-fascist organizations, connected with while the Germans were evacuating the coun- politicians of the big parties of that period try, their Greek friends threw away their uni- who were looking to the example of Mussolini forms and tried to hide (many of them didn’t as a way to cope with the rising radicalization have the chance), while a few of them fol- of the workers movement and of the Greek lowed the Nazi army into exile. For a short refugees who had come to Greece after the period after the Liberation and before the of- collapse of the allied intervention in Turkey. ficial outbreak of the Civil War (1946-1949), In 1936, a fascist politician, Ioannis Metaxas, the ‘collaborators’ were prosecuted and vil- became prime minister and very quickly dicta- ified. The Greek ruling class, though, dis- tor, establishing a regime copying many of the covered very quickly that they were in need rituals of Nazism. Fascist organisations were of these people again. Fascist gangs started implanted among the youth and in the work- a campaign of terror against the Left round places while all the genuine workers organiza- the country, under the protection of the lo- tions and parties were disbanded. Ironically, cal police. During the Civil War, they were history brought that regime - with its open in- given free rein in the countryside. The collab- clination to German fascism - into World War orators in a few years were rebranded as ‘pa- 2 on the Allied side. This was because Greek triots’ who saved the country from Commu- capitalism’s integration in West European im- nism, gaining recognition and benefits from perialism was far more important than the the state, while the Left had to go under-

18 ground.3 of the dictatorship, Kostas Plevris5. Michalo- These groups survived as ‘clubs’ in parts liakos was arrested and went to jail, but not of the country and were re-activated in the for long. He was to go to jail again some years early ’60s, when the ruling class was surprised later, after being arrested for having explo- to see a new upsurge of the Left, student and sives. His connections with the secret services labor activism. Costa Gavras’ film ‘Z ’, de- (some of his fellow fascists who remained in picted the most famous case : the murder jail for years have spoken out) enabled him to of Grigoris Lambrakis, MP for the United go free again very quickly. Democratic Left (the electoral front of the The fascist terrorism of the first years of underground Communist Party) after one of the 3rd Greek Republic became an inisignif- his speeches in Salonica, in 1963. The fas- icant footnote for official history. But those cist groups were used by the police and the were the years when Michaloliakos and other Right to intimidate gatherings of the Left nostalgics were putting bombs in offices of and the unions, organizing counter demon- the left, in cinemas playing Russian movies strations, appearing as ‘concerned citizens’. and in bookshops. Retired officers compiled These fascist networks formed part of what personal arsenals, around which they built in Greek political vocabulary was called the neo-fascist groups. They were not just nos- ‘para-state’, a nexus connecting the Palace, talgics. The recently opened British Foreign secret services, the gendarmerie, politicians Office files showed that the British Embassy and the fascist groups; at the service of the was afraid of a new military coup in Greece ruling class but running parallel to the official even until 1980. The rising workers movement state. This nexus had a strong hold inside the managed to drive all these neo-fascist groups army. In April 1967 that ‘official’ part of the and their military supporters to the margins. para-state, the junta of colonels, took power They were forced to set aside the guns and to push through with full-force the campaign the bombs, and in 1984 they were regrouped against the Left and the workers’ movement. in EPEN (National Political Union), a party The small group of leaders of the dictator- founded on the orders of the imprisoned de- ship went to jail in 1975 but a whole layer of posed dictators. Michaloliakos, who had al- cadre remained untouched. Torturers, cops, ready founded a group called Golden Dawn in military, judges, advisers and ministers either the beginning of the ’80s, became the leader of stayed in their positions or just went home as the EPEN youth6. EPEN had its best result if nothing had happened. In late 1976, at the in the Euro-elections of 1984, with 2.3% of the funeral of an arch-torturer during the dicta- vote and electing one MEP. In the following torship, some of these ‘remnants’ made their years, New Democracy was able to gather the appearance -shouting fascist slogans and at- majority of these remnants, and EPEN disap- tacking journalists. Among those bullies was peared. Michaloliakos was quickly replaced as Nikos Michaloliakos, a young cadre of the ‘4th Youth leader, and he returned to his openly of August’4 organization, founded by one of neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ project.7 the most openly Nazi-inclined ‘intellectuals’ Before their recent successes, there had 3The affinities with Golden Dawn are not only ideological. Many of its cadres have family connections with these collaborationist and anti-Communist groups of the 40s, including its most well-known leaders: Michaloliakos, Kasidiaris etc. 4Taking its name from the proclamation date of the dictatorship of 1936. 5Today Plevris is in LAOS (Popular Orthodox Party), while his son, Thanos Plevris, has left LAOS to join New Democracy. 6He had met personally the dictators in prison. 7I won’t tire the English reader with footnotes from Greek sources. The best published books, from which I have crosschecked the facts on the history of Golden Dawn, are Dimitris Psarras, Black Bible of Golden Dawn, Polis, Athens, 2012 [in Greek] and Giorgos Pittas & Katerina Thoidou, The Golden Dawn File, Marxistiko Vivliopoleio, Athens, 2013 [in Greek].

19 been three failed attempts by Golden Dawn a public appearance in May Day 1998, after to emerge into the mainstream. This expe- already trying to build some local groups in rience is important both for the way they neighbourhoods of Athens based on attack- managed to make steps forward and for the ing left-wing activists and migrants. Again way they were blocked. Their first attempt their attempt was blocked through a combi- was in the early 90s, rebranding themselves nation of workers’ resistance and the interven- as ‘Greek Nationalists’, and trying to take ad- tion of revolutionaries. Workers’ resistance vantage of the nationalist fever cultivated by didn’t just inhibit the attack, but also cre- the government, because of the tensions with ated a net of protection for migrants against the Republic of Macedonia. The collapse of racism. Teachers’ unions and hospital work- state capitalism in Eastern Europe and the ers’ unions were the first to take action against civil war in ex-Yugoslavia, made Greek cap- racist attempts of the government to exclude italism very greedy for a big share of the migrants from free education and health. At Balkan market. This was accompanied by an the same time, the counter-demonstrations ideological campaign and nationalist demon- organized mainly on the initiative of SEK (So- strations organized with the support of the cialist Workers Party of Greece) didn’t allow Church and semi-obligatory participation of them space in the streets. These two factors school students. In those ‘demos’ Golden came to a head on a single day in June 1998. Dawners made their first public appearance During a trial of neo-Nazis who had attacked and recruited some youth, trying to create members of SEK, a group of Golden Dawners combat groups to attack left-wing school col- brutally assaulted a group of left-wing stu- leagues. Their attempt failed having crashed dents and education trade unionists who were on two counter-forces. On the one hand, the in the courts for a different trial (resistance movement of school occupations managed to to the police during a recent demonstration). bring down a series of Ministers of Education One of the victims narrowly avoided death. and, combined with the workers’ resistance, Among the neo-Nazis was the vice-leader of overthrew the neo-liberal government of New Golden Dawn, Antonis Androutsopoulos, who Democracy in October 1993. Golden Dawn went underground for years to avoid arrest. could not find space in this radicalized mi- Golden Dawn had to retreat under the mas- lieu. At the same time, the intervention of sive outcry against them. the Left was able to show that nationalism The third attempt came in the mid 2000s, was part-and-parcel of the neo-liberal attack. again with racism as the spearhead but with The Union of Bus Workers that was central to Islamophobia giving an extra potential to the overthrowing the government was also an offi- neo-Nazi propaganda. The discourse of the cial supporter of the Socialist Revolution Or- clash of civilizations suited a Greek govern- ganisation8 when we were prosecuted for pub- ment which was trying at the same time to lishing a book supporting the right of the Re- be part of Bush’s War on terror and to use public of Macedonia to choose its own name. racism as a divide-and-conquer tactic against The second attempt of Golden Dawn came the workers’ movement. Golden Dawn en- in the mid-to-late ’90s. This time racism was dorsed Islamophobia and targeted Afghan, their main tool. The PASOK government had Pakistani and Arab refugees and migrants. embraced neoliberalism and was attacking ba- But the anti-war movement was the one that sic working class rights, and at the same time determined the situation. Massive majori- was cultivating a wave of racism against mi- ties expressed themselves against the wars in grants, mainly from the Balkans. Police con- Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in support trols, intimidation, deportation, went along of the Palestinians. It was actually through with the media targeting migrants as the root the anti-war movement that communities who of every evil. Golden Dawn tried to make were to play a crucial role in the anti-fascist 8The organization that later evolved into SEK.

20 action in the future (the Pakistani commu- media were trying to convince us that Golden nity in particular) were radicalized and joined Dawn was a ‘natural’ product of the threat a ranks with the Left. The neo-Nazis remained big part of the population feels coming from constantly under pressure in the streets. In the Muslim migrants. In reality, their elec- October 2005, after an attack committed by toral results have been quite the same in ar- one of its well-known thugs, a demo reached eas with big migrant populations and in areas close to their offices in Athens, and there with no migrants. were shots from shotguns coming from inside The gloss of a ‘charity organization’ on the Nazi HQ. Under the fear of the move- Golden Dawn hasn’t been anything more than ment -and also feeling the threat that under a media fabrication. The infamous photo of those circumstances even the police would at a Golden Dawner helping an old lady who last be forced to act against them, Golden ‘was afraid of migrants’ to go to the bank that Dawn’s leadership decided to suspend its ac- hit the front pages a couple of years ago has tion. Golden Dawn then disappeared for two now been exposed as nothing more than one years. of their leaders with his own mother! The There are some common elements in all ‘soup kitchens’ only for Greeks have been just these attempts of the neo-Nazis to intervene. clumsy photo opportunities out of their of- First, in all these cases they tried to ride on a fices; nothing to do with any kind of solidar- wave of reactionary ideology stemming from ity network. Unfortunately this propaganda above - from the government and the ruling had an international impact, because it fitted class. In all the cases the governments felt with a superficial approach saying that the happy to see that their ideological campaign economic crisis and the social polarization by was taking a ‘movement dimension’; for them themselves provided roots for the fascists in it was one more argument to justify the at- Greece, leaving totally out of the picture the tacks on the working class. At the same time, deliberate intervention of the ruling class to Golden Dawn had its own separate agenda. help them make a breakthrough. They were not just ‘playing the game’ of the What had actually happened was that government, but were trying to recruit and racism and Islamophobia had been already organize fascist nuclei in neighbourhoods and deeply embedded in the political agenda of schools, on the basis of controlling the streets both the big political parties. The last years and street fighting against left-wing activists of the government of New Democracy (2004- and migrants. Finally, in all the cases, their 2009) saw a culmination of racist propaganda attempt failed after coming into collision with and pogrom-like police campaigns against mi- the real movement -trade unions, students grants. The fascist arguments were becom- and the Left - and in no case because of any ing part of the official discourse. After De- action of the police or the state. cember 2008, the scapegoating of migrants So what changed and allowed them to get was even more combined with the strength- into Parliament? An easy answer is to say ening of a discourse of ‘law and order’. De- that it has been the economic crisis. This cember 2008 was the month of a rebellion is, of course, a crucial parameter but Golden that saw massive demonstrations and barri- Dawn’s rise was not an immediate result. Eco- cades round the country after the murder of nomic crisis brought fruit to Golden Dawn but a school-student by a policeman. The Greek only mediated through political actions - ac- ruling class had a glimpse of a revolution and tions in most cases coming from the govern- was really scared. The government was to sur- ment and the state and to a much lesser extent vive for some more months, but a third factor coming from the fascists themselves. The at- was already also shaping the situation. LAOS tempts to interpret the appearance of fascism (The People’s Orthodox Rally), a far-right in pure sociological terms can only reproduce party, which broke away from New Democ- their own cheap arguments. Until recently the racy, was gaining ground. LAOS entered the

21 parliament in 2007 with 3.8% and jumped to joined in. This opened the gates for Golden 5.6% in the elections of 2009. In the mean- Dawn to enter the scene. The accumulated time, they had gained 7.15% in the Euro- populist far-right dynamic had suddenly shat- elections. LAOS was the bitter fruit of the tered on the massive unpopularity of auster- constant attempts of New Democracy (with ity. Papademos’s government effectively col- PASOK trailing behind) to pull the political lapsed in three months (officially it survived agenda towards racism and ‘security’. for six months) after a succession of general LAOS needs a special note, because its strikes. The ‘technocrat’ instead of overcom- case shows that the boundaries between fas- ing the ‘conservatism’ of the established polit- cist and far-right populist parties can be quite ical system, as they hoped, actually detonated blurred. Set-up by a firebrand politician of the beginning of its end. Actually Golden New Democracy, it was not an openly fascist Dawn was just one of the ways this enormous party, in the sense of attempting to build a political crisis was expressed. The combined reactionary movement from below, or hint- vote of New Democracy and PASOK is a striking in any way against the democratic sys- ing indicator (5.7 million votes in 2007, 5.3m tem. Nevertheless, its leader, while still be- in 2009, 2 million in May 2012). The vote of ing in New Democracy was trying to establish LAOS from the high point of 386 thousand links with the far-right and with the fascists; (2009) fell to 97 thousand (June 2012). A once he made an open call to Golden Dawn party of the Left, SYRIZA, advanced to be to join New Democracy, offer their ‘capabil- the second party in the elections of 2012. It ities’ and take a ministry as a reward. An- is in the middle of this political earthquake other fascist group, Greek Front, led by Makis -with the sudden implosion of the two biggest Voridis9, was integrated in LAOS. LAOS’s parties since 1981- that one can evaluate the youth section was under the control of the 440 thousand votes of Golden Dawn. fascist groups. The ideological tango went Alas, the agenda of Golden Dawn was not like this: New Democracy was fueling racism, only electoral. Since late 2008 they had es- islamophobia and fear, LAOS was gaining tablished a presence through a ‘citizens’ com- ground, the government was using LAOS’s mittee’ in an Athens neighbourhood, Agios ‘success’ as a justification for moving more to Panteleimonas. In the years to come, they the right, with PASOK tailing all this frenzy. would focus efforts on that area, promoting LAOS was advancing, using the reac- their squads, patrolling the streets against tionary ideas of the ruling class in the crud- migrants, shutting down the local playgound est form, while at the same time being able because of ‘foreign children’ playing there, to pose as ‘against the system’. This trick attacking mosques, not letting activists nor came to an abrupt end in late 2011, while the politicians of the Left to campaign. In the Greek state was in the middle of the storm of meantime, they had made their first electoral the debt crisis. PASOK’s government, despite success in the local elections of 2010, electing being elected with almost 44% could not hold Michaloliakos as a councillor who was threat- against the pressure of the general strikes. Pa- ening to ‘turn the whole of Athens into an pandreou resigned as prime minister and an Agios Panteleimonas’. ex governor of the Bank of Greece, Lucas Pa- Their project was to create similar local pademos was called to form a government of groups in neighbourhoods and towns round ‘national unity’. It would be a government the country, to frighten activists, migrants -with a banker/technocrat at its head- that and minorities. And they really put this would try to push forward the austerity mea- project forward; these last three years have sures showing no remorse towards the unions. been full of local confrontations, with fascist PASOK and New Democracy joined as ex- attacks, attempts to organize local ‘parades’, pected. But also the ‘anti-systemic’ LAOS to control other squares in Athens through 9Voridis was the official contact of Jean-Marie Le Pen in Greece.

22 replicating ‘citizens’ committees’ etc. the government was afraid of the growth of If we fast forward our description to to- Golden Dawn and turned against it to inhibit day, we can have a good sense of the balance its further advance. It is actually the same of forces in this battle. Now the whole picture argument used by the Nazis themselves: it has changed. Five of the MPs of Golden Dawn was supposedly the success of Golden Dawn are in jail, including its leader, Nikos Michalo- that caused the backlash against them. The liakos. Their attempt to organise demon- truth is exactly the opposite. It has been the strations in support of their jailed leadership failure of Golden Dawn to serve the agenda has been a total failure. Outside the Po- of the ruling class and the government that lice Headquarters, when their ‘Führer’was in made them clip their wings for the moment. handcuffs, no more than 200 Golden Dawners Golden Dawn hasn’t been able to extend the appeared, failing even to present themselves example of Agios Panteleimonas to any other with their Golden Dawn t-shirts. Many of neighbourhood. Not only that, but wherever their local offices have been abandoned. Their they tried to do it they provoked radicaliza- annual march of 31st of January has been tion and local anti-fascist activity on a unseen much smaller than last year’s. Their jailed scale. If the government and a part of the rul- MPs have denounced Nazism, racism and vi- ing class was hoping that the provocations of olence. In Agios Panteleimonas migrants can the fascists would create an ideological disori- walk with no fear, the most notorious member entation in the working-class movement and of the local fascist ‘committee’ is in jail, while would make it easier for racism to divide the the local police station officers are also being struggles, the result has been the opposite. prosecuted. More and more the workers’ movement was The turning point came in September fusing with antiracism and antifascism. More 2013, when Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-racist 34 cases of struggle against austerity were tar- year old musician was stabbed to death by a geting also ‘the Nazis who support the gov- Golden Dawner in a suburb of Piraeus. Fyssas ernment’, and more cases of struggle against was attacked first by a ‘battalion’ of Golden Golden Dawn were targeting also ‘the govern- Dawn who then stood aside and watched the ment who covers for the Nazis’. murder. The police was also near the event The summer of 2013 leading up to the and deliberately let the fascists commit their murder of Pavlos Fyssas has been crucial, be- crime. The government was forced to act, cause Golden Dawn tried to raise the stakes. pushing some judges to go on with prosecut- It was the first time they attempted to hit ing Golden Dawn as a criminal organization. directly against the Left and the trade union The same ministers who were until recently movement. Some days before the murder of defending Golden Dawn as a legitimate party Pavlos Fyssas they had organised a fighting and refusing to accept the calls of the move- squad of them, armed with sticks and clubs, ment for ‘no platform for the Nazis’ suddenly walking in military formation into the ship- transformed into anti-fascist ‘vigilantes’. yards of Perama. They physically attacked a group of trade unionists of the Commu- nist Party, while shouting slogans against the ‘communist controlled union’. In the past, Golden Dawn had organized attacks against left-wing activists and some provocations in the unions, but never such an open attack against well-known trade unionists while re- producing the calls of the ship-owners who had long been complaining that trade union- An explanation that went around the in- ism is to blame for the high unemployment in ternational media after these events was that the sector.

23 Golden Dawn was trying to intervene in coming back to haunt them, and this time a crucial moment of the class struggle. The with the possibility of anti-fascist and anti- government had attempted to advance its pro- austerity rage merging. They had to start gramme by shutting down the public TV- acting against Golden Dawn in order to save radio broadcaster in a single day. It was themselves. a message to the Troika (IMF, ECB, EU) The contrast between the sudden elec- that the government was still in a position to toral advance of Golden Dawn between 2010 fight against the stronghold of trade union- and 2012 and the reality of anti-fascist ac- ism. That attempt backfired. The pub- tion forcing the government to take action lic TV remained occupied and self-organized against them in late 2013 cannot be explained by its workers for months and in just a few through spontaneity. The protests after Pav- days the government lost one of the three los Fyssas’s death were spontaneous but they parties supporting it -the Democratic Left- were also a product of consistent anti-fascist a party with Eurocommunist origins. The initiatives in the last years. government remained with a marginal major- KEERFA (Movement United Against ity in the parliament and had lost its single Racism and the Fascist Threat) has been cen- ‘left-wing’ cover. Two possible strategies ap- tral in this. Initiated by members of SEK, peared inside the ruling party. One called for it brought together anti-capitalists, migrant re-establishing some contacts with the Left communities, trade unionists, anti-racists and and,crucially, with the trade union bureau- anti-fascists relating to most of the tenden- cracy in order to go on coping with the work- cies of the Left. KEERFA tried to put into ers resistance. This was the way they had action the rich tradition of the united front, been able to abort the all-out strike called by while at same time being able to cope with the high-school teachers, not through repres- the clear lack of will of the leaderships of sion but with SYRIZA’s trade unionists yield- the two main parties of the Left (Communist ing to calls for stability. The other strategy Party and SYRIZA) to be involved in anti- called for a sharp turn to the right, escalating fascism. Actually when KEERFA was set up the civil-war inspired campaign against the there were open criticisms for both parts of its left, racist campaigns against migrants, and goals: antiracism and antifascism. The issue more police repression. The Golden Dawn of antiracism was considered by part of the leadership decided to intervene in this debate, Left as disorientating because it supposedly creating facts on the ground in favour of this tailed the agenda of the government to shift second strategy. They were hoping to show the agenda from austerity to security. An- to the ruling class that they have the ability tifascism was said to be unnecessary because to fight against the Left and the unions in a Golden Dawn was still under 0.5%. LAOS way the normal methods of the government was considered just a ‘populist’ party and ex- and the police cannot. They miscalculated. posing its fascist cadre and discourse was con- The murder of Pavlos Fyssas generated sidered as a luxury. For good reasons or bad an immediate explosion of anti-fascist activ- these controversies are now obsolete. ity. Spontaneous demos erupted not only in In these years KEERFA has had to or- the neighbourhoods round the scene of the ganize at several and different levels. Neigh- murder but round the country. Local Golden bourhood committees to fight against the at- Dawn offices had to be evacuated. School stu- tempts of fascists to build local groups, mass dents joined massively the protests. In a few demonstrations (with 19 January of 2013 be- days the Unions of public sector turned an ing the best example) to show the power of already called strike into day of anti-fascist anti-fascism in the streets, anti-racist activity action. A march of tens of thousands reached to counter the official propaganda, action in close to the Nazi headquarters in Athens. The trade-unions not to allow any space for the government saw the ghost of December 2008 Nazis, and solidarity work with the migrant

