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Red & Black Revolution (1)

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RevolutionA magazine of libertarian communism Number 4

Red & Black

1798

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yours!yours!yours!yours!yours!

Rebellionin Ireland

Racism & ClassStruggle

PDF versionNov 2000

http://surf.to/anarchism

PDF versionNov 2000

http://surf.to/anarchism


members are involved in their trade unions;we’ve fought for abortion rights and againstthe presence of the British state in NorthernIreland; we’ve also been involved in cam-paigns in support of workers from countriesas far apart as Nepal, Peru and South Africa.Alongside this, we have produced over fiftyissues of our paper Workers Solidarity, and awide range of pamphlets. In 1986, we organ-ised a speaking tour of Ireland by an anar-chist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, ErnestoNadal, to commemorate the 50th anniver-sary of the revolution there.

As anarchists we see ourselves as part of along tradition that has fought against allforms of authoritarianism and exploitation, atradition that strongly influenced one of themost successful and far reaching revolutionsin this century - in Spain in 1936 - 37. Thevalue of this tradition cannot be underesti-mated today. With the fall of the SovietUnion there is renewed interest in our ideasand in the tradition of libertarian socialismgenerally. We hope to encourage this interestwith Red & Black Revolution. We believe thatanarchists and libertarian socialists shoulddebate and discuss their ideas, that theyshould popularise their history and struggle,and help point to a newway forward. If you areinterested in finding outmore about anarchism orthe WSM, contact us atPO Box 1528, Dublin 8,Ireland.

About the WSMThe Workers Solidarity Movement wasfounded in Dublin, Ireland in 1984 followingdiscussions by a number of local anarchistgroups on the need for a national anarchistorganisation. At that time, with unemploy-ment and inequality on the rise, there seemedevery reason to argue for anarchism and for arevolutionary change in Irish society. Thishas not changed.

Like most socialists we share a fundamentalbelief that capitalism is the problem. Webelieve that as a system it must be ended,that the wealth of society should be com-monly owned and that its resources should beused to serve the needs of humanity as awhole and not those of a small greedy minor-ity. But, just as importantly, we see thisstruggle against capitalism as also being astruggle for freedom. We believe that social-ism and freedom must go together, that wecannot have one without the other. As MikhailBakunin, the Russian anarchist said, “So-cialism without freedom is tyranny and bru-tality”.

Anarchism has always stood for individualfreedom. But it also stands for democracy.We believe in democratising the workplaceand in workers taking control of all industry.We believe that this is the only real alterna-tive to capitalism with its on going reliance onhierarchy and oppression and its depletion ofthe world’s resources.

In the years since our formation, we’ve beeninvolved in a wide range of struggles - our

Comment

Back IssuesA limited number of copies of

Issue 1, 2 & 3 are still available.Send 2 pounds/ 3 dollars for a

single copy. Bulk discount of 1/3applies for orders of 3 copies or

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R & B R 1 featured articles on thecollapse of the left, Russia 1917-21, Marx

& the state, the EZLN & more.R & B R 2 included Russian Anarchism

today, Chomsky on Anarchism, Twosouls of the unions etc

R & BR3 included Anarchism in SouthAfrica and Italy, The anti Water Charges

struggle, the early Irish left etc

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A AWelcome to issue 4 of “Red andBlack Revolution”.

In this issue, we follow in thefootsteps of the 3 previous issues’with a balance of articles ofhistorical and present-day interest.

The 1798 rebellion in Ireland hasbeen marked throughout Irelandin this, the year of its 200thanniversary, with the launch ofpamphlets, T.V. programmes,Summer Schools and re-enactments of battles. In thecontext of the Irish ‘peace process’and the Good Friday Agreement,the 1798 commemorations havetaken on added significance. Welook at how 1798 is remembered,and indeed how large parts of itslegacy are deliberately forgottenor distorted. We also take a look athow the left in Ireland have reactedto recent events in the North and

the ‘window of opportunity’ whichhas opened up with the silencing ofthe guns.

Ireland 1998 has seen a hugegrowth in naked racism. Thearrival on the shores of the ‘CelticTiger’ of a few thousand asylumseekers has been met by hysteriaabout "scroungers" and a nakedattempt by sections of the mediaand the political establishment towhip up racism. This is of coursenot a uniquely Irish phenomenon,so we are delighted to carry anarticle from the Workers SolidarityFederation in South Afica, whichlooks at their analysis andexperiences of fighting racism.

Since the launch of Red & BlackRevolution, we have attempted toanalyse past and currentdevelopments in anarchism. In thistradition, we look at the

Organisational Platform of theLibertarian Communists, both ina historical context and in thecontext of its relevance today. Wealso carry an interview with theSolidarita organisation in theCzech Republic about theirexperiences in developinganarchism in the post-Soviet era.

We hope that you will findsomething of interest to you in thisedition. We don’t claim to know allthe answers, rather we areattempting to provoke and stimulatedebate on some of the crucialquestions facing us. If there isanything you agree or disagree with,we would love to hear from you. It isthrough debate and discussion thatideas can be developed.

This is our contribution to thatdevelopment of ideas. Read andenjoy!


1998 - 99

Contents

Red & Black Revolution is published by the Workers Solidarity Movement. The deadline for the next issue isApril 1999. Submissions are welcome and should be sent either as 'text only' files on Mac or PC format computerdisks or typed on plain white paper. Disks are preferred. Letters are also welcome. All correspondence shouldbe sent to Red & Black Revolution, PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland.

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm.html

3

With racism on the rise in Ireland, it has become more important than everfor anti-racist activists to examine where such ideas come from and howthey can be fought. In this article, the South African anarchist organisa-tion, the WSF, puts forward its view that the fight against racism and theclass-struggle are inextricably linked.

Racism: Where itcomes from, How we

should fight it

Anarchism with afuture - The Czech

Republic

Environmentalism

Hobson's choiceThe "Good FridayAgreement" & the

Irish Left

Victor Serge

The 1798 Rebellion

The Friends ofDurruti

Page 4

Page 7

Page 11

Page 15

Page 18

Page 27

Page 29The Platform

The Friends of Durruti organisation, which arose from the ranks ofanarchist militants during the Spanish Civil War, condemned the CNTand FAI members who joined the anti-Franco government. For theirpains they were accused of wanting to establish an “anarchist dictator-ship”. Alan MacSimóin reviews the first English language book aboutthem, and looks at the lessons to be learnt from Spain.

Kevin Doyle talks to Vadim Barák of the Solidarita organisation in theCzech Republic about the problems and possibilities facing anarchists inthe process of rebuilding a revolutionary movement.

In June of 1795 several Irish Protestants gathered on top of Cave Hill,overlooking Belfast. They swore " never to desist in our efforts until we hadsubverted the authority of England over our country and asserted ourindependence". Three years later 100,000 rose against Britain in the firstIrish republican insurrection. Andrew Flood examines what they werefighting for and how they influenced modern Irish nationalism.

So you want to change the world? What next? Unsurprisingly this simplequestion has provoked much discussion among anarchists. AileenO'Carroll and Alan MacSimóin look at the answer provided by someRussians.

Anarchism is often seen as being broadly linked with the radical wing ofthe Environmental movement. Ray Cunningham in reviewing‘Anarchism and Environmental Survival’ considers these links and theinfluence of these movements on each other.

The "Good Friday Agreement" was passed by an overwhelming majorityof voters North and South. The agreement presented something of aHobson's Choice for the Irish working-class - which route to an entrench-ment of sectarianism do you want to take? Here Gregor Kerr looks at thereactions to the agreement of the Irish left.

Letters Readers views on some controversy generated with the last issue Page 26

One time anarchist Victor Serge joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and is oftenquoted by Leninists today to justify their repression of the left. DermotSreenan looks at his later writings and finds a Serge unhappy with manyaspects of Bolshevik rule but unable to break with them because of theapparent success of the Russian Revolution.


Q: What’s your view of the old‘Communist’ system that existedin the Czech Republic until1989? Had it any positivefeatures?

It should be remembered that unlike inHungary, Poland and Eastern Germanywhere the Communist Party (CP) wereinstalled into government by the Sovietmilitary forces, here in Czechoslovakia theycame to power by winning democratic elec-tions with an overwhelming majority ofvotes. But what you call the ‘old Commu-nist system’ had nothing in common withtrue socialism. The regime we had until1989 had all the faults that the CzechAnarchists at the beginning of the centurypredicted it would have. The CommunistParty bureaucracy took over the state powerin the name of workers. They slaughteredleft and right oppositions, destroyed basiccivil and human rights to prevent ordinarypeople from organising themselves inde-pendent of the Party and from expressingopinions hostile to “the most perfect democ-racy in the world”. Industries were notnationalised under workers' control butunder central bureaucratic management.Agriculture was collectivised with brutalforce. The centralised undemocratic plan-ning that became the norm here, fulfilledthe interests of the nomenklatura1 and notthat of the whole society. As time went onit became more and more inefficient.

Q: Was there anarchist activityin Czechoslovakia in the lead upto the Velvet Revolution(1989)?

A: Yes, there was an anarchist minority inan illegal party called the Left Alternative.This party was very small and composedmainly of intellectuals and students whobelonged to various currents of democraticand revolutionary socialism. They opposedthe Communist regime and pursued a pro-gramme of socialism based on workers’self-management and direct democracy.As freedom of speech and association didnot exist, the LA remained confined tobeing a more or less discussional platform,not an organisation active among workingclass people.

During the Velvet Revolution the LA gainedsome credibility among ordinary people,

and in Prague - the centre of the revolution- it made significant steps to becoming areal working-class alternative. In the firstlocal elections, 10,000 people voted for theLA in Prague. But by then the revolutionhad been usurped by careerist dissidentintellectuals and former Communist bu-reaucrats. They took over a movement ofCitizens’ Forums and the state apparatus,and by means of a massive propagandacampaign succeeded in persuading peoplethat we could not have socialism with de-mocracy - that the only way was the west-ern ‘market economy’ idea.

This new situation saw the LA once morein a position of isolated discussional cir-cles. This time it was fatal. Some of itsleading figures were moving towards apro-market position, sectarianism occurredand in the end its internal conflicts de-stroyed it.

Q: What sort of history doanarchist ideas have in theCzech Republic?

Anarchism started here in the 1880s as ayouth section of a patriotic and liberalmovement against the Austro-Hungarianmonarchy. When the Social DemocraticParty was established, its left wing wasrepresented by Libertarian Socialists, butafter several years they were forced tobreak away. Until WW1 the most powerfulcurrent of Libertarianism was Anarcho-Syndicalist. A stronghold of Czech Anarcho-Syndicalism was in the Northern Bohemianmining regions. Anarcho-Syndicalists weresoon organising their own union federa-tion, the Czech General Union Federation(the CGUF). Repression by the state stran-gled the CGUF in 1908, but could notdestroy the Syndicalist spirit among work-ers and new Syndicalist unions like theRegional Miners Unity were formed.

By 1914 the Federation of Czech Anarcho-Communists (the FCAC) was also wellestablished among Czech workers.Syndicalists and Anarchists published alot of papers such as The Proletarian. An-archists established some consumers’ co-ops. During WW1 there was a generalclampdown on the Czech Libertarian move-ment - a lot of militants were either jailedor marched to the front; many were killed.

Unlike Syndicalism the FCAC survivedthe war.

In 1918, on 14th October, the FCAC’s mili-tants, together with left Social Democrats,organised a 24-hour general strike that infact marked the end of the Austro-Hungar-ian empire’s domination of our nation. Thisevent made Czech nationalist politicians,who did not want to break away from theempire until that moment, start negotia-tions with the empire about our independ-ence. Strikers were demanding our right tonational independence and a creation ofthe Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Aftera day the strike was called off by the SocialDemocratic leadership. On 28th Octoberordinary people - mainly in Prague - roseup again to finish off the decaying Austro-Hungarian authorities.

At that time the leading Anarchist-Com-munist intellectuals were already movingtowards Leninism. One of them became anMP in the parliament of the new republicand another was a minister of the firstgovernment. On the other hand it tells a lotabout Anarchist-Communist influence atthe time. In 1918 the Anarchist-Commu-nists became the left wing of the Czecho-slovak Socialist Party (the CSSP). In 1923Anarchist-Communists were expelled fromthe CSSP and their leaders manoeuvredthem into a last step before an open unifi-cation with the CP, which had alreadybeen established in 1921 by left SocialDemocrats and left Anarchist-Communists,who openly converted to Bolshevism. (Infact they were the first here to translateLenin’s works.) This last step led to theformation of the Independent SocialistParty (the ISP). In 1925 the ISP, despiteresistance from the last remnants of syndi-calism - the Association of CzechoslovakMiners, which was tied to the Anarchist-Communists - abandoned federalism andother Anarchist principles and joined theCP.

Q: Tell us a little about yourformation. Is Solidarita acompletely new organisation ordid you develop from anotherorganisation?

Solidarita developed from the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (the ASF), whoseroots reach to the LA. After 1990, in a timeof greatest illusions about the marketeconomy and consequently the greatestisolation of the left (no matter whether pro-

Anarchismwith a future

Kevin Doyle talks to Vadim Barák of the Solidarita organisation in theCzech Republic about the problems and possibilities facing anarchists inthe process of rebuilding a revolutionary movement.

- the Czech Republic -


market or socialist), the ASF sank into adeep sectarianism and dogmatism - whichit has not recovered from yet.

But after this interval, there was a change:The first union struggles occurred; stu-dents fought back against the introductionof fees for education at universities; therewas more and more support among peoplefor environmentalist campaigns; in gen-eral the discontent of the working popula-tion was growing. A minority in the ASFdid its best to be involved in this fermentand tried to translate its experience fromthose struggles into an internal debate inthe ASF. That debate should have changedthe ASF into an active and effective liber-tarian organisation. However, the major-ity in the ASF refused to discuss ourproposals and we had to leave. Since thattime (1996) Solidarita has been working tobuild itself. Our theoretical and organisa-tional development is not finished yet.Through continuous involvement in localas well as national struggles of workersand young people, and through discus-sions, we are accumulating experience andclarifying our ideas. We describe ourselveseither as anarcho-syndicalists or Libertar-ian Socialists.

Q: What other Anarchistorganisations are there?

In the last while there has been quite a bitof change. Until about a year ago, therewere three main organisations - the newlyformed Northern Bohemian LibertarianFederation (NBLF), the Czechoslovak An-archist Federation (the CSAF) and theCzechoslovak Federation of RevolutionaryAnarchists (the CSFRA).

The CSFRA derives from the ASF (who Imentioned above). As far as we are con-cerned it is an organisation riven withdogmatists and sectarianism. The CSFRAdoesn’t base its politics on reality, so wedon’t have much to do with it.

In contrast both the NBLF and the CSAFwere federations that sought to unite vari-ous currents of anarchism. This is oneimportant difference we in Solidarita hadwith these groups. Solidarita is an organi-sation united in its theory and practice.We are pulled together by a common pro-gramme and we are all equally responsiblefor implementation of our organisation’spolitics. But there was some overlap be-tween Solidarita and both of these organi-sations - the NBLF and CSAF - jointmembership for example.

Last year the CSAF split, giving rise to anew group called the FSA - the Federationof Social Anarchists. Since then the FSAhas gone through a significant develop-ment. They’ve adopted the Platform2 as animportant part of their political attitudes.This puts them in a similar position toSolidarita. The FSA carries out intensivepropaganda work and are currently in-volved in ongoing discussion with us andother Czech syndicalists with a view touniting. Also involved in these discussionsare a number of ex members of the NBLF

(The NBLF ceased to exist because of aspilt between syndicalists and green anar-chists).

The outcome of all this may well be a newanarcho-syndicalist organisation, whichwould be a major step forward for class-struggle anarchism.

Q: What sort of unions exist inthe Czech Republic at themoment?

