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From Civil War to the War for Civil Rights

by Caitlin Hines

 

The Civil War to World War II

The left current in Irish republican politics asserted itself sporadically but persistently throughout the '20s and '30s, in such groupings as C—mhairle na Poblachta (1929), the Worker's Revolutionary Party (1930), Saor Eire (1931), and the Republican Congress (1932) under the leadership of Peadar O'Donnell. Irish socialists joined with their comrades from many nations in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War: some 145 volunteers, mostly trade unionists and IRA members, formed the Connolly Column, fighting alongside the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against the Fascist forces of Generalissimo Franco. However, none of these groupings drew large numbers from the rank and file until 1946, when Clan na Poblachta was formed by Seán MacBride (who had been the IRA Chief of Staff in 1936 and would later found Amnesty International, for which he would receive the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes). The "success" of Clan na Poblachta led to the expulsion of their members from the IRA after the party won ten seats in the 1948 Irish election and promptly entered into a coalition government with the conservative Fine Gael party. This "selling out" by the highly respected MacBride (son of the patriots John and Maud Gonne MacBride) was one of several incidents which left a deep distrust of the corrupting influence of electoral politics, shaping attitudes about abstentionism to this day. The Irish government earned the further scorn of republicans by its craven acquiescence to British demands during World War II, when, despite having declared itself officially neutral, Ireland allowed Britain to use Irish airspace and coastal waters with impunity, and held republicans and communists in internment camps at Churchill's request. Documents recently declassified show that during WWII Churchill had drawn up detailed plans for a military occupation of Dublin and other port cities if needed for national security-an invasion that was called off when it became clear that Britain could still rule all of Ireland efficiently through a combination of neo-colonialism in the South and direct occupation in the North. In 1949, the Irish Free State government proclaimed Ireland a sovereign republic, nominally cutting ties with the British Commonwealth-a symbolic move which did nothing to address the demands of the Republicans or to improve the day-to-day conditions of the Irish people, North or South.

Although the 1937 "Free State" Constitution had enshrined both the "special position of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church" and the subjugation of women:

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Article 41.2 In particular, the State recognizes that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore, endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home, the Republican Movement had since the Civil War ignored such glaring social injustices and instead been preoccupied with abstract issues such as the illegitimacy of both governments in Ireland. After World War II, the mainstream "republican" party, Fianna Fáil, invited in multi-national corporations to the South on a massive scale, providing the most generous tax incentives in the entire world to attract companies to exploit the novelty of an Irish industrial working class. It was not until the 1950s, that the section of the Irish populace engaged in agriculture ceased to be a majority of the Irish Free State's population. This solidified Ireland's emerging status as a Third World nation, a cheap source of European, English-speaking labor (Ireland has the lowest wage levels in Europe, about 1/3 of Belgian manufacturing wages, for example).

 

The Border Campaign To Civil Rights

In the early 1950s, the IRA and Sinn Féin were in a lull. The British annexation of the North was virtually ignored until the poorly-planned and executed "border campaign" (1956-62), an unpopular bombing campaign which only served to deepen the rift between the Republican Movement and the masses it was attempting to mobilize. It was clear to some in the leadership that the IRA was becoming irrelevant, and intense internal political education was undertaken, especially in the prisons, to assess where things had gone wrong and how best to move forward. This "new direction" was articulated by a leading member of the Army Council of the IRA, Seamus Costello, at the annual Bodenstown [Wolfe Tone] commemoration in 1966:

We believe that there should be a limit to the amount of land owned by any single individual. We also believe that the large estates of absentee landlords should be acquired by compulsory acquisition and worked on a co-operative basis with the financial and technical assistance of the State.

In the field of industry, our policy is to nationalise the key industries with the eventual aim of co-operative ownership by the workers. The capital necessary...can be made available without recourse to extensive taxation by the nationalisation of all banks, insurance, loan and investment companies whose present policy is the re-investment of our hard earned money in foreign fields.

This was no empty rhetoric; the Movement's actions complemented this policy shift, with an increased emphasis on social and community campaigns, such as the Civil Rights movement, and broader participation in electoral politics at the local level. The IRA went so far as to sell the majority of its weapons to the then active, Free Wales Army.