24 communities against state racism, against fas- Pavlos Fyssas’ murder had made a long state- cist attacks or against bosses taking advan- ment on the prospects of a left government tage of the situation. These initiatives pro- without a single mention of racism or the fas- vided confidence to big layers of activists in cist threat. They were (and still are) consid- order to take action of their own. The ex- ering political-electoral pacts with nationalist- amples in the workplaces have been the most right breakaways from New Democracy, leav- impressive. Golden Dawners were trying to ing aside the ‘difficult’ issues of racism and find ways to intervene but instead of that police repression. they were generating a wall of anti-fascism. We are far from finished with the fascist In the hospitals, the campaign of ‘blood do- threat. The collapse of the political system nations only for Greeks’ provoked impromptu and the economic melt-down is going deeper. demos from hospital workers and patients. In State racism is escalating. New Democracy the schools, their campaign of recruiting stu- PM, Samaras is in the forefront of promot- dents has led to widespread anti-fascist coming racist policies in the European Union. He mittees organized by the local unions. In the didn’t find a word of sympathy for the hun- bus drivers, the only workplace were they had dreds of refugees drowned close to the Italian managed to enter officially, gaining seats in island of Lampedusa. His minister of Public the union leadership, they were discredited Order called the Asian migrants ‘inferior cul- and marginalized, especially after trying to or- turally’. They are building more fences and ganize provocations in general strike demon- concentration camps. The Greek ports police strations. Over the last year anti-fascism in recently deliberately murdered families with the workplaces became a movement of its small children coming from Afghanistan and own, with Golden Dawn MPs not even trying Syria. Golden Dawn will go on trying to find to visit workplaces because the unions, even ways to take advantage of all this. The tri- in small factories, were threatening to strike als of the fascists are themselves a gamble. against their presence. Activists of KEERFA are deeply involved in The murder of Pavlos Fyssas just brought the court cases, trying to make the legal con- all this on-going work to the surface. It also nections between the many different cases of exposed some other hidden truths. First, it fascist attacks in neighbourhoods with the of- showed the level of state complicity in the ficial prosecution against the Golden Dawn rise of Golden Dawn; it is revealing that when leadership. The judges and the police are still the government decided to move against the trying to find ways to present the cases as sep- fascists, they had to get rid of a big chunk arate acts of violence and not connected with of the leadership of the police and the secret Golden Dawn as an organization. services. Local police stations in areas where Of course the state action cannot, in it- Golden Dawn had a significant presence have self, save us from the Nazis. The difference been proved to be part of the explanation: po- is that now the anti-fascist movement feels lice officers were informing the fascists about vindicated and confident. Thousands of mi- possible police action and about the initiatives grants cheered seeing Michaloliakos in hand- of anti-fascists. Networks connecting Golden cuffs. Activists who had faced tough battles Dawn and capitalists were also revealed. The in the workplaces could breathe a sigh of re- most intriguing has been the case of a ship- lief. United front work can be more effective, owner who had an underground museum of since the parliamentary Left has recognized Nazism and tons of guns stored in a ware- the need of action. The streets are ours and house, who was funding Golden Dawn and we’re going to keep them that way. The 22nd was also involved in the tabloid papers proof March, called in an international meeting moting fascist activity. The parliamentary in Athens, will be an important day of an- Left were very slow to wake up to the danger. tifascist action in many countries. Fascists SYRIZA’s central committee not long before and far-right populists are trying to appear

25 in an organized way in the Euroelections, so the opportunity to turn this situation upside as to gain from the desperation created by down, showing to any prospective imitator of austerity and the crisis. Golden Dawn was Michaloliakos the way not only to the prison supposed to be their best example. The anti- but also into the dustbin of history. fascist movement in Greece has the duty and

26 The Permanent Crisis of 21st Century Ulster Union- ism

Se´anMitchell

Last month, a frail and diminished Ian son and North Belfast MLA Nigel Dodds, Paisley was interviewed by journalist Eamonn whom he accused of staging a coup to oust Mallie in what is likely to be his last major him. According to Paisley, there are powerful public appearance. For much of his public elements in the DUP who are anxious to draw life the roaring voice of unionist intolerance back from the power-sharing agreement and and bigotry, Paisley seems anxious in his twi- re-galvanize the DUP around sectarian pos- light years to cultivate a legacy as a voice of turing. This directly contradicts the image reason and good-neighbourliness. The con- Robinson has tried to concoct for his lead- trast between some of his comments in the ershipone that presents itself in Washington interview and Paisley’s long record of sectar- and Dublin as the reasonable voice of 21st- ian agitation was clear, and in places bizarre. century unionism, out to win the hearts and The ‘whole system’ of gerrymandering ‘was minds even of Catholic voters. wrong,’ he now concedes. ‘It was not one man Predictably, Robinson reacted angrily to one vote - that’s no way to run any coun- Paisley’s charges, deriding his account as ‘a try. It should be absolute freedom and ab- failure of recollection’. But Paisley’s attack solute liberty’ - an astounding about-face for signifies the weakness of his embattled and a man who came to international prominence crisis-prone successor, who appears to be a as the arch-opponent of the civil rights move- sitting duck for any would-be leadership con- ment. Bloody Sunday, he now tells us, ‘was a tenders. Long-time underling of Paisley and very dangerous thing, and then the attempt to for decades the day-to-day organiser of the cover it [up] They were just making a protest DUP, Robinson’s ousting of Paisley was de- within the law.’ This from a politician whose signed to appease the harder loyalist section party, the DUP, struggled to contain its out- of the party who were displeased with their rage at the verdict of a Tory government that leader’s close relations with Martin McGuin- British troops had killed innocent civilians on ness. Certainly, the replacement of Pais- the day. ley’s ‘chuckle brothers’ routine with the dead- Still, even by his own words, Paisley’s con- pan demeanour of Peter Robinson eased the version is an incomplete one. The victims of nerves of some. But the change was cos- the Dublin-Monaghan bombings brought the metic and the inherent problems of the DUP attacks on themselves, he insists. He glossed remained, and have even intensified under over or claimed he could not remember the Robinson’s leadership. litany of bigoted statements made through- Much has been made of Paisley’s appar- out the years (including calling Catholics ‘ver- ent volte-face: had he mellowed in his old min’). He was unapologetic about his involve- age or was he simply angling for a histori- ment in organising the paramilitary Vanguard cal legacy that did not have the word ‘bigot’ organisation, or his close cooperation with as its main epitaph? In truth, Paisley’s con- loyalist paramilitaries during the UWC strike fused retrospective reflects the contradictions in 1974. of modern-day Unionism as it tries to square People will disagree about the motivations sectarian politics with the reality of power- and the sincerity of the ‘Big Man’s’ trans- sharing in the North today: this conundrum is formation, but in some ways this misses the not specific to the ageing firebrand but is one point: the real revelations were to be found in that the entire historical project of Unionism his scathing attacks on his DUP successors- now faces. After decades of branding anyone First Minister and party leader Peter Robin- who worked with nationalists a ‘Lundy’ and

27 spouting the slogan ‘Never’ from innumerable ralled into crisis. Below, we examine the ori- platforms, Paisley - the embodiment of Union- gins of this crisis, and how its interaction with ist oppositional politics - stunned many of his other variables, namely the inherited sectar- followers by cutting a deal with his long-time ian structures of the state and the economic enemy Gerry Adams in 2007, leading to the crisis, continues to fuel the resurgence of sec- reopening of the Northern Ireland Assembly tarianism in the North. and the implementation of power sharing between Sinn Féinand the DUP. This wasn’t the The Belfast Agreement and result of a maverick leader out to secure his legacy: it was the logical outcome of the his- the Sectarian State torical conjuncture that Unionism now finds The 1998 Belfast Agreement was welcomed by itself in. a large majority across the island of Ireland. On the surface Unionism appears to be Although a demand among ordinary people stronger than ever. The Belfast Agreement for an end to armed conflict drove the peace solidified partition and entrenched the notion process forward, at its core the Agreement that constitutional change would only come was an attempt by local and Anglo-American about with support of the majority of peo- elites to secure stability by plotting a way ple in the North: thus seemingly ruling out a out of the impasse that the North found it- united Ireland for the foreseeable future. The self in by the early 1990s. Within official main threat to the state for decades, the Pro- unionism, there was a grudging recognition visional IRA, has ceased to exist and its politi- that the old methods of open sectarianism cal wing now fully supports the security forces backed up by crude repression that had sus- and accepts the hand of the British Queen. tained the Orange state since the 1920s were Certainly, stubborn resistance to the North- no longer viable, and that some form of po- ern state remains in some republican quarters litical accommodation was necessary. To re- - and small-scale armed ‘dissident’ actions re- publicans it was increasingly clear that their main a reality - but it hardly compares with ‘long war’ stood no chance of forcing a British the wide-scale resistance seen at the height of withdrawal, and that a low-level military cam- the Troubles. paign was futile and unsustainable. The so- Despite these successes, Unionism has lution in political terms - aggressively man- staggered from crisis to crisis in the last num- aged by successive British, US and Irish gov- ber of years. Peter Robinson has been hit ernments - was an accommodation between with scandal after scandal, resulting in the unionism and nationalism in a devolved as- stunning loss of his East Belfast seat to the Al- sembly at Stormont. liance Party in the last Westminster elections. From the outset this political arrangement The spat between Paisley and Robinson, how- has been fraught with tension and prone to in- ever, is a reminder that Unionist leaders have termittent crises. The Agreement has been been fractiously divided for decades. Nei- described as ‘a cure for which there is no ther Paisley nor Robinsonnor Trimble before known illness,’ because nowhere in its 11,000 themcould claim to be the leader of a singu- words does it identify the problem which it larly united Unionist Movement in the way purports to solve.1 Instead, it relied on ‘con- that past figures like Craig or Carson could. structive ambiguity’ - the notion that, for In short Ulster Unionism is not what it once unionists, the Union is guaranteed, while at was. Pulled by the realities of power-sharing the same time, for nationalists, the path to with Sinn Féinand pushed by its own class Irish unity is secured. Furthermore, the very contradictions Unionism has continuously spi- nature the Assembly perpetuates and rein- 1 Eamonn McCann, ‘Tragedy is opportunity for conflict resolution envoys’, Belfast telegraph, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamonn-mccann/tragedy- is-opportunity-for-conflict-resolution-envoys-28747476.html

28 forces existing communal divisions - all Mem- trickles down towards to the street. For this bers of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) have reason, and contrary to establishment claims, to declare themselves Unionist, Nationalist or the structures of the Northern state have led ‘Other’. The First Minister is always from to an intensification of sectarianism rather the largest Unionist or Nationalist party, the than its decline. In Belfast, for example, the Deputy First Minister from the largest party number of ‘peace walls’ has more than dou- on the ‘other side’. Every election consists of bled since the Agreement. The level of fear two parallel contests to elect the party seen as has not fallen, and in interface areas, it has the best champion of ‘their own’ community. increased. There is now genuine and quite Any elected representatives who want to opt rational fear of physical attack in some ‘in- out of the sectarian headcount by designating terface areas’. Persistent low-level sectarian ‘Other’ are consigned to the margins when it attacks have been a regular feature of life in comes to voting in the Assembly on issues re- sections of the North, particularly in Belfast quiring ‘cross-community support’, for exam- and north Antrim, and have at times be- ple. Thus the ‘new’ Stormont institutionalises come more orchestrated in character as loy- sectarianism in a fundamental way. alist paramilitaries seek to flex their muscles. The political system in the North is there- Today, as sectarianism is again ratcheted up, fore based on an inherent contradiction. On fear grows that we are headed back to ‘the bad the one hand we have a political set up based old days’: in late September a young national- on ‘power sharing’, wherein old communal an- ist in Brompton Park - just across the Crum- imosities were to be sidelined in favour of lin Road from the so-called loyalist ‘civil rights cross-community cooperation. In a new, pros- camp’ was set upon by a gang roving the area perous Northern Ireland closely integrated in a car while walking with his girlfriend, suf- into an Anglo-American free market power- fering permanent disfigurement of his face and house, sectarianism was to become the fading head: his 19-year old brother committed sui- shadow of a retreating epoch. On the other cide two years ago, after suffering permanent hand power-sharing seems in some ways to brain damage in a vicious sectarian attack in have further entrenched communal divisions, the same area four years earlier. Protestants giving rise to a system in which the union- too have been the victims of sectarianism. In ist and nationalist blocs today dominated by the summer of 2013 a number of Catholic the DUP and SF - united in their commit- youths attacked a small Protestant enclave in ment to neo-liberalism - are continually at log- the Blacks Road in Belfast, and a number of gerheads over peripheral, so-called ‘cultural’ Protestant churches and homes have been at- issues. The result is that Northern Ireland tacked over the last period. The fear is that plc is in an almost permanent state of cri- such horrible incidents will now become rou- sis, as sectarian animosities are continually tine. inflamed over flags, parades and sharp differences over how to deal with the past. Con- Economic Crisis and the sequently, rather than watching the slow decay of sectarianism over the past year we have Resurgence of Sectarianism witnessed its resurgence. The political struc- While an unstable accommodation between tures in place in the North have not only unionism and nationalism lay at the heart of proven consistently incapable of challenging the political institutions thrown up by the it: they are part of the problem, and there is Belfast Agreement, its economic underpin- widespread exasperation among ordinary peo- nings of are crucial to understanding the cur- ple at the lack of progress in moving forward. rent revival of sectarianism. The Agreement This way of running things has had a poi- was patched together during the boom years sonous effect as the Assembly perpetually de- of the mid-1990s, when the Celtic Tiger was scends into communalism and sectarianism in full stride in the South and the property

29 bubble seemed to confirm the promise that an bles. end to armed conflict would bring new pros- Even in a period of boom, the combina- perity to the North, including those working- tion of communally-organised political insti- class communities hardest hit by the Troubles. tutions and an aggressive neo-liberal assault Under the influence of London and Wash- on the welfare state would mean that the po- ington, local elites aimed to reposition them- tential for peoples’ frustrations manifesting selves in the global economy through restruc- themselves in renewed sectarian violence is turing the Northern Ireland economy along never far from the surface. But in a period neo-liberal lines.2 The substantial public sec- of protracted economic crisis, the danger of tor that had grown up during the ‘Troubles’ sectarian polarization and renewed and wide- would be chopped down to size, with redun- scale violence is a real one. Sectarian tensions dancies in the thousands; New Labour’s ma- have been escalating in the North, driven by nia for privatisation and the Blairite assault both the ‘respectable’ wing of unionism repre- on the welfare state would be extended aggres- sented at Stormont and by the combined ag- sively to the North; in the longer term more itation of loyalist paramilitaries and the Or- ‘flexible’ labour arrangements and a drastic ange Order, who have orchestrated a series of cut in corporate tax rates would provide the confrontations over flags, parades, and what foundations for a new, private-sector led econ- they describe as a ‘cultural war’ against their omy. A revived tourism sector and a ‘globally ‘Britishness’. The clearest sign yet of this competitive (i.e. low wage) knowledge econ- resurgence in sectarianism has been the return omy’ would serve as the economic foundations of loyalist violence to the streets of Belfast, of a ‘new’ Northern Ireland. starting during last year’s marching season, The onset of global economic crisis in peaking in the run-up to and after Christmas late 2008, however, and the dramatic down- in the ‘flag protests’, and then returning fero- 4 turn since has laid bare many of the flawed ciously around this year’s Twelfth. assumptions behind these ambitious plans, In July 2013, loyalists set up a ‘civil rights’ though none of the political parties at Stor- camp at an interface at the end of Twadell mont seems inclined to change course. Belfast Avenue in North Belfast, and in the east of has the highest retail vacancy in the UK, the city the UVF has painted over a council- and the bulk of foreign investment has in- funded George Best mural and replaced it volved massive public handouts to multina- with a sinister profile of a masked paramili- tional corporations offering low-wage employ- tary gunman - side by side with a quote from ment in call centres and the like. As else- US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. where, the bursting of the real estate bubble on the need for the ‘oppressed’ to forcibly take has meant that many working-class homeown- what the ‘oppressors’ won’t give them. In Au- ers are struggling to hold on to houses that gust, a republican-organised anti-interment are not worth what they owe on them. A march through the city centre was met by recent report noted that standards of living thousands of loyalists, who attempted to lay have fallen further in the North than any- siege to the parade, attacking bystanders and where else in the UK.3 Poverty remains deeply police and ransacking one of the better-known entrenched, its effects felt most severely in ar- mixed pubs in the city centre. At the start of eas that suffered the most during the Trou- the school year, three Catholic schools in loy- 2For details of this see Brian Kelly, ‘Neoliberal Belfast’, Irish Marxist Review 2 3‘Northern Ireland living standards had steepest fall in the UK,’ BBC News 10 Feb 2014 . 4The most recent period of violence originated with a banned Orange parade past the Ardoyne shops in North Belfast. Night after night, the streets of North Belfast and some sections of East Belfast were consumed by rioting. Undeterred, Unionist politicians and the Order went further. Additional marches in the same area were called in subsequent weeks in an effort to turn Ardoyne into a ‘New Drumcree’.

30 alist areas were threatened and warned not to the ‘new’ Northern Ireland. This is a recipe re-open, although nothing came of the threats for benign apartheid - ‘equal but separate’ de- and the schools are functioning as normal. velopment without any need for unity. The renascent sectarianism that these incidents demonstrate has taken the establishment by surprise, though none of it should The Historic Crisis of Union- come as a shock: low-level sectarianism has ism been a persistent feature throughout the post- Agreement period - particularly in Belfast - at Undoubtedly, however, the main thrust of dis- times erupting into serious violence.There can content over the last period has emanated be no doubt, however, that in the last few from within the ranks of Unionism. Working- years, particularly over the last 18 months, class Protestant communities, like those in incidences of sectarian confrontation have be- Catholic areas, have gained little from the come more and more frequent and orches- peace process. There is a deep well of anger trated. that progress is not being made and that Deeply invested in the Agreement, Sinn working class people are being left behind. Féinshares a responsibility for the resurgence For this reason the DUP have consistently of sectarianism in recent years. Increasingly it tried to raise sectarian tensions to deflect reflects the outlook of a substantial Catholic anger from their own inability to deliver sub- middle class that has made its peace with stantive change in the lives of ordinary people. the Northern state, and which rather than Fearful of losing their voting base to hard- seeking a radical overhaul asks only for some line loyalists around Jim Allister’s TUV (tra- room within the existing arrangements for ditional Unionist Voice) and the PUP (Pro- its expression of ‘Irish identity’. Sinn Féin gressive Unionist Party), the DUP has been fully accepts the communal premise of the completely silent in the face of escalating Agreement, that there exist in the North two sectarianism, with their local MLAs stand- main ‘traditions’ - unionism and nationalism ing should-to-shoulder with Orangemen and - equally deserving of tolerance and respect, paramilitaries. and which must be accommodated perpetu- It is not surprising, therefore, that the loy- ally into the future. alist flag protests were preceded by a system- Much like the Nationalist Party, which atic attempt by the DUP to raise sectarianism dominated Catholic politics in the North in East Belfast. The flag protesters had come before 1969, SF sees itself increasingly as onto the streets in response to 40,000 leaflets the mainstream representative of ‘national- delivered across Belfast slamming the Alliance ist interests’ in a communally divided society. party for ‘backing the Sinn Féin/SDLPposi- They aim not to overcome sectarian divisions, tion that the flag should be ripped down on but (like the DUP) to be seen as effective at all but a few days’ and urged people to tell securing the best carve-up for their side of the the Alliance party ‘We don’t want our na- divide. This means that the growing dispar- tional flag torn down from City Hall. We ity between rich and poor within the ‘nation- can’t let them make Belfast a cold house for alist community’ is ignored, and that on the Unionists.’5 The focus on the Alliance party rare occasions when discussions of issues like resulted from that party’s victory over DUP poverty and unemployment etc. are taken up, leader Peter Robinson in his East Belfast they are used mainly to illustrate the (min- stronghold at the Westminster election. It is imal) lingering differences in conditions be- doubtful that the DUP leadership, so wedded tween Protestant and Catholic workers rather to portraying Northern Ireland as ‘open for than their common interests in resisting the business’, intended to unleash a wave of dis- growing disparities between rich and poor in ruptive protests across Belfast. But this was 5Goretti Horgan, ‘Loyal to the Flag’, Socialist Review, February 2013

31 the consequence nonetheless. to dictate the political agenda of the North. Secondly, the material mechanisms for maintaining Unionism as an all class alliance have been severely undercut. The well- documented decline of traditional industry decimated the social base of Unionism and weakened it as a project that could corral the protestant working classes. There are no shipyards, no mills, and no factories to parcel out jobs to Protestants. The security industry remains overwhelmingly Protestant, but the days of an exclusively Protestant police The Flag protests were not the first time force are gone. This collapse of industry also in the post-ceasefire era that Unionism has had the consequence of corroding the social descended into outbursts of sectarian street fabric of many protestant communities. The protests. On a number of occasions, such prescription of the Unionist and Nationalist as the Garvaghy siege of the late 90s, the elites to this crisis, a mixture of austerity and Holy Cross protests in 2001, the loyalists neo-liberalism, has only made the situation street protests of 2006 or the various outbursts worse. around Ardoyne and the Short Strand, sec- One symptom of this crisis has been de- tions of Unionism have taken to the streets to clining support within Protestant commu- stoke sectarianism. To an extent, these inci- nities for the Belfast Agreement. Whilst dents can be explained by the sectarian grand- a clear majority of people both North and standing of Unionist politicians and paramili- South of the border supported the Agreement, taries. However, they also represent a deeper support amongst Protestants from the out- malaise within Unionism. set was less secure. According to Jonathan The historical project of Unionism is in a Tonge, ‘With both Nationalist parties endors- protracted crisis. In truth, this process pre- ing the Agreement a 99 percent yes vote was dates the current period, and can be traced recorded among Catholics, but only 57 per right back to the Civil Rights movement and cent of Protestants voted likewise’. Within six the decline of the Orange state that set in months of the referendum this had dropped from the early sixties. It is a crisis, how- further; only 41 percent of Protestants, as ever, that has continued apace in the post- against 72 percent of Catholics, felt that the agreement period, and further intensified in Agreement benefited unionists and national- the last few years. Why has this been the ists equally. case? Unionism has always been defined, both As the years went on, the notion that organisationally and ideologically, as an all- ‘Protestants were losing out’ while ‘Catholics class alliance of Protestants, designed to cap- were getting everything’ - energetically pro- ture and maintain state power. This project moted by Unionist politicians - continued has been undercut throughout the last few to gain traction. By 2005 only 2 percent decades for two main reasons. Firstly, the de- of Protestants believed that unionists had cline of the Orange State - coupled with the benefited more than nationalists from the acceptance of the British Government that agreement. When asked in a 2008 survey the Northern state could only survive with the which community they thought had bene- support of a section of the Nationalist popu- fited most from the Belfast Agreement, 78 lation - meant that Unionism was pushed into percent of Protestants responded that it was the power sharing with Nationalists. Gone are the Catholic community. Whilst the notion the days of absolute Unionist authority over that Catholics were doing better out of the the state and with it the ability of Unionism Agreement was quite widespread, the facts

32 don’t quite add up. As the report itself to insist that the deep anger persisting among comments; ‘Protestants perceive the Belfast sections of the Protestant working class at Agreement to have benefited Catholics un- their losing ground in post-Agreement North- equally to Protestants, [but] respondents gen- ern Ireland is not the problem. The problem erally didn’t understand why or how this had is that under the influence of sectarian bigots happened, and may have been basing their in the DUP and loyalist paramilitaries the ri- answers on a perception that Catholics had oters misdirect their anger toward Catholics, benefited rather than from actual evidence’.6 who live in conditions as bad as or worse than The notion that Catholics were gaining those prevailing on the Shankill, rather than to the detriment of Protestants has gathered directing it upwards, at those who benefit pace in some quarters since the economic cri- from the poverty at the bottom - including sis of 2008. In the absence of a struggle that the leadership of the DUP itself. could articulate the real and genuine anger into a class direction; the notion that the Flags, Parades and ‘Protestant ‘other side’ is to blame has gained traction. Secondly, the crisis of Unionism has caused it Culture’ to fracture, meaning that forces outside of the Increasingly, Unionism has sought to make up DUP have begun to grow which in turn has for its shortcomings by portraying itself as caused the DUP to continuously tack right forthright defenders of an embattled ‘Protes- in the hope of courting favour with disaf- tant Culture’. Conflicts at Assembly and lo- fected loyalists. In essence, therefore, the cur- cal government level over so-called ‘cultural’ rent resurgence of sectarianism must be un- issues - chiefly the right of Orange marchers derstood as the intersection of the politi- to parade through majority nationalist dis- cal crisis of Unionism with the deepening tricts where they are unwanted, but also over economic crisis driven by the recession. the flying of flags on public buildings, the Journalists’ accounts from within the ranks attempts to foist ‘homecoming parades’ for of the riots suggest that beneath the commu- British military regiments on mixed communal defence of the ‘right to march’, it is the nities, decisions over whether to fund or ac- increasing economic desperation in working- knowledge the rights of Irish-language com- class Protestant areas that is fuelling the ri- munities, etc. - continually aggravate sec- ots. ‘It came to a head because the taigs were tarian enmity and resentment, and shape the getting away with everything, getting every- context in which, in the absence of progressive thing they want, and we just can’t hack it alternatives, loyalist paramilitaries continue any more,’ one local resident told David McK- to exert a substantial influence in working- itrick, adding that it was easier for Catholics class Protestant districts to get jobs. ‘Aye, definitely. They get the This notion of ‘Protestant culture’ - 7 work on building sites and all.’ widely promoted by both sides in the ‘New’ Socialists must therefore begin from a dif- Northern state - rests on the claim that Or- ferent starting point than the middle classes ange Parades and flag flying are somehow in- who express their disdain at the rioting. nately Protestant. Consequently, a consistent Where mainstream condemnation combines attempt has been made by various forces in revulsion at the violence with deep class con- the establishment to promote ‘protestant cul- tempt for the communities involved, we have ture’ as an integral part of the ‘New North- 6Ten Years On: Who are the Winners and Losers from the Belfast Agreement?,http: //www.academia.edu/3238672/Ten_Years_On_Who_are_the_Winners_and_Losers_from_the_ Belfast_Agreement 7David McKittrick, ‘Rioting by night, peace by day: Belfast seeks a swift solution’,The Indepen- dent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rioting-by-night-peace-by-day-belfast- seeks-a-swift-solution-8104884.html

33 ern Ireland’. Part of the ‘two traditions’ ap- tarian order and division in society. Time and proach, this argument absolves the state from time again they prove themselves incapable of finding any permanent solution to the conflict change. In short, the Orange Order aren’t a here other than ’peaceful coexistence’ between part of the solution to sectarianism, they are cultures. It seeks to placate sectarianism and a fundamental part of the problem. to manage it. When Unionist politicians or Orange lead- In reality this strategy is falling apart, and ers talk of ‘Protestant Culture’ they wish to if anything, is leading to increasing disorder. convey an image of something benign and Part of the problem with promoting the no- harmless. But it is not surprising that the tion of ‘Protestant Culture’ and the two tradi- term tends to arise when Orangeism comes tions idea more broadly, is that it tends to lead under criticism for actions that are anything to more division, not less. It ingrains a sense but. Even the idea of ‘Protestant’ culture is of ‘other’, portrays sectarianism as something misleading. Protestantism is a global religion, natural, and lends justification to all sorts of yet Orange marches etc are something partic- divisive notions. Beyond the vacuous rhetoric ular to the North of Ireland. It is not com- spouted by Unionist politicians, the truth is parable to say ‘Jewish culture’, the various that talk of ‘Protestant Culture’ has increas- practices which are common amongst Jewish ingly become an excuse to justify all manner communities the world over. Yet even if we of sectarian activities. For instance, we are accept that Orange marches are somehow cul- now expected to accept the flying of Union tural, this does not give them carte blanche Jacks in communities as ‘cultural’: the real- legitimacy. All cultures or cultural practices ity couldn’t be any different. Flying union must be judged on what they entail and what jacks has always been a means of intimida- consequences they have for wider society. It tion, a way of marking territory. Thus, when was once part of the ‘cultural’ practices of the Union Jacks go up the message that follows is South of Ireland to lock women up in laun- ‘Catholics stay out’. dries because they had children out of wedlock The Orange Order is another case in or did not conform in one way or another to point. In a vain effort to ingratiate the Order, the supposed moral code of the church. Cer- and include it into the wider neoliberal agenda tainly this horrid oppression of women was of the State, millions of pounds were poured part of the ‘catholic culture’ of the day, which into a campaign to rebrand it as a cultural or- viewed sex as something bad and women as in- ganisation and to repackage the Twelfth as a nately inferior to men. But this did not stop colourful and harmless day out with the kids right minded people in coming out and con- -‘Orangefest’. As well as this some £4 mil- demning it and eventually succeeding in abol- lion was poured into the organization’s cof- ishing it. The same goes for the practices of fers - including large sums from the austerity- Orangeism, be they cultural or not. obsessed southern state. Despite this, there are now more contentious parades rather than The Real Face of Orangeism less in Northern Ireland. Still, the Northern state encourages us to see organisations like Orangeism has never been a benign cultural the Orange Order as an integral part of build- movement; rather it has always been a deeply ing a ‘shared future’. But this is a contradic- political project, and a reactionary one at tion in terms. How can an organisation whose that. A cursory glance at its history will il- raison d’etre is to maintain division be part lustrate this. The Order was formed to de- of a shared future? The idea that the Or- fend ‘the King and his heirs’ and to sup- ange Order is simply a commemorative out- port the political, economic, and social dom- fit, a sort of Battle of the Boyne re-enactment ination of Ireland by a minority grouping of society, is nonsense. The Orange Order is an great landowners, business men and Protes- institution that actively seeks to reinforce sec- tant clergy known as the ‘Protestant Ascen-

34 dancy’. These elites consciously saw the Or- and territorial domination. As a former lead- der as a counter-revolutionary force, ‘a bar- ing Orangeman, John Brown, once explained: rier to revolution and an obstacle to compromise’, and actively opposed the Protestant led On 12 July and other occasions 1798 Rebellion. In the 19th century it was the Orangeman marched with his reinvented by Unionist industrialists, and be- lodge behind its flags and drums came a powerful tool in tempering the rise to show his strength in the places of trade unionism in Ulster and in opposing where he thought it would do the anti-colonial movement throughout Ire- most good. Where you could walk you could dominate and land. Throughout the 20th century it was a 9 key component of the ‘Orange State’, insti- other things followed. tuting discrimination and solidifying sectarian In the main, it is the Catholic community division. Crucially, when the spectre of work- that has been on the receiving end of this ing class unity was raised, the Orange Card exercise in domination. Still today, the po- was deployed. Indeed, as Liam Clarke re- larization that the Order encourages provides cently noted in the Belfast Telegraph, the Or- a context for sectarian attacks on Catholic der has historically been a barrier to progress homes and even murder across the North. For of any kind: this reason, Socialists support the right of residents to oppose the sectarian coat trail- The Order has been dragged kick- ing of the Order. As the protestant historian ing and screaming into every cen- William Brown pointed out, it is absurd to ex- tury since 1800. It opposed pect Catholics to react any differently giving Catholic emancipation, the dises- the history of the Order: tablishment of the Church of Ire- land and even the introduction Even if we exclude the hatred, of the secret ballot. It has also mayhem and murder this march- been opposed to nearly every suc- ing can in certain circumstances cessful political reform since par- generate, it is patently ridiculous tition.8 nowadays to expect the Catholic- nationalist community always to Still, some sections of the Order reject this show tolerance and forbearance description, and prefer to portray the organi- to something that was designed sation as a ‘respectable’ religious outfit. His- ‘to keep the papists in their torical experience, however, tells us otherwise. places’ and ‘to show them who’s From the first sectarian riots of the 1840’s, master’. The politics of the as- to the pogroms of 1912, 1920, 1935, 1949 cendency is both foolish and dan- and the Orange riots of 1969, right through gerous.10 the tunnels of Dunloy in the 1980s and the streets of Drumcree in the 1990s, Orangeism But we also have to understand that it is has always been synonymous with sectarian not just Catholic residents that lose out. The violence. This is not accidental. Rather, it tension that Orangeism creates has the effect is the logical outcome of the confrontational of dragging us all backward, and it is invari- strategy of the Order. Despite talk about ably the people at the bottom, both working ‘tradition’, Orange parades have always been class Protestants and Catholics, that lose out about immediate objectives, namely political the most. Working class Protestants have as 8‘Why cuddling up to Orange Order would be a mistake for the DUP’ ,Belfast Tele- graph, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/debateni/blogs/liam-clarke/why-cuddling-up-to- orange-order-would-be-a-mistake-for-the-dup-29421787.html 9‘Marching against time’, Socialist Review, Issue 200, September 1996 10 William Brown, An Army with Banners: The Real Face of Orangeism, 2003

35 much a stake as anyone in creating a society example of how Orangeism is about the pro- free from sectarianism. Sectarian politics has motion of exclusion, rather than about cele- laid waste to working class protestant areas, brating culture. It is also testament to the and offers no hope for a future for the people fact that Nationalist resident groups are not of the Shankill or the Sandy Row. Orangeism the only people who have a stake in opposing is a barrier to building an alternative to this Orangeism. mess. Despite the fact that most people in However, it would be a mistake to view ev- the North wish to see a more integrated so- eryone who partakes in Orange marches as un- ciety, the Order is resolutely opposed to it. reconstructed bigots and to write them off en- It’s modus operandi is to maintain divisions tirely. The Order contains many working class between Catholics and Protestants, it discour- people who can be won through struggle to ages mixed marriages, and evokes notions of socialist politics. Famously, during the 1907 ‘protestant unity’. Crucially, as the living Dockers strike the Order split, with many standards of working class people are being of its more progressive and labour minded cut across the board, the Order encourages brethren going on to form the ‘Independent notions of ‘the other side are doing better’, Orange Order’.13 weakening the urgent necessity for Catholics Still today many working class people will and protestants to come together to fight the have some association with the Order. As the cuts. social fabric of many working class areas has Furthermore, the divisive politics of the been eroded organisations like the Orange Or- Order is working to produce further divisions. der have come to fill the vacuum. The rou- At the 2010 Twelfth of July march in County tine of Lodge meetings or the pride and disci- Down, the Grand Master of the local Orange pline associated with band practices can give Lodge, told the gathered crowd that ‘multi- many working class people a sense of ‘belong- culturalism and diversity politics are a mask ing’: particularly amongst the young and dis- for intolerance and hatred towards the es- advantaged who have little other recourse for tablished majority’.11The LGBT community recreation. Whilst acknowledging this, how- too has become a target for the Order. The ever, socialists have to be clear in pointing out Unionist newspaper, the Belfast Newsletter, that Orangeism ultimately holds the whole described the ‘resolutions’ that ‘each Twelfth working class back. James Connolly long ago gathering is expected to support: pointed out this contradiction:

Orangemen and women will Viewing the procession as a pledge their support for the fly- mere ‘Teague’ (to use the name ing of the Union Flag on public the brethren bestow on all of buildings and oppose gay mar- Catholic origin), I must confess riage at 18 demonstrations across that some parts of it are beau- Northern Ireland on July 12.12 tiful, some of it ludicrous, and some of it exceedingly disheart- ening. What any of this has to do with ‘protestant culture’ is anyone’s guess? The fact that The regalia is often beautiful; I the Order chose opposition to Gay marriage have seen representations of the as one of their main pledges is just another Gates of Derry that were really 11SeánMitchell, Why All Workers Should Oppose the Orange Order, http://www.swp.ie/node/4716 12‘Orange Order set to pledge support for the Union flag and oppose gay marriage at this years Twelfth celebrations’,http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/regional/orange-order-set- to-pledge-support-for-the-union-flag-and-oppose-gay-marriage-at-this-year-s-twelfth- celebrations-1-5205602 13For more on this see John Gray’s seminal account of the strike, City in Revolt, 1985

36 a pleasure to view as pieces of The Impossibility of ‘Progres- workmanship; and similar rep- sive Loyalism’ resentations erected as Orange arches across dingy side streets Void of a stable base in Protestant areas, the that, if we could forget their sym- DUP has increasingly come to rely on sectar- bolism, we would admire as real ian grandstanding and the support of loyal- works of art.14 ist paramilitaries. It is a strategy long used by Unionist parties, but it is fraught with difficulties. The shift to the right by the Connolly, however, understood that be- DUP has created a space where other loyalist hind the majesty of the Orange procession lay forces, namely the PUP and the UVF, have a politics that all workers had a stake in op- grown. The PUP claims that its membership posing. has increased from around 100 to 500 in the last year. Undoubtedly the party has benefited from both its involvement in the flag The Orange Order was not protests and the growing disillusionment with founded to safeguard religious the ‘Big House Unionism’ of the DUP. It is freedom, but to deny religious likely, therefore, to make small gains in this freedom, and that it raised this year’s local elections. religious question, not for the The PUP has long purported to be a work- sake of any religion, but in or- ing class party and the progressive voice of der to use religious zeal in the Unionism. It holds a number of what might be interests of the oppressive prop- called ‘old labour’ positions around economic erty rights of rackrenting land- questions. However the growth of the party 15 lords and sweating capitalists. has plainly not come from these positions: instead it has derived from its sectarian stance around flags and parades. Those who bemoan We should be forthright in our opposition the absence of a ‘progressive loyalism’ that to Orangeism, but we should also not overes- will speak for the protestant working class timate its strength or weight in society. Or- miss the point entirely: any set of politics ange parades certainly still bring out thou- based on communalism will always be driven sands of people and the organisation remains into the cul de sac of sectarianism. What the a formidable force with thousands of members PUP is doing is exploiting genuine working and influential backing within the Assembly. class anger and misdirecting it in a sectarian However, its size and weight within society direction. Their argument is that the deteri- has considerably declined. Its membership, oration of working-class life in Protestant ar- once as high as 100,000, is now down to about eas is down to Catholics getting preferential 30,000 and the behaviour of the Order of late treatment: their ‘solution’ is to attain these has turned many people from its doors. In- resources at the expense of the ‘other side’ deed, one poll showed that only 8 percent of through whipping up sectarian violence and Protestants agreed with the Order defying Pa- intimidation. Moreover, rather than develop- rade Commission rulings.16 ing an independent working class politics, the 14James Connolly, July the 12th, http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/07/july12. htm 15James Connolly, Labour and the Proposed Partition of Ireland, http://www.marxists.org/ archive/connolly/1914/03/laborpar.htm 16‘Northern Irish People to Orange Order: You Can’t Walk Where You Want,’ http: //www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/northern-irish- people-to-orange-order-you-cant-walk-where-you-want-29581681.html

37 PUP will be pushed in line behind the ‘big was fissures to the left - most famously around house Unionists’ of the DUP. This was made the Outdoor Relief Riots. But less well-known clear by PUP leader Billy Hutchinson’s sup- is the development in the period of right- port for ‘Unionist Unity’ at the party’s most wing loyalist movements, principally the Ul- recent conference: ster Protestant League, which combined class discontent over unemployment and poverty Today the Progressive Unionist with a reactionary sectarianism. The same Party reiterated its commitment can be said of the emergence of Paisleyism, to Unionist unity, recognising which exploited growing unease with the post- that this is the best way to main- war economic downturn to promote an inten- tain the Union while also address- sification of sectarianism. And today loyalist ing in partnership the complex is- paramilitaries claim that Protestants are los- sues that affect our most disad- ing out, and that Catholics are doing better. vantaged communities.17 Common to all of these loyalist movements is that they combine working class discontent over economic issues with a reactionary narra- tive that points the finger at Catholics. Many of these movements emerged at the behest of a Unionist leadership desperate to maintain their own support base. But they then develop a life of their own, as the Flag protests have shown. Whilst loyalism today shares many characteristics with reactionary movements of the past, there is one crucial difference; loyalism today is far weaker. Think of the Ulster Work- PUP banner at the loyalist ‘civil rights’ camp on Twadell ers Council strike, when loyalists brought Avenue. Northern Ireland to an effective standstill. Or the mass protests and ‘general strike’ around the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which Loyalism has always represented a certain had more limited consequences, but still con- class division in Unionism. When Big House veyed considerable strength. Whilst its true Unionism has fractured loyalist forces emerge that these ‘strikes’ had more in common with which combine a discontent with Unionist a lock-out than a traditional industrial action- elites with a renewed and intensified focus on whereby people were intimated by paramili- anti-Catholic sectarianism. The way that the taries not to go to work- they did signal a PUP exploits genuine concerns over poverty degree of social weight within loyalism. The and unemployment to increase sectarian ten- decline of old industry has undercut this so- sions is reminiscent of loyalist movements cial weight . Around the time of the Garvaghy throughout the history of the Northern state. dispute, loyalists talked of shutting the North In the 1920s, the Ulster Protestant Associ- down as they had in the past. Certainly there ation articulated a reactionary response to was widespread violence. But there were no mass unemployment by calling for expulsions strikes, life went on. The loyalist flag protests of Catholics from workplaces. In the 1930s, are on an even smaller scale. Whilst they have the Great Depression and the corresponding had a considerable impact on society here, decline in industry in the North, also caused creating no go areas, heightening tensions and Unionism to fracture. One consequence of this causing wide scale disruption they are on a far 17‘Unionists must co-operate: PUP boss’, Belfast Newsletter, http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/ regional/unionists-must-co-operate-pup-boss-1-5580760

38 smaller scale than past loyalist movements. In said of housing, where Catholics continue to short, loyalism no longer has the power to take be disproportionally affected by the housing us backwards to the days of the Orange State, crisis. In North Belfast for example, Catholics but it can play a role in holding us all from make up 45 percent of the population yet moving forward. some 74 percent of those on the housing waiting list are catholic. Are Catholics Gaining over Much of these differences can be put down to regional trends rather than some new Protestants? form of discrimination: for historical reasons, In addition to claiming that they are the vic- things remain worse in Catholic areas, which tims of a cultural war, loyalists have been ar- are concentrated in the West of the region guing for some time that Catholics have been where wages are lowest and services poorest - gaining from the Peace Process whilst Protes- mirroring the North-South divide in England. tants have lost out. This perception has been In Belfast unemployment between Catholics driven in part by the rise of a new and confi- and Protestants is almost identical. The fact dent Catholic middle class which has made its remains, however, that Loyalists are wrong peace with the Northern state and is content that Catholics have been doing better than to carve out a space for itself in the current Protestants economically. Whilst these fig- order. The richest part of Belfast, the Mal- ures clearly disprove the fallacy of a Catholic one Road, for example, now has a Catholic advantage over Protestants, they mask the ex- majority. The idea that Protestants are los- tent to which Protestant communities have ing out is also fuelled by the deterioration in faced a serious decline over the last number Protestant areas themselves. One of the most of years. There are many reasons for this de- striking features of poverty in Northern Ire- cline: the engineering and other manufactur- land over the last 20 years has been the way ing jobs that used to provide relatively well- Protestant working class areas have steadily paid, secure employment in Protestant areas climbed up the deprivation figures. So, while have gone. Educational disadvantage hits the Catholic areas were highly over-represented in Protestant section of the working class, espe- the 10 percent most deprived areas 20 years cially boys, hard - though all children in the ago, today about 40 percent of the most de- North are poorly served by a selective educa- prived areas are Protestant. tion system. Loyalists are correct in saying that protes- Agency work is often the only option - tant working class areas are deteriorating, jobs that earned £12 an hour 10 years ago but they are wrong to point the finger at but now attract only the minimum wage and Catholics. In fact, despite perceptions to the offer no security. The reality of poverty, how- contrary, the fact remains that by most socio- ever, is that both Protestants and Catholics economic determinants, Catholics continue to loose out. Even before the recession, median do slightly worse than Protestants. In 2007 wage levels in the North generally were just the religious composition of the population 85 percent of those in Britain - over £15 a of working age in the North was found to week less than the next lowest-paid region of be 53 percent Protestant and 47 percent Ro- the UK, the North East of England, now it’s man Catholic. Yet, 54 percent of those un- down to about 82 percent of wages in Britain. employed were Roman Catholic, compared to However, in the absence of any class based 46 percent Protestant, making Catholics 1.4 alternative the notion of one community do- times more likely than Protestants to be un- ing better has been the predominant way that employed. Indeed, this trend is observable anger has been directed. across all age groups, with Catholics being The protesters are right, then, that the more likely to be unemployed than Protes- Protestant working class has not benefited tants, young and old alike. The same can be from the peace process. But neither has the

39 Catholic working class. It may have made further worsen the situation. Working tax some sense 40 years ago to see the interests credits have been massively cut; Housing Ben- of Catholic and Protestant working-class com- efit has been cut for people on benefits and munities as separate and distinct - even con- few people in work now get it. If the Assem- tradictory. Undoing the effects of generations bly passes the Welfare Reform Bill and brings of discrimination and exclusion meant strik- in the Bedroom Tax and further cuts in dis- ing a new balance between the communities. ability benefits, then Northern Ireland is set Conventional thinking saw the game as zero- to lose more income than any other part of the sum: giving to the Catholics meant taking UK. But these issues can also be a source of from the Protestants. This was never an accu- resistance. If we are to make any serious head- rate assessment, but there was enough truth way in the coming period then we must find in it to make it seem plausible. Now it makes ways to build both a movement against these no sense at all. Today, there is no solution cuts which undercuts the notion of one com- to the problems of deprived Protestant areas munity doing better than the other, whilst si- which would not also be the solution in de- multaneously linking this with a fight against prived Catholic areas. There is no separate the sectarian ideas and organisations which Protestant or Catholic working-class interest. hamper any real unity emerging. The working class will advance in the future However, the history of the labour move- together, or, to the detriment of all, it won’t ment in the north going back before the advance at all. founding of the Northern Ireland state suggests that sectarianism has played a crucial The Socialist response role in paralysing every attempt at advancing independent working class politics in times of Unlike media pundits and other others on the capitalist crisis. In trying to demonstrate the left, we should not see the current resurgence potential for class politics, socialists tend to of sectarianism as being about culture, iden- emphasize the high points of workers’ unity tity, or some vacuous notion of a ‘clash of in the norththe 1907 dock strike, the 1919 competing rights’. What we are witnessing engineers’ strikes, the Outdoor Relief riots of is the crisis of capitalism mediated through the thirties. But each of these episodes also the political specificity of the North: unem- demonstrates the resilience of sectarianism: ployment and austerity are causing a well of the post WWI recession saw a massive gen- anger which reactionary forces are anxious to eral strike in 1919, but also the rise of the Ul- exploit. But as Marxists we understand that ster Protestant Association and the pogroms these same underlying factors can give fuel to of the 1920’s. The post WWII decline in in- class struggle and new opportunities for the dustry saw a rise in Labourism and the North- Left. Socialists have to be confident about the ern Ireland Labour Party but also generated possibilities that class politics offers for build- an early form of Paisleyism. ing a serious resistance and winning working- The political lessons of the last great class Catholics and Protestants to a new and economic recession in the 1930’s are of effective round of mass struggles. paramount importance. In 1932, a sustained The type of visceral sectarianism we have campaign of agitation around unemployment seen over the last few months is a very dan- brought thousands of Catholics and Protes- gerous development, and one that cannot be tants into the streets. An attempt by the ignored. But we should resist the temptation state to crush the movement by force was to see it as an inevitable and permanent facet met by sustained rioting on both the Shankill of life. New obstacles have emerged for the and the Falls, creating Belfast’s first non- left certainly, but significant opportunities re- sectarian working class riot. But again, de- main. The economic crisis, and a raft of soon spite the mass movement, sectarianism didn’t to be implemented cuts, has the potential to just disappear. Sectarian attacks continued

40 and the Revolutionary Workers Group, which across the board have been lower in the North had developed a base in both Protestant and than corresponding regions in Britain- and Catholic areas during the strike, were forced as such, all workers had a stake in opposing to contend with the rise of organizations like it. Today, the differences between Protestants the Ulster Protestant League and the sectar- and Catholics are even more marginal, render- ianism of Unionist politicians who viciously ing any notion of privilege null and void: ul- resisted any notion of class unity.18 timately both Catholics and Protestants have In other words the history of the labour an interest in fighting together. Furthermore, movement in Belfast suggests that economic any movement of the left that confines itself crisis presents both the potential for a united to one community will face serious pressures working-class response and for a retreat into to revert to communal politics. Historically the familiar groove of sectarian scapegoating. this has meant a retreat from class politics There is little appetite in the North for a re- into a version of left Nationalism or Labour turn to the violence of the Troubles. But we Unionism. have to be clear that in the current situation, The second approach is the reformist one. with a deepening economic crisis as its back- This position, dominant amongst the trade drop, the potential exists for the emergence union leadership, seeks to win Protestant of class struggle against austerity and at the workers to class politics by ignoring or at same time the possibility for a renewal of sec- worst justifying the sectarianism of loyalists. tarian tensions. The cuts, austerity and dis- This approach is evident in the failure of the content with the establishment has created a Unions to present any sort of clear opposition situation where the continuation of the status to the upsurge in loyalist violence in the last quo is not a viable option for ordinary people period. It can be seen also in the attempts on either sides of the divide. The question for by some union leaders to build a relationship the working class in the North remains this: with the ‘protestant community’ by effectively in the face of this impasse, will we move for- entering into alliances with loyalist paramili- ward towards class unity, or backward into the taries. Taking its cue from the Northern state, cleavages of communal politics? the Unions accept the notion of the ‘two tradi- In attempting to build a left in the North tions’, and refuse to take a stand against loy- two strategic approaches towards the Protes- alist sectarianism. In the short term Unions tant working class have historically prevailed. fear that any opposition to loyalists will jet- The first position, prevalent amongst repub- tison their protestant support. True, some licans, writes them off as a singular, reac- loyalists would no doubt criticise the unions tionary bloc. Here, Protestant workers are if they were to come out against sectarian- viewed merely as the dupes of Unionism, in- ism. But the reality is that in the long term capable of breaking from the shackles of Or- this position paralyses the labour movement angeism. In the past this position was justi- and forces it to retreat every time sectarian fied on the left by a crude materialism, which enmity rises. Despite this, the Unions and categorised Protestant workers as a privileged Trade Union struggle can play a crucial role cast, above and separate from their Catholic in challenging sectarianism. At 36 percent, counterparts. Certainly, real and significant the North has a higher trade union density differences did exist between Protestant and than any corresponding region in Britain or Catholic workers, and no serious socialist the Republic of Ireland19, bringing hundreds movement could afford to ignore this. But of thousands of Catholic and Protestant work- ultimately sectarianism had the effect of drag- ers together. If the unions can be pushed into ging all workers backwards - living standards action, then the environment for challenging 18For more on this see the author’s forthcoming book on the ODR riots. 19Trade union statistics 2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trade-union- statistics-2012

41 sectarianism will be much more favourable. a movement which brings Protestant and But if we ignore the menace of sectarianism, Catholic workers together, whilst simultane- then that unity will be short-lived and the di- ously fighting to break workers from reac- visions will emerge once more. tionary ideas like Orangeism. This is why so- Socialists, therefore, can neither write off cialists are not neutral on the National ques- the protestant working class because loyal- tion. As Lenin argued, socialism ‘assesses ist ideas currently predominate within a sec- any national demand, any national separation of it, nor can we shirk from the difficult tion, from the angle of the workers’ class questions when attempting to build a move- struggle’.21 Socialists do not call for an end ment of working class opposition to auster- to the border out of some desire to unite the ity. Common to both these positions is the historic Irish nation. We do so because we un- equation of loyalist and the Protestant work- derstand that if a real workers movement is to ing class as one and the same. It ignores the be built in this country, then it must overcome long tradition of labourism and trade unions all sources of division, including the ideas of amongst protestant workers, and neglects the Orangeism in the working class. But we also many Protestants who have no truck with loy- understand that this cannot be done on the alism or Unionist politicians. Common too is basis of Irish Nationalism. Gerry Adam’s plan a separation of the political and the economic, to have a referendum on Irish unity is a case a sort of ‘Render unto Loyalism the things in point. What he is effectively asking protes- which are loyalist; and the Trade Unions the tant workers, and catholic workers for that things that are the Trade Union’s’. Socialists matter, is to vote to separate from one rotten do not separate political and economic ques- state in the North, in order to unite with an- tions. On the contrary, we see them as in- other rotten state in the South. Socialists of extricably linked. Socialists understand that course want to see an end to the border. But through struggle workers can change their we stand in the tradition of James Connolly ideas. Class struggle is, as Marx put it, a ‘self- and fight for a 32 County Workers’ Republic changing’ process. Therefore when Protestant that can offer a future for all workers on this and Catholic workers fight together, the ter- island, Protestant or Catholic. rain is changed, and an opportunity arises for Socialists must able to link the day to sectarianism to be challenged. However we day issues around pay, jobs or funding with a should not confuse an opportunity with in- wider political fight in society. This relation- evitability. As Marx put it, revolutionary ac- ship between the practical activity of bringing tion must be ‘practical-critical’.20 That is to workers together through struggle and the po- say it must combine a practical engagement litical fight against reactionary ideas within with the building of real struggle with an ide- that is the key to left wing strategy in the ological offensive against bourgeois ideas. The North. Ultimately this process can only be history of the left in the North, unfortunately, synthesized by a revolutionary party, rooted is the history of the separation of these two in struggle and capable of challenging back- things. ward ideas within the working class. The task For this reason, the only principled and remains to build it. sustainable position for the left is to build

20Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/ theses/theses.htm 21Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/ works/1914/self-det/ch04.htm

42 The Precariat: New Class or Bogus Concept?

Kieran Allen

Rather like the clothing industry, the own direct experience. Such understandings academy has its changing fashions. The en- are sometimes linked to actions and strategic terprising social science academic will invent choices. Certainly, Guy Standing’s concept of a concept and market it extensively in books the precariat has important implications. and peer-reviewed publications. The more ci- tations it receives from other academics, the more successful his or her career becomes. The key strategy lies in getting ahead of the curve - hence the premium placed on neolo- gisms, the invention of new words. ‘The precariat’ is one such fashionable concept. It is a play on the word ‘proletariat’ but it signifies a much more modern, up to the minute capturing of the latest trends brought about by globalisation. It was developed by Guy Standing, a Professor of Eco- nomic Security at Bath University who has since moved to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Prior to that he worked as an economist with the Interna- Guy Standings book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class tional Labour Organisation for two decades and became known as an international expert on ‘flexibility’. A sceptic of the dominant neoliberal discourse, Standing’s outlook derives from another fashionable figure in academia, The precariat, according to Standing, are Karl Polanyi. This effectively argued that the people who lack seven main forms of labour extreme forces of the market had to be coun- security. They do not have adequate income terbalanced with regulation. In 2002, as an earning opportunities because of the return of ILO economist, Standing argued that there mass unemployment; when they do find work, had to be changes in the welfare state to re- they have no protection against arbitrary dis- flect the rise of the ‘flexi worker’ who were missals; they do not have defined job descrip- seen as the core group in modern society. tions; they have no work security in terms of Later the term ‘flexi worker’ morphed into proper health and safety regulations or lim- ‘the precariat’ and Standing’s fame in aca- its on working time or unsocial hours; they 1 demic circles shot up. have no career path or opportunities to up If it were simply a matter of the academic- skill; their wage are not protected by mini- publishing complex producing new words, it mum wage legislation or indexed against in- would barely merit discussion. But words flation; they have no collective voice. This is like ‘the precariat’ are concepts that feed a description of the conditions facing millions into theoretical understandings. And, despite of people today - particular those who are mi- the ornamentation and jargon that surround grants, young or the elderly who are forced much academic theorising, theories are ways to return to work because of inadequate pen- in which we understand the world beyond our sions.2 1J. Breman, ‘A Bogus Concept’ New Left Review 84, November-December 2013. 2 G. Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, London Bloomsbury Academic , 2011, p 10

43 Different interests? of those who want change now rest with the ‘precariat’ - this new class in the making. Standing’s purpose, however, is not simply to describe - but to theorise. In other words, to But what might this change amount to? offer a way of understanding these develop- Here Standing’s critical but continuing sup- ments which serve as a guide to action and port for the ILO’s social liberalism shines policy. Mimicking the language of Marxism, though. At the root of this approach is a dis- he argues that the precariat is a new ‘class in like for the ‘labourist’ politics, which domi- the making’. In other words, it is not organ- nated the working class movement. But while ised or conscious of its distinct interests but his attack on ‘labourism’ is sometimes remi- the objective conditions for its existence as a niscent of the language of the anti-capitalist class have been produced by neoliberal glob- left, in reality it is an attack from the right. alisation. The central point - and indeed the The old workers movement is presented as a key implication of using the term ‘precariat’- conservative force who sought security under is that this class has distinct interests to those the protection of a bureaucratic state. The of the ‘proletariat’. Here is his argument, ‘salariat’- a jargon sociological term for white- collar workers - have apparently, along with The precariat was not part of ‘the the elite, ‘most of the financial capital and have gained vastly more income’ without evi- working class’ or the ‘proletariat’. 5 The latter term suggests a soci- dence of working harder. Standing virtually ety consisting mostly of workers writes off trade unions as ‘necessarily adver- in long term stable, fixed-hour sarial and economistic’ and suggests that the jobs with established routes of precariat needs new collective bodies, which advancement, subject to unioni- engage in ‘collaborative bargaining’ not just sation and collective agreements, with employers but with other groups of work- with job titles their fathers and ers, ‘because its interests are not the same as those of the salariat or core employees, who mothers would have understood, 6 facing local employers they were have labour unions to speak for them’. familiar with’3 Sheltering behind a technological deter- minist outlook and the siren call of inevitabil- We shall return to this peculiar definition ity, Standing argues that a focus on ‘big of the working class later but for the moment state’ reforms has become an historic anachro- note its mythical tone and its image of work- nism. The precariat are presented as ‘global- ing class as somewhat conservative. Standing isation’s child’. Globalisation, in turn, arose has, in fact, a broadly contemptuous attitude from an ‘emboldened group of social and eco- to this ‘old’ working class. He argues that it nomic thinkers’ who disliked the state and is simply ‘a term embedded in our culture’ ‘its planning and regulatory apparatus’. ‘The from centuries past and he agrees with André tragedy’, Standing argues, ‘was that, while Gorz’s proclamation made, ironically, before their diagnosis made partial sense, their prog- 7 the May 68 general strike in France that the nosis was callous’ ‘end of the working class’ occurred long ago.4 The less callous solution, Standing sug- By this he means that it ceased to have his- gests, is a further break from the ‘big state’. toric agency -able to unite around common He argues that ‘contrary to the labourist interests and forge a new society. The hopes declaration that “Labour is not a commod- 3ibid p.6 4ibid p.7 5ibid p.171 6ibid p.168 7ibid p.5 8ibid p.161

44 ity”, there should be full labour commodifi- Insightful critiques of Standing’s argu- cation’.8 Thus, while Marx critiqued capital- ments have been made by writers like Richard ism for turning living creative energy into a Seymour but, oddly, he argues that ‘the ap- mere commodity, Standing suggests that the pellation precariat works as a populist inter- process did not go far enough. Full mon- pellation’ and so it is a concept that can be etary values should be placed on all bene- embraced by the left to help ‘found a new, fits workers grudgingly receive from employ- radical majoritarian politics with an anti- ers. The ‘fancy’ heath insurance benefits that capitalist core’12 US workers received, for example should be There are a number of reasons why the scrapped and converted ‘into benefits that can concept of the precariat has permeated some be bought by market choice’.9 More bizarrely, left discourse in the recent past. One lies in Standing calls for the ending of maternity the internal construction of Standings’ book. leave because this non-market benefit is sub- Despite arguing for a more commodified ver- sidised by taxpayers, including the precariat, sion of capitalism, it draws on themes that who will never receive it.10 He extols the have appeared in the anti-capitalist movement virtues of volunteering with NGOs as against since the Seattle uprising in 1999. Thus, there bureaucratic welfare services. There is even are attacks on the corporate take-over of uni- a nod in the direction of David Cameron’s versities and a defence of ‘the commons’ and rhetorical suggestion to let public sector work- urban spaces that are being invaded by com- ers run their units as co-operatives, which ten- mercial interests. There are gestures to the der for contracts - presumably at somewhat argument about the ‘social factory’ that orig- lower wages. inally emerged in the Italian workerist movement of the 1970s as Stranding critiques the If this is the central thrust of Standing’s ‘blurring’ of the work/leisure division. There argument, then why has the term ‘precariat’ is a wider argument made against neoliberal gained such currency on the left? Noam globalisation and a recognition that it has led Chomsky, for example, has declared it a to a worsening of life conditions for the major- ‘very important book’ and uses the term ‘pre- ity. Yet despite the often impressionistic tour cariat’ regularly. The wider Occupy move- of these themes, the central point of the book ment adopted the term even as it forged remains an argument that the precariat have strong links with some of the unions in the different interests from the organised working US. A smaller element, however, such as ‘Ad- class and need a more commodified form of vance the Struggle’, went further and declared capitalism accompanied by global regulation that, and a Basic Income to allow them to partici- pate more actively in the market. It is hard to tell poor, unemployed, undocumented, immigrants, people of colour, that There are other external reasons why the we too, have a stake in the struggles of union book received a relatively positive response. workers, especially relatively privileged work- One is that many people - and the young in ers. This is an unpopular reality that many particular- experience a high degree of insecu- revolutionaries and leftists do not want to rity because of the re-structuring of Western confront11 capitalism. This re-structuring has acceler- 9ibid p.162 10ibid p.162 11‘Longview Occupy and Beyond: Rank and File and the 89% union’ Advance the Struggle February 2nd 2012 http://advancethestruggle.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/longview-occupy-and-beyond- rank-and-file-and-the-89-unite/ 12R. Seymour ‘We are all precarious - on the concept of the precariat and its misuses’ New Left Project, http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/we_are_ all_precarious_on_the_concept_of_the_precariat_and_its_misuses

45 ated further since the crash of 2008. As a re- Moreover, as Perry Anderson pointed out sult some of the conditions of existence that long ago, Western Marxism has increasingly were once experienced by some of the poorest been located in academia and has focussed sections of the working class are spreading to on culture and idealist forms of philosophy much wider layers. Take, for example, college that are often divorced from an involvement graduates. We will use data from Ireland to in class struggle. It may be ironic that Ander- illustrate the scale of the changes. son was the author of this piece but his point Currently Ireland has an extremely high that Western Marxism survived in a differ- number of people with third level qualifica- ent milieu to classic Marxists such as Lenin, tions in the 25-34 age bracket. It amounts Trotsky and Luxemburg still holds. This has to 48 percent of this age cohort, compared important implications because the broad ori- to 33 percent in the wider EU. Most young entation of academic leftism in the social sci- people enter college with a traditional aspi- ences has been to dispute the capacity to ration - that a degree offers a chance of a the ‘old’ workers movement to struggle for better life and a ‘career’ that affords some anything other than economistic sectional de- security. Many indeed assume that it is a mands. Not surprising then two types of new ticket into the middle class. Yet the reality theories have emerged in academia to explain is very different. Youth unemployment has working class passivity and, unfortunately, risen to 30 percent and that is after the re- these have gained some traction among left- turn of mass emigration, which particularly ists. affects youth. Before taking up work, many will spend months on unpaid internships. Af- One is the notion that neoliberalism has ter that they will most probably go through entered the very soul of workers so that they a series of temporary contracts before getting are now incapable of thinking in a real col- a permanent job. According to the ASTI, the lective sense. A good example of this ap- secondary teachers union, the newly qualified proach is Jennifer Silva’s Coming Up Short: teachers will spend an average of eight years Working class Adulthood in an Age of Un- on temporary contracts. Moreover as they en- certainty. This argues that younger workers ter the labour force, they will experience lower are no longer able to connect personal trau- pay and lower pension rights because trade mas to public issues and, therefore, adopt fun- union leaders have sold these young workers damentally individualistic stances. Another out. Given these circumstances is it surpris- approach, however, is to focus on structural ing that there is a certain appeal to an ar- changes in the nature of capitalism and in the gument about a difference of interest between working class. Epstein and Krippner’s work ‘the precariat’ and ‘the proletariat’? on ‘financialisation’ which argues that profit The second reason, however, has to do is no longer linked to production is a good ex- with the ideological confusion that has en- ample of writings which emphasise changes in gulfed sections of the anti-capitalist left. The the structure of capitalism.13 Standing’s The crash of 2008 was similar to that of 1929 in be- Precariat is an example of the latter. These ing a general ‘systemic crisis’. The response structural changes, it is suggested, require an of the workers’ movement was strong in par- orientation away from organised workers to- ticular countries such as Greece but, overall, wards wider social movements and the ‘pre- there has not been sustained or successful re- cariat’. Variations of these arguments have sistance. This discrepancy between the scale won a hearing in sections of the anti-capitalist of the crisis and the weakness of working class left who fear that the over-focus on organised response has led to a search for ‘new’ theories workers might cut them off from ‘the move- to explain this. ment’. 13 G.Epstein, Financialisation and the World Economy New York Edward Elgar, 2005 and Greta R. Krippner ‘The financialisation of the American economy’ Socio-Economic Review 2005 3(2):173-208.

46 This then is the wider context for the the accepted limits but reformist ideas arose reception that Standing’s ‘precariat’ has re- out of the experience of workers in a particu- ceived. At the core of the book is a method lar phase of capitalism and if Labour parties - derived primarily from the academy- that were not there to give them expression other is at variance with an active Marxist ap- -sometimes left nationalist - forces arose to proach to the world. Not only does it dis- perform the same function. count the fact that the fundamentals of cap- Today we have entered a new phase of capitalism are rooted in the commodification of italism and the reformist politics which dom- human labour, it seeks to ‘read off’ suppos- inated labour movements are in crisis. The edly ‘inevitable’ changes from ‘globalisation’. leadership layers have embraced social liber- In other words, it replaces an analysis of po- alism and only try to tack on a few pathetic litical struggle within the workers’ movement ‘left’ gestures to appease their base. The mass with a ‘faux nostalgia’ that writes off work- of workers who suffer exploitation and grow- ers either as victims of internalised neoliberal ing insecurity are left in a contradictory posi- values or redundant because of the structural tion. Many want to fight - as most ballots that economic change. The massive gap in all these are taken for industrial action in Ireland tes- writings is any examination of the strategies tify. But they often lack confidence and still and policies that arise in the workers’ move- expect others to represent or fight for them. ment from the domination of reformism. More broadly, a new revolutionary alternative has not yet emerged that can give voice to the common interest of workers. The systemic cri- The role of reformism sis of capitalism is, therefore, being reflected Reformist influences became deeply rooted in in a crisis within labour movements and there the Western labour movement first in the late is a massive fight underway to resolve it in 19th and early 20th century with the rise of favour of those who wish to see a challenge to German Social Democracy and the British capitalism itself. Part of that fight involves Labour Party and then, again, during ‘the relating, precisely, to some ‘labourist’ senti- Golden Age’ of capitalist expansion from 1948 ments in order to move them in a revolution- to the early seventies. The hegemony of these ary direction. Standing has no interest in such ideas affected - and still affects - every aspect an outcome and so his new concept of the ‘pre- of working class life: the separation of ‘in- cariat’ comes with an attempt to ideologically dustrial relations’ from political struggle; the legitimise divisions between workers. rise of a professional union bureaucracy whose But even if this is the effect of his ar- primary purpose is to bargain rather than guments, we still need to deal with them in lead struggle; the subtle patronage structures their own terms. This is a somewhat slippery that co-opted working class fighters into offi- task because of the impressionistic manner in cial structures; and, crucially, the implicit ac- which the book is written. Nevertheless, there ceptance of divisions between workers created are a number of key themes we will focus on by the market as the price to be paid for con- to critique his argument. forming to the system. The hegemony of these ideas did not arise from a thin layer of labour A mythical proletariat aristocrats, as Lenin originally suggested,14 or even, purely, from the apparatus of union Standing’s approach to social class is drawn and Labour party bureaucracies. These ap- from a variant of Weberian sociology, which paratuses certainly played a vital role in sus- sees it merely as a number of categories with taining reformist methods and practices when defined characteristics. The class structure is grassroots anger threatened to move beyond supposedly composed of an elite, a ‘salariat’ - 14 T. Cliff,‘The Economic roots of reformism’ in Neither Washington or Moscow, London: Bookmarks 1982.

47 white collar workers who have ‘pensions, paid Quite the contrary. The general picture now holidays and enterprise benefits, often sub- is one of declining security for all workers as sidised by the state’; a ‘proficians’ - profes- capital seeks to compensate for declining rates sionals or technicians whose skills are in high of profit by increasing the rate of exploitation. demands; and manual workers. Manual workers in most advanced economies Marxists take an entirely different ap- have been losing out on pension security; em- proach to social class and see it as a relation- ployment security with the rise of mass unem- ship that is formed with an opposing class in ployment; job description security with the the process of production. Production here constant pressure for flexibility. In Ireland, is not understood in the narrow sense of sim- for example, the number of defined benefit ply manufacturing but rather the way human pension schemes has declined from 2,500 in energy is used to transform our environment. 1990 to only 800 today. In the last four years Work that is conventionally categorised as be- alone, 400 of these schemes have closed, im- longing to ‘services’ -such in education and pacting 65,000 workers.16 One recent study health- are also sites in which class relations in Europe found that only 32 percent of all are formed. These ‘services’ help reproduce workers thought they had good employability new generations of workers and increase their prospects - i.e. could get another job at simi- productivity. They are therefore part of trans- lar pay and conditions if their own one closed forming the environment to meet expanding - while 23 percent of industrial workers feared and socially determined human needs. for their job security in the next six months17 The key point - which Standing misses en- Clearly, therefore, the manual working tirely - is that these relations under capital- class cannot be defined by stable, secure pat- ism are based on exploitation and are shaped terns of employment. Insecurity - or precar- by the underlying logic of capital: namely, a iousness - is a condition that does not just drive for self-expansion, based on an endless characterise one group but is a condition af- search for a high rate of profit. This means fecting the wider working class in varying de- that far from the working class being a static grees. category, it is continually being changed by capital and its own struggles against it. The myth of a privileged Thus it is absurd to start from a picture salariat of the manual working class from a distant era. If core sections of organised workers The ‘salariat’ - primarily office and white- were drawn from skilled workers, miners or collar workers - have probably undergone the car workers in the past, it does not follow that most change in recent decades due to the na- it remains the case today. Currently, for ex- ture of capitalist re-structuring. ample, white-collar employees in Ireland have A hundred years ago, office employees had higher rates of trade union membership than a ‘trust’ relationship with their employer be- skilled workers. 37 percent of clerical employ- cause they worked in close proximity and were ees are members of a union compared to 30 rewarded for loyalty to the firm. In the 1930s, percent from craft workers.15 And if man- Lewis Corey characterised this group as ‘hon- ual workers won some security from employers oured employees’ who had close and confiden- during the Golden Age of capitalism, it does tial relations with their employers. Even by not follow that they continue to have ‘stable’ the late fifties the sociologist, David Lock- jobs with prospects of advancement in 2014. wood, was arguing that ‘the clerk and the 15CSO, Quarterly National Household Survey Module on Union Membership 2009 Table 3a 16‘Pensioners may face cuts under reform package’ Irish Times, 20 November 2013 17Eurofound, Quality of employment conditions and employment relations in Europe, Eurofound, Dublin , 2013 18D. Lockwood, The Blackcoated Worker, London: Allen and Unwin, 1958 p.58

48 manual worker do not, in most cases, share of large corporations, the task of organising the same class situation at all’.18 He pointed the systematic exploitation of larger num- to differences in status and work situation as bers of workers requires a large managerial the primary reasons. cadre. This strata, - which have been dubbed However, in 1974 the American Marxist, the ‘new middle class’ by Alex Callinicos20- Harry Braverman, challenged this idea and are often rewarded with higher salaries and pointed out the growing ‘proletarisation’ of bonuses. They are mainly engaged in unpro- white-collar work. He showed how the wages ductive activities that serve the specific meth- of routine white-collar workers had fallen be- ods of capitalist exploitation. However, the low skilled manual workers initially and then vast majority of salaried workers have seen an below those of many unskilled factory work- increase in job intensity and declining rates of ers. His central argument was that ‘Taylorist’ pay and security. methods in term of loss of autonomy and Standing’s claim, therefore, that the a shift to managerial control were spreading ‘salariat’ have ‘most of the financial capital from the factory floor to the office.19 and have gained vastly more income’ without working harder is patently absurd. Its purpose however is rhetorical. By presenting a fictitious image of a privileged ‘salariat’ and a conservative manual working class, he aims to establish a space for a supposed new class, which have different interests to them. The reality, however, is entirely the opposite. The majority of white-collar employees are increasingly being drawn into the conditions of existence of the wider working class. They

A Privileged Salariat? are being subjected to more intense forms of exploitation and, as part of that, a regime of insecurity is being enforced on many of them. Since then the process of ‘proletarianisa- Once again, far from the formation a ‘pre- tion’ has accelerated dramatically. Instead of cariat’ we are witnessing a growing proletar- a ‘trust’ relationship between most white col- ianisation and accompanying this is a regime lar employees and their managers there is an of insecurity - or if you would prefer ‘precari- ‘audit’ relationship. Their ‘outputs’ are mea- ousness’. sured through mechanism such as Key Per- formance Indicators. They are then ‘bench- Labour is needed marked’ against each other to increase insecurity and stress. There is a growing trend As Kevin Doogan has pointed out, Stand- to ‘performance related pay’ to link salaries ing grossly exaggerates the trends to part to productivity. With the rise of mass third time and temporary work in globalised cap- level education, the salaries of routine white italism.21 Worse, he misrepresents the reason collar workers have often fallen further com- why insecure or ‘precarious’ employment is in- pared to the wider labour force. However, a creasing. small minority of these employees have been Capitalism is a system characterised by pulled into the ranks of management. With both vertical and horizontal struggle. Each the demise of the family ﬁrm and the growth capitalist seeks to maximise the exploitation 19H.Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital, New York:Monthly Review Press 1974 20A. Callinicos, ‘The new middle class and Socialism’ International Socialism Journal, Vol. 2.No. 20, 1983. 21K.Doogan, The New capitalism and the Transformation of Work,London: Polity 2009

49 of their own workforce but they are also en- 2000 2011 2012 gaged in a horizontal struggle with their fellow In employ- 1735.4 1861.3 1841.3 capitalists for access to credit, resources and ment labour. Just as labour is dependent on capi- Full time 1455.2 1423.8 1396.0 tal, so capital also needs human labour. Even Part time 280.3 437.5 446.3 those sections of capitalism that are furthest Part time - removed from direct production in services or Not underem- Na 300.4 298.6 manufacturing, still need workers to monitor ployed their computer screens or their investment re- turns. Part time Capitalists, therefore, worry about hold- - Underem- Na 137.1 147.6 ing onto labour. They worry about high rates ployed of turnover. They worry about the loss of Table 2: Full Time and Part time Employment in Ireland skilled labour to competitors. They dislike 2000-2012 having to train and bear the costs of mould- By underemployment the CSO means ing new workers into the particular regime of involuntary part time work where the em- their firm. Broadly, therefore, in advanced ployee has no other options. The OECD, countries they seek to hold onto workers when using figures mainly derived from the Irish there is a booming economy or even when CSO, asserts that part time employment rates of capital investment are relatively high. Here are figures from the OECD: has jumped from 18.1 percent of those in employment in 2000 to 25.0 percent today. 2000 2011 2012 It also claims that temporary employment OECD Countries 11.3 11.9 11.8 has jumped from 4.7 percent to 10.2 percent.

Table 1: Temporary employment as a % of dependent em- These variations tell a very different ployment tale to that of Standing. His central argu- These figures reflect a pattern whereby ment is that the precariat arose as ‘global- workers are mainly hired as permanent em- isation’s child’. But ‘globalisation’ is one ployees - even if that permanency has be- of those class neutral terms invented by so- come increasingly insecure. Munck has ciologists, which enable academics to en- made the valid point that Standing’s argu- gage in impressionistic and rather unspe- ment is ‘eurocentric’ because he is point- cific discussion of what purport to be in- ing to precarious employment in advanced evitable trends. The doyen of this style countries while implying this is a global of academic theorising is Anthony Giddens phenomenon.22 Rates of ‘informal’ em- - now Baron Giddens - who claimed that ployment in poorer countries tend to tra- ‘third way’ social democracy, was an in- ditionally average around 40 percent. For evitable concomitant to globalisation.23 many in the global South, there is nothing Standing takes a very different ap- new about ‘precariousness’. proach to Giddens but his argument that Ireland presents another interesting the rise of the precariat is an inevitable re- variation on the general pattern. Here are sult of ‘globalisation’ suffers from a similar the most recent figures from the CSO. problem. It ignores the central dynamic - and the contradictions - inherent in the drive of capital to expand itself. Where 22R.Munck, ‘The Precariat: A View from the South’ Third World Quarterly Vol, 34 No. 5, 2013, pp 747-762 23A. Giddens, The Third Way and the Renewal of Social Democracy , London: Polity, 1998.

50 there is a concentration of capital, there Once we locate precariousness within is a bigger need for labour. The uneven the dynamic of capitalism, it becomes clear spread of capital - primarily as a result of that it is not a category that applies to a imperialism- explains why there is more particular social group but to the working competition between capitalists in some class as a whole. Standing captures one as- countries than in others. This also helps pect of the change towards greater insecu- to explain why there is a greater need for rity but refuses to locate it in the dynamic labour in some countries than in others. of capitalism itself. This is why he favours One of the central features of capital- a utopian market based solution that sug- ism is that there are different rhythms gests that commodification suits a myth- of investment in different periods. Ulti- ical new class. It is also why his theory mately, this is dependent on the expected is a deeply ideological analysis of the pro- rate of profit. When the rate of profit is cess because it legitimises the creation of low, there is a fall-off in investment and more division within the working class by as a result there are higher levels of unem- purporting to find a difference in interest ployment. This has been a key trend in between those who are currently precari- the last decade in particular. One indica- ous and those who are not. tion of this is that in 2000, cash holdings - uninvested profits - represented 9.5 per- Atomised and powerless? cent of global assets but by 2012 this had risen to 12.4 percent. In absolute terms, In the old days there were miners who the cash holdings of publicly listed enter- lived in tight knit communities and devel- prises jumped from $2.3 trillion dollars in oped a collective voice but the precariat 2000 to $6.5 trillion in 2011, the year of the are dispersed, fragmented and denied a latest figures. 24 space to organise collectively. They can Declining rates of profits produce con- only succeed through social movements of tradictory consequences within capitalism. the streets - but not the workplace. While On the one hand there are greater pools this is not spelled out by Standing, it is of unused labour and, on the other hand, certainly an implication that some demor- there is an intensification of exploitation of alised sections of the left have embraced. the existing labour force. Capitalists seek It is, however, a classic case of apoliticism. to use the threat of insecurity and unem- Between 1911 and 1913 the Irish labour ployment to increase the surplus value ex- movement was built amongst the most ca- tracted from each worker and to decrease sualised sections of the workforce. The the necessary costs of employing them. It core of Larkin’s ITGWU was drawn from is this dynamic which produces greater in- dockers and carters who were effectively security or precariousness in employment day labourers. and Ireland, is prime example of this. Dur- During the Celtic Tiger, most workers ing the Celtic Tiger there was an insatiable had permanent jobs and there was little demand for labour and so many were of- sign of a large casualised workforce. Work- fered ‘permanent’ contracts. But when ers were in a more economically advan- investment dries up - declining to about tageous position because of the shortage one third of what it was at the height of of labour but their militancy and social the Tiger economy - precariousness grows achievements were minimal. hugely. The difference had to do with the pol- 24ILO, World of Work Report 2012 p. 75

51 itics that dominated the respective labour could be worse’. movements. The revolutionary syndical- Nothing better illustrates the crisis of ism of Connolly and Larkin gave expres- reformism than the huge retreats that have sion to a form of class struggle union- been undertaken in the post-crash years. ism that placed a premium on working Those who promote spurious sociological class solidarity as distinct from any re- explanations, which suggest that there is a spect for the rules of industrial relations. necessary ‘atomisation’ because of ‘global- Mass pickets and blacking were the tactics isation’ and the ‘precariat’, miss the point. that welded together a casualised work- ‘Atomisation’ is primarily the result of a force into a fighting force that terrified the social partnership strategy that relies on employers. fomenting demoralisation and defeatism to Modern Irish trade unionism, however, ensure compliance with austerity. is dominated by Labour Party figures who favour social partnership. During the Conclusion boom years, they actively restrained workers from imposing any significant cost in- The precariat, therefore, is a fashionable creasing claims on employers. For exam- but quite bogus concept. It reflects- but ple, that leadership attacked a proposal does not help to solve - a major problem at a SIPTU conference for a campaign in the workers movement today. We need to force employers to make mandatory an entirely different approach. pension contributions. Even during the First, we need stronger socialist net- boom years, this type of business unionism works to promote the common interests of exacerbated divisions within the workers’ workers in resisting austerity and capital- movement. ism. That means opposing union agree- After the crash, the fostering of di- ments that sacrifice one group of workers visions between workers as a method of to ‘red circle’ conditions for others. The promoting compliance with austerity be- reality is that once conditions are reduced came a standard practice. It is now rou- for temporary workers, they become the tine for union leaders to promote changes norm for all later. When there is a small which ‘red circle’ some conditions for ex- cohort of intimidated and abused workers, isting workers while accepting disgraceful it will act as a break on any union ad- attacks on new entrants. But compliance vance. Opposing these divide and rule tac- via division is not confined to new versus tics will necessary involve socialists in op- older workers. The original vote to re- posing business unionism and social part- ject the Haddington Road agreement was nership. overturned by a two-fold strategy. First, Second, we should support mass union- the union leaders turned a blind eye as isation drives which organise workers in their friends in the Labour Party pushed sections of the economy which rely more on through emergency legislation in the Dail temporary and zero hour contracts such as to change the conditions of public sector the fast food industry and the retail trade. workers by legal decree - the infamous Fi- This will involve a break with the cur- nancial Emergency Measures in the Pub- rent ‘organising model’ that is promoted lic Interest Act. Second, with that stick by many unions. This model, which has firmly placed behind their back they told been imported from unions like the SEIU one group of workers that they were not (Service Employees International Union) being hit as hard as others and that ‘it in the US, is based on more tokenistic

52 forms of struggle in order to reach partner- formism is that social movements can ship agreements with employers when suf- emerge on the streets, which are far more ficient union density has been achieved.25 militant, more anti-capitalist than any- The reality is that the only union that will thing occurring in the work place. So- be able to organise the mass of young work- cialists should be unreservedly enthusias- ers who face the brunt of insecurity is a tic about such movements and willing to fighting union that is willing to break laws learn from new generations of fighters. We and engage in the most militant tactics to should reject any type of defensive syn- defeat ruthless employers. dicalism that plays fails to recognise that Third, the current model of trade such movements can play a major role in unionism is totally inadequate for the the re-composition of working class poli- struggles ahead. It is based on organisa- tics. But within those movements, we also tional structures that are divorced from need to point boldly to the importance of the workplace. It relies on a professional focusing on and involving organised work- ethos, which promises casework and ad- ers. vocacy within official industrial relations From Tahrir Square to Puerta del Sol structures. It decorates itself with a fake in Madrid, there have been magnificent tokenistic leftism that is a cover for its ab- street movements, which have helped to reject passivity. Such a model of trade union- awaken a new militancy in workers. But ism is entering a period of crisis whose out- the occupation of squares in itself cannot come is still unknown. What is required break the power of the profit-extracting is a different form of class struggle trade machine. Only the militancy of the streets unionism based on grassroots initiative. combined with the power of workers in Fourth, an aspect of the crisis of re- the workplaces can do that.

25 K. Allen, ‘Social Partnership and Union revitalizatiuon: The Irish Case’ in G. Gall (eds) The Future of Union Organisaing, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009

53 Irish Tories and social bandits of Seventeenth Century Ireland

Ruair´ıGallagher

...Here’s the finest of stories, but they could not hold towns or territory, ‘Tis of Redmond O’Hanlon, the chief of all and a considerable force of Parliamentar- Tories. Here’s the feast of O’Rourke, the fight of ians would always result in their retreat.1 O’Mara’s, Toryism increased in 1651, perhaps coin- And the battle of Aughrim, and the fall of O’Hara’s. ciding with the Scottish Covenanter inva- Here’s Cathier na Gapul, and Manus sion of England and its decisive defeat at M’Connell, the Battle of Worcester. The Subsequent With his merry man Andrew, and Randell O’Donnell, Tory unrest did considerably disrupt the With other great Tories, Irish rogues, Rappa- Parliamentarian regime until 1653, when, rees, Once plenty in Ireland, as leaves on the trees. three years after Oliver Cromwell’s departure from Ireland, many of the Catholic -Popular poem dedicated to the Irish Tory outlaws titled Irish Rogues and Rapparees. Confederates or Tories left Ireland to join armies in Europe thereafter. With the Tories or Tory had been a term com- Restoration of the English monarchy in monly used by the English to describe 1660 under Charles II, many of the Con- Irish outlaws or bandits, deriving from federate forces returned to Ireland, with the Irish word tóraidhe, meaning raider or an optimistic expectation of being restored pursued person. During the 1690’s, the to the properties or estates that had been phrase Tory became common in order to confiscated during the era of the English distinguish supporters of King James II Commonwealth. As events unfolded, very and during the ‘Glorious Revolution’ from few Irish Confederates would be restored the Whig counterpart; and it is a term, to their properties during the Restoration ironically, that is still in usage today by period. The Restoration settlement - con- the anti-working class political party of sisting of the King’s Declaration in 1660, the British Conservatives. Nevertheless, the Act of Settlement of 1662 and Act of Irish Toryism can trace its antecedents to Explanation of 1665 - finally resulted in the Cromwellian Wars of the 1640’s and very few Catholics, militant Confederates 1650’s in Ireland, particularly after the col- or ensign-men being restored to their for- lapse of a centralised Royalist war effort mer properties, an outcome which would in 1649-1650, after which thousands of ir- leave a residue of burning resentment. In regular forces carried out a partisan war the nineteenth century, historian J.P Pren- against the Parliamentarian regime. His- dergast became one of the first academics ´ torian Micheál O Siochrú,has pointed out to analyze the phenomenon of Toryism, that Tory rebels could be successful at civil later referring to the Restoration settle- disorder with attacks such as: sabotages, ment as a ‘tragedy in three Acts’.2 A ambushes on convoys, damaging property contemporary, the Catholic Primate of Ire- and surprise attacks on isolated garrisons, 1Micheál O´ Siochrú, God’s Executioner, Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland, (London, 2008), p. 197. 2For an informative overview of the Tories during the Cromwellian era and throughout the Restora- tion period see J.P Prendergast: The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, (new ed., Great Britain, 1996), and particularly, Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660-1690, (London, 1887).

54 land, Oliver Plunkett, and one of the most erally provided intelligence or tacit sup- prolific writers on Toryism, summed up the port for the Tories because many viewed tragedy of the dispossessed aristocratic To- them as simply avengers of the wrongs ries: of the English gentry and crown government. Nonetheless, with banditry also In my diocese, that is, in the being a persistent problem for European counties of Tyrone and Ar- states, J.P Prendergast has pointed out magh, there were certain gen- that Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy tlemen of the leading families of Ireland (1605-15), even referred to Irish of the houses of O’Neill, Mac- bandits or Woodkernes at the beginning Donnell, O’Hagan, etc. Up to of the seventeenth century as ‘the White twenty-four in number together Moors’; alluding to the Spanish expulsion with their followers; they were of the Moors from Andalusia during the deprived of their properties Spanish Reconquista.5 and took to assassination and One can also compare the Tories to robbery on the public highway, the late historian and Marxist Eric Hob- entering at night to eat in the 3 sbawm’s conception of the Social ban- houses of the Catholics. dits/Primitive rebels of early modern Eu- It was during this appalling socio- rope. Intellectual studies on bandits be- economic epoch that Toryism emerged and gan to grow in importance from 1959, with was sustained throughout the latter half of Eric Hobsbawn’s creation of the concept the seventeenth century, while Irish indus- of ‘social banditry’, in his work, Primitive try deteriorated in the 1660’s and 1670’s Rebels. Hobsbawn explained that social as a result of the Cattle Acts and Nav- banditry is essentially ‘endemic peasant igation Acts.4 The Cattle Acts had ini- protest against oppression and poverty; a tially imposed a prohibitive duty on cattle cry for vengeance on the rich and the op- and sheep, and then completely forbade pressors, a vague dream of some curb upon exports of Irish livestock, beef, pork and them, a righting of wrongs’. Hobsbawm bacon. Also, the Navigation Acts blocked put forward the thesis that social bandits the direct import of colonial produce to are essentially; Ireland, such as sugar and tobacco - generally affecting the Irish importer who had Peasant outlaws whom the lord relied on direct imports. With the re- and state regard as criminals, sult that land confiscations and the neg- but who remain within peas- ative economic consequences of the Cat- ant society, and are considered tle and Navigation Acts helped to develop by their people as heroes, as a type of ‘prototype nationalism’ among champions, avengers, fighters the Tories. This was an insurgency in al- for justice, perhaps even lead- liance with the Catholic populace who gen- ers of liberation, and in any 3Oliver Plunkett to Baldeschi, from Dundalk, 27th Jan 1671, in Monsignor John Hanly (ed). The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett, 1625-1681, (Dublin, 1979), pp. 157-161. 4 L.M Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660, (3rd ed., London, 1978), pp. 13-19. 5J.P Prendergast, Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660 to 1690, (1887, London), p. 57. 6For an intellectual and hugely fascinating Marxist interpretation of banditry in pre-Capitalist Eu- ropean societies see both Eric Hobsbawm’s: Primitive Rebels, (London, 1965) and, Bandits, (new ed., Great Britain, 2001).

55 case as men to be admired, tionary, he argued that robbers and ban- helped and supported.6 dits could prove to be ‘the mighty force for the victory of the revolution’ and creating Hobsbawm was influenced by Fernand an alliance with robbers and bandits could Braudel’s classic three volume history on produce a new The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean [s]pirit and a new goal, embrac- world in the age of Philip II, which dedi- ing all peoples...Rough and cated a sub-chapter to the phenomenon of wild to the point of cru- banditry in Europe in the late sixteenth elty, these people have a fresh and early seventeenth centuries; particu- strong nature that is untram- larly the appearance of banditry in the melled and not used up, and Italian States, Sicily, Catalonia, Andalu- this [is] open to live propa- sia, and in the border-zones of the Turkish ganda, and if the propaganda is Empire, France, Venice, Bosnia and Herze- life and not doctrinaire, it will govina, Romania and Hungary etc. Ac- succeed in reaching them.9 cording to Braudel’s thesis, early modern European banditry, therefore, represented In contrast, Marx consistently argued righters of wrongs and a form of vengeance that only he proletariat could be the cru- upon the ruling class and its lopsided jus- cial revolutionary agent of any giving rev- tice.7 Braudel pointed out that banditry olution. As Marx explained: can also receive the support of the nobility Of all classes that stand face as demonstrated by the links between the to face with the bourgeoisie to- Neapolitan or Sicilian nobility and ban- day, the proletariat alone is a dits in southern Italy.8 There would seem really revolutionary class. The therefore to be an interesting link between other classes decay and finally banditry and its potentiality in a revolu- disappear in the face of modern tionary situation. Industry; the proletariat is its Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, as special and essential product.10 co-members of the International Work- ing Men’s Association, often argued on Despite the intellectual debate between the nature of which class would lead the Marxism and Anarchism on the nature of revolution. Both agreed that the prole- which class was to be the important mover tariat (working-class) would play a role, of a revolution, Toryism generally showed but Marx saw this group to be the deci- the same socio-political characteristics as sive revolutionary agent whereas Bakunin banditry in early modern Europe, and this considered the possibility that the lumpen- is exemplified by the Nangle/Costello re- proletariat - consisting of unemployed, bellion (1665-166) in north Connaught. peasants, common criminals, bandits, etc. Dudley Costello and Edward Nangle lost - could become the vital mover of a revolu- their estates during the Cromwellian pe- tion. In Bakunin’s Catechism of a Revolu- riod and had failed to be restored to their 7Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the Age of Philip II, (3 vols, London, 1995), p. 746. 8ibid p. 750 9Quoted from Zeev Ivianski, ‘Source for inspiration for Revolutionary Terrorism - The Bakunin - Nechayev Alliance’, in Conflict Quarterly, p. 53. 10Quoted from Anne Robertson, ‘The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict’, in What’s Next, December 2003.

56 properties during the Restoration. Both The Nangle/Costello insurgency was a Nangle and Costello carried out audacious major threat to the Restoration govern- sabotages and hit-and-run attacks on the ment, with many of the Catholic populace properties of the Protestant landlords and being supportive of these men, and refus- gentry in Leitrim, Mayo and the surround- ing to betray those that they deemed as ing counties of both north Connaught and heroes battling against a domineering En- south Ulster. Nangle and Costello had glish government. Toryism received a ma- been ‘agrarian reactionary’ Tories whose jor setback with the death of Edward Nan- grievances were in opposition to the En- gle, who was killed during a raid of the vil- glish settlers, and they were determined to lage of Longford in July 1666. By 1667, reclaim their estates and properties. There Costello and his band of Tories continued was fear within English circles that if the to subvert the authorities with a violent Nangle/Costello rebellion were not sup- form of ‘economic war’ against the settler pressed, it could well develop into a wider class, with destruction and raids on cat- insurrection, which would cause deeper dif- tle until Costello was eventually shot dead ficulties for the Restoration government. by the English general, Theobald Dillon, In order to thwart the Nangle/Costello re- on March 1667 in County Mayo. Follow- bellion, James Butler, the Duke of Or- ing the death of Costello, his party of To- mond, ordered the townspeople of Bel- ries were routed and disappeared without turbet in County Cavan, to erect an in- trace. Nevertheless, the Nangle/Costello land fort during 1666. Costal fortifications revolt had demonstrated that Restoration preoccupied the government during the Toryism had a social and political edge Restoration period due to hysteria about a which had the potential to develop into possible Dutch or French invasion.11 The a sustained campaign of resistance against Catholic Irish populace refused to provide the new political and social order.13 Tory- intelligence to the English authorities; in- ism was a phenomenon that could largely stead, they gave tacit or explicit support depend on the local support of the Irish to the Tories as Edward Nangle and Dud- population, and could also - albeit through ley Costello continued in 1666 to carry out sporadic raids - seriously threaten the in- several daring acts of sabotage on the set- ternal security of the Restoration regime. tlers and their property; Moreover, the seditious activities of Dud- ley Costello and Edward Nangle, like some of their fellow Tories, can also be regarded In Connaught we hear of out- - depending on one’s perspective - as the rages by Tories. Three or four actions of insurgents or primitive resis- companies are in quest of them, tance fighters. Tories or bandits in general but the inhabitants of that failed think in terms of a modern revolu- country where they are, are tionary political ideology, such as Marx- generally their friends, and will ism or Irish Republicanism; neither did give no intelligence where they they develop a radical economic doctrine, may be met with. They have in terms of agrarian reform, and they failed lately burned several houses, (along with their fellow Tories in north and threaten others.12 11Paul M. Kerrigan, Castles and Fortifications in Ireland, 1485-1945, (Cork, 1995), pp. 107-108. 12George Warburton to Joesph Williamson, 11th Dec 1666 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1666-1669, p. 252). 13S.J Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760, (New York, 1995), p. 206.

57 Connaught or south Ulster) to re-occupy throughout the 1670’s, managing to suc- the land. In this respect, the Tories share cessfully overstretch the government’s in- the same characteristics as Hobsbawm’s adequate troop numbers during the early social banditry, ie defence or restoration of 1680’s. In comparison with those To- the traditional order of society with nostal- ries active during the Restoration, Red- gia for the past. Social-bandits or the To- mond O’Hanlon, or Count O’Hanlon as ries were less revolutionaries and more ar- the French had known him, was arguably dent fighters against the new order. They the most famous Tory that Ireland pro- were revolutionary traditionalists who reduced - as seen by the large amount of lit- garded as oppressive the English admin- erature and songs as been written about istration with its chauvinistic apparatus; this fascinating character. William Car- they sought to take Irish society back to leton’s inaccurate but entertaining nine- pre-Cromwellian times when dispossession teenth century novel on the life of Red- coupled with transplantation would have mond O’Hanlon romanticized the char- been unimaginable. With hindsight, it can acter somewhat - depicting O’Hanlon as be seen that if the Nangle/Costello rebel- handsome, popular among his people, and lion had conceived of a modern revolution- cunning at evading capture by the En- ary doctrine or developed greater commu- glish authorities.14 O’Hanlon’s favourite nications with Tories in the other provinces retreats were the wooded areas of Slieve of Ireland, given the circumstances of the Gullion, the Mourne Mountains and the time, their actions would have perhaps re- Fews Mountains of South Ulster. These sulted in a wider rebellion outside north areas, particularly in South Armagh, have Connaught and south Ulster. periodically witnessed an absence of effi- cient state power. As late as 1975, Mer- lyn Rees, then the British Northern Ire- land Secretary, described South Armagh as ‘Bandit Country’ in regards to the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) guerrilla campaign during the recent ‘Troubles’ of the late twentieth century.15 O’Hanlon was a dispossessed aristocrat and his an- cestral lands had been confiscated during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and not restored during the Restoration of the monarchy. Popular tradition would later regard Redmond O’Hanlon as an Irish Robin Hood who robbed the rich and gave William Carleton’s inaccurate but entertaining nineteenth to the poor.16 O’Hanlon had successfully century novel on the life of Redmond O’Hanlon extorted protection money or ‘black rent’ from wealthy merchants, landowners and even from the ordinary Catholic populace. With the suppression of the Nan- According to S.J Connolly, this indicates, gle/Costello rebellion, Toryism continued 14For an entertaining but largely inaccurate account of Redmond O’Hanlon’s life as a Tory outlaw see: William Carleton, Redmond O’Hanlon, The Irish Rapparee, An Historical Tale, (New York, 1896). 15Toby Harnden, Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh, (London, 2000), p. 14. 16J.C Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland 1603-1923, (new ed., London, 1981), p. 105.

58 that Toryism represented not just a rear- selves and handed in their weapons to the guard action against the social and po- Tories as Archbishop Boyle explains: litical order, but predatory banditry as had been common throughout early mod- Hanlon who commanded his 17 ern Europe. Therefore, perhaps one small party of villains he led can compare the unscrupulous Redmond them a mile into the moun- O’Hanlon to Robin Hood and many other tains and there searched them famous early modern European outlaws all and took away what mon- such as Diego Corrientes of Andalusia, the eys they had, and finding but 2 Slovakian Juro Janosik, the famous Scot- cobs in Mrs Cawfield’s pocket tish outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor and the he would not rob her of her Albanian Skanderbeg, or English highway- small stock. He finding Capt. man Dick Turpin. In similar fashion to Chichester much hurt he gave O’Hanlon, popular culture has also repre- them all their liberties and sented highwayman Dick Turpin as daring, stripped them of no clothes.18 elegant, gallant to women, and a Robin Hood who robbed the rich on the English O’Hanlon’s actions can in many ways highways and gave to the poor. English be regarded as those of a social bandit or highwaymen can also be regarded in many a Robin Hood, insofar as he could be dar- instances as criminals that robbed and ter- ing in the face of the enemy and had the rorised their victims for self-gain, similar support of the Catholic populace. How- to modern day criminals. However, many ever, O’Hanlon was more contradictory: he ordinary people who come into this world could be ruthless to the Catholic popu- with nothing and leave this world with lace as well as to the Protestant landed nothing, long for popular stories of the gentry. In a society ravaged with the hero in society who courageously defies his Cromwellian Wars of the 1640’s, made oppressive enemy; brings hope to the hun- worse with the Act of Settlements and Ex- gry and expropriates the wealth of the few planations of the Restoration, flexible tac- for the benefit of the many. In this respect, tics had to be applied in order to resist in- popular tradition has also re-created Red- justice. O’Hanlon had been a dispossessed mond O’Hanlon as an Irish Robin Hood. aristocrat of the Gaelic gentry, and like But we are fortunate enough to be pro- many dispossessed Tories, shared a burn- vided with a valuable anecdote by Arch- ing resentment against the new proprietors bishop Boyle, which he wrote in 1678, and and the landed system that came into place this also helps to reaffirm the notion of under the Restoration. A system in crisis O’Hanlon as a popular outlaw. The anec- is often singularly cruel and the most vul- dote begins with O’Hanlon and eight other nerable are treated with contempt. More- Tories ambushing Captain Chichester and over, in order to defend a culture and its his company of four or five men, his Lady way of life, it simply rules out any counter- and Lord Cawfield’s daughter, while trav- violence to its own violent rule. However, elling near Dundalk. There was a short history will remember the heroes’ of by- stand-off until eventually Captain Chich- gone eras - the Redmond O’Hanlons - who ester and his company surrendered them- take to the hills or mountains to continue 17S.J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630-1800, (New York, 2008), p. 167 18Archbishop Boyle to Orrery, Dublin, 15th June, 1678, in Edward MacLysaght (ed), Calendar of Orrery Papers, (Dublin, 1941), pp. 202-203.

59 a war of attrition against a far superior en- bands of mercenaries consisting of dra- emy because it is understood that the poor goons and foot soldiers that were tasked to have little choice but than to resist with proceed into previously inaccessible moun- methods their enemy understands. tainous or wooded areas, in order to liq- At the same time that O’Hanlon’s re- uidate Tories in their strong-holds. Well treated to the Fews Mountains of South known Tory hunters such as: Sir George Ulster and the north Connaught vicinity, Acheson; Sir Hans ‘Tory Will’ Hamilton; Toryism also emerged in the 1680’s in areas Sir George Hill and Sir George Rawdon of landed upheaval or dispossession such were commissioned by county justices to as Munster and Leinster, as well as the spearhead the suppression of Toryism.22 counties Cork and Kilkenny. The most But one of the most effective measures notable of these Tories was the gentleman for suppressing Toryism included offers of robber Colonel Richard Power, a son of a pardons to entice fellow Tories to betray dispossessed aristocrat from County Cork and murder each other. Indeed, J.P Pren- and the ‘Three Brennans’ of Kilkenny. The dergast explained that as late as 1695, Three Brennans, an ancient Sept of Ossory any Tory outlaw who killed his comrades in the north of Kilkenny, carried out the fa- was entitled to a pardon. Tory hunt- mous raid on the Duke of Ormond’s castle ing and murdering became common, and at Kilkenny and robbing his highly prized was legalised in 1718 and these laws con- plate.19 tinued to be in force until 1776.23 It As with Ireland, banditry appeared in was under these circumstances that Red- Europe in this period often where com- mond O’Hanlon was assassinated by his mon political borders had existed before, traitorous foster-brother, Art O’Hanlon, at as with France and Kingdom of Piedmont- Eight Mile Bridge, County Down, on 25th Sardinia; the Pyrenees border region with April 1681. The Duke of Ormond then ap- Spain; and the frontier between England pointed General Lucas (who had overseen and Scotland.20 The weakness of cen- O’Hanlon’s assassination) as an army lieu- tral government, the stark economic condi- tenant and gave Art O’Hanlon a pardon, along with £200 blood money, for his ser- tions and a lack of adequate policing would 24 lead to the continuance of banditry in Eu- vices. rope and Ireland throughout the 1670’s The policy of offering pardons to defeat and 1680’s. News of ambushes, robberies bandits was also followed in early mod- and house burglaries became an almost ern European states, as was the case in daily occurrence. The English feared that Spain and Naples. For instance, Fernand if Toryism were not suppressed, it could Braudel explains how the Venetian government used pardons to remove brigands ‘grow into petty rebellion, especially in Ul- in Crete during 1555, how Genoa granted ster’.21 In order to effectively suppress pardons to bandits in Corsica and how the banditry, the English government set-up Turks adopted analogous measures dur- 19 John P. Prendergast, Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660-1690, (London, 1887), pp. 142-143. 20Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800, (Cambridge, 2001), p. 222. 21Sir G. Rawdon to Viscount Conway, 29th Nov 1673 (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series., 1673-1675, pp. 37-38). 22Eamonn´ O´ Ciardha, ‘Woodkerne, tories and rapparees in Ulster and north Connacht in the seventeenth century’, (M.A. thesis, University College, Dublin, 1991), p. 155. 23John P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, (new ed., Great Britain, 1996), p. 176. 24 Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster, (new ed., Belfast, 2001), p. 144.

60 ing this period in Anatolia.25 Julious R. society until the emergence of capitalism Ruff described another instance where the with the Industrial Revolution in Britain Spanish viceroy on one occasion pardoned 188 bandits, in return for military ser- and the creation of the centralised modern vice in Italy, the Balerics, Gilbraltar, and bourgeois state after the French Revolu- Oran.26 It was only with the conclusion tion in 1789. Toryism or banditry was a of the War of Spanish Succession that the pre-capitalist phenomenon; as industriali- Spanish monarchy could assert greater authority outside Castile and effectively curb sation expanded, peasants from the coun- banditry. In sum, these practices in Eu- tryside flooded into the growing cities they rope and Ireland, were successful insofar became part of a new class, namely the in- as they broke up bands of bandits from dustrial proletariat. within, caused distrust and managed to convert many bandits to becoming the lo- For revolutionary Marxists today, it cal government’s protectors rather than is important to acknowledge the courage their enemies. of the bandit Tories of these early times. ‘Ho! Brother Teig, what is your story?’ They were rejecting both an oppressive En- ‘I went to the wood and shot a Tory;’ glish administration at the time of nascent ‘I went to the wood, and shot another;’ capitalism and a new order that was grad- ‘Was it the same, or was it his brother?’ ually destroying a noble Gaelic civilisation ‘I hunted him in, and I hunted him out, and its way of life. It must also be re- Three times through the bog, and about membered that the Tories essentially pro- and about, Till out of a bush I spied his head, vided Ireland with fighting men and fight- So I levelled my gun, and shot him dead.’ ing leaders. Today, in the epoch of neoliberal globalisation and ever increasing at- -Popular nursery rhythm dedicated to the Tory outlaw. tacks on the working-class, we need more These policies were a measure of weak- of such fighting leaders. The Tories were ness and confirmed the inadequacies of a trailblazers of the struggle to win a new central government. It was desperate to society which would follow Marx’s maxim: defeat the threat of banditry. Despite this, ‘from each according to their ability, to banditry continued to disrupt European each according to their need’.

25Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the Age of Philip II, (3 vols, London, 1995), pp. 748-749. 26Julius R. Ruﬀ, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800, (Cambridge, 2001), p. 222.

61 Oppression, Intersectionality and Privilege Theory

Karl Gill

Many people today under capitalism are lege theory, because we all have unearned ad- faced with oppression. Some people are more vantages that we are often unaware of, people oppressed than others and people are op- need to examine their own level of privilege pressed for many different reasons. Generally before they can express solidarity with more people face oppression on the basis of their oppressed people in society and if you are not sexuality, race, class, gender, gender identity constantly ‘checking your privilege’ you are etc. and this oppression has a real and often part of the problem and de facto an oppressor. disabling impact on people’s lives and how The premise of this is that white people ben- they interact with others, work and learn. efit from racism, straight people benefit from It also has an overall impact on how society homophobia, men benefit from sexism and so functions as a whole. In the process of coming on. to grips with and understanding this oppres- This is a particular view of how oppression, social theorists have come up with many sion works. In this view people are oppressed different analyses. Two analyses which are by other people who have not had the same often linked are ‘Intersectionality’ and what experiences in life, that is, experiences of prej- is broadly referred to as ‘Privilege Theory’. udice. For example, unchecked gender priv- These are the two concepts which I will be ilege means you are complicit in sexism; or dealing with in this piece and outlining what unchecked race privilege means you are racist I think Marxists might have to say on the mat- by definition. ter. In one sense, the fact that so many people Proponents of Privilege Theory (PT) can have come to this view is a huge step forward. be very different and range from the anarchist People have very good reasons to point out left to the liberal-dominated NGO sector. For racism, sexism etc. and encourage people to the purpose of this piece I will be dealing with reflect on their reactionary ideas. However the as many aspects of PT as possible in an over- questions we need to ask are: will personal re- all analysis of the general concept. Referring flections alone defeat oppression? Is this the to PT as a ‘theory’ is sometimes challenged by best method for tackling homophobia? Can its proponents however this is something I do we beat Youth Defence and the Iona Insti- for ease of discussion. The concepts defined tute by encouraging them to reflect on their within PT were written by authors in books own positions in society? Where does this op- and when this has been discussed in universi- pression come from and how can we go about ties these authors are referred to as theorists wiping it out once and for all? - so ‘theory’ is not meant to be a pejorative Socialists should be on the side of people label. who agree with PT and Intersectionality and You may have come across PT when hear- we should work together to tackle oppression ing someone say ‘check your privilege’ in re- and bigotry. However it should be the job of sponse to a form of prejudice. PT is the Marxists within all movements to argue with idea that we all have various levels of priv- people in a constructive and comradely man- ilege which comes from our personal experi- ner and put across a Marxist analysis of op- ences in life based on our identity. Those with pression. most privilege are considered to be white, The beginning of PT can be traced back straight and wealthy men so the closer you to its development in 1960s America where are to the race, sexuality, class and gender it was predominately referred to as ‘White with most power and dominance in society the Skin Privilege’ and used by some writing dur- more privilege you have. According to privi- ing the civil rights and black liberation move-

62 ment. In 1967 the Students for Democratic do. Passing privilege is ‘The privilege to be Society published a book by Noel Ignatiev able to ‘pass’ as a more privileged group, such and Theodore Allen which included two ar- as a light-skinned person of color passing as ticles; White Blindspot and Can White Radi- white, a transperson passing as non-trans, a cals be Radicalized? These pieces argued that disabled person passing as able-bodied, etc’. white activists tended to put much less em- Other privileges include, Body Size Privilege, phasis on racism when examining American Religious Privilege, Educational Privilege and labour history and when organising current of course Race, Class and Gender privilege. struggles. They also argued that the biggest While the notion that we must go around block to building class struggle and revolution constantly checking people who are flaunt- in America was the chauvinism of white working their ‘Passing Privilege’ may seem almost ers. laughable, to some there is, however, a very This approach made a resurgence in the important argument here. You can see the early 1990s. In 1990 Peggy McIntosh wrote importance of taking this line of thinking se- a book called White Privilege: Unpacking the riously when you read how the TJLP define Invisible Knapsack. In this book McIntosh ar- ‘Class Privilege’. gued that white people have a full knapsack Class Privilege: The privilege of of privilege due to the fact they live in a world being a person raised with finan- tailored to their needs and that this knap- cial stability and access to finan- sack weighs you down - so the more privileged cial safety nets through family or you are the more weighed down you are. You other assets. Class privilege can must carry this knapsack around with you and also apply to someone who has never forget its weight when talking to a per- accrued wealth over time. In our son of colour - hence ‘check your privilege’.1 society, class privilege often dic- Recently this concept has resurfaced tates ‘opportunities’, ‘freedom’, within the Occupy movement and in US and access to ‘legal rights’ and the British sociology schools in universities. Of- power to influence political sys- ten the notion that we all have various levels tems and the media. In our ex- of privilege that you must check is taught as perience, class privilege has been a given fact in sociology books and lectures. one of the privileges most devas- At the height of the Occupy Wall Street tating to radical organizing when movement a very important document was gone unchecked by those who doing the rounds and being discussed at open have it.2 assemblies. This document was called Check- ing Your Privilege 101 and it came from Clearly this definition of class is a prob- the Transformative Justice Law Project of lem. While obviously it is true that the fam- (TJLP) in Chicago. This group is made ily you were born into can be an advantage or up of different academic activists who stand disadvantage to you, can we really justify a for prison abolition, gender self-determination discussion of class in terms of privilege? Ob- and what they call transformative justice. In viously activists with a decent income should Checking Your Privilege 101 they list twelve always keep in mind that not everyone can forms of privilege. These vary from ‘Life on afford to eat in that restaurant or travel to the outside privilege’ to what they call ‘pass- that protest or conference. But this doesn’t ing privilege’. Life on the outside privilege mean that all those with secure, or relatively is explained as being the privilege of not be- well-paid jobs are of a different class or part ing in prison, as prisoners do not have the of the problem. If we apply the general the- same access to certain things as non-prisoners sis of PT, that we all have various levels of 1Bill Mullen - ‘Is there a White Skin Privilege?’ 2013 Socialistworker.org 2 Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois, Checking Your Privilege 101

63 privilege, this line of thinking becomes very drivers, trades people, gardeners etc.. live similar to the notion that society is made up and work in working-class communities, live of many different classes and this is a notion with working-class people and make their liv- often used by the right to divide people. ing without benefiting from the work of oth- Marxists argue that in capitalist society ers. there are two main classes; the working class What is involved here is not just an argu- and the capitalist class. Now while many peo- ment about definitions or labels but an anal- ple may not self-identify as either one of these, ysis of the way society is structured and how for Marxists, class is an objective relationship it can be changed. Socialists think that this based on one’s position in the process of pro- is a useful way of looking at society as it duction. The days when the vast majority of has the potential to empower and unite peo- people worked in manual production in fac- ple. Making this broad definition of working tories may have passed, but the fundamen- class, rather than individual identity or par- tal division between those who own and con- ticular occupations or lifestyles, the point of trol capital and those who don’t - between departure for the struggle means identifying exploiter and exploited - remains. Under cap- a social force that actually has the potential italism today you can work for Google on 70K power to defeat the system. However if we a year or you can own your own small busi- take the Checking Your Privilege 101 defini- ness, employ 2 or 3 people and earn 50K a tion of class we are into potentially dangerous year or less. However the person who works territory as it can only serve to divide peo- for Google is selling their labour power to the ple who are essentially members of the same company and having a profit made out of it, class. Also, the notion that telling members whereas the person who owns their own busi- of the ruling class to ‘check your class priv- ness is directly profiting off the labour of the ilege’ will actually achieve anything is farci- people they employ. Also the person who cal. The only thing that will make a capital- owns their own business has far more con- ist think twice about their actions is if there trol over their own life than the person who is a threat to their profits, not appealing to is under the thumb of a manager and CEO their good will. However, the Checking Your in Google (no matter how nice their offices Privilege 101 document is widely accepted as are). We need to acknowledge that a huge representing the liberal wing of the concept. number of people today work in call-centres, There are other places on the left and the service industry, self-employment, shop within activism where PT can be found, for floors, restaurants, the entertainment indus- example within Anarchism. There is a de- try, IT etc. and that traditional factory work- bate within the anarchist movement interna- ers are now, for various reasons, the minority tionally between what are referred to as ‘class (although they remain an important factor). struggle anarchists’ who have a near-Marxist Again this does not change the fact that a call- analysis of capitalism, and take the view that centre worker, for example, creates a profit for there are class roots to all oppression, and their firm and therefore is a member of the other anarchists who turn to the postmodern working class. social theorist Michel Foucault to explain op- There are of course some people who are pression. Foucault argued that power exists ‘middle class’ and these people fall into two everywhere in society and is not just concen- main categories: first, those who own small trated in the state; applying this theory to businesses or are self-employed; second those oppression you can see clearly how PT comes who, while working for a salary, play a man- into it. If power exists everywhere, in every agerial role, i.e. they are paid not for their relationship in society (as opposed to power labour power alone but also to manage the being overwhelmingly concentrated at the top labour (and exploitation) of others. How- and having an influence at the bottom) then ever, many self-employed people such as taxi it is easy to see how PT can be applied here,

64 that men benefit from sexism etc. live with women so the fact that women earn However, no matter how radical a spin is less due to sexism is not a case for demanding put on this concept the central problem with men feel bad about this - it’s a case for women the theory remains, namely that other work- (and men) organising to demand equal pay, ing class people, and not the ruling class, are and not by lowering men’s income. The only seen as benefiting from identity-based oppres- person who benefits from paying women less sion. It is no use saying you support liberation is the person who pays them in the first place and socialism and then disregarding all class - the capitalist. analysis in order to cry ‘Check your privilege!’ Because the amount of privilege you have at working-class people. What proponents is based on your past experiences in life owing of PT need to keep in mind is what exactly to your identity it means your privilege is an oppression is, and how it works. How does unchanging status. So no matter how much oppression reproduce itself? Where does op- solidarity you express, or how many years you pression come from? And ultimately how can spend fighting for the rights of more oppressed we get rid of it? In essence what PT comes people, you are still an oppressive scum bag if down to is a view of oppression as the personal you do not acknowledge the fact that you are choice or decision of the oppressor. privileged because you are a man, or you are Also within PT there is a fundamental white, straight etc. Altogether PT paints an confusion between privileges and rights. Call- absolutely hopeless scenario where society is ing something a privilege makes it almost dominated by oppressive working class people sound dirty, like something you shouldn’t have and we can’t really do anything about it. or like something you should feel bad about because someone else doesn’t have it. Obvi- ously, it is far better to extend rights to all Intersectionality than it is to restrict rights to some. LGBTQ Intersectionality is a method of analysis often people do not have access to marriage - do used by some people on the Left to discuss we make straight people feel bad about get- the different forms of oppression that people ting married because of this or do we fight for face in their daily lives or lived experiences. It everyone’s right to marry? is used to look at how these different oppres- PT seems to be limited to recognising in- sions intersect and how they impact on peo- equality and oppression on an individual level; ple. Intersectionality emerged from the black more about urging people to make individual feminist movement because of a very impor- confessions than about fighting the root cause tant analysis of how black women faced both of oppression. In this context, prejudice is racism and sexism and even the latter in dif- normalised as just a part of society and the ferent ways to white women. Proponents of ability to change it is diminished. Oppression Intersectionality focused on the oppression of itself does capitalism’s work by dividing us women as defined by racism. and individualising us and PT does nothing to challenge this either. What PT also does is ignore the connections people have in society; we are not all individual, independent actors in the game of life. We have friends, family, neighbours, col- leagues etc. and we are influenced by the different oppressions they face as well as the ones we ourselves are subject to. It is said that men benefit from sexism but it is not said often enough that men also have sisters, mothers In 1974 a new organisation of black lesbian and partners who are victims of sexism. Men feminists was born in Boston, Massachusetts

65 in America called The Combahee River Col- movement is fantastic. However while it is lective. In April 1977 (three years before they important for us to recognise that this group disbanded) they wrote their official statement and others like them came a very good place, to explain their politics. The concepts defined Marxists should have some clear criticisms of in this statement are widely quoted by propo- this document. Clearly their oppression is real nents of Intersectionality today even though and clearly they are victims of both racism the term ‘Intersectionality’ isn’t used in it. and sexism (as well as capitalism) but does In fact the term itself only began to be used their analysis advance their position? Can widely in the early 1990s. their emphasis assist in their struggle against The formation of the Combahee River oppression? Collective comes from a really positive per- First of all, while they identify as socialists spective. This was a group of some of the and discuss economic inequality, there seems most oppressed women in America coming to be no real class analysis. Instead they opt together, discussing ideas and figuring out for discussing things in terms of privilege: their own liberation. This was in direct re- We do not have racial, sexual, sponse to the sexism of the male-dominated heterosexual, or class privilege to civil rights and black nationalist movements rely upon, nor do we have even and the often-implicit racism of the white- the minimal access to resources dominated women’s movement. While they and power that groups who pos- did not necessarily feel that they were com- sess any one of these types of pletely cast aside by these movements they privilege have. did think that often their own issues were not taken up and other issues were prioritised. Secondly there is this statement: They say in their statement: We are not convinced however, that a socialist revolution that is Above all else, our politics ini- not also a feminist revolution and tially sprang from the shared be- anti-racist revolution will guaran- lief that Black women are inher- tee our liberation. ently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an ad- This is a good principle as long as it is junct to somebody else’s but be- not a condition for taking part in a revolu- cause of our need as human per- tion. Before we have a revolution must we sons for autonomy. This may guarantee that each and every worker is con- seem so obvious as to sound sim- sciously both a feminist and an anti-racist? plistic, but it is apparent that Do we ask the working class to wait and not no other ostensibly progressive revolt on the basis that there is still sexism movement has ever considered and racism in society? our specific oppression as a pri- Understanding the development of class ority or worked seriously for the consciousness is fundamental to Marxism and ending of that oppression..We to how exactly we beat oppression. A revolu- struggle together with Black men tion is a process. A revolution starting from against racism, while we also very basic economic and political demands struggle with Black men about can turn into a socialist revolution. A so- sexism.3 cialist revolution includes not just large street protests and college occupations but also mass This is a good starting point. The fact strikes and general strikes where the entire that, in a deeply racist and sexist society, they working class down tools and withdraw their bravely demand an end to sexism within their labour. In this process everything gets thrown 3The Combahee River Collective Statement - 1977

66 up in the air and everything ends up landing sexism) then a revolution can open the way in different places, everything changes, includ- to everyone’s liberation. Arguments will still ing people’s ideas. have to be had and socialists and feminists People’s ideas are developed and based on will have to argue against sexism and racism real, material objective conditions and dur- and every other expression of oppression we ing a revolutionary period these conditions meet in a revolution - but we can still say change radically. Even in the smallest of that men, women, black and white, gay and struggles today we can witness a shift in peo- lesbian working together against capitalism in ple’s ideas as people learn rapidly when they and of itself is a major blow to oppression. are forced into fighting the system. During While the ideas behind Intersectionality the Egyptian revolution in 2011 we witnessed initially emerged in the 1960s/70s it came Muslims, some of whom may at some stage back into being with the rise of postmod- have held prejudice views about Christians, ernism. In 1983, postmodern theorist Kim- form a protective ring around those Christians berléCrenshaw wrote an essay entitled Map- (Copts) while they prayed and vice versa. We ping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity have seen people concerned about the prop- and Violence against Women of Color. In this erty tax end up coming on protests for abor- essay she made a clear link between intersect- tion rights. When people are engaged in their ing or overlapping oppressions and postmod- own battles they become more ready to ex- ernism: ‘I consider Intersectionality to be a press solidarity with others who are engaged provisional concept linking contemporary pol- in other battles. People’s consciousness shifts itics with postmodern theory’.5 Further to radically in a revolutionary process. this in 1995 Caroline Andrews wrote a pa- As Marx said in the German Ideology in per called Ethnicities, Citizenship, and Fem- 1845 inisms: Theorizing the Political Practices of Intersectionality. In this she wrote: Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist con- Postmodernism has given visibil- sciousness, and for the success of ity to fragmentation, marginal- the cause itself, the alteration of ization, and multiple identities. men on a mass scale is necessary; The question of how to theo- an alteration which can only take rize the intersection of feminism place in a practical movement, and ethnicity partially reflects a revolution. This revolution is postmodern sensibilities. Post- necessary, therefore, not only be- modernism is certainly an im- cause the ruling class cannot be portant intellectual step towards overthrown in any other way, but the reconceptualising of differ- also because the class overthrow- ence. The idea of multiple, fluid ing it can only in a revolution suc- identities, of things being both ceed in ridding itself of all the what they are and what they are muck of ages and become fitted not, of the end of metanarrative to found society anew.4 all these open up the debate for the better understanding of dif- We don’t only beat oppression by beat- ference6 ing capitalism, we also beat oppression in the process of beating capitalism. If a revolution However this connection with postmod- throws off the muck of ages (like racism and ernism is nowhere to be seen in the circles 4Marx, German Ideology, 1984 5Crenshaw, 1983 - quoted in the charnellhouse.org 6Andrews, 1995 - quoted in the charnellhouse.org

67 where it is discussed today. I want to argue Also, Marxists should keep the concept of that the core concept of what is now called class central to our analysis. It is because we ‘Intersectionality’ is nothing new. For gener- live in a class society that oppression exists ations the left have discussed, in various ways, in the first place. All oppression arises from how different people are victims of oppression the class division in society. So the ability in different ways. Trotsky and Kollontai in to wipe away oppression depends on having early 20th Century Russia discussed what is a class analysis and acting on it. Class can- called ‘the double burden of women’ to re- not be viewed as just another way in which fer to how women were both wage workers humans are divided, but as a key division in and homemakers and men were not. Marx society that gives rise to prejudices between talked about how the working-class Irish em- other real human differences. All struggles are igrants in England had it worse than most of intrinsically linked but revolutionaries need to the English working class and the European work to connect struggles through solidarity left through the 20th century resisted anti- and broad alliances that bring different groups Semitism and recognised how working-class together. Socialists should see themselves as Jews were oppressed in a different way to the ‘tribunes of the oppressed’ and use every space rest of the class and so on. they occupy to highlight the plight of the most Marxists must recognise that it is vi- oppressed people in society. It is not good tal to challenge racism, sexism, homophobia enough to just say you are against racism if etc. and not simply concentrate on economic you do not demand that non-Irish people also struggles or say certain things can wait until have a right to a home, education, job and after the revolution. While people are being health in this country and make this demand oppressed nothing can wait. However, this at every turn and opportunity. Lastly we need necessary struggle is not helped by compli- an organisation that can do all this. But this cated, often abstract, academic terms or con- organisation needs to reflect and represent cepts which can be used by the knowledgeable the class. The revolutionary party should be activist to berate working class people who a multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-identity may hold some reactionary ideas. We need to international working-class organisation that disagree with people and patiently argue why challenges the capitalist and class roots of op- racism and all other prejudice is bad. pression.

68 Review: Sabby Sagall, Final Solutions: Human Na- ture, Capitalism and Genocide

John Molyneux

of Erich Fromm. As might, perhaps, be expected given the author - Sagall is a very long standing member of the British SWP - he tends to take the relevance of Marxist historical materialism to the problem more or less for granted - there is no sustained comparison of Marxist historical explanations of these events with non-Marxist explanations of them. He does, however, feel the need to justify in some detail the psychoanalytic concepts which he believes are necessary to supplement or complete more conventional Marxist analysis in this field and this takes up the first half of the book. In the second half, he attempts to demonstrate the applicability of this Marxist/psychoanalytic Sabby Sagall, Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Genocide Pluto Press, 2013 £20.50 methodology to each of the aforementioned genocides in turn. The most important concept deployed by Sabby Sagall has written a hugely am- Sagall is that of ‘social character’ developed bitious book which covers immense histori- by Fromm. For Freud, human behaviour and cal ground and attempts to answer one of character is heavily influenced by the uncon- the most challenging historical and theoretical scious and each individual’s unconscious, and questions of our time. The historical events therefore their character, is shaped primar- it deals with are four genocides: that of Na- ily by their experiences in early childhood tive Americans at the hands of European set- and how these interact with their basic sex- tlers; the Armenian genocide perpetrated by ual drives and development. Turkey; the Nazi Holocaust and the Rwanda Freud’s analysis of this process, with its genocide of 1994. The question it tries to an- concepts of oral, anal and genital stages, the swer is how to provide a convincing overall Oedipus Complex and sublimation, though explanation of these dreadful events. enormously influential and genuinely insight- The essence of his argument - and this ful, is open to the criticism of being asocial is what makes this book so distinctive and in that on the one hand it focuses on sepa- original - is that such an explanation requires rate individuals (and their parents) and, on a combination of socio - economic historical the other, claims to be universal across all so- analysis with psychoanalysis. The histori- cieties and time periods. cal analysis is based on classical Marxism, or Fromm’s concept of social character gives what might be called orthodox historical ma- the Freudian account a Marxist twist by be- terialism i.e. it takes as its point of departure ing applied not to isolated individuals but to the development of the forces and relations social classes or communities and by being of production and the consequent class strug- shaped by that class/community’s role in the gle. The psychoanalysis is drawn mainly from process of production (as productive or unpro- Freud as mediated by the Freudo-Marxism of ductive, exploiter or exploited , reactionary or the Frankfurt School, in particular the work progressive). To this Sagall makes the impor-

69 tant addition of the idea of social character tated and driven to narcissistic rage by the also being formed by the experience of the progressive disintegration of the Empire in given class/community in the class struggle, the 19th and early 20th century. This rage especially its experience of victory or defeat. was tipped over into genocidal aggression by In Sagall’s hands, therefore ‘social character’ catastrophic defeats in the 1st World War and is a class and historically specific concept. projected on to the Armenians ‘the enemy His argument as a whole is as follows: within’. first, that genocide is ‘a modern phenomenon In Germany the already authoritarian so- rooted in the social, economic and psycho- cial character of the middle class, as it de- logical nature of capitalism [a] society based veloped in the 19th century, was intensified on individual greed and competiveness, po- by the experience of defeat in the 1st World litical domination, the alienation of human War and the trauma of the Great Depression labour and the commodification of human be- and given expression by Hitler and the Nazis. ings and their relationships.’ (p.248).But be- The decision to launch the Final Solution it- cause capitalism is only episodically, not per- self in 1941/42 was precipitated by defeat on manently, genocidal, this background analysis the Russian front which signalled the collapse must be supplemented by analysis of the spe- of the Nazi dreams of conquest. cific circumstances and conflict precipitating In Rwanda the background to genocide the genocide and the social character motivat- lay in a long period of domination by Tutsi ing the perpetrators to carry it out. minority which was intensified and racialised In particular, Sagall identifies the capital- by German and Belgian colonial rule. With ist ‘middle class’ (or petty bourgeoisie) with independence a Hutu based government was their ‘anal destructive’ and ‘authoritarian’ so- established and many Tutsis went into exile. cial character as the prime agents of geno- For a while the economy grew but then in the cide, especially when they ‘have suffered ma- early nineties it crashed and the exiled Tutsis jor historical defeats or other forms of extreme launched a civil war to regain power. Rwanda stress’ (p.248). In the genocide of Native was traditionally a very authoritarian soci- Americans he focuses on the middle class En- ety and the economic collapse, combined with glish Puritan and later the Scots-Irish as main panic that the invading Tutsi forces were on villains of the piece. In relation to the Arme- the verge of victory, precipitated the mass nians, it is the middle class would be mod- slaughter of Tutsis. ernisers of the Young Turk movement in the The question that immediately confronts Ottoman Empire. In the Holocaust it is the a reviewer is does Sagall’s argument stand up? petty bourgeois based Nazis and in Rwanda Answering it is no easy task. I note that it is the middle class Hutu Power leaders and in his review of the book in Socialist Review their peasant followers. Donny Gluckstein, who has written books on In the case of the Anglo-settlers in North the Nazis and on the Second World War and America, there is a clear conflict with the so is no ignoramus on these matters, concludes Native Americans over land occupancy, us- with the rather evasive remark ‘Whether he age and ownership but this is augmented and [Sagall] has succeeded is something that the driven to genocide by the social character of reader will have to decide.’ I am not surprised. the settlers with its puritanical sexual repres- A proper scholarly assessment of Sagall’s the- sion, its anxieties about salvation and its sup- sis demands expert knowledge of each of the pressed rage at religious persecution and other four genocides he investigates, plus a serious violent conflict in Britain. grounding in psychoanalytic theory in its to- The Young Turks were a middle class tality, plus a good grasp of historical materi- movement that wanted to modernise the Ot- alism and issues of historical method. In all toman Empire in order to save it. They likelihood this will be the work of many spe- were frustrated in their attempts, disorien- cialist hands rather than one individual.

70 Here I will confine myself to some overall, dynamic of revolutionary events is directly rather impressionistic comments and a discus- determined by swift, intense and passionate sion of some issues that it throws up. changes in the psychology of classes’. But the First, the book is well written and clearly psychology involved here is an understanding explained; the first part on psychoanalytic of changes in consciousness, mass or individ- concepts is more difficult than the second on ual, rather than invoking the role of the un- the actual genocides but in general it is acces- conscious, and hence does not make use of sible to the lay reader and is certainly full of Freudian or psychoanalytic concepts such as very interesting material. Second, it combines id, ego and super ego or projective identifica- a large amount of theory with a great deal of tion which Sagall wants to employ. wide ranging empirical evidence and this is a But Sagall advances a different argument. very impressive achievement. It is clearly the He maintains that there is a fundamental dif- product of a deep and sustained engagement ference between the genocides that he is try- with the material and the issues it raises. ing to explain and other bloody historical The tone of the book is also impressive. events such as the First World War (or, for Sagall’s commitment to social justice and hu- example, the suppression of the Paris Com- man liberation and, of course, to ensuring mune or Franco’s terror during and after the that the horrors he describes are not repeated, Spanish Civil War, or Pinochet’s repression is evident throughout but there no descent in Chile) in that the latter were ‘rational’ but into rhetoric or superfluous moralizing. It is the former were ‘irrational’. What he means a scrupulous, social scientific investigation. by this is that in the First World War or in This said, the first problem that strikes me crushing the Commune the ruling classes were is a very basic one: is psychological analysis acting on the basis of, and in rough conformity really required here? Clearly all human action to, their economic and class interests. His four from the most everyday to the most histori- chosen genocides, however, were ‘irrational’ in cally significant has a psychological aspect or they did not correspond to the objective class component to it, just as it has a biological interests of their perpetrators. This is why or physiological component. Neither walking psychoanalytic concepts are needed. down the road nor storming the Bastille is This seems to me a difficult argument in possible independent of the law of gravity but that distinguishing or separating out the ra- that doesn’t mean we expect historical anal- tional and the irrational in human behaviour ysis of the French Revolution to include an and human history as clearly separated out exposition of the theory of gravity. Sagall ac- as Sagall tries to do is not easy. I suspect knowledges this problem when he writes, ‘if that unconscious drives would be very much we wish to analyse the causes of the First at work in the slaughter of the Communards, World War, Lenin is more useful than Freud’ and in all sorts of repression and individual (p.55). In other words, although a psycholog- and systematic torture etc. And it seems to ical dimension is involved it can be ‘assumed’ be an unfortunate fact of history that no bru- or taken for granted because it is a relatively tal regime has ever fallen through a short- minor element whereas it is economic, class age of torturers or thugs to enforce its will. and political factors that are causally decisive. (The famous Milgram Experiment of 1961, One answer to this objection is that the which showed the readiness of ‘normal’ citi- best Marxist history does incorporate the psy- zens to torture when ordered to do so by an chological element as a link in the chain of authority figure, is relevant here). Genocide, analysis that begins with the development of the attempt to exterminate a whole people, is the forces of production. The outstanding ex- clearly at the extreme end of the spectrum of ample of this is Trotsky’s History of the Rus- human cruelty but is it qualitatively different sian Revolution and it is notable that in the in this respect from other forms of brutality Preface to that mighty work he writes, ‘The that have gone on throughout the history of

71 class society? treatment of the Nazi Holocaust. This may Sagall defends his insistence on the need be because here he is able to build on the mas- to deploy psychoanalysis not just on the terly work already done by Trotsky, as well as grounds that unconscious factors were at work many other Marxist hands ranging from the in the genocides he considers but that these Frankfurt School to Mandel and Callinicos. It genocides were so contrary to the class in- may also be because it is with the question of terests of the perpetrators that these uncon- the Holocaust that Sagall has been most en- scious factors have to be considered a major gaged and which may have driven the whole part of the explanation and that without them enterprise. Also the massive diversion of re- the genocides would not have taken place. sources involved in the Holocaust does seem In itself, this is a strong argument but to run clearly counter to the Nazi regime’s whether or not Sagall has shown that this was overwhelming interest in winning the war. so in relation to each of his chosen episodes I also found the section on the Arme- is a question to which I will return shortly, nian genocide pretty persuasive but certainly but first want to raise another issue: the con- lack sufficient knowledge of this episode to cept of ‘social character’. It is reasonable to pass any confident judgment. In the case of argue that social classes develop certain dis- Rwanda I was more doubtful but felt even less tinctive ‘character structures’ on the basis of qualified to offer an assessment, their roles in production and history but this It was the account of the Native American does not tell us how much weight should be genocide that I found least satisfactory. This attributed to this factor in the analysis of his- is because I was not persuaded of the argu- tory. It is also reasonable to argue that there ment that was predominantly ‘irrational’ in exists such a thing as ‘national character’, the sense defined by Sagall. This is partly formed by history, but we know how such a because the process was gradual and pro- notion is often abused in journalism and poor tracted, over centuries, rather than a sudden history writing. Clearly Sagall’s social char- outburst of ferocious destructiveness, as was acter concept is much superior to and more the case with the other three. It is also be- Marxist than, that of national character, but cause the settlers had such a clear self in- some of the same dangers may arise. In the terest in terms of driving the Native Amer- case of ‘social character’ these danger is com- icans off the land and crushing their resis- pounded by the difficulty of providing empir- tance. Doubtless this process involved in- ical confirmation of claims about the nature numerable excesses (in which social and in- of particular social characters (e.g. that the dividual character may have played a part) German middle class were ‘authoritarian’). but I don’t think the genocide as a whole Sagall addresses this problem with the was driven by these unconscious psychologi- claim that there are four kinds of evidence for cal forces rather than the irreconcilable clash social character: social or social psychoana- of opposed modes of production and conflict- lytical surveys; psychoanalytical case studies; ing economic interests. historical studies; realist creative literature. Sagall supports his argument by an ex- But much of this may be of doubtful reliabil- tended comparison between the extermina- ity and sometimes in this book I think Sagall tion in Anglo-America and the conquest of makes assertions about groups’ social charac- Latin America which though brutal in the ex- ter (e.g. the Scots-Irish) on the basis of sec- treme stopped short of actual genocide, at- ondary sources that would be very open to tributing the difference to the different social challenge. character of the Spanish and Portuguese con- When it comes to the application of his quistadors and settlers. I thought this gave theories and hypotheses to the four genocides the latter too much credit and the more likely I think Sagall’s accounts are not equally con- explanation was the fact, also mentioned by vincing. Most convincing to my mind is his Sagall, that in the North the conflict was over

72 land, whereas in the South it was over control to stimulate discussion, however, and not at of labour. In other words, the Spanish and all to negate the interest and value of the Portuguese refrained from full genocide be- book. I don’t think it would be possible for cause they needed the indigenous population anyone to cover this ground and attempt to to work for them, as was the case with African answer the questions Sagall does here without slaves in the US. But Sagall can counter this raising a multitude of issues requiring further objection by saying that what made this geno- debate and discussion. That this book will, cide irrational was precisely that it deprived hopefully, be a provoker of such debate, and the white settlers of a potential labour force. a signiﬁcant reference point within it, is it- Perhaps in the end it comes down to a ques- self a major achievement on which the author tion of degree. should be congratulated. These doubts and problems are intended

73 Review: Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: the Secret Origins of the First World War

Roy H W Johnston

my father’s 1913 book Civil War in Ulster: its Probable Consequences2. This suggested some research trails to follow, but these however lapsed, until they became somewhat urgent, now that the centenary of these events is nearly upon us. I wrote some critical draft notes3, based on some initial research. I have to thank David Burke for drawing the above book to my attention; it turns out that my draft notes are pointing in the same direction as Chapter 25 of Hidden History where the Irish dimension is analysed. I have since read the book, and done some initial comparative study with other sources,

Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: the including some relating to Sir Henry Wilson Secret Origins of the First World War Mainstream, Edin- and the Imperial General Staff, as well as the burgh, 2003 £20 1923 Asquith work on the origins of WW1 and that of Wolff (1934) giving the German experience.4 A contribution to the debate on the ori- Much remains to be done, and I hope to gins of World War One publish an in-depth study in due course. How- I came across this book by chance in a con- ever I have delved enough into related publi- text where I had been struggling with writing cations to be convinced that Hidden History an essay on the origins of WW1 and its rel- is not simply a conspiracy-theory jaunt, but evance to Ireland, arising from some reminis- a serious attempt to uncover how British im- cences of my father Joe Johnston (1890-1972). perial strategy really developed, in the after- He had told me that the Larne and Howth math of the negative experience of the Boer gun-runnings in 19141 were used as a device War, in the direction of instigating a war to to deceive the Germans about the British like- destroy Germany while making it look like lihood of entering the war, should they attack Germany initiated it. France via Belgium. So I am presenting what follows as a sort This at the time did not register, but I of brief abstract of my future in-depth review, picked up on it when I wrote the introduction in the hopes that it will be seen by at least to the 1998 re-publication by UCD Press of some historians and critical scholars in time to 1A substantial shipment of guns for the Ulster Volunteer Force, bought in Austria and shipped from Hamburg, was landed at Larne in April 1914. A smaller quantity was landed at Howth in July. There is evidence that both events were with the connivance of the British imperial elite. See Hidden History, especially p.316. 2This was an attempt to build support for all-Ireland Home Rule among northern Protestants. An annotated version of this historic book was published in 1998 by UCD Press and is still in print. For an e-version contact [email protected]. 3For these notes see http://www.rjtechne.org/polit/irlww1.htm 4HH Asquith, The Genesis of the War, Casell 1923, Theodor Wolff, The Eve of 1914, Gollancz, 1935.

74 influence any seminars relating to the Larne say to summarise the complex machinations and Howth gun-runnings. The Howth guns of imperial policy arising from their African were transported in a yacht owned and cap- experience which Hidden History uncovers, tained by Erskine Childers, then working for but I must try to list some of the key episodes. the Admiralty. It begins with Cecil Rhodes setting up a group Howth occurred about 10 days before Au- of executors for his will, in such a way as gust 4 1914 when war was declared, by a to ensure that his wealth, derived from his Liberal-Tory majority supported by Carson exploitation of African resources, would be and Redmond, to the cheers of the assembled used to further the influence of the British MPs. Empire. These included Lord Alfred Milner, The decision to go to war did not originate Lord Rothschild, Lord Esher and several oth- from the Cabinet; it came as a result of a ‘se- ers who acted as a ‘secret elite’ in support of cret elite’ via the War Office and the Entente, an imperial expansion agenda. With their re- and was open to constitutional question. The sources they had an outer circle of influential King was included in this ‘secret elite’ group. people whom they were in a position to fund So we have King and colonial bureaucracy by- in such a way as to make things happen. The passing the Cabinet, and managing to achieve book goes into this in detail; it seems the ‘se- a Parliamentary majority, as a result of infor- cret group’ was set up in 1902 and continued mal Entente agreements with the French. in existence until 1925. The references to Erskine Childers in Hid- Key events for which they defined the den History will add to controversy about agenda, and in some cases implemented it, this episode; he is presented basically as a included the setting up of the ‘Entente Cor- British agent; the truth, I suggest, is more diale’ between Britain and France in 1904 in complex. Erskine Childers motivation in the a form that was not a formal alliance, and did Howth episode I think was to arm Redmond’s not have to refer to Cabinet. Though Britain Volunteers to be a Home Guard for Ireland in had a treaty of alliance with Japan, the elite the coming war, in an all-Ireland Home Rule group managed to ensure that this did not politically reformed situation. trigger British participation in the 1905 war Childers had written a book supportive of with Russia, despite a violent encounter with Home Rule in 1911, and had been active with the Russian fleet in the North Sea, involving his cousin Bob Barton exploring the work of British ships. The ‘secret elite’ had identified Plunkett and the co-operative movement. In Russia as a key ally of France in the future the context of his Howth arms delivery, how- war on Germany. ever, it seems he was ‘taken for a ride’ by Sir Key contacts in the Franco-Russian net- Henry Wilson and the British imperial strate- working were Poincare and Isvolsky5. There gic plans; the latter had been actively sup- was an attempt by Kaiser Wilhelm to agree a portive of the earlier Larne gun-running, and pact with his cousin the Tsar which the ‘se- the Curragh conspiracy, and was the prime cret elite’ were able to kill via the Duma, with mover in the context of the imperial interests the influence of Isvolsky and Poincare. in ensuring that the British Expeditionary On the home front they had Balfour and Force existed and was ready to go in August Asquith under their influence, and they man- 1914. The Howth event was to reassure the aged to get control of Lloyd George, who had Germans that the British were prioritising the initially been an independent radical activist, Irish problem,. by a trick involving a court case in which Car- It is quite impossible in a short review es- son had a role defending him in a context re- 5See HH p.205 ff. Raymond Poincare was French Prime Minister from 1912; he was from Lorraine and strongly anti-German. Alexander Isvolsky had been Russian Foreign Secretary up to 1910; he sub- sequently became Ambassador to France. Isvolsky was in effect an agent of the secret British imperial elite group.

75 lating to Lloyd George’s promiscuity. Milner cause the Germans thought the British were in the Colonial Office, was one of the original occupied with Ireland. The Larne-Howth ploy ‘secret elite’ activists; Grey in the Foreign Of- had worked. fice, and Haldane in the War Office became So, in conclusion, may I urge anyone con- associated later. This group developed com- sidering writing about Larne and Howth in plete control of the media, via the Times and centenary mode not to do so without having the elite press, as well as the ‘gutter’ compo- read this book. Also may I add a further sug- nent. gestion: was the 10% ratio of gun quantity Prior to Sarajevo there were several between Larne and Howth a strategic deci- episodes (eg Agadir) that could have led to sion by Sir Henry Wilson and co? He explic- war, but in each case war was avoided, basi- itly wanted to wreck the Home Rule process, cally because Wilhelm did his best to avoid and get Ireland partitioned; did he also wish it, and succeeded. Then came Sarajevo, but to encourage a rising of the activists so as to I will not attempt to summarise the detailed execute the leadership? I have heard this sug- activity on the international ‘secret elite’ net- gested, and having read this book it seems work which resulted in the Russian attack on totally plausible. the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in response to I hope this review will pose some questions the latter’s attack on Serbia. The French in peoples minds and generate some queries to responded in alliance with Russia, and the my email address. I am conscious that as an Germans responded in alliance with Austria- actual review of the book it is inadequate. If I Hungary. am to do more however I feel I need to interact The Germans counter-attacked the French with a competent critical historian with some via Belgium, and this brought in the British, understanding of imperialism. Can I invite with the Germans branded as the aggressor. anyone interested in this subject to contact The Irish dimension made this possible, be- me at [email protected].

76 Review: Gary Younge, The Speech, the story behind Martin Luther King’s Dream

Conor Kennelly

speech’s true relevance in the current context of an America with its first African American president but also an America where a racist killer like George Zimmerman can walk free and Black unemployment is almost twice that of whites. The speech is rightly regarded as one of the greatest speeches of all time but as Younge points out, the speech only assumed its historical legacy after King’s death. The response of white mainstream America varied from the racist Clarion Ledger newspaper which omit- ted to mention the speech and headlined its Gary Younge, The Speech, the story behind Martin Luther King’s Dream Guardian Books, £6.99 coverage of the March with ‘Washington is clean again with Negro trash removed to no mention in the Washington Post and the New York Times headline ‘I have a dream’. (All On the 29th of August 1963 at the height quoted in Younge p.5) The more radical sec- of the American Civil Rights movement, Mar- tions of the Civil Rights movement considered tin Luther King delivered his iconic ‘I Have a it wishful thinking on King’s part to dream Dream’ speech that was the final act in the of racial harmony when they were experienc- mass March on Washington. Over a quarter of ing the brutal reality of every-day racism in a million people from all over the US, marched America. Anne Moody, an activist from rural on a stiflingly hot American summer’s day to Mississippi who attended the March, recalled: demand Civil Rights. Up to that point, it was ‘Martin Luther King went on and on talking the largest mass demonstration in American about his dream. I sat there thinking that in history. The marchers were predominantly Canton we never had time to sleep, much less African American though a significant minor- dream’. (Quoted in Younge, p. 5). Malcolm ity of whites did take part. The march and the X told Bayard Rustin, one of the main orga- speech took place in a deeply racist America nizers and a legendary Civil Rights activist where a de facto apartheid state prevailed. In and socialist, ‘You know this dream of Kings the Jim Crow South the majority of African is going to be a nightmare before it’s over’. Americans couldn’t vote nor have equal ac- (Quoted in Younge, p.5) cess to health and education and were forced Today the speech resonates with people to ride on segregated buses and eat in segre- fighting for justice and freedom all over the gated restaurants. The Ku Klux Klan could globe. ‘I Have a Dream’ was emblazoned murder Civil Rights activists with impunity on placards carried by protestors in Tianan- while the police brutally beat up protesters. men Square. Graffiti on the West Bank wall Gary Younge deconstructs the manner in states: ‘I have a dream. This is not part of which the speech has been manipulated and that dream’ (quoted in Younge, p.6). 68% of subverted across the political establishment Americans still think the speech is relevant such that even an openly racist right-winger including 76% of blacks and 68% of whites. like Glenn Beck can shamelessly appropri- (Younge, p.6) ate it for his own ends. Younge places the As Younge argues, the speech was both

77 relevant for its time and also timeless. The ing to realize that legal reforms were insuffi- aspiration for racial equality that the speech cient if African Americans didn’t simultane- so eloquently articulated was in the same year ously experience a material improvement in when the racist Democratic Governor of Al- their lives. To acknowledge this aspect of the abama, George Wallace, stood in a college speech would, as Younge puts it: ‘demand an doorway to block Black students going to col- engagement with both the material reality of lege. Only 2 weeks after the March, four black racism and the material remedy of antiracism girls were killed by a bomb in Birmingham, - a challenge the country has barely begun to Alabama. address.’ (Younge, p.12) However, while it’s the ‘I Have a Dream’ John F Kennedy has been mythologized refrain and the call for racial harmony that as a great liberal crusading President who was is mostly remembered today, the speech con- assassinated before he could withdraw Amer- tained radical phrases that are not widely ica from Vietnam and initiate more substan- quoted. King was demanding immediate tial Civil Rights reforms. The fact that he change instead of gradual progress; that was a militant Cold Warrior and brought the Blacks could not wait anymore. As he put world to the brink of nuclear annihilation is it: ‘We have also come to this hallowed spot more often overlooked. Kennedy could speak to remind America of the fierce urgency of in West Berlin about democracy while the now. This is no time to engage in the lux- notorious police chief, Bull O’Connor, was ury of cooling off or to take the tranquiliz- setting dogs loose on non-violent civil rights ing drug of gradualism’. (Quoted in Younge, protestors in Birmingham. Only the fact that p.111) Arguably, in this respect, King was in- the images were broadcast around the world sisting on a revolutionary process unlike a re- and the Civil Rights movement was becom- formist strategy that expects us to wait un- ing more militant forced JFK to address the til the ruling class is ready to grant us our issue. His brother Robert displayed the con- rights and freedoms. Until the end, King was tempt that his administration held for the opposed to violence not just as a tactic but Civil Rights movement and Black people in as a matter of principle and condemned vio- general when he said: ‘Negroes are now just lent methods elsewhere in the speech. Nev- antagonistic and mad and they’re going to be ertheless, the speech was a rallying call for mad at everything. You can’t talk to them... people to mobilise and take to the streets. My friends all say even the Negro maids and Likewise, another refrain ‘We cannot be sat- servants are getting antagonistic’ (Younge, isfied’ is also conveniently forgotten though p.21). In addition, Kennedy, who relied on King was clearly insisting on nothing less than Black votes to get elected, was equally depen- full equality and wouldn’t compromise on that dent on another key constituency, white racist principle. Southern Democrats such as George Wallace Younge also argues that another impor- and his own Vice President, Lyndon John- tant aspect of the speech that is conveniently son. Younge shows that it was only with great forgotten was King’s use of the metaphor of reluctance that Kennedy and the Democrats the bad cheque. As King put it: ‘In a sense conceded Civil Rights. we have come to our nation’s capital to cash King would eventually break with the a checka promissory notefor life, liberty and Democratic Party in 1967 when he openly op- the pursuit of happiness’ and ‘We refuse to posed the Vietnam War. The Democrats, of believe that there are insufficient funds in the course, turned on him and accused him of great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So betrayal. At the time of his death, King’s we have come to cash this check, a check that popularity was quite low. An opinion poll will give us, upon demand, the riches of free- in 1966 showed that twice as many Ameri- dom and the security of justice’. (Quoted in cans held an unfavourable opinion of him as Younge, p.10) In this sense, King was com- those who held a favourable one. Life Maga-

78 zine accused King of ‘demagogic slander’ after was made possible by the gains of the Civil his anti-war speech at the Riverside Church Rights movement, it is unlikely that King (Younge, p.147). would recognize the realization of his Dream In the decades since his death, King’s pop- if he were alive today. Also, while King op- ularity has soared. In a 1999 poll, King ri- posed American foreign military intervention, valled JFK and Albert Einstein; only Mother Obama authorizes drone attacks on innocent Teresa was more popular (Younge p.148). Pakistanis and Yemenis. Under successive Even so, Younge argues a struggle had to be Democratic and Republican presidencies the won before King’s legacy was officially recog- majority of working class Americans have seen nized or at least that part of it that America their real income decline while the richest 1% was comfortable with. Even in 1983, the noto- has amassed more wealth than ever. rious racist Republican senator, Jesse Helms, According to a recent Oxford University could baldly state ‘The conclusion must be Press study: ‘Around four out of every five that Martin Luther King Jr. was either an people in the U.S. will endure unemployment, irresponsible individualor that he knowingly receive food stamps and other forms of gov- cooperated and sympathised with subversive ernment aid, and/or have an income below and totalitarian elements of a hostile foreign 150 percent of the official poverty line for at power.’ (quoted in Younge, p. 149). least one year of their lives before age 60’. The dreams and aspirations contained And while poverty is highest in percentage within the speech are all the more powerful terms among African Americans, contrary to and poignant for the very fact that Amer- racist myths, the majority of Americans on ica still remains a deeply racist society. As welfare are white. However, while America Younge states: has experienced its deepest recession since But to the extent that the speech the Great Depression, the rich have contin- was about ending racism, one can ued to get richer. The 400 richest Ameri- say with equal confidence that cans have a combined total wealth of $1.7 tril- its realization is not even close. lion. While racist attitudes still prevail among Black unemployment is almost white Americans, it’s this tiny elite who has double that of whites. Black been the main beneficiary of racial inequality. male life expectancy in Washing- Younge concludes his book by making a ton DC is lower than in the Gaza passionate defense of King’s Dream. As he Strip. One in three Black boys argues, if we only allow cynical ‘realists’ to born in 2001 stands a lifetime risk determine the parameters of our political hori- of going to prison; more Black zons we will never change anything. men were disenfranchised in 2004 I strongly urge everyone to read this book. because they were felons than Gary Younge provides a useful analysis of the in 1870, the year the Fifteenth speech and its wider historical context. In ad- Amendment ostensibly guaran- dition people should take the time and listen teed the Black male franchise. to the speech on the internet and be inspired. (Younge p. 154). I would like to acknowledge the help of my partner Lucien Senna in writing this re- While the legal barriers to racial equal- view. Lucien grew up in 1970s Boston and ity have been largely removed, institutional experienced racism first hand when she was racism is still a fact of life as the above fig- ‘bused’ to a mixed school and the bus was ures demonstrate. regularly stoned by racists in Irish-American Indeed, African Americans have suffered South Boston. Her father, Carl, spent part disproportionately more than whites during of his childhood in a Catholic orphanage in the current recession which has largely co- New Orleans where the nuns frequently had incided with Obama’s presidency. While to hide the children when the Klan attacked Obama has acknowledged that his election the orphanage. 79