We have standard bureaucratic pro-mar-ket unions that believe in social partner-ship. They rely on endless and mostlyfruitless negotiations with the governmentand employers. They organise about 40%of our workforce and are divided into sev-eral union federations that come from theold Communist Revolutionary Union Move-ment. The CP still has a small union fed-eration, but it is absolutely passive andunimportant. Now the most powerful fed-eration is the Czech and Morovian Cham-ber of Trade Unions (the CMCTU). Asmaller federation worth mentioning isthe Trade Union of Agricultural Workers.All the CMCTU’s unions claim to be inde-pendent of all political parties, but theCMCTU’s leadership admits that its poli-tics are close to those of Social Democracy.A good number (of the leadership) also ranas candidates of Social Democracy in elec-tions to both houses of parliament.

The remarkable exception to all this isTrade Union Association of Railway Work-ers (the TUARW), which is really inde-

pendent of political parties and says “No!”to the introduction of market principlesinto public services and to privatisation ofthe railways. In February 1997 the TUARWled the most important strike in the post-1989 period and are surely the most ad-vanced union in our country. The CMCTU’sleadership has accused the TUARW of be-ing Anarcho-Syndicalist! Other living un-ions in the CMCTU which are getting moreand more able and ready to fight back, arethe miners, steelworkers and teachers’unions.

The rest are dying unions, which still be-have like the old Communist unions. Theironly concern is to collect enough money tofeed the bureaucracy and to buy Christ-mas presents and holiday trips for theirrank and file. For example in Health Care.Right now the government wants to close20% of hospitals and decrease wages, butthe Health Care Workers Trade Union(HCWTU) will not do anything about it.They will just join the CMCTU’s demon-stration against the government’s auster-ity politics, but no more. No wonder workersare deserting them! In fact there is notradition of self-activity for decades in theCP unions - people wait on their leaders todo something for them and, as I said, theHCWTU leaders do nothing.

Q: What is Solidarita’s positionrelative to the unions? Do youfavour the formation of newsyndicalist unions?

• Increases in rents and the price ofelectricity, gas and heating, announcedon July 1st 1998 has put two-thirds ofthe Czech population (2m households)onthe poverty line.

• Unemployment has now climbed fromzero to 7% (350,000), and is set to worsen

further.

• New interest rates forced through bythe Czech Republic’s IMF ‘managers’earlier in the year will cause the collapseof 40-60% of Czech enterprises over thenext year.

'Free-Market' Madness in the Czech Republic


Despite all the problems with the presentunions - some of which I’ve outlined above- we believe in working inside them. Webelieve they are real working class organi-sations. Within them we argue for asyndicalist alternative of combative anddemocratic unions run ‘by workers for work-ers’, where all delegates would be immedi-ately recallable so that workers wouldcontrol their own struggles. Unions shouldbe active not only in a workplace, but alsoin communities. They should take part instruggle against racism and fascism, inenvironmental campaigns. Their final goalshould be transformation of this society ofmarket dictatorship into a LibertarianSocialist society of social justice, workers’self-management and grassroots democ-racy.

That kind of union can come into existenceonly through our active participation inpresent day unions and through a rankand file movement in these unions forcontrol over their organisations and fights.

It is also interesting to note that the or-ganisation I mentioned above, the FSA,has also moved towards a position were itsees the necessity of working within the‘here and now’ unions. This is an impor-tant development.

Q: How has the change to a‘market-style economy’ affectedCzech workers?

The market economy has not fulfilled anyof people’s hopes for a decent and free life.Sure we can buy more products and nowthere are no shortages of essential goodslike bread or toilet paper, but everything isvery expensive. Generally our living stand-ard is worse than it was under the Commu-nist dictatorship. Our wages and pensionsare lower than in 1990 - when economictransformation started - and we have topay high taxes. Besides, now we also haveto pay for many services that used to bepaid for from taxes e.g. a lot of medicines,textbooks for children, dentist treatmentetc. Till [shop] prices are growing fasterthan incomes. An average wage is about

£200 a month, but 62% of workers getwages lower than the average and only 5%get wages higher than £400 per month -these are the managers and the directorsof companies.

Q: There has also been a massiveround of privatisation. Whathas happened here?

Working class people were persuaded bypro-market political forces that privatisa-tion would solve all the problems and wouldbring about a society where everybody is arich share-holder. Everyone was going tobecome prosperous and production wouldbe ecologically harmless! Nothing of thatsort has happened. Privatised companieseither ended up in hands of state-ownedbanks or in the hands of foreign investors,who bought only the best enterprises (i.e.those which were highly profitable evenunder the Communist state management;e.g. Volkswagen bought Skoda). But manycompanies also ended up in the hands of ‘anew aggressive class of owners’. Thesepeople gained enormous wealth from, basi-cally, stealing. The government has beenturning a blind eye on this. I am talkingabout the people who were charged withmanaging banks, industries and privati-sation funds. The amount of stolen prop-erty arising from privatisation is estimatedto be in the region of hundreds of billions ofCzech Crowns. Just to give you an idea ofhow large an amounts of capital this is, itshould be enough to say that the CzechGMP is CC1600 billion.

It also needs to be said that the govern-ment is following the advice of the IMF torestrict spending on public services, ondoles, pensions and all social benefits. TheIMF/Government has also cancelled subsi-dies towards heating, electricity and gasfor households. They have pushed for adecrease in wages and for structural ad-justments of industry. This means thattens of thousands of public sector workerswill lose their jobs; hospitals, schools andrailways are being closed down; unemploy-ment is growing. No wonder that morethan 50% of the population believe that theStalinist economy was bad, but that thefree market one is not much better!

Q: In what way have peopleresisted the attack on livingstandards

The CMLIU organised a big demonstra-tion against the government’s austeritypolicy in Nov. 1997. But the attack onliving standards was also one of the princi-pal reasons why this right-wing govern-ment of Klaus got kicked out of office earlierin the year. But while people might belooking for some solution electorally - itwon’t come. The Social Democrats haveabandoned all of its radical promises, andin fact only just won in the most recentparliamentary elections despite the hugedissatisfaction with Klaus. In the after-math of that election the SDs entered intoan ‘alliance’ with Klaus and his free-mar-ket cronies - which was a huge stab in the

back for those people who had voted for theSDs in good faith.

There is a long way to go but we see our roleas one of getting involved. We’ve beeninvolved in the initiative for a GeneralStrike (the IGS) launched by a number ofsocialist groups. We’ve also been doingwork on the matter of rent increases.Solidarita has distributed leaflets callingfor the non-payment of higher rents againstgovernment and local councils that areincreasing rents. As we get more of a basein the larger towns and cities, more oppor-tunities will arise for us to be effective inthis regard. It is important to recognisethat people in communities here are atom-ised and without any tradition of self-ac-tivity - from the years of Stalinism. Thereis much work to be done, but we are hopefulwhile being realistic.

Q: How is anarchism seen in theCzech Republic? Are you everconfused with the oldCommunists!

Yes, quite often, but people soon realisethat we are different. But also, now it isn’tso much the big problem it used to be [beingconfused with the CP]. Pro-market illu-sions are heavily shattered here now, andanti-Communist hysteria is gone. Peopleare willing to consider your ideas and ac-tivities with respect even if they presumeyou are a Communist. A lot of people seemto believe that the only positive thing aboutcapitalism is its relative freedom, but froman economic point of view it does not mat-ter whether you live under Communism orCapitalism. Solidarita believes libertar-ian socialism is a clear alternative: free-dom + socialism We fight hard to get itsideas of social justice, workers’ self-man-agement and grassroots democracy over toordinary people.

Our colleagues, classmates and neighbourssee the difference: “You are active amongus, you really try to do something; the CPis just sitting in the parliament!” We standa good chance to gain a leading position foranarchist ideas if we can be even moreactive, doing clear and reasonable libertar-ian politics.

SOLIDARITA can be contacted at PO Box13, Cerná Hora, 67921, The CZECH RE-PUBLIC. To obtain a copy of their interna-tional newsletter, enclose a donation.

1 The extended hierarchy of the CommunistParty. The name nomenklatura derives from thesystem adopted at the 9th Party Congress of theCPSU (Bolsheviks) which put in place a systemwhere the party would keep a list of those whom itconsidered ‘suitable’ for office. In time, thenomenklatura system came to represent those whowere in the Party and/or followed its orders.2 The Organisational Platform of the LibertarianCommunists - a pamphlet written in the mid 20sby anarchists who had fought in the RussianRevolution. It argues for the unity of theory andpractice in the anarchist organisation, and forcollective responsibility around a definiteprogramme. (See page 29)

Red & Black Revolution (7)Guest Writer

Alongside the classical anarchist struc-tures of unions and traditionally ‘political’organisations, anarchists are increasinglyto be found in the environmental move-ment. This is hardly surprising given that,although one wing of the green movementhas entered mainstream parliamentarypolitics, there is still a wide base of grass-roots activism some of which, in its meth-ods and organisation, is very close toanarchism. What’s more, the more radicalenvironmentalists are becoming aware thattheir demands cannot be accommodatedby capitalism, and are beginning to makeconnections between their campaigns andother issues. Why then are the links be-tween anarchism and environmentalismnot much stronger? And what are theissues that still divide them?

Mutineers on the Titanic?Most anarchists have some idea of theserious state of environmental degrada-tion caused by capitalism. You don’t haveto be politically active to know about thehole in the ozone layer, or the choppingdown of the rainforest, and the pollutioncaused by a transport system based on carsis obvious to anyone who lives in a city.Anarchist groups rarely see these as issuesto be campaigned on, like women’s rightsor trade union struggles. But environmen-tal issues effect the working class dispro-portionately. They are the least able toescape the effects of environmental dam-age, and the most likely to bear the bruntin terms of disease, malnutrition and so on.We know that poverty-level wages andpoor housing in the developing world are aresult of capitalism. The fact that theslums this creates are the hardest hit byflooding, for example, is another symptomof capitalism putting profits before people.But campaigns against this sort of indirectoppression are thin on the ground.

One possible reason why anarchists don’tcampaign as much on environmental is-sues is the gradual nature of environmen-tal problems. Unlike other struggles wherethere is a clear line that is crossed, anobvious point to focus on - whether it be arepressive piece of legislation or a strike -pollution, for example, is incremental. Theproblem is generally not that one factoryopens and suddenly the air is visibly pol-luted. The level of pollution tends to in-crease steadily over time, and it is hard toget excited over a difference that you can’t

see. Of course there are exceptions - a fewyears ago in Cork a particularly bad toxicspill led to calls for stricter controls onchemical production and safety (see Work-ers Solidarity 41 for details). But, in gen-eral, we become accustomed to thedegradation of our environment if it hap-pens slowly enough.

The final, and most important problem, foranarchists in tackling environmental is-sues is that we disagree with most of thesolutions on offer. The mainstream greenline on the environment is that we are all,more or less equally, to blame for its de-struction, and we must all, again more orless equally, make sacrifices if the ecosys-tem is to survive - this when the poorest20% of the population produce only 3% ofcarbon dioxide emissions. Even more radi-cal greens, though they do realise thatcorporations and capitalism are doing mostof the damage, insist that we must allreduce our consumption and simplify ourlives. They also say that industrialisation,in itself, is a bad thing, no matter who is incontrol. Anarchists, on the otherhand, think that everyone shouldhave more of what they want,not less. There are problemswith how production is organ-ised, and certainly if thingsare produced for need andnot profit a lot of wastewill be cut out. But mostof the world has a stand-ard of living far below whatwesterners would take forgranted and, as an absolute mini-mum, this has to be addressed.

A World DividedThe history of this century hasbeen of deepening divisions in hu-manity. The gap between richand poor has widened enor-mously, today 225 peopleown more than the poorest50% earn in a year. Eightyfour people are togetherwealthier than China,three people wealthierthan the poorest 48countries. The wealthiest 20% of theglobal population consumes 60% of theenergy, 45% of the meat and fish, andowns 87% of the vehicles1. This is not tosay that everyone in the ‘developed’ worldis well off, of course. Within the richer

countries the gap between rich and poor isalso growing, with the figures for home-lessness, unemployment and malnutritionrising all the time. In the last decade,diseases like tuberculosis, caused essen-tially by poverty, have reappeared, havingbeen eradicated earlier this century. TheUS may be the world’s biggest consumer,but it also has the highest per capita prisonpopulation, and 16.5% of its populationlives in poverty.

On a global level, the picture is of a south-ern hemisphere owned, controlled and ex-ploited by the north. Raw materials -minerals and food - are produced in thesouth and consumed in the north. Theenvironmental problems in the north/westare mainly those caused by over a centuryof industrial production - pollution hasbecome a fact of life. The earth, the air, therain, all have been contaminated.

The south may not have as long a history ofindustrialisation as the north, but as far asenvironmental damage goes it is gainingrapidly. When a corporation shifts produc-tion to the developing world, it does so toescape not just trade unions, but also envi-ronmental regulations. Workers in thesouth are not just lower-paid, they’re sub-ject to much more dangerous working con-ditions, and much more damage to their

Anarchism & EnvironmentalSurvival

Graham Purchase is one of the most prolific writers in the Australiananarchist movement, and in books such as ‘Anarchist Society & its Practi-cal Realisation’, has made a serious contribution to the debate on thefuture of the anarchist movement, and how our ideas can best be put intopractice today. Here, we review his latest book, ‘Anarchism and Environ-mental Survival’.


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environment, than workers in the north.As well as industry, agriculture is mademore damaging. Leaving aside the use ofinsecticides and fertilisers that have beenbanned in the north, the trend towardslarge-scale monoculture farming meansthe soil becomes exhausted and prone toerosion. The need to expand the area ofland under cultivation means the destruc-tion of wilderness areas and deforestation,which also causes soil erosion. This in turncauses flooding, which destroys people’shomes and crops under cultivation, lead-ing to more pressure on the land.

The worldwide increase in the human popu-lation and the level of (industrial and agri-

cultural) production means that the poten-tial impact of humanity on the environ-ment continues to grow. At the moment,this impact is enormous because, often, thepeople who are making environmentallysensitive decisions are shielded from theresults. Whether this is because of moneyor distance, the end result is that, no mat-ter how damaging their decisions may be,they can be sure the damage will be tosomeone else, and so are free to continuetheir pursuit of profit.

Making the ConnectionsGraham Purchase’s book, Anarchism andEnvironmental Survival, is an attempt tobring anarchist and green theories to-

gether, and propose a model for a possiblepost-revolutionary society. His anarchismis based on the idea that decisions mustbe made by those who are effected bythem. The basic social unit of society,then, is the community. Your communityis where you live and work, the particulararea you identify yourself with. Depend-ing on the context, this could be yourimmediate surroundings - a village orsuburb - or an extended area - a county orcity.

Each community is linked to a particularplace, although the borders of this regionare rarely clearly defined. You coulddraw the limits of a town where its build-ings end, or include land cultivated by itsinhabitants. Sometimes these are usefuldefinitions, but the people themselves,when talking about ‘their land’ may in-clude nearby forests, lakes or mountains(and again, since the size of a communityvaries depending on the context, this re-gion can also vary in size). Communitiesare made up, then, not just of relation-ships between people, but of the relation-

Vegetarianism and environmentalismoften go hand in hand. This is partlybecause the consumption of large live-stock has itself an effect on the environ-ment. It takes seven pounds of grain toproduce one pound of beef - if we were allto become vegetarian, so the argumentgoes, much less land would have to beused for agriculture. This is true to acertain extent, but the grain:meat ratioleaves out many things. For example, acow produces not just meat, but milk,leather and dung (a fertiliser, soil stabi-liser, and even fuel source). Wool, feath-ers and eggs are all useful ‘by-products’of animal husbandry that have to takeninto account.

Even so, raising animals is not the mostefficient use of agricultural land. But alot of land is not suitable for other formsof agriculture. Animals can be raised inforests, or on the side of mountains, andin areas where the soil is too poor for crop

production. Many animals can be rearedalongside crops, and others, like poul-try, are well suited to small scale farm-ing. Turning over whole prairies to cowsfor grazing is certainly inefficient, butthat’s not the only way to farm animals.

The tendency in agriculture (as in indus-try) in the last century has been forspecialisation, and for the production ofsmaller herds, made up of larger ani-mals. Purchase goes into some detail onthe virtues of microlivestock - smaller,more adaptable, and generally hardierversions of the more common modernanimals. Such animals are more pro-ductive - the greater number that can beraised on a given area of land makes upfor their small size - and it's easier tomatch the size of the herd to the landavailable. All of these factors makethem ideal for the kind of small-scalemixed farming he proposes should be

Meat ‘n’ Veg ‘n’ Microlivestock (re-)introduced to our cities.

The question of efficiency is not the onlyreason so many environmentalists arealso vegetarian. After all, the batteryfarm is perhaps the epitome of efficiency,and that has few friends in the greenmovement. There is also a moral argu-ment, that we should try to reduce theeffects of humanity on the planet, and onthe animals that live alongside us. Pur-chase quotes Elisee Reclus, a well knownanarchist of the 19th century, “for thegreat majority of vegetarians...the im-portant point is the recognition of thebond of affection and goodwill that linksman to the so-called lower animals, andthe extension to these our brothers of thesentiment which has already put a stopto cannibalism among men”1. You willhave to judge the merits of this argu-ment for yourself, Purchase shows thatit is not necessarily relevant to a discus-sion of the environment, and that a meat-eating society can still be green.

1 “On Vegetarianism”, 1901


ship between the people and the land.This, Purchase feels, is the key to environ-mental protection.

With the globalisation of the economy, andsociety in general, the current trend is totackle environmental problems on a globallevel. This appears to make sense with anissue like the destruction of the ozone layer,but it can often become ridiculous - aswhen the Earth Summit’s decision to fixthe level of global emissions merely led tothe creation of a new market. Developingcountries can now sell some of their ‘pollu-tion quota’ to richer countries. Most prob-lems, says Purchase, are better tackled atthe local level, but this means some changesin the way production is organised. EarlierI talked about how money can shield youfrom the effects of environmental damage- the same is true of distance. Those of uswho live in urban areas know the problemsthat industrial concentration has causedlocally, but only get second or third-handreports of the problems of intensive foodproduction, for example.

Small is Beautiful?If you think of the global economy as afactory, with each worker/community mak-ing only one part of a complex machine,and depending on the others to make allthe other parts, you can see how difficult itis for one worker/community to changewhat they’re doing. Purchase proposesthat we shift from the current, locally spe-cialised and globally interdependent soci-ety, to a society made up of more balanced,self-sufficient communities (individual ar-tisans, if you like). Thus we would imme-diately deal with some of the problemsoverconcentrated production has caused,like pollution and soil erosion. We wouldeliminate some, at least, of the costs oftransport between these production cen-tres. We would also make it easier for eachcommunity to deal with the problems thatarise in their own region.

When Purchase talks of increasing localindependence in this way, he does notmean these communities would be entirelyself-sufficient. The fact that some areasare richer in minerals, or more suited togrowing certain foods, means there willalways be a certain degree of specialisa-tion. Nor does it follow that, if there is ashift towards food production in urbanareas, for example, that each rural areahas to include a certain amount of facto-ries. Finally, self-sufficiency should not beconfused with isolationism - the communi-ties Purchase describes are starting pointsfor federations, not a return to feudalism.Even if it is just on the basis of commonenvironmental influences, a shared river,or mountain range, or coastline, communi-ties would obviously come together to dis-cuss things that affect them in common.And in an anarchist society, based on theidea of our common humanity, there wouldsurely be an abundance of regional, conti-nental and global projects, covering everyaspect of science and culture.

Purchase’s proposal for more ecologi-cally integrated communities usuallymeets with most scepticism when it isimagined applied to cities. Even a rela-tively small city, like Dublin, is almostcompletely dependent on food from neigh-bouring regions, and its ecosystem ismade up of cars, people and concrete. Ifa city like New York or Mexico wassealed off from the rest of the world, itwould die within days; the only questionis whether it would be from starvation orasphyxiation. Given the number of suchlarge cities around the world, and thefact that, even if it were possible, giventhe size of the earth’s population, foreveryone to live in small towns and ruralcommunities, many would not want to,how can cities be accommodated withinan environmentally sound anarchist so-ciety?

It’s an obvious point, but cities did notspring into existence fully formed, withall their support networks intact. Likeany community, initially they producedmost of their food themselves, but as theindustrial base increased, the demandfor land for industry and accommoda-tion for the workforce grew, forcing foodproduction into the hinterland. Mostcities, even up to recently, would havehad small farms comparatively close tothe town centre. The supercities of to-day are only possible because of ad-vances in food preservation (throughchemical additives and refrigeration) andtransport. Before these advances, thepressure for a city to grow in size wasmet by the necessity to have enoughfarms, near enough, to produce the food.Nor is the ejection of agriculture fromthe city irreversible - during the SecondWorld War, for example, food shortagesin Britain led to an immense drive to-wards small-plot urban farming, some-thing of which has continued to this day

in the ‘allotments’ scheme.

Cities, in Purchase’s model would con-tinue to exist, but agriculture would bereintroduced to the residential/commer-cial mix. There are different ways ofdoing this - you could divide the city intosectors, with each concentrating on aparticular use of the land, aiming atsufficiency on a city-wide scale. Or, andthis is more in line with the overallproject, each sector would be a commu-nity in itself, diversity being broughtdown to a more local level. (‘Sufficiency’is used here as an ideal, not expected tobe reached. Cities would still be moredensely populated than other areas, andso more likely to be a base for industryand other labour-intensive activities, theaim is to reduce the dependence on otherareas for food.) Food production wouldbe integrated into the city - cattle graz-ing on green spaces, lawns turned intovegetable patches, small neighbourhoodfarms. Between the demands of indus-try and accommodation, argues Pur-chase, there are spaces which in aproperly planned city could be filled withlife.

The immediate question is whether thiscould ever be more than a gesture. Sure,some farming could be integrated intourban life, but could it ever come close tomeeting the needs of those who live inthe city? If we are to continue to have thesame population density, and the sameconcentration of industry in our cities,can these urban farms ever be more thana supplement to large-scale farming else-where, a token ‘greening’ of the city? Ifcities were to seriously approach self-sufficiency, wouldn’t this necessitate ahuge expansion in their size, or a funda-mental change in the nature of urbanlife? Do we want, or need, such a change?

Cities of the future?


Equal Wealth, not SharedPoverty

There is still a clear sticking point in anyattempt to integrate anarchist and envi-ronmental positions, and that is the ques-tion of levels of production. Depending onhow far down the path of self-sufficiencyyou go, you rule out more concentrated,specialised production, and so reduce thepossible output. (Or at least, reduce effi-ciency - you can build a train in a work-shop, but it’s a lot easier to do it in afactory). In an anarchist society, a lot ofwork will be recognised as socially unnec-essary, and it’s hard to overestimate howmuch effort goes into keeping the appara-tus of international capitalism and thenation state going. When money goes, weget rid of the banking industry and finan-cial exchanges. Without states, there is noneed for armies and the whole weaponsindustry - a sizeable part of most westerneconomies - becomes defunct. When pro-duction is based on need, we will be rid ofmost advertising, and the useless duplica-tion of identical goods it was created tohide. There will be no more built-in obso-lescence, because who would build some-thing they know is going to fall apart ratherthan something that will last, if it wasn’tfor their boss’s desire for higher profits.

The production that remains will bechanged. No rational society would basetheir transport system on cars. A goodpublic transport system would improvethe quality of most people’s lives immeas-urably. The benefits in terms of livessaved, public health, and countless otherareas are obvious, and well-known. Over-dependence on cars is a result of the pur-suit of profit, and it is profit that makes ourindustries so polluting. Cleaner sources ofenergy, like solar and wind power, areavailable but not profitable. Scrubbersand filters for chemical outflows, biode-gradable, recycled and non-toxic materi-als, all of these could be used in most of ourfactories. But as long as control of produc-tion is in the hands of those who do not feelthe effects of pollution, they will be over-looked in favour of the cheaper, more prof-itable alternative.

By eliminating, or greening, all of theseprocesses, we would go a long way to reduc-ing our ecological footprint. But eliminat-ing useless production is only part of thestory, an anarchist society would also in-crease useful production. Even in the de-veloped West, far too many fall below thepoverty line - we need more homes, moreschools, more hospitals, enough to meeteveryone’s basic needs - and then we mustgo further. An anarchist society will wantto have more than just the bare essentials,surely we want to improve everyone’s stand-ard of living. Some may choose to live a lifeof austerity, but most of us want a newworld because we want more of the goodthings in life, not less.

In the developing world, the gap betweenwhat people have and what they need is

even bigger. The southern hemisphere hasbeen exploited ruthlessly by the north, oneof the first priorities for an anarchist soci-ety must be to redress that balance, andthe enormity of that task cannot be under-estimated. Millions of people don’t evenhave a clean source of drinking water, wewant everyone to have a standard of liv-ing beyond the current average for an in-dustrialised country. There is no way thiscan be accomplished without increasingcurrent levels of production.

These are major problems with the idea ofself-sufficient communities. On the onehand, we need a globally integratedeconomy, for the foreseeable future at least,because of the vast gap between the wealthof a community in Namibia, for example,and one in Oregon. At the same time, wecan’t afford the relative inefficiency thatsmall-scale, localised production implies.Even if we decide that decentralising pro-duction is a good thing, it can’t be our firstpriority. And is it necessary?

A World Without BordersAnarchism has always been international,has always stressed the importance of ourshared humanity over all those things -nationality, language, race, religion, gen-der - the ruling class tries to use to divideus. We stress the importance of democ-racy, of people having a say in the decisionsthat affect them. We also realise that somedecisions are too far-ranging in their ef-fects, too intertwined with the situations ofothers to be made at a local level. That iswhy large anarchist groups often operateas federations, and a lot of thought hasgone into creating structures - like man-dating delegates, rotating positions, mini-mising the need for full-time bureaucrats -that allow decisions to be made democrati-cally, with mass participation, involvingthousands, or millions, of people.

After all, there will always be a clash be-tween the needs of society and the needs ofa particular area, the only question is abouthow to balance them. Factories have to bebuilt, and food grown, somewhere. Nu-clear power may be unnecessary, but goldisn’t2, and you can’t mine it without dam-aging the local environment. We will al-ways have to walk the line betweendecisions being made by groups far-re-moved from their effects, and the NIMBYtendency - do what you like, but not in mybackyard. The difference, in an anarchistsociety, is in whomakes the deci-sions, and why.

Capitalism is no-toriously short-t e r m i s t ,

decisions are made based on their immedi-ate profitability, thinking even a few yearsahead is unusual. What other kind ofsociety would build nuclear power stationswithout knowing how to dispose of thewaste safely? Why else would the economybe based on non-renewable fossil fuels,when the only question is when, not if, theywill run out? If the earth is an uninhabit-able wasteland in 100 years, what does itmatter, as long as the profits are good? Allthe green consumerism in the world won’tfix this insane system, if we want a ra-tional economy we’re going to have to runit ourselves.

Agriculture and industry need not be asdamaging to the environment as they areat the moment - we already know of cleanerand safer ways of doing things, that aren’tused because they aren’t profitable. Howmuch can we change things if, as well asusing the technology we know of now, sci-ence is directed towards cleaning up pollu-tion instead of weapons research? Ifresearch was done on minimising the dam-age of intensive farming, instead of devel-oping ‘Terminator’ genes? We don’t haveto believe that science has all the answersto know that there is a lot of room forimprovement.

As anarchists we have always argued that,from union struggles to environmentalprotest, from community organising to revo-lution, the best way to victory is throughmass participation and democracy. When-ever they seize the opportunity, people arewell capable of organising their own lives,and their own movements, better than any‘wise’ leader, or ‘benevolent’ dictator. Weshould be more confident that a free anddemocratic society will handle the prob-lems of environmental damage, and thequestions of local autonomy and globalinterdependence, in a just and fair way.After the anarchist revolution, do we re-ally need a green revolution?

1 United Nations Human Development report,19982 ibid3 Gold is not just decorative, it has manyimportant industrial uses, but you must usecyanide in the mining and purification process.


Racism &Class struggle

How can racism be defeated?An answer to this question requires anexamination of the forces which gave riseto, and continue to reproduce, racism. Italso requires a careful analysis of whichsocial forces benefit from racial oppres-sion.

By racism is meant either an attitude de-nying the equality of all human beings, oreconomic, political and social discrimina-tion against racial groups.

The roots of racismCapitalism developed as a world systembased on the exploitation of workers, slavesand peasants - black, brown, yellow, andwhite. In the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, the young capitalist system cen-tred mainly on western Europe and theAmericas. In the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies Africa and Asia were broughtincreasingly into the ambit of capitalistpower.

In the Americas, vast plantation systemswere set up. Based on slavery, they werecapitalist enterprises exporting agricul-tural goods.

It was in the system of slavery that thegenesis of racism is to be found. In thewords of Caribbean scholar, Eric Williams,“Slavery was not born of racism: rather,racism was the consequence of slavery”1.

Initially, the slave plantations were notorganised on racial lines.

Although the first slaves in the Spanishpossessions in the Americas were gener-ally native Americans, slavery was re-stricted (at least officially) to those who didnot convert to Christianity.

The native Americans were succeeded bypoor Europeans. Many of these workerswere only enslaved for a limited period, asindentured servants serving contracts ofup to ten or more years. Others were con-victs sentenced for crimes such as stealingcloth, or prisoners of war from uprisingsand the colonisation of areas such as Ire-land and Scotland. However, there were

also a substantial number of life-long Eu-ropean slaves, and even amongst the in-dentured a substantial number had beenkidnapped and sold into bondage.2

Conditions on the “Middle Passage” (thetrip across the Atlantic) for these inden-tured servants and slaves were, in Williams’words, so bad that they should “banish anyideas that the horrors of the slave ship areto be in any way accounted for by the factthat the victims were Negroes”3.

More than half the English immigrants tothe American colonies in the sixteenthcentury were indentured servants4, anduntil the 1690s there were still far moreunfree Europeans on the plantations of theAmerican South than Black slaves5.

Racist ideas were developed in the contextof the slave trade of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. In this period, Afri-can people came to be the main source ofslaves for the plantations.

The systems of social control establishedfor American and European unfree labourwas now applied to the Africans.

The main reason for this shift to Africanslaves was that such slaves were obtainedcheaply enough, and in sufficient num-bers, to meet the expanding needs of theplantation capitalists6. African rulingclasses played a central role in the highlyprofitable slave trade: “The trade was ... anAfrican trade until it reached the coast.Only very rarely were Europeans directlyinvolved in procuring slaves, and thatlargely in Angola” 7.

It in the seventeenth century that racistideology began to be developed for the firsttime by such groups as “British sugar plant-ers in the Caribbean, and their mouth-pieces in Britain” who fastened ontodifferences in physical appearance to de-velop the myth that Black people were sub-human and deserved to be enslaved: “hereis an ideology, a system of false ideas serv-ing class interests”8.

Racism was used to justify the capture andperpetual enslavement of millions of peo-ple for the purposes of capitalism. Theenslavement of native Americans had beenjustified as being on the grounds of their

heathen beliefs; Eu-ropean servitude

was justified asbeing the lot of

Racial oppression remains a defining feature of the modern capitalistworld. It is manifest most spectacularly in violent attacks on immigrantsand minorities by fascist gangs. More important to the fate of thesecommunities has been the systematic and increasing discrimination bycapitalist states, manifest in attacks on the rights of immigrants, cuts inwelfare services, and racist police and court systems.


inferiors; Black slavery was justifiedthrough racism.

Once developed, racist ideas came to beused more broadly as a justification foroppression. Jewish people, for example,came to be oppressed as a racial minorityrather than as a religious group.

The beneficiaries of slavery were not Euro-peans in general, but the capitalist rulingclasses of western Europe. African rulingclasses also received substantial benefits.There were of course the vast numbers ofEuropeans indentured or enslaved. Therewere also the sailors on the “Middle Pas-sage” whose conditions, according toWilliams, were themselves scarcely distin-guishable from slavery. Finally, there werevast numbers of “poor White” peasant farm-ers of the Americas (some of whom wereformer indentured servants) who were out-competed and driven to the margins by thegiant slave plantations.9 The vast majorityof Europeans never owned slaves: only 6per cent of whites owned slaves in theAmerican South in 1860.10 There were alsoAfrican-American and native Americanslave-owners.

Race and EmpireRacism was thus born of the slavery ofearly capitalism. However, having beenonce created, subsequent developments incapitalism would sustain and rear thiscreature of the ruling class.

The extension of capitalist power over Af-rica and Asia took place largely from theseventeenth century onwards in the formof imperialism11. Initially, imperial con-quest was often undertaken directly bylarge corporations such as the British EastIndia Company (in India) and the DutchEast India Company (in South Africa,among other places). Later capitalist gov-ernments took a direct hand, notably in theconquest of most of Africa from the 1880s.

Imperialism in this period was driven bythe search for profits: initially, profits fromcontrol of trade; later by big corporations’

need for cheap sources of labour and rawmaterials, and by the need to find newmarkets to sell manufactured goods.

Racist ideas were again pressed into serv-ice to justify the process of imperial con-quest and rule. Imperial control wasjustified on the supposed grounds thatAfricans and Asians (and for that matterother colonised peoples such as the Irish)were unable to govern or develop them-selves, and needed to be ruled by externalforces - namely the ruling classes of west-ern Europe and Japan12. Equal rights werenot seen as even being possible in thisworld view.

Empire did not benefit workers in the colo-nies, nor in the imperialist countries. Theprofits of empire accrued to the capitalistclass13. Meanwhile, the methods and forcesof colonial repression were deployed againstworkers in the imperialist countries (mostnotably, the use of colonial troops to crushthe Spanish Revolution), whilst lives andmaterial resources were wasted on impe-rial adventures. Today, multi-national com-panies cut jobs and wages by shifting torepressive Third World client regimes.

Racism todayClearly, capitalism gave birth to racism.Racism as an idea helped justify empireand slavery. Racism as a form of discrimi-nation or oppression facilitated high levelsof exploitation, and has thus been an im-portant factor in the development of capi-talism.

Today, both slavery and the formal em-pires have been overthrown - this haslargely been the result of struggles by mil-lions of workers, peasants and slavesagainst oppression. Slave revolts are partof the history of class struggle againstcapitalism. Peasant and worker resist-ance to colonialism are equally so, althoughit must be noted that most anti-colonialstruggles were prevented from reachingtheir necessary conclusion- socialist revo-lution- by the determination of local elites

to reach a deal with capitalism and impe-rialism.

However, although these struggles re-moved the formally racist structures ofslavery and empire they have not buriedracism.

Racism -as an idea and as a practice- con-tinues to serve two key functions undercapitalism.

First, it allows the capitalists to securesources of cheap, unorganised, and highlyexploitable labour. Key examples are im-migrants and minorities. Subject to racistdiscrimination, they form a segment of theworking class that has been described as“super-exploited”, providing high levels ofprofit for capitalists. In times of capitalistcrisis (such as today) these segments aremost readily deprived of political and so-cial rights, the first to fall in the overallassault on the working class that takesplace.

Secondly, racism allows the capitalist rul-ing class to divide and rule the exploitedclasses.

Across the planet, billions of workers andpeasants suffer the lashes of capitalism.Racism is used to foster divisions withinthe working class to help keep the rulingclass in power.

Praxedis Guerrero, a great Mexican anar-chist, described the process as follows14:

“Racial prejudice and nationality,clearly managed by the capitalist andtyrants, prevent peoples living side byside in a fraternal manner...

A river, a mountain, a line of smallmonuments suffice to maintain foreign-ers and make enemies of two peoples,both living in mistrust and envy of oneanother because of the acts of past gen-erations. Each nationality pretends tobe above the other in some kind of way,and the dominating classes, the keepersof education and the wealth of nations,feed the proletariat with the belief ofstupid superiority and pride to makeimpossible the union of all nations whoare separately fighting to free themselvesfrom Capital….

If all the workers of the different ...nations had direct participation in allquestions of social importance whichaffect one or more proletarian groupsthese questions would be happily andpromptly solved by the workers them-selves.”

It happens between majority populationsand super-exploited minorities, but alsobetween the working classes of differentcountries. Workers are told to blame andhate other workers- distinguished by cul-ture, language, skin colour, or some otherarbitrary feature- for their misery. A clas-sic example is the scape-goating of immi-grants and refugees for “taking away jobsand housing”.


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Ireland & British Imperialism

In this way, workers’ anger is deflectedonto other workers (with whom they havealmost everything in common) rather thanbeing directed against capitalists ( withwhom workers have nothing in common).An appearance of common interest is cre-ated between workers and bosses of a givenrace or nation.

Who benefits?Racism does not benefit any workers. Evenworkers who are not themselves directlyoppressed by racism lose out from racismbecause it divides the working class. WhiteAmerican workers, for example, in no waybenefit from the existence of an impover-ished and oppressed minority of AfricanAmerican workers who can be used toundercut wages, and working and livingconditions.

In addition, racist attitudes make it verydifficult to unite workers against the capi-talists to challenge the overall distributionof wealth and power in society. Racism hasbeen used again and again to break work-ers’ struggles.

The more the working class is divided, theworse its overall condition will be. Thispoint, which was repeatedly made by theclassical anarchist movement15, has beenconfirmed in a study by an American soci-ologist who set out to test the propositionthat white workers gain from racism16.

Comparing the situation of White and Blackworkers in all fifty US states, he found,firstly, that the less wage discriminationthere was against Black workers, the bet-ter were the wages that White workersreceived. Secondly, he found that the exist-ence of a substantial nationally oppressedgroup of poor workers reduced the wagesof White workers (but did not affect theearnings of middle and upper-class Whitesvery much). Finally, he found that themore intense racial discrimination was,the more poverty there was for lower classWhites.

Such facts fly in the face of political strat-egies which claim that majority popula-tion workers receive material benefits fromracism. The logic of this argument is thatthese privileges must be “renounced” be-fore working class unity is possible. Suchan argument assumes that capitalistswould adopt a strategy that systemati-cally benefits the majority of workers, amost unlikely (and as we saw above, un-sustainable) notion. In addition, this ar-gument implies that the immediatepolitical task is a redistribution of wealthamong workers as opposed to a class strug-gle against capitalism. That is to say, itcalls on the majority of workers to fight onprinciple for worse conditions.

Finally, this approach mixes up two verydifferent things: oppression and privilege.While it is obviously true that some work-ers do not directly experience racial op-pression, it does not follow that they benefitfrom it. The two terms are distinct: whileit is oppressive to be subject to low wages,it is not a privilege to have a living wage.

Why racist ideas are acceptedNone of the arguments made so far in thisarticle deny the possibility that minoritiesof the working class may receive tempo-rary benefits from racial oppression inspecific circumstances. A case in pointwould be the small white working class inSouth Africa between the 1920s and the1980s, which received real benefits fromapartheid. But, as a general rule, racialoppression is fundamentally against theinterests of the majority of workers of allcolours.

To recognise the primary role of capitalistruling classes (aided by their states) inpromoting and benefiting from racial op-pression is not to deny that many workingclass people often support racism. Racismis often very widespread. However, such

support for racism is an example of work-ing class people acting against their owninterests, rather than evidence that work-ers benefit from racism.

However, if racism provides no benefits forworkers, how can we explain such supportfor the essentially irrational ideas of rac-ism?

The answer is that there are very realmaterial forces in capitalist society whichoperate to foster support for these ideas.

The first factor is capitalist control overideas. Capitalists do not simply rule byforce, they also rule by promoting a capital-ist world-view. Here we must consider, asPraxedis argued above, how “the dominat-ing classes, the keepers of education andthe wealth of nations” … “feed the prole-tariat with the belief of stupid superiorityand pride”: the role of the schools, themedia, literature and so forth. The impactof this propaganda cannot be underesti-mated.

The second factor is the material condi-tions of the working class itself. Undercapitalism, the working class suffers pov-erty, alienation and misery. In the sameway that workers may take solace fromreligion, they may also seek the imaginarycompensation of supposed racial superior-ity, “the belief of stupid superiority andpride” (in Praxedis’ words).

In addition, working class people are lockedin bitter competition for a limited amountof jobs, housing and other resources. Inthis situation, they may blame other groupsin the working class for their plight. Wherethe other groups are culturally or physi-cally distinct in appearance, this resent-ment and competition may be expressed inracist terms. Hence the view, for example,


1 Eric Williams, 1944, Capitalism and Slavery. AndreDeutsch. p. 17. See also Peter Fryer, 1988, BlackPeople in the British Empire. Pluto Press. chapter 11.2 Williams does not take sufficient account of theinstitution of life-long slavery among Whites.3 Williams, p. 14.4 Williams, p. 10.5 Leo Huberman, 1947, We, the People: the drama ofAmerica. Monthly Review Press. p. 161.6 Williams, pp. 18-9, 23-29.7 Bill Freund, 1984, The Making of ContemporaryAfrica: the development of African society since1800. Indiana University Press. p. 51.8 Fryer, p. 64.9 Williams, pp. 23-6; Huberman, p. 167-8.10 Huberman, p. 167.11 See Freund for a discussion of the Africanexperience.12 Fryer, pp. 61-81; Freund.13 And not to workers as Fryer claims, pp. 54-5.These arguments are criticised in greater detail in theWSF Position Paper on “Anti- Imperialism”, online athttp://flag.blackened.net/revolt/africa.html.14 Programa de la Liga Pan-Americana del Trabajoin Articulos de Combate, p. 124-5, cited in D. Poole,“The Anarchists and the Mexican Revolution, part 2:Praxedis G. Geurrero 1882-1910”, Anarchist Review.No. 4. Cienfuegos Press.15 For example, Ricardo Flores Magon and others,To the Workers of the United States, November 1914,reproduced as Appendix A, in Colin Maclachlan,1991, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: thepolitical trials of Ricardo Flores Magon in the UnitedStates. University of California Press. p. 123.16 Al Szymanski, 1976, “Racial Discrimination andWhite Gain”, in American Sociological Review, 41.17 N. Chomsky, 1994, Keeping the Rabble in Line.AK Press. pp. 105-6.18 See on this point, “Race, Class and Organisation:the view from the Workers Solidarity Federation(South Africa)”, 1997, Black Flag, no. 212. Online athttp://flag.blackened.net/revolt/africa/wsfother/bf_race_org.html

that 'they' are 'taking our jobs'.

The Oppressed dividedFrom the above, it is clear that racism is aproduct of capitalism, and fundamentallyagainst the interests of the working classand peasantry.

Are capitalists from oppressed groups reli-able allies in the struggle against racism?The short answer is, no, they are not.

The effects of racism are fundamentallymediated by class position. Taking thecase of the United States: although na-tional averages of White and Black in-comes show a vast gulf between the two,when class is taken into account the mate-rial inequalities between White and Blackworkers are shown to be quite limited;taken from another angle, the gap betweenthe conditions of both sets of workers, onone side, and those of the upper class, onthe other, are yawning17.

Michael Jackson may still face racism, buthis wealth and power as a capitalist shieldshim from the worst effects of racism. Pri-vate schools, lawyers, high incomes - allthese factors cannot be ignored.

Perhaps more importantly, the class inter-ests of such elites tie them into supportingthe capitalist system itself. Black policechiefs, mayors, and army officers are asmuch defenders of capitalism as their Whitecounterparts. Such strata will readily com-promise with the powers-that-be if it willgive them a chance to be 'in the racket andin the running'.

Fighting racismIt is capitalism that continually generatesthe conditions for racist oppression andideology. It follows that the struggle againstracism can only be consistently carried outby the working class and peasantry: theonly forces capable of overthrowing thecapitalist system. The overthrow of capi-talism will in and of itself fundamentallyundermine the social sources of racism.The overthrow of capitalism however, re-quires the unification of the working classand peasantry internationally, across alllines of colour and nationality.

In addition, the crushing of capitalism,and the establishment of libertarian so-cialism will allow the vast resources cur-rently chained to theneeds ofprofiteering by a

rich few to be placed under the control ofthe working and poor people of the wholeglobe. Under libertarian communism itwill be possible to use these resources tocreate social and economic equality for all,thus finally enabling the disfigurements ofracial oppression to be scoured from theface of the earth.

However, this article is in no way arguingthat the fight against racism must be de-ferred until after the revolution. Instead, itis arguing that on the one hand, only aunited working class can defeat racismand capitalism; on the other, a united work-ing class can only be built on the basis ofopposing all forms of oppression and preju-dice, thereby winning the support of allsectors of the broad working class.

Firstly, it is clear that racism can only befought on a class basis. It is in the interestof all workers to support the struggleagainst racism. Racism is a working classissue because it affects the conditions of allworkers, because most people affected byracism are working class, and because, asindicated above, it is the working classmembers of racially oppressed groups whoare the most severely affected by racism.

Working class unity is also in the interestsof racially oppressed segments of the work-ing class, as alliances with the broaderworking class not only strengthen theirown position, but also help lay the basis forthe assault on capitalism. Without deny-ing in the least the heroism, and, in somecases, radicalising role played by minoritymovements, it is quite obvious that a mi-nority of, say, 10 per cent of the populationlacks the ability to overthrow the existingconditions on its own18. Such unity is par-ticularly vital in the workplace, where it isalmost impossible for unions of minorityworkers to function.

Secondly, working class unity can, how-ever, clearly only be built on the basis of aresolute opposition to all forms of racism. Ifother sections of the working class do notoppose racism, they create a situation inwhich nationalists can tie racially op-pressed segments to Black and other mi-nority capitalists in the futile games of'Buy Black' campaigns and voting blocs.Class-based and anarchist alternativesmust present a viable alternative if theyare to win support.

Our tasksAnti-racist work should occupy a high pri-ority in the activities of all class struggleanarchists. This is important not simply

because we always oppose all oppres-sion, and because anarchists have

long been opponents of racism. Itis also because such work is anessential to the vital task ofunifying and conscientising theworking class - a unity withoutwhich neither racism nor capi-talism can be consigned to thehistory books.

At a general level, we can approach thesetasks by active work in anti-racist strug-gles and campaigns, including work along-side non-anarchist forces (without, ofcourse, surrendering our political inde-pendence), and by continual propagandaagainst racism in our publications,workplaces, unions and communities.

The workplace and the union are particu-larly important sites for activity: it is herethat capitalism creates the greatest pres-sure for workers’ unity across all barriers,and it is here that the workers’ movementstands or falls on the basis of its ability toaddress the needs of its whole constitu-ency.

We can approach these tasks by raising, onthe one hand, demands that apply equallyto all workers (better wages, full unionrights, opposition to social partnership etc.),and by raising, on the other, demandswhich specifically address the needs ofracially oppressed segments of the work-ing class (equal schooling, equal housing,no to colour bars in industry etc.). Thus, weshould fight for “Better Housing for All! Noto Segregation!”, to take one example. Thetarget of such demands would, of course,be the bosses, although in no case whatso-ever should the tiniest concession be madeto racial prejudices on the part of anyworkers.

There is no contradiction between the classstruggle and the struggle against racism.Neither can succeed without the other.


Serge was born in 1890 and rapidly be-came a self educator and socialist joiningthe Jeuns-Grades - a Belgium federation ofSocialist youth groups. Serge eventuallyended up in Paris, which was the scene ofa huge demonstration (over 500,000 peo-ple) when the working class learned of theexecution of Francisco Ferrer2. “It was atime of pot-bellied peace; the atmospherewas strangely electric, the calm before thestorm of 1914.”3 Serge was at this timeinvolved in publishing a journal in Paris.Subsequent to the riots at the time of thedemonstrations his house was raided, thepolice found weapons there, two of hiscomrades were sentenced to death by theguillotine, and he got 5 years in prison.Nasty times to be living in if the stateconsidered you to be a revolutionary. Butthey were about to get worse. While inprison, the Great War broke out in all itsfutility, all over Europe sending youngmen to their deaths. Most of the main-stream left parties turned towards fratri-cidal patriotism causing mass confusion inthe movement. The young imprisonedSerge found the whole situation incompre-hensible.

Dawn and DeclineFollowing his release, Serge ended up inPetrograd at the start of 1919. He was notthe only young revolutionary to be drawnto Mother Russia during her famous datewith destiny. One of the first people he metwhile there was Maxim Gorky. Gorky,apart from being famous both at home andabroad as a major writer, was also a re-spected political figure in Russia. He’dbeen a champion of change for a long time,and his opinion was one that was respectedby many.

Gorky had witnessed the early days of therevolution and reported that the Bolshe-viks were “drunk with authority”4. But,after a brief time, Serge made his ownmind up about the whole matter. “I wasneither against the Bolsheviks nor neutral;I was with them, albeit independently, with-out renouncing thought or critical sense.

The Bolsheviks' petanarchist

Certainly on several essential points theywere mistaken: in their intolerance, in theirfaith in stratification, in their leaning to-wards centralism and administrative tech-niques”5. In spite of these reservations hethrew himself into working alongside theBolsheviks. He was invited to be aPetrograd representative at the foundingmeeting of the Communist International(Third International) initiated by Lenin inMoscow.

All this work for the Party brought with itspecial rations. Such was the wide sweep-ing famine in Russia at the time that, evenwith these rations, Serge wrote “I wouldhave died of hunger without the sordidmanipulations of the black market, wherewe traded the petty possessions we hadbrought in from France.”6 The CentralCommittee, however, suffered none of thesehardships. Living in the Hotel Astoria,they dined on soup and “delicioushorsemeat”7 in comparative warmth, over-looking the dark public squares. Sergeeven calls this place the “hotel of the dicta-

tors”.8

The Winter of 1919 was a cold and bitterone. Civil War raged, exiled Russian Aris-tocrats traded currency with the Tsar stillon it, while the Bolsheviks printed it like itwas going out of fashion and used it toprocure arms. That’s right, the Bolsheviksprinted money with the Tsar’s image on it.As Serge says “we used to print them for thepoor fools (Russian Exiles)”9. The wide-spread cloak of hunger hung over the wholecountry. In the midst of this mess, theinfamous Bolshevik secret police, theChekas carried out their dastardly work.The telephone rapidly became an enemy ofany sympathetic official and Serge was noexception. He writes “At every hour itbrought me voices of panic-stricken womenwho spoke of arrests, imminent executions,and injustice, and begged me to interveneat once, for the love of God!”10. At this stagethe custom of arresting and executing hos-tages had become “generalised and legal.”11

The mere existence of a secret police is arapid insight into the nature of the Party’spolitics at the time. From 1918 onwardsthe leadership, from Lenin downwards,had become increasingly more paranoidand saw plots and treachery everywhere.The Cheka were formed to counteract thisbut as Serge writes he believed it “was oneof the gravest and most impermissible er-rors that the Bolshevik leaders committedin 1918.”12 He claimed that revolutionarytribunals, letting in defensive evidence andfunctioning in the clear light of day rather

Leninists are fond of quoting from the writing of Victor Serge, as a meansof getting a libertarian rubber stamp for the actions of the Bolsheviksduring the October revolution and the subsequent events. In his keynotearticle "In defence of October"1 John Rees uses no less than 8 quotes fromSerge’s writings within the space of 70 pages. Poor old Lenin only managedto clock up 4 original quotes, while Tony Cliff’s dubious interpretation of allthese events manages to get more quotes in than one could possibly count.To a certain extent, what the Leninists of today are trying to tell us is thatSerge was a practical man, and he knew that the only way for the revolutionto succeed was to row in behind the Bolsheviks. So, with this in mind, wetake a look at Serge’s’ autobiography “Memoirs of a Revolutionary”.

THE LIFE, TIMES &CONFESSIONS OF VICTOR SERGE

One of nine Rolls Royce cars ordered for Lenin at the 1920 London Motor Show


than the cloak of the night, would havefunctioned efficiently with “far less abuseand depravity.”13 When Serge brought upZinoviev (Lenin’s appointed President ofthe Third International and member of thePolitbureau) around this time in a conver-sation with Gorky, Gorky shouted out“Don’t talk to me of that beast ever again -tell him that his torturers are a disgrace tothe human image.”14

By early 1920, it appeared that the CivilWar was coming to an end, and the idea ofnormality returning to Mother Russia wasgaining popularity. By January of 1920Dzerzhinsky (People’s Commissar for theInterior), with the backing of Lenin andTrotsky, recommended the abolition of thedeath sentence - except in areas wherethere were still military operations beingcarried out. Hope sprang up immediatelyamongst the thousands of suspects in thecrammed prisons as the decree was passedby the Government and signed by Lenin.But the executioners of the Cheka werebusy that night, as 200 people were drivenoutside of Petrograd and shot. Over 300 inMoscow. Relatives scraped at the massburial grounds looking for relics of theirdead loved ones. Serge actually met one ofthe grim reapers who worked in thePetrograd Cheka, who said of that time“We thought that if the People’s Commis-sars were getting converted to Humanitari-anism, that was their business. Ourbusiness was to crush the counter-revolu-tion for ever, and they could shoot us after-wards if they like!"15 The work of theCheka, although well recognised, was neverspoken of. No one was disciplined for thisslaughter, implying that their dirty workmet with the approval of the Bolsheviks.

The enemies within ?By 1920 opinions were rampant and di-vided about the Soviets. The Menshevikswere outright opponents, the Left Social-Revolutionaries first boycotted them andthen collaborated with them. The anar-chists were divided into pro-soviet andanti-soviet. Serge called all the peopleoutside the party view of the time “dissi-dents of the revolution” who were “right onmany points”.16 But the dissidents had afundamental point which had to be admit-ted, which was above all the right oft h epeople of Russia “for freedom of ex-pression and the restoration of libertyin the soviets.”17 The Soviets of 1917had been the workers’ councils whichhad been composed of the workersand soldiers’ delegates who wished todisband the bad old society and bring aboutthe dawn of a new age of freedom formankind. But with the suppression of allopposition to the viewpoints of the Bolshe-viks, Serge writes “In practice they (thesoviets) represented nothing but the localParty Committees.”18 The Party at thistime had been practically invaded, accord-ing to Serge, by careerists, mercenary ele-ments who came over in swarms to the sidewith power. Bureaucratisation was ram-pant. It comes as no surprise that the

Party that would bring about the “dictator-ship of the proletariat” was now full of littledictators who “possessed no initiative”.19

After all, the nature of their politics was tohave a small number of people makingdecisions for the majority.

The search for the enemies within wasgrowing, mainly driven from the top (sec-retaries) downwards through the Partyand exercised by the Cheka. Of the manyanarchists in prison at this time, Leninsaid they “were not true anarchists noridealists - just bandits” and anyway “TheState is a machine for which we are answer-able and we cannot allow its operation to befrustrated.”20 By this stage, the Bolshevikswere determined that this revolution wastheirs alone and anyone who held an alter-native opinion was labeled against theparty - and therefore against the revolu-tion. Any opposition to the will of the partywas seen as a threat as the Bolshevikswrestled for a grip on the monopoly ofpower. They were hanging onto it by theirfingertips and any threat was dealt with ina severe manner. As one party memberwrote in an official trade union journal atthe time ‘Professional’ny Vestnik’ “the de-struction of newspapers, the annihilationof freedom of agitation for the socialist anddemocratic parties is inadmissable.The.....violence against strikers, etc. irri-tated open wounds. There has been toomuch of this type of memory of the Russiantoiling masses and this can lead to ananalogy deadly to the Soviet power.”21 TheBolsheviks were holding onto State powerirrespective of costs, ideals or lives.

Anarchists were arrested en mass by theCheka in November 1920, as they pre-pared for their congress. Serge speaks, atthis time, of being horrified at witnessingthe rigging of elections so that Lenin’s andZinoviev’s ‘majority’ opinion would win.Lenin said the trade unions should organ-ise autonomously from the state (an im-provement from Trotsky’s position whichsaid they should be merged) but they mustbe subordinate to the Party. 'All power tothe Party' would have been a much moreaccurate slogan at this time. Incidents

happened all the time in factories. TheParty was becoming less and less popular,and strikes were on the increase. This wasin the November and December of 1920.The atmosphere was building towards aconfrontation between the Party and thosewho were pro-revolution, but not pro theBolshevik version they were being served.That confrontation would burst into theopen at Kronstadt and Serge was one of thewitnesses.

Whose Revolution is this ?Kropotkin, the best known anarchist inRussia and worldwide at the time, died.The anarchists, including a number whowere temporarily released from Bolshevikjails in order to attend, turned his funeralinto a massive show of strength and a"denunciation of all tyranny"22. Behind thecoffin marched thousands of mourners handin hand, carrying the black flags of anar-chism. The Cheka’s presence at the fu-neral added to the atmosphere of tension.Many anarchists were arrested straightafter the burial of the old man, only todisappear to prisons from which they wouldnever re-emerge. Just as the old man layin the ground, many were to join him andwith them went the hopes for socialismand freedom.

18 days later, Serge was awoken in theAstoria Hotel with the news that “Kronstadtis in the hands of the Whites.”23 Later onthe next day other comrades told him “thesailors have mutinied”24 and that whathe’d heard previously was nothing but anatrocious lie. Serge writes “We were para-lysed by official falsehoods. It had neverhappened before that our Party should lieto us like this.”25 It was in fact a navalrevolt, led by the local Soviet.

The battle lines were drawn, this was abattle for power. Who was really in chargeof the Soviets, the people themselves or aParty already rampant with bureaucratsand careerists? Lenin had written in 1918that “The irrefutable experience of historyhas shown that.....the dictatorship of indi-vidual persons was very often the vehicle,the channel of the dictatorship of the revo-

lutionary classes.”26 What this meantin reality was that the make-up ofthe Soviets had to change and waschanged from the freely elected del-egates to submissive party hacks who

rubber stamped the decisions made fur-ther up the hierarchy. The battle atKronstadt was fought to either bring therevolution back towards the people or towave good-bye to it all.

The killing of hope inKronstadt

Serge wrote of the demands of theKronstadt rebels. “Pamphlets dis-tributed in the working class areas ...It was a programme for the renewalof the Revolution ... re-election of theSoviets by secret ballot; freedom ofthe spoken and printed word for allrevolutionary parties and groupings;


freedom for the trade unions; the release ofrevolutionary political prisoners; abolitionof official propaganda; an end to requisi-tioning in the countryside; freedom for theartisan class; immediate suppression of thebarrier squads that were stopping the peo-ple from getting their food as they pleased.”27

The crews of the First and Second NavalSquadrons, along with the garrison andthe Soviet in Kronstadt, were fighting forthe triumph of the above demands.

A delegation from Kronstadt which wasdispatched to Petrograd to explain theuprising ended up in the hands of theCheka. Most of those who mediated on thesailors’ behalf ended up being arrested.Serge justifies the whole incident and hisown siding with the Party in this way“Kronstadt had right on its side. Kronstadtwas the beginning of a fresh liberatingrevolution for popular democracy ... How-ever, the country was absolutely exhausted,and production practically at a standstill;there were no reserves of any kind, not evenreserves of stamina in the hearts of themasses. ...Soviet democracy lacked leader-ship, institutions and inspiration; at itsback there were only masses of starvingand desperate men.”28 That was his reason.He saw no hope for the people to take thede-railed revolution and put it back ontrack. Serge puts it more bluntly in hispropaganda of the time when he wrote“Despite its mistakes and abuses the Bol-shevik Party is at present the supremelyorganised, intelligent and stable force whichdeserves our confidence. The Revolutionhas no other mainstay, and is no longercapable of any thorough going regenera-tion.”29 It was with these words that Sergekissed the idea of freedom good-bye, andheld up his arms in a shrug which saidthere was nothing better.

The anarchists and the Menshevik SocialDemocrats were outlawed, along with any-body else who didn’t give absolute loyaltyto Lenin’s dictatorship. Charged with allsorts of “odious terms”30, Serge himselfwrites “The Cheka is mad!”31 In Moscow atthe same time Lenin was proclaiming the“New Economic Policy”. Lenin, in his ownwritten words, described this: “Socialismis merely the next step forward from Statecapitalist monopoly. Or in other words,

socialism is merely state capitalist monopolywhich is made to serve the interests of thewhole people and has to that extent ceasedto be capitalist monopoly.”32 At the samecongress, a party faction known as theWorkers’ Opposition was outlawed anddenounced as “anarcho-syndicalist” be-cause they wished management of produc-tion to be handed over to the trade unions.This history of events displays that theBolsheviks could not accept any threat totheir monoploy of power. The threat atthat time was on the cold winds of changeblowing from the port of Kronstadt.

Do not mourn - Organise !Serge has been championed for a long timeby various Trotskyists and Leninists asthe former Libertarian who saw the Bol-shevik example and followed it. He was apractical man, they’ll say, an example of ananarchist who saw sense in that time ofrevolt. Read his book and listen to hisstory. He was a man who was courageousand strong and fought for what he be-lieved. But at one point a light was extin-guished in him, and he just kept on pushingfor the programme being put forth by theparty. That light that went out was hisbelief that you could win freedom, hethought that what the working class had todo was trust in and obey the 'revolutionaryparty'. Unfortunately, when they did thatthey were left in a position of hoping theparty would deliver that freedom. Too latedid they realise that the emancipation ofthe working class is the job of the workingclass itself, the party isn’t going to deliverit.

This battle was lost in Kronstadt, andthat’s why anarchists throughout the worldcelebrated when we saw those joyous faceson the other side as the Berlin wall wassmacked over. Then the Party had won thebattle and formed in its wake a viciouslyauthoritarian state - where the will of thepeople was crushed beneath the wheels ofinterest of the Bolsheviks. So we did notmourn the passing of the Bolshevik dicta-torship, socialism’s chance in Russia passedwhen the blood of the sailors was spilled bythe Red Army on the ice of Kronstadt.Serge wrote his Memoirs of a Revolution-ary - and in it he displays how the meansdetermine the end. Leninists have failedto make a revolution based on freedom andequality because it cannot be built on sup-pression. Bakunin wrote with a claritythat Serge only found out though experi-ence “Only the practice of social revolution,great new historical experiences, the logicof events can bring them around, sooner orlater, to a common solution: and strong inour belief in the validity of ourprinciple......the workers...., not their lead-ers, will then end by joining with us to teardown these prisons called States and tocondemn politics, which is in fact nothingmore than the art of dominating and fleec-ing the masses.”33 It’s imperative that asocial revolution is built on freedom, asany anarchist will tell you. When it is, thatrevolution will not fail, and that is a truth

that we are here to build for.

References1 In “International Socialism No. 52” a journalpublished by the Socialist Workers Party inBritain2 Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge3 An anarcho-syndicalist and educationalreformer. In Barcelona he translated FrenchSyndicalist material and founded the journalSolidaridad Obrera. He was vilified and hated bythe Catholic Church and the right because heestablished libertarian schools for the education ofworking class children. His respect within theworking class was such that his death in Spainbrought half a million people out to demonstrateon the streets of Paris.4 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, page 73, Quoteattributed to Maxim Gorky5 ibid page 766 ibid page 797 ibid page 798 ibid page 799 ibid page 8610 ibid page 8011 ibid page 8012 ibid page 80-8113 ibid page 8114 ibid page 8215 ibid page 99, Quote attributed to a man calledLeonidov - his real name was never written bySerge - a man who took part in the execution ofhundreds of people outside Petrograd.16 ibid page 11817 ibid page 11918 ibid page 11819 ibid page 11820 Anarchists behind bars (Summer 1921) - Leninquoted when asked about imprisoned anarchistslike Voline21 The Bolsheviks & Workers Control, page 28,Quote from Party member Lovosky22 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, ibid page 12123 ibid page 12424 ibid page 12525 ibid page 12526 Lenin’s article ‘The immediate Tasks of theSoviet Government’ published in Isvestiya27Memoirs of a Revolutionary, ibid page 12628 ibid page 12829 ibid page 12930 ibid page 12931 ibid page 12932 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 25, page 35833 No Gods, No Masters: Vol. 2, ed Daniel Guerin,page 161 - Bakunin letter to La Liberte Oct 5th1872


Irish ruling class.

James Connolly neatly described the Irishnationalist version of 1798 thus

“The middle class “patriotic” historians,orators, and journalists of Ireland haveever vied with one another in enthusias-tic descriptions of their military exploitson land and sea, their hairbreadth es-capes and heroic martyrdom, but haveresolutely suppressed or distorted theirwritings, songs and manifestos.”3

In short, although the name of the UnitedIrishmen was honoured, their democraticideas were buried even before the forma-tion of the 26 county state.

In the 1840’s Ireland once again fell underthe influence of a wave of internationalradicalism. They sought to uncover thereal aims of the 1798 rebellion. The repub-lican organisation of the 1840’s, the YoungIrelanders “celebrated the United Irish-men not as passive victims or reluctantrebels, but as ideologically committed revo-lutionaries with a coherent political strat-egy”.4 They placed a marker on the graveof the key United Irishmen leader, WolfeTone, at Bodenstown. Paying homage atthe grave is an essential annual rite forany party wishing to claim the republicanlegacy.

These different histories mean that evenwithin republicanism there was little agree-

ment about what the real legacy of 1798was. In 1934 when Protestant members ofthe Republican Congress arrived atBodenstown with a banner proclaiming‘Break the connection with capitalism’ theywere physically assaulted and driven offby IRA members.

Of particular note is the way the women of1798 have either been written out of his-tory altogether or exist only as the faithfulwives of the nationalist histories and theblood crazed witches of the loyalist ac-counts. Like other republicans of thatperiod the United Irishmen - for the mostpart - did not see a role for women, al-though “one proposal was made that womenshould have the vote as well”5 . Neverthe-less a number of women, including MaryAnn McCracken, played an important rolefrom an early period in promoting the or-ganisation, and a Society of United Irish-women was established in 1796.6

In the run up to the rebellion, women wereparticularly active in subverting the Mili-tia. They would swear in soldiers and alsospread rumours that the troops were goingto be sent abroad. Women were active inthe rebellion, not just in ‘traditional roles’of medical aid etc., but also in quite anumber of cases as combatants. However,almost all of these roles seem to be onesthat individual women demanded andfought for, there is little evidence of anyserious effort on the part of the UnitedIrishmen to mobilise women.

An overview of the RebellionIn the Autumn of 1791, societies of UnitedIrishmen were formed in Belfast and Dub-lin. Initially the organisation limited itselfto calling for democratic reforms includingCatholic emancipation7 . In response topopular pressure, the British governmentwhich effectively ruled Ireland - initiallygranted some reforms. This period of re-form ended in 1793, when war broke outbetween revolutionary France and Brit-ain.

In December of 1796 the United Irishmencame the nearest they would to victory,when 15,000 French troops arrived offBantry Bay. Bad weather prevented thelanding and saved Britain from defeat.After Bantry Bay, Irish society was bit-terly polarised as loyalists flocked to jointhe British army and the United Irish-men’s numbers swelled massively.

By the Spring of 1798, a campaign of Brit-ish terror was destroying the United Irish-men organisation and many of the leaders

In 1798 Ireland was shook by a mass rebellion for democratic rights andagainst British rule. 200 years later 1798 continues to loom over Irishpolitics. The bi-centenary, co-inciding with the ‘Peace process’, has at-tracted considerable discussion, with the formation of local history groups,the holding of conferences and a high level of interest in the TV documen-taries and books published around the event.

1 71 71 71 71 79 89 89 89 89 8It is rightly said that history is written bythe victors. The British and loyalist histo-rians who wrote the initial histories of therising portrayed it as little more than theactions of a sectarian mob intent on massa-cring all Protestants. Later reformerssought to hide the program of 1798 to uniteIrishmen regardless of creed. After 1798they turned to the confessional politics ofmobilising Catholics alone. DanielO’Connell, the main architect of this policy,went so far in 1841 as to denounce theUnited Irishmen as “... wicked andvillianously designing wretches who fo-mented the rebellion”.1

So the first response to the Loyalist historyin Ireland was an alternative but parallelhistory produced to suit a Catholic nation-alist agenda. Both of these agendas neatlydovetailed in showing the rising as a fightfor “faith and fatherland”. This is illus-trated by the treatment of two portraits ofprominent figures in the rebellion. LordEdward Fitzgerald had his red cravat2

painted out and replaced with a white one.Father Murphy had his cravat painted outand replaced with a priest's collar! Withinparts of republicanism and the left therehave been attempts to rescue this history,starting with the memoirs of United Irish-men like Myles Byrne who chose exile overcompromise. But, all too often, this historyhas been crushed beneath histories de-signed to fulfil the needs of the British and


had been arrested. The remaining leadersfelt forced to call an immediate rising, eventhough this would be before French aidcould arrive. The date was set for May23rd. A number of factors undermined therising in Dublin. However major risingsoccurred in Wexford in the south, and An-trim and Down in the north. Elsewherethere were minor skirmishes. By the au-tumn - despite a small French landing - therebellion had been defeated, tens of thou-sands were dead and a reign of terror hadspread over the country.

Origins of the risingThe 1798 rising occurred at a unique mo-ment in world politics, the point at whichparliamentary democracy (and capitalism)was replacing absolute monarchy (and feu-dalism). The American Revolution of 1771-81 and the French Revolution of 1789 werethe key inspirations for those who were tolead the rebellion in Ireland. Wolfe Tonedescribed how “the French Revolution be-came the test of every man’s political creed,and the nation was fairly divided into twogreat parties – the aristocracy and demo-crats”.8

To this was added the severe oppressionthe majority of Irish people lived under.The country was bitterly divided , two warshad been fought in the previous centurywith the combatants split along religiouslines. The native Catholic landowningclass had been forced either to surrendertheir lands or to convert to the Anglicanreligion. In parts of the country, in particu-lar the North-East, even the ordinaryCatholic tenants had been forced off theland, to be replaced with Presbyterian‘planters’ brought over from Scotland. Thisleft a legacy of sectarian rivalry whichhelped the British to ‘divide and rule’.

Although some reforms had been won, thesituation by the 1780’s was that the coun-try was ruled by Anglican landowners,with Presbyterian landowners having onlylimited political power, and Catholic land-owners none. Beyond this, the mass of thepopulation, Catholic, Protestant (Anglican)and Dissenter (Presbyterian) had virtu-ally no rights at all. In 1831 there were6,000 absentee landlords, who owned over7,000,000 acres.

The complete subjection the peasantry weresubjected to is hinted by a traveller throughIreland at the time who wrote

“A landlord in Ireland can scarcely in-vent an order which a servant, labourer,or cottier dares to refuse to execute. ... Apoor man would have his bones broken ifhe offered to lift a hand in his owndefence . . . Landlords of consequencehave assured me that many of theircottiers would think themselves hon-oured by having their wives and daugh-ters sent for to the bed of their master."9

There were famines in 1740, ’57, ’65 and’70. The first of these alone killed 400,000.10

The arrival of capitalism had seen thebeginnings of a working class. There were

at least 27 labour disputes in Dublin from1717 to 1800 and the formation of the earlytrade unions had started11 . “There were 50combinations in 27 different trades in Dub-lin in the period 1772-95. There were atleast 30 food riots ... in the period 1772-94..”12

This atmosphere of revolutionary ideas onthe one hand, and brutal oppression on theother, was the climate in which the UnitedIrishmen were born in 1791. This initiallyreformist organisation, at first composedof the Protestant middle class was to choosewithin a few years to take the path oflaunching a democratic and anti-colonialrevolution.

Leadership Vs massesAccording to the Report of the Secret Com-mittee of the House of Lords - shortly beforethe United Irishmen were founded - Tone,Samuel Neilson and others in the northcirculated a Secret Manifesto to the Friendsof Freedom in Ireland. Towards the endthis contained a description of past move-ments that was to prove prophetic as adescription of events in 1798

“When the aristocracy come forward, thepeople fall backwards; when the peoplecome forward, the aristocracy, fearful ofbeing left behind, insinuate themselvesinto our ranks and rise into timid lead-ers or treacherous auxiliaries.”13

Once the United Irishmen had decided totake the direction of rebellion, they had towin the mass of the people actively to joinin such a rebellion. To do this they high-lighted the economic advantages of reform.Gaining the vote for rich Catholic land-owners would mean little to those payingrent for this land.

Dr Willam James MacNeven, under inter-rogation by the House of Lords in 1798,when asked if Catholic emancipation orparliamentary reform mobilised ‘the lowerorders’ said “I am sure they do not under-stand it. What they very well understand isthat it would be a very great advantage tothem to be relieved from the payments oftithes and not to be fleeced by the land-lords”14 In 1794 they asked “Who makesthem rich? The answer is obvious - it is theindustrious poor”.

Historian Nancy Curtin points out that“Some united Irish recruiters ... suggestedthat a major redistribution of land wouldfollow a successful revolution” and that asa result “To a certain extent republicanismbecame associated in the common mindwith low rents, the abolition of tithes and atax burden borne by the wealthy and idlerather than by the poor and industrious”15

The Union doctrine; or poor man’s cat-echism, was published anonymously aspart of this effort and read in part

“I believe in a revolution founded on therights of man, in the natural andimprescriptable right of all citizens toall the land ... As the land and its pro-duce was intended for the use of man ’tis

unfair for fifty or a hundred men topossess what is for the subsistence ofnear five millions ...”16

Before 1794 the role consigned by republi-can leaders to the masses was one of fairlypassive displays of support for change. Forexample Illuminations (where people putlights in their windows) were important toshow the level of public support.

Following the 1794 banning of the DublinUnited Irishmen the masses became moreactively involved. Riots were organised bythe United Irishmen, particularly aroundthe arrival of the new Viceroy, Camden, inMarch 1795, when aristocrats were stonedin the streets of Dublin.

As public demonstrations were banned,various ruses were used to gather UnitedIrishmen together. Race meeting wereused as pretexts for mass assemblies. Mockfunerals with up to 2,000 ‘mourners’ wouldbe held, sometimes the coffin would actu-ally contain arms. In the countryside masspotato diggings (often for imprisonedUnited Irishmen) were organised and of-ten conducted as military drills. Thesewere a way of seeing who would turn outand how well they would follow orders.

This following of orders was central to thepreparation for rebellion, as the UnitedIrishmen’s leadership wanted to be able tocontrol and discipline the masses in theevent of a rising. This was also why aFrench landing was central. The Frencharmy would help not just to beat Britain,but also to control the masses. The originalstrategy for the rebellion was for only a fewthousand United Irishmen to join the armyof the French (and for these to be quicklydisciplined).

This is the context in which Tone’s “Ourfreedom must be had at all hazards. If themen of property will not help us, they mustfall; we will free ourselves by the aid of thatlarge and respectable class of the commu-nity - the men of no property” must betaken. Yes, the United Irishmen had turned


to the ‘men of no property’, but the leader-ship still intended to run the show, andwith French help hold back the masses ifnecessary.

After 1794, with the turn towards revolu-tionary politics and the need to mobilisethe masses, the class basis of the UnitedIrishmen underwent a radical change.Dublin membership of artisans, clerks andlabourers rose to nearly 50% of the total.17

Other popular political societies in Dublinin the 1790’s included ‘the Strugglers’. Onejudge referred to “the nest of clubs in thecity of Dublin”. Their membership wassaid to consist of “The younger part of thetradesmen, and in general all the appren-tices”. The informer Higgins describedthese clubs as comprising “King killers,Paineites, democrats, levellers and UnitedIrishmen”.18

The link with the ‘Defenders’A central part of the strategy for massrebellion was to build links with the al-ready established movements, and in par-ticular the Defenders. The Defenders hadstarted as a local ‘faction’ (gang) in Ar-magh and were initially non-sectarian,their first Captain being Presbyterian.19 .Armagh was the scene of intense politicalagitation around the arming of Catholics,with the Protestant Orange Order20 con-ducting armed attacks on Catholics. How-ever the arming of the Catholics had “thefull support of a radical section of Protes-tant political opinion” 21 . These originsare important, as later historians haveattempted to portray the Defenders aspurely a Catholic sectarian organisation, asort of mirror image of the Orange Order.

In 1795, up to 7,000 Catholics were drivenout of Armagh by Orange Order pogroms.The United Irishmen provided lawyers toprosecute on behalf of the victims of Or-

ange attacks. “Special missions were dis-patched there in 1792 and again in 1795and senior figures like Neilson, Teeling,McCracken, Quigley and Lowry worked thearea ceaselessly ... “.22 Many expelledCatholic families were sheltered by Pres-byterian United Irishmen in Belfast, andlater, Antrim and Down. These expulsionsfacilitated the spread of Defenderism andfear of the Orange Order to other parts ofIreland.

The Defenders were already politicised tosome extent by the hope of French inter-vention and their anti- tax and anti-tithepropaganda. They proclaimed “We havelived long enough upon potatoes and salt; itis our turn now to eat mutton and beef” 23 .Despite their rural origins the Defenderswere not a peasant movement but “drawnfrom among weavers, labourers and tenantfarmers ... and from the growing artisanclass of the towns”. By 1795 there weresome 4000 Defenders in Dublin, closelylinked with many of the republican clubsin the city. The complex nature of theDefenders is illustrated as “in Dublin therewere Protestant Defenders” even though“revenge against Protestants was certainlyan important element in Defender think-ing” 24 .

The Orange Order attacks had inevitablyintroduced sectarianism into the Defend-ers. But the United Irishmen saw thissectarianism as being due to the influenceof priests, and directed only against Prot-estant landlords. This was to prove aserious under estimation, particularly out-side of the north.

The RebellionIn December of 1796, a French Fleet ap-peared off the shores of Bantry Bay with15,000 French soldiers and Wolfe Tone.Rough seas and inexperienced sailors pre-vented a landing which would have liber-

ated the country from British rule. TheBritish campaign of terror against theUnited Irishmen which followed was seri-ously undermining the organisation by1798. In the Spring of 1798, pressure wasmounting for a rising without the French,and after the arrest of most of the Leinsterleadership a date for the rising was set bythose who escaped.

The key to the rising was to be Dublin. Itwas intended to seize the city and trigger amessage to the rest of the country by stop-ping the mail coaches. However, althoughthousands turned out for the rising in thecity, it ended up as a fiasco with almost nofighting. The reasons why this happenedcan be found in the class basis of the lead-ership of the United Irishmen.

Once it was clear that the rising was goingto happen without the French, it was alsoclear that there was no mechanism to holdback the workers and peasants from goingbeyond the bourgeois democratic and sepa-ratist aims of the rising. The key informerwho betrayed the Dublin rising, Reynolds,had turned because of fears of his ancestralestates being confiscated.25

Edward Fitzgerald, Neilson and the otherswho planned the May 21st rising in Dublinwere willing to risk this. But they werearrested and removed from the scene byMay 19th. The British, on the informationof informers, had seized the gathering pointfor the rising. In the confusion there waslittle chance of the rank and file of theUnited Irishmen gathering to create analternative plan. And the second rank ofleadership, which could have created analternative plan, failed to do so preciselybecause it now feared the uncontrolled‘mob’.

Precisely as had been warned “when thepeople come forward, the aristocracy, fear-

Pitch capping, in which moltenpitch was set alight on the

victims head and the travellinggallows used to half-hang

people. Tortures like these,along with flogging were used

on thousands of people to try toforce them to reveal the names

of United Irishmen or thelocation of arms in 1797 andearly 1798. Many died as a

result of them.

They were accompanied by ageneral campaign of looting

and rape, along with transpor-tation of suspects to the fleet.

This allowed the British forcesto seriously undermine United

Irishmen organisation andforced the remaining leadership

to call a premature rising.


ful of being left behind, insinuate them-selves into our ranks and rise into timidleaders or treacherous auxiliaries.”

The Wexford RepublicA limited rising occurred around Dublinwhich was rapidly and brutally suppressed.Loyalists and British forces unleashed fur-ther terror in the rest of the country. InWicklow and North Wexford this includedthe execution of over 50 United Irish pris-oners, the murder of civilians and the burn-ing of homes.

There was United Irishmen organisationin this area, Wexford town was consideredthe preferred landing place for the French.But the bulk of the 300 or so United Irish-men here do not appear to have been pre-paring for a rising. One historian of therebellion, Dickson, reckons that “without aFrench landing and without the compul-sion applied by the magistrates and theiragents ... there would have been no Wexfordrising at all”.26 and his account demon-strates that the early battles were sponta-neous clashes. The all important initialvictory was at Oulard, where there was noreal rebel commander and some of theUnited Irishmen were armed only withstones.

The Oulard victory demonstrated that theBritish army were not unbeatable. This,and the increasing repression, saw hun-dreds and then thousands flock to join therebel hilltop encampments. However thesuperior tactics, arms and training of theBritish forces was to prove a match for therebels. On 4th and 5th June the rebellionsuffered its most decisive defeat at thebattle of New Ross, and on 9th the defeat atthe battle of Arklow was the last majorattempt to spread the rebellion to neigh-bouring counties.

Wexford town was however liberated forthree weeks. At the time it was thrivingand had a population of 10,000, many ofwhom were Protestants. After liberation,a seven man directory of the main UnitedIrishmen and a 500 strong senate took overthe running of the town. Both of theseincluded Catholic and Protestant mem-bers. In addition each area / district had itsown local committee, militia and electedleader. The time before it was retaken wasnot sufficient for much constructive activ-ity beyond the printing of ration coupons.However the limited reorganisation of lo-cal government that did occur, and itssuccess in maintaining order until justbefore the town fell, demonstrates the of-ten denied political side of the Wexfordrebellion.27

On 21st the final major battle of the ‘Wex-ford republic’ was fought at Vinegar Hill.It had taken some 20,000 British soldiersthree weeks to crush the 30,000 Wexfordrebels who were “utterly untrained, practi-cally leaderless and miserably armed”.28

Events in Antrim/DownThe North had also seen a savage cam-paign of British torture which had terri-

fied, disorganised and disarmed many ofthe United Irishmen. General Knox hadtold General Lake that his methods werealso intended to “increase the animositybetween the Orangemen and the UnitedIrishmen”. Robert Simms who was Adja-cent-General of the United Irishmen in thenorth simply refused to acknowledge thatthe signal from Dublin indicated he shouldrise. Instead, presumably in part for theclass interests already outlined, he pre-ferred to wait for the French.

Nevertheless, the rank and file were deter-mined there should be a rising and thelower officers with Henry Joy McCracken(who had just returned from jail in Dublin)forced Simms to resign on June 1st and gotan order for a rising at a delegate meetingon June 2nd. This delay meant it was nottill 5th that the rising started in Antrim,and 7th in Down. In the course of thisdelay, the northern rising was furtherweakened. Three of the United Irishmencolonels gave the plans to the British, tak-ing away any element of surprise and al-lowing them to prepare for the rising.

More seriously, stories started reachingthe north from the Wexford rebellion withthe newspapers “rivalling rumour in por-traying in Wexford an image of Catholicmassacre and plunder equalled only bylegends ...”. Many of these stories werefalse although some Protestant men hadbeen killed in Enniscorthy. The distortedversion that reached the north by 4 June(before the rising) was that “at Enniscorthyin the county of Wexford every Protestantman, woman and child, even infants,have been murdered”. Alongsidethis were manufactured itemslike a supposed Wexford Oath“I, A.B. do solemnly swear ...that I will burn, destroy and mur-der all heretics up to my knees inblood”.

Later commentaries tried to denythe scale of the Northern rising,or have claimed that many Pres-byterians failed to turn out. How-ever, given all of the above, what istruly remarkable is how little effectall this had, in particular as by 5ththe Wexford rising had clearly failedto spread. Of the 31,000 UnitedIrishmen in the area of the northernrising, 22,000 actually took part inthe major battles (more turned outbut missed the major battles).29

Like the Wexford rising, theNorthern rebels suc-ceeded in winning mi-

nor skirmishes against the British butwere defeated in the major battles by theexperienced and better equipped. As inWexford, the British burned towns, vil-lages and houses they considered sympa-thetic to the rebels and massacred bothprisoners and wounded during and afterthe battles. After the battle of Antrim,some were buried alive.30

The last major battle of the Northern ris-ing was at Ballynahinch on 13th June. Bythe time the French arrived in Killala inAugust, it was too late, although theirinitial success does suggest that either theWexford or Antrim rebels may have beenmuch more successful if they had the ben-efit of even the small number of experi-enced French troops and arms later landedat Killala.

Some 32 United Irishmen leaders wereexecuted in the North after the rising,including two Presbyterian ministers.Henry Joy McCracken in hiding after therising, wrote a letter to his sister in whichhe sums up the cause of the failure of therising as “the rich always betray the poor”.He was captured and executed in Belfaston July 16th.

Post rebellion republicansAfter the rising it was in the interests ofthose who had led it to minimise theirinvolvement by insisting they were igno-rant dupes or forced by ‘the mob’ to take

Henry JoyMcCracken,executed in

Belfast at the ageof 31.


part. A song asks “Who fears to speak of’98?”. People researching oral historieshave indicated that the answer was ‘justabout everyone’. Even the year of death onthe gravestones of those who died in therising was commonly falsified. The reasonwas the British campaign of terror, whichcarried on into the following century withchapel burning’s and deportations of cartloads of suspects.

In Wexford, where the death penalty stillapplied to anyone who had been a UnitedIrish officer, it was a common defence forex-leaders to claim they were forced intotheir role by mobs of rebels. This explana-tion was handy for both the official andCatholic nationalist versions of the his-tory. It suggested that the Protestantportion of the leadership was coincidentalin what was otherwise a confessional orsectarian rising, depending on your pointof view. This deception was credible be-cause the United Irishmen membershiplists for Wexford were never captured. Thisallowed ex-rebel leaders like Edward Hayto argue that “there were fewer UnitedIrishmen in the county of Wexford then inany other part of Ireland”31 .

The Orange OrderOn the loyalist side, the Orange Orderneeded to minimise Presbyterian involve-ment in the rising and portray it as apurely sectarian and Catholic affair. Soloyalist accounts have tended to focus onthe Wexford massacres, often making quitefalse claims about their scale, who wasmassacred and why they were massacred.Musgraves (the main loyalist historian) inhis coverage of the rebellion gives only 2%of his writing to the Antrim and Downrebellion while 62% of his coverage concen-trates on Wexford.32 The limited accountsgiven of the Northern rising portray it asidealistic Presbyterians being betrayed bytheir Catholic neighbours and so learningto become ‘good loyal Orange men’. Thescale of British and loyalist massacres ofthese Presbyterians is seldom mentioned.

The CentenaryMore than anything else the Catholic na-tionalist history of the rising was deter-mined by the needs of the Catholic churchwhen faced with the socialist influencedFenian movement one hundred years later.Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘A Popular history ofthe insurrection of 1798’, published in 1870was the major work from this perspective.This ‘history’ had several aims; to hide therole of the church hierarchy in condemningthe rising (and instead claim that thechurch led the rising); to blame the failureof the rising on underground revolutionaryorganisation (as an attack on the Fenians);and to minimise the involvement of North-ern Presbyterians and democratic ideals.In so far as they are mentioned the view isthat “it was the turbulent and disorderlyPresbyterians who seduced the law abidingCatholics”. 33

This history has therefore emphasised therebellion in Wexford and elevated the roleof the handful of priests who played anactive part. Father Murphy thus becomesthe leader of the rising. The fight was for‘faith and fatherland’, as a statue of aPikeman draped in rosary beads whichwas erected in Enniscorthy on the hun-dredth anniversary of the rising proclaims.Finally, the role of the United Irishmen isminimised. The leadership role of UnitedIrishmen like Baganal Harvey, MatthewKeogh and Edward Lough, who were Prot-estant, is glossed over. The failure of therebellion is ‘explained’ by the inevitabilityof revolutionary movements being betrayedby informers. Patrick Kavanagh presentsFather Murphy as the sole heart of theinsurrection, and the United Irishmen as“riddled by spies, ruined by drink, withself-important leaders ... “. 34

Issues of ‘98To a large extent, these histories shapedthe popular understanding of the rising.In this limited space it is impossible toaddress all the issues they raise. But thereis a need for current revolutionary organi-sations in Ireland to dispel the illusionscreated of the past. This is particularlytrue with regard to Protestant workers inthe north who are largely unaware that itwas their forefathers who invented Irishrepublicanism, nor indeed that the firstRepublican victim of a showtrial and ex-ecution was a Presbyterian fromBallymena, Willam Orr.

The current debate on the release of politi-cal prisoners could be much informed ifOrr’s pre-execution words were remem-bered “If to have loved my country, to haveknown its Wrongs, to have felt the Injuriesof the persecuted Catholics and to haveunited with them and all other ReligiousPersuasion in the most orderly and sangui-nary means of procuring Redress - If thesebe Felonies I am a Felon but not otherwise...". 35

The role of the Catholic churchAlthough, by 1898, the Catholic churchwould choose to pretend it had led the

Wexford rising, in 1798 nothing could befurther from the truth. Dr Troy, Arch-bishop of Dublin, said within days of therising (27 May 1798) that “We bitterlylament the fatal consequences of this anti-Christian conspiracy”.

In fact the Catholic hierarchy was opposedto the radical ideas of the rebellion and,especially since the opening of the Catholicseminary at Maynooth, stood beside Brit-ain and the Irish Protestant Ascendancyclass. Three days after the rebellion hadstarted, the following declaration came outof Maynooth

“We, the undersigned, his Majesty’s mostloyal subjects, the Roman Catholics ofIreland, think it necessary at this mo-ment publicly to declare our firm attach-ment to his Majesty’s royal person, andto the constitution under which we havethe happiness to live ... We cannot avoidexpressing to Your Excellency our regretat seeing, amid the general delusion,many, particularly of the lower orders,of our own religious persuasion engagedin unlawful associations and practises”(30 May 1798)

This was signed by the President of theRoyal College of Maynooth and 2000 of theProfessors and students, 4 lords and 72baronets.36 One of the Wexford rebels,Myles Byrne, wrote afterwards that “priestssaved the infamous English government inIreland from destruction”.37

Individual Catholic priests like FatherMurphy played an important leadershiprole in the rising, alongside the mostlyProtestant United Irishmen leaders. Ac-cording to Dickson “at least eleven Catholiccurates took an active part and of thesethree were executed”.38 But their ownBishop described the rebel priests after therebellion as “excommunicated priests,drunken and profligate couple-beggars, thevery faeces of the Church”. 39 . Their role inthe leadership of the rising was against thewishes of the hierarchy and out of a moti-vation to protect their parishioners fromLoyalist atrocities.

Was the rebellion Protestant in the

north and Catholic in the south?A more complex attempt to deny the legacyof 1798 is to suggest that the northern andsouthern risings were not really connected.That the northern rising was Presbyterianand democratic while the southern wasCatholic and sectarian.

Although the population (and thus therebels) in the north were mainly Presbyte-rian and those in the south mainly Catho-lic, both armies contained considerablenumber of both religions. I’ve alreadymentioned some of the Protestant leadersin the south. Indeed, if partly to head offsectarian tension within the rebel army,United Irishmen commander Roche issueda proclamation on 7th June “to my Protes-tant soldiers I feel much in dept for theirgallant behaviour in the field”. For thereasons discussed below, the Wexford ris-

Earl Camden, theBritish Viceroy at

the time of therebellion


ing was seriously mired by sectarianism,but right to the end there were Protestantsamong the rebels. It is still rememberedaround Carlow that after the battle FatherJohn Murphy was hidden by a Protestantfarmer, only to be betrayed by a Catholicthe next day.

It is true that in the north there weresectarian tensions present, a CatholicUnited Irish officer urged a column of Pres-byterians to “avenge the Battle of theBoyne”40 just before the battle of Antrim!Also in the north, at Ballynahinch, theDefenders (who would have been over-whelmingly Catholic) fought as a distinctunit. However the figures show that thou-sands of Catholics and Protestants turnedout and fought side by side in a series ofbattles, despite the obvious hopelessnessof the situation.

Protestants in Wicklow andWexford

There were stronger sectarian elements inthe Wexford rising. To understand wherethese came from, we need to look at eventsimmediately before the rising. About 25%of the population was Protestant, theseincluded a few recently arrived coloniesthat must have displaced earlier Catholictenants and thus caused sectarian ten-sions.

The high percentage of Protestants inWexford also made it possible to constructa Militia and later Yeomanry that wasextremely sectarian in composition, in thewords of Dickson in Wexford “these Yeo-man were almost entirely a Protestantforce”.41 This Yeomanry was responsiblein part for the savage repression that pre-ceded the rising and the initial house andchapel burning during it. Col. Hugh Pearseobserved “in Wexford at least, the miscon-duct of the Militia and Yeomanry ... waslargely to blame for the outbreak ... it canonly be said that cruelty and oppressionproduced a yet more savage revenge”.42

When faced with a Protestant Landlordclass mobilising a mainly Protestant localarmy to torture them and burn their chap-els, it is perhaps unsurprising that manyCatholics were inclined to identify Protes-tants as a whole as the problem. TheUnited Irishmen organisation in the areabefore the rising was too small to makemuch progress in overcoming this feeling,and in fact one of their tactics added to thesectarian tension. There were OrangeLodges in Wexford and Wicklow. As else-where, there is evidence that the UnitedIrishmen deliberately spread rumours ofan Orange plot to massacre Catholics. Theintention was that the Catholics wouldjoin the rebellion in greater numbers, butsuch rumours inevitably heightened dis-trust of all Protestants.

The Wexford massacresThroughout the Wexford rising, sectariantensions were never far from erupting.This was expressed throughout the risingas a pressure on Protestants to convert to

Catholicism, particularly in Wexford townwhere “Among the insurgent rank and file... heresy hunting became widespread ...Protestants found it prudent to attend massas the only means of saving their lives.”43

When the rebels carried out massacresthey often had strong sectarian under-tones. Loyalist historians and evenPakenham, the most widely read historianof the rising, are guilty of distorting thenature of these massacres by claiming onlyProtestants were executed.

The reality of the Wexford massacres wasthat the victims tended to be landlords, orthe actual agents of British rule like mag-istrates and those related to them or inservice to them. Anyone suspected of beingan Orangeman was also liable to be ex-ecuted. Massacres were also a feature ofthe rebellion in the north, where no sectar-ian motive can so easily be attached. Arebel unit near Saintfield (in the north),led by James Breeze, attacked and set fireto the home of Hugh McKee, a well knownloyalist and informer, burning him, hiswife, five sons, three daughters and house-maid to death.44

Loyalist historians are also guilty of ignor-ing or minimising the causes of most of themassacres, the far larger massacres byBritish army and loyalist forces of civil-ians, rebel prisoners and wounded. Thegreatest of these was the massacres duringand after the battle of New Ross whereeven the Loyalist historian Rev. JamesGordon admits “I have reason to think moremen than fell in battle were slain in coldblood”45 . The scale of this massacre canonly be guessed at, but after the battle 3,400 rebels were buried, 62 cart loads ofrebel bodies were thrown in the river andmany others (particularly wounded) wereburned in the houses of the town. Accord-ing to many accounts the screams ofwounded rebels being deliberately burnedalive may have played a significant part inthe murder of 100 loyalist civilian prison-ers at nearby Scullabogue on the morningof the battle.

At Scullabogue around 100 were murdered,74 were burned alive in a barn, (nine ofwhom were women and 8 of whom wereCatholic) and 21 men were killed on thefront lawn. A survivor, Frizel stated thatthe cause was the rumour that the militarywere murdering prisoners at New Ross.46

At least three Protestants were amongstthe rebels who carried out these killings.The presence of Protestants amongst themurderers and Catholics among the vic-tims gives the lie to the claim that this wasa simple sectarian massacre.

The leadership of the rebellion, both UnitedIrishmen and the Catholic priests, tried todefuse the sectarian tension and preventmassacres. On 7th June, Edward Lough,commander of the Vinegar Hill camp, is-sued a proclamation “this is not a war forreligion but for liberty”.47 Vinegar Hill wasthe site of many individual executions overthe 23 days the rebel camp existed there.Between 300 and 400 were executed, mostwere Protestant although Luke Byrne, oneof the organisers of the executions, is quotedas saying “If anyone can vouch for any ofthe prisoners not being Orangemen, I haveno objection they should be discharged”and indeed all captured Quakers werereleased.48 In general, throughout Wex-ford Quakers who were Protestant but notassociated with loyalism were well treatedby the rebels, but did suffer at the hands ofthe loyalists.

A proclamation from Wexford on 9th Junecalled to “protect the persons and proper-ties of those of all religious persuasions whohave not oppressed us”49 and on 14th Junethe United Irishmen oath was introducedto the Wexford army. None of this is todeny that there were sectarian tensionsand indeed sectarian elements to the mas-sacres, perhaps most openly after the rebelarmy had abandoned Wexford. ThomasDixon and his wife then brought 70 meninto the town during the night “from thenorthern side of the Slaney” and plied themwith whiskey. The following day a massa-cre started at 14:00 and lasted over fivehours. Up to 97 were murdered.

A loyalist cartoon of United Irishmen training


However, even here, not all the 260 prison-ers from whom those massacred were se-lected could be described as innocentvictims. One of those killed (Turner) wasseen burning cabins in Oulard shortly be-fore the battle there.50 Another prisonerwho survived was Lord Kingsborough, com-mander of the hated North Cork Militiaand popularly regarded as having intro-duced the pitch cap torture, in which thevictims head was set on fire.51 Most sig-nificantly this massacre happened whenthe rebel army had withdrawn from thetown and stopped when rebel forces re-turned.

It is an unfortunate feature of some repub-lican and left histories of 1798 that thesectarian nature of the Wexford massacresis either avoided or minimised. To north-ern Protestant workers today this merelyappears to confirm an impression that thisis the secret agenda of the republican move-ment. The stories - both true and false - ofsectarian massacres in Wexford that werecirculated in the North before and duringthe rising must have undermined the unityof the United Irishmen. Although theWexford leadership did act to limit sectari-anism, in hindsight it is obvious that theUnited Irishmen were complacent aboutsectarianism amongst the Defenders andin Wexford more could and should havebeen done. In particular the final and mostblatantly sectarian massacre, at Wexfordbridge, could probably have been avoided ifthe Dixons, the couple at the centre of it,had been silenced. They had spent theperiod of the rebellion in Wexford trying towhip up a pogrom.

1798 and Irish nationalismThe debate around nation is in itselfsomething that divides the Irish left.In particular after the partition ofIreland in 1922, there has been a realand somewhat successful effort todivide people into two nations. Oneconsists of all the people in the southalong with northern Catholics. Ca-tholicism is a central part of thisdefinition, with the Catholic Churchbeing given an informal veto for manydecades over state policy in the south. Toa large extent this definition is tacitlyaccepted by many parts of the Republicanmovement today. Francie Molloy’s 1996election campaign posters - based on therebeing 20,000 more nationalists (i.e. Catho-lics) than Protestants in Mid-Ulster - is acase in point. This has led to a situationwhere those responsible for sectarian mur-ders of Protestants were not treated asseriously by the republican movement asinformers or even those judged guilty of‘anti-social’ crime.

However, the south has started to emergefrom under the long dark shadow of Catho-lic nationalism, in the urban centres atleast. De Valera’s comely maids at theCrossroads and the threat of the Bishop’scrosier have faded into a distant and bi-zarre past.

However in the north, the ideology of a‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’ isstill strong. Particularly in recent years,this has seen the political decision of north-ern loyalists to start referring to them-selves as British or ‘Ulster-Scots’. This isa quite remarkable robbing of even thehistory of loyalism, and would have beenan insult to even the Orangemen of 1798,one of whom James Claudius Beresforddeclared he was “Proud of the name of anIrishman, I hope never to exchange it forthat of a colonist”.52

A couple of years after the rising, Britainsucceeded in forcing the Irish Parliamentto pass an ‘Act of Union’ which effectivelydissolved that parliament and replaced itwith direct rule from Westminster. It isironic that 36 Orange Lodges in Co. Ar-magh and 13 in Co. Fermanagh declaredagainst this Act of Union. Lodge No. 500declared it would “support the independ-ence of Ireland and the constitution of 1782”and “declare as Orangemen, as Freeholders,as Irishmen that we consider the extinction

of our separate legislatureas the extinction of theIrish Nation”.53

What was thenation fought for

in 1798?The rewriting of the his-tory of 1798 by loyalistsand nationalists alike hasa common purpose, whichis to define being ‘Irish’as containing a require-ment to being a Catholic.The greatest defeat of1798 is the success of thisproject, in particular af-

ter partition when thesouthern and northernstates adopted opposed con-fessional definitions ofthemselves. One legacy ofthat failure is that in 1998we not only live on a di-vided island but that thevast majority of our hos-pitals and schools are ei-ther Catholic orProtestant.

The United Irishmen’score project, to replace the

name of Irishman for the labels of Catholic,Protestant and Dissenter was not an ab-stract nationalist one. It came from aconcrete analysis that unless this was donethen no progress could be made because apeople divided were easily ruled. Here liesthe greatest gulf with ‘republicans’ todaywho reverse this process and imagine thatsuch unity can only be the outcome ratherthan the cause of progress.

The rebellion of the United Irishmen wasnot a rebellion for four abstract green fields,free of John Bull. It was inspired by thenew ideas of equality, fraternity and lib-erty coming out of the French revolution.

Separatism became a necessary step onceit was realised that fulfilling these ideasrequired the ending of British rule. Formany it also represented a rebellion againstthe ownership of land by a few, and forsome a move towards an equality of prop-erty.

Those leaders who planned the rising werepart of a revolutionary wave sweeping thewestern world, they were international-ists and indeed an agreement for distinctrepublics was drawn up with the UnitedScotsmen and the United Englishmen.54

They corresponded with similar societiesin Paris and London. Some, like ThomasRussell, were also active anti-slavery cam-paigners. As Connolly puts it “these menaimed at nothing less than a social andpolitical revolution such as had been ac-complished in France, or even greater”.55

None of this is to claim that socialism wason the agenda in 1798. Common ownershipof the means of production would not be-come a logical solution for some years yet,when large numbers of people started towork in situations where they could notsimply divide up their workplace. Butthere is no denying that radical ideas thatare well in advance of today’s republicanswere on the agenda of many in 1798.

The central message of 1798 was not Irishunity for its own sake, indeed the strongestopponents of the British parliament hadbeen the Irish ascendancy, terrified thatdirect rule might result in Catholic eman-cipation. Unity offered to remove the sec-tarian barriers that enabled a tinyascendancy class to rule over millions with-out granting even a thimble full of demo-cratic rights. The struggle has progressedsince as many of these rights have beenwon, but in terms of creating an anarchistsociety the words of James Hope, the mostproletarian of the 1798 leaders still apply

“Och, Paddies, my hearties, have donewid your parties. Let men of all creedsand profissions agree. If Orange andGreen min, no longer were seen, min.Och, naboclis, how easy ould Irelandwe’d free.”

1Freeman’s Journal, 22 May, 18412 Which represented not only a revolutionary badge but adefence of the execution of the French king Louis.3Labour and Irish History, James Connolly, ChVII4The Tree of Liberty, Radicalism, Catholicism andthe Construction of Irish Identity 1760 - 1830,Kevin Whelan, p1675A history of the Irish Working Class, PeterBerresford Ellis, 1972, p716The Women of 1798 : Representations andrealities by Dáire Keogh in 1798 ; 200 years of

This article is based on a much longerdraft which includes discussion of theradical politics of the period and the pre-rebellion organisation of the United Irish-men. This can be read on the internet athttp://flag.blackened.net/revolt/andrew/1798.htmlor by sending £1 and a S.A.E. to WSM,PO Box 1528, Dublin 8.


Letters

Dear Comrades,

I read the article about Italian anarchismin your last issue and after showing it tocomrades involved in the ‘Italian Solidar-ity Committee’ in Munich, Germany, havebeen urged to write to you to comment ona few points in this article.

Under the heading “Non-FederatedGroups” the author talks about a groupcalled ‘Canenero’. In reality no such groupexists, ‘Canenero’ is a magazine that writesabout insurrectionalism and is not affili-ated to any particular group.

The author afterwards accuses this non-existent group of “military actions” which“are decided in secrecy”. This is simply alie, the comrades in Italy do not distin-guish between ‘military’ and ‘nonmilitary’actions, they see it as ‘direct action’ whichcan - of course - take different forms. Asthere is no established organisation mostactions are decided more or less ‘secretly’,i.e. in very small groups, but there existmany opportunities whereinsurrectionalistic anarchists meet (withthe full knowledge of other Italian anar-chists) and your author would have been

Reply of Donato Romito (FdCA)

Yes, what’s very important is solidarity -solidarity with comrades who are victimsof state repression. (See judge Marini’sstunt, one comrade’s suicide in prison andanother two in jail in Turin, one comrade inMilan sentenced to 5 years and 270 mil-lions of Italian liras on the base of a notfocusing video....) But solidarity does notimply agreement or support forinsurrectionalistic positions.

Direct action is made by the organisedmasses, and not by individuals consider-ing themselves as anarchist vanguardsand splinters of the working-class at thesame time. Anarchism was born inside thereal movement of the masses and its revo-lutionary aims live inside the class-strug-gles and are not separate from them.

So it does not matter whether “Canenero”is a magazine or a group, it does matter ifdifferent forms of direct action are “de-cided more or less secretly” “by very smallgroups” of insurrectionist anarchists. Ourview it that of Cafiero, who wrote in 1882

: “...it’s better one step with all comradesalong the real road of life, than to stayalone walking hundreds of yards...inabstract.”

Libertarian Regards, Donato Romito

Federazione Dei Comunisti [email protected]://www.pandora.it/fdca

more than welcome to participate.

Insurrectionalistic anarchists in Italy donot form a sort of clandestine movement asthe article implies, instead this is exactlywhat the Italian state and the police wantto make everybody believe, so they can geton with their repression and their impris-onments.

The insurrectionalistic comrades in Italyneed our solidarity, because tomorrow itcould be others who are criminalised andeventually it could be us.

More information about the recent repres-sion against Italian anarchists can be ob-tained from the “Italian SolidarityCommittee” in Munich at the followingaddress:Solikommittee Italien c/o InfoladenMunchenBreisachnerstr. 1281667 Munchen Germany

All the best.

Martin Kubler (for the Italian SolidarityCommittee, Munich)

23rd October 1997

The last issue of Red & Black Revolution included an article written byDonato Romito, a militant in the Italian FdCA for many years. Oneparagraph of this has proved controversial and below we print a reply tothis paragraph and Donato's response to the points raised. The full articleis on the web at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/rbr3_italy.html or ifyou send us an SAE we'll send you a copy of it. The paragraph in questionis reproduced below

There are tens of non-federated groups and circles. ... Among these groups we have tomention Cane Nero. Their positions are inspired by insurrectionalism (in the name ofanarchy). Their "military" actions are decided in secrecy and often provoke policerepression against all anarchists who more often than not know nothing about Cane Nero'sactions. These comrades are then asked by Cane Nero to support it. Yet when the dusteventually settles, the name of anarchy has been ruined and around anarchism there isonly a desert!!

resonance, Ed. Mary Cullen7 Catholic emancipation was the demand for the removalof laws that discriminated against Catholics8quoted in Labour and Irish History, ibid, Ch VII9Arthur Young, in his Tour of Ireland quoted inLabour and Irish History, ibid, chap IV10A history of the Irish Working Class, ibid, p5411The United Irishmen, Nancy Curtin, 1994, p 14712 The Tree of Liberty, ibid, p9213Quoted in Labour and Irish History, ibid, ChapVII14The United Irishmen, ibid, p2815The United Irishmen, ibid, p. 119 - 12016quoted in 1798: the United Irishmen and theearly Trade Unions, Mary Muldowney in SIPTUFightback No 717The United Irishmen, ibid, 199418The Tree of Liberty, ibid, p77 - 7919The United Irishmen, ibid, p 149.20Then known as the ‘Peep O Day boy’ after theirpractise of carrying out dawn raids on Catholic homes21The Defenders, p18, Deirdre Lindsay, in 1798 ;200 years of resonance, Ed. Mary Cullen

22The Tree of Liberty, ibid, p12823The Defenders, p19, ibid24 Ibid, p20-2225Citizen Lord : Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 1763 -1798, Stella Tillyard, p24626 The Wexford Rising in 1798, Charles Dickson,1955, p3627The Wexford Republic of June 1798 : A storyhidden from history, Kevin Whelan in 1798 ; 200years of resonance, Ed. Mary Cullen28The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p4129The United Irishmen, ibid, p260 -26730Revolt in North, Charles Dickson, 1960, p13531History of the Insurrection in the county ofWexford, 179832The Tree of Liberty, ibid, p13833 ibid, p15034 ibid, p17035Willam Orr, pre-hanging declaration, 2.45pm,14 October 179636The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p 1637Memoirs, Vol. 1, p39 (1906)38The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p 17

39 A vindication of the Roman Catholic Clergy ofthe town of Wexford during the late unhappyrebellion, pub 179940 When Catholics and Protestants fought onopposite side41The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p1342Col. Hugh Pearse in ‘Memoir of the life andservice of Viscount Lake’ (1744 - 1808) p95quoted in The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p1243The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p 1844APRN, 11 May 199845The Wexford Rising in 1798, ibid, p11646Ibid, p12947Ibid, p12648Ibid, p7749Ibid, 1955, p12650Ibid, 1955, p6251Ibid, 1955, p14952Revolt in North, ibid, p24353Ibid, p24354A history of the Irish Working Class, ibid, p7255Labour and Irish History, ibid, Chap VII


This book is probably the most detailedwork about them in the English language.Unfortunately, it takes as its starting pointthat readers will be extremely knowledge-able about both anarchist ideas and therole of the anarchist movement in Spain.Without such knowledge the reader willfind it impossible to understand what theauthor is writing about. Guillamón’s bookreads as if it is a specialised academicpaper, or a chapter which has been ex-tracted from a much bigger work aboutSpain.

To make matters worse, the author seemsunable - despite a familiarity with thehistorical details - to understand the ideasof anarchism. He criticises the Friends oneach occasion when they don’t issue “in-structions” or “seize power”. His own biasis made clear when he proclaims “anar-chism’s inadequacy as a revolutionarytheory of the proletariat” (p.93).

His own views appear to be of the Marxist‘council communism’ type which enjoyed abrief popularity, particularly in Germanyand the Netherlands, in the 1920s. Like all‘councilists’ Guillamon sees unions as “capi-talist State machinery” (page 83). Because

The Friends of DurrutiGroup: 1937-1939

of this he sees theentry of CNT mem-bers into the gov-ernment asinevitable. There-fore his biggestcriticism of theFriends is thatthey did not splitfrom the CNT, re-nounce anarchismand transformthemselves into arevolutionary party.

Spain in the 1930s hadthe biggest anarchistmovement in Europe,with almost two mil-lion people in its Na-tional Confederation of Workers (CNT), ittruly was a mass organisation with verydeep roots in the working class. The Com-munist Party, prior to 1936, was a smalloutfit, the anti-Stalinist POUM probablyhad no more than a few thousand membersand the Trotskyists could be counted onthe fingers of a couple of hands.

Because of this the syndicalist notion thatthe political battle of ideas was not of theutmost importance was widespread. Whilethere were activists and tendencies withvarying ideas and strategies within themovement, there was no large and clear-cut opposition when a section of the CNT‘leadership’ proposed ‘postponing’ the revo-lution and collaborating with the govern-ment to win the war against Franco. The‘Friends of Durruti’ group had no existenceprior to the outbreak of the Civil War inJuly 1936.

On July 19th 1936 workers across most ofSpain took to the streets when the militaryrose up against the centre left PopularFront government. Arms were seized andthe military rising defeated in over half ofthe country. For many this was the chanceto get rid of the capitalist system.

Workplaces were seized and put under thecontrol of their workers. In rural areastens of thousands of peasants collectivisedtheir land. Trade union militias wereformed to attack the military rebels. Powerwas shifted from the government and therich to local delegate committees.

Although the government still existed ithad no real power. The military, economicand political struggle was proceeding inde-pendently of the government, and, indeed,in spite of it. The councils and collectiveswhich had emerged were the structuresupon which the revolution could have beenbuilt and consolidated. They needed to bebrought together