The first sectarian killings of the current phase of the Irish struggle also came in 1966, when the Loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force of Augustus "Gusty" Spence gunned down four Catholics at random. This took place amid a background of increasing frustration for the Nationalist community, who were faced with a host of social problems. The post-war Labour government in Britain had sown the seeds of discontent by opening the doors of higher education to the masses, and expanding social services to create the modern welfare state; the first generation of Nationalists to graduate from college were confronting the harsh realities of discrimination in housing and employment once they left the university. Acts of violence against the Catholic minority fueled their increasing resentment over inadequate living conditions, and in 1968 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed, consciously modelled after the US Civil Rights movement and inspired by the student rebellion in Paris in May and the Prague Spring. NICRA's demands seem astonishingly modest in retrospect: their rallying cry was "One Man, One Vote," since votes in Northern Ireland were based on property, and one way of perpetuating the subjugation of Catholics was to disenfranchise them by denying them housing. Entire families often had to live in one room for years, awaiting a housing allocation, while their wealthy landlord received up to six votes. Miserable living conditions and pervasive discrimination in employment had the additional benefit of encouraging Catholic emigration, which consistently outpaced that of Protestants, ensuring that the population breakdown remained constant despite the 40% higher Catholic birthrate. NICRA's demands were modest, but it is a testament to the fundamental instability of the Northern Irish State that even these demands could not be met; instead, NICRA marches, such as the long march from Belfast to Derry over New Year's 1968 (patterned after the Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march), were met with police batons and water cannons, as well as vicious attacks by Loyalist mobs using nail-studded cudgels-all of which was shown on British TV. In the South, the Free State Army was activated in response to renewed anti-Catholic pogroms in Belfast, which had erupted in August, 1969, when over 500 Nationalist homes were burned out by Loyalist mobs. Refugee centers were set up on the southern side of the border. The response of Harold Wilson's Labour government in Britain was to send in the Army: 8,000 troops, complete with armored personnel carriers and helicopters-a tacit declaration of war. Amidst this almost palpable tension, a rift which had been forming within Sinn Féin and the IRA widened, and in 1969/70 there was an open split over the issue of abstentionism-whether or not to take seats in an "illegitimate" Parliament, be it London or Dublin.

 

The Provisional Split

The hard-line abstentionist minority, under the leadership of Seán MacStiofain, split from what became known as "the Officials," forming the Provisional Republican Movement: Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA ("the Provos"). The split was over tactics and principles, and, while more complex than a simple Right/Left division, this is a large part of the story; the Provos were more conservative and generally more traditional, heavily influenced by Catholicism, with some elements veering towards a streak of anti-Communist paranoia. The Provos began as pure nationalists, placing a greater emphasis on military action than on political theory (a typical popular slogan was "Ireland-United, Gaelic, and Free"). In contrast, the Officials, led by IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding, were far more radical ideologically, calling for a class war to achieve the socialist republic, but were increasingly frustrated in their attempts to translate their politics into action.

The split took place at a time when "IRA" was cynically said to stand for "I Ran Away"; the first bombs of the current conflict had been set off not by the IRA but by Loyalists in the spring of 1969, and the armed occupation of the North of Ireland by British troops had begun in August. The Nationalist community had at first welcomed the soldiers, imagining them as their protectors against Loyalist thugs, but by the summer of 1970, the Army's true role as an occupation force was clear, although it was not until February 1971 that the first British soldier in the current conflict was killed. The renewal of armed resistance was both a product of and a response to the military occupation: the Civil Rights movement had waged the Battle of the Bogside and defended what became known as Free Derry without the help of the IRA, and one of its leaders, Bernadette Devlin of People's Democracy, had even been elected to the British Parliament (at 21, the youngest MP ever elected), but the struggle demanded an army. The Provos and the Officials both maintained units in the field, as each sought to fill that need.

 

Internment and Bloody Sunday

On August 9, 1971, the British government conducted mass sweeps of suspected "terrorists," and interned over 300 people without charges or trial (ironically, most PIRA and OIRA members eluded arrest because of intelligence warnings). The only Protestant interned was Ronnie Bunting, a republican socialist (and son of Major Bunting, the Reverend Ian Paisley's right-hand man). Internment only served to inflame the Nationalist people and fuel their support for a military campaign, and six months later, on January 30, 1972, Britain cemented Irish resistance by its callous act of murder on "Bloody Sunday," when paratroopers opened fire on a peaceful civil rights march, killing 13. In the South, a national day of mourning was declared-and the British Embassy in Dublin was burnt down. Two months later, Amnesty International found the British government guilty of "cruel and inhumane treatment" of prisoners, and the naked face of British colonialism was fully exposed. After Bloody Sunday, which was shown on TV throughout the world, it was difficult to pretend that there wasn't a war going on in Northern Ireland, and it was blatantly obvious that peaceful, non-violent demonstrations would be met with bullets. British troop strength had reached 21,000-almost equivalent, in proportion to the population, to US troop strength in Vietnam at the time. Armed struggle seemed the only option open to the Nationalist people, and "No Go" areas were set up in Northern cities, with the support of both wings of the IRA. The middle ground was fast disappearing for Loyalists as well; the Northern Ireland government at Stormont had collapsed, and Britain assumed direct rule of the province for the first time. In September, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) was formed, joining other Loyalist terror groups in carrying out random sectarian murders of Catholics. Two to three times as many Catholics as Protestants were killed throughout 1972, the bloodiest year of the war; it was later learned that some of the killings ascribed to the IRA were actually committed by agents of the British forces, in an attempt to discredit the IRA. Any criticism the Irish government might have been tempted to raise was stifled by the need for British support of Irish entry into the European Common Market, as Britain's economic rule once again dictated Irish politics.

 

The European Community

In 1972, Ireland and Britain joined the European Economic Community. Though the effects of this action were not immediately recognizable, over the course of time the traditional relations between the two countries would be altered significantly. British policy was now subject to review by the European Court of Human Rights, while Irish clerical domination and its resulting social legislation, would be held to an EC-wide standard. European capital from the Continent began to play an increasingly important role in both the six and twenty-six county statelets, displacing the dominance of Britain, which had already given way to a great extent to the multinationals of the United States in the South. Irish farming, still a vital economic sector, despite being in decline since World War II, would greatly suffer from European competition. While some mining of ores continued, every smelting plant in Ireland would eventually close its doors, as competition from the continent rendered them all economically unviable. Irish fishermen too would face competition from the well-outfitted fishing fleets of other European nations. Ireland would increasingly look to Europe for grants and investment, especially for the development of the nation's infrastructure-quietly backing away from its tradition of neutrality and its claim of sovereignty "over the entire island of Ireland," in exchange for improved motorways and housing subsidies.

 

Special Legislation

The war in the North dragged on, showing no signs of dying out. Britain, unable to achieve a military victory, sought to redefine the nature of the conflict by denying that a state of war existed. A series of repressive legal tactics were enacted, such as the Emergency Powers Act of 1973, which

permits non-jury trials (the infamous "Diplock" courts, which have a 93% conviction rate);

permits written confessions obtained through interrogation using "a moderate amount of physical force," without corroborating evidence (80% of the convictions are based solely on these "confessions");

shifts the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defense-one is presumed guilty until proved otherwise;

permits the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the over-whelmingly Protestant police force of the North, to arrest without warrant and hold a suspect for up to 72 hours; permits a house or building to be searched without warrant, and the confiscation of any items therein.

Together, these sweeping powers-unique in Western Europe-allow the occupation forces virtual carte blanche in suppressing resistance. In 1974, this was expanded to the British mainland with the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which allows for indefinite internal deportation of suspected "terrorists." Only Chile, Indonesia, and Britain have the legal power to enforce indefinite internal exile, although the PTA's main use has been as a tool of harassment, with over 5,000 persons detained and only 50 charged under the Act. The PTA, allegedly a "response" to bombings by the IRA, is really a convenient catch-all legal means to oppress anyone whose politics the Government dislikes. Recently, it has been revealed that British intelligence agents provocateurs were behind some of the more spectacular actions for which the IRA had been blamed in the early 1970s. A dozen innocent Irish men and women who had been jailed for up to 16 years were finally released in the early 1990s (including the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four), to the great embarrassment of the British Government, which had held them on the basis of dubious evidence, including "confessions" obtained under torture, for crimes which sources suggest the British intelligence services themselves carried out. As a direct result of these (contrived) bombings, supposedly demonstrating an utter disregard for civilian casualties, the draconian PTA was easily passed by a shocked Labour government.

 

The Officals' Cease-fire

In 1972 the Officials declared a cease-fire, following a series of unpopular actions, such as the assassination of an Irish Catholic member of the British Army, Ranger Best, who was home on leave in Derry from duty with Britain's Army of the Rhine. In response to criticism of Best's killing, the OIRA had stated:

We are not a Catholic organisation...If there is anyone who has been giving us support in the belief that we are some sort of militant, Catholic, nationalist organisation, then let them withdraw their support now. We are nothing of the sort. We are out to build a revolutionary socialist party of the Irish working class.

Nine days after this defiant statement, the OIRA declared an indefinite cease-fire. This led to bitter accusations of betrayal on both sides; the Provos continued the struggle in arms (following a brief "bilateral truce" and high-level negotiations in London), but remained politically conservative; the Officials refined their political line, but laid down arms. These contradictions would prove untenable, setting the stage for the Republican Socialist movement.


Vincent Conlon*, Armagh RIP.
Phil O'Donoghue*, Dublin.
Paddy O'Regan*, Dublin.
Mick O'Brien, Dublin.

KIA — killed in action;
* — wounded;
SL— Section Leader

 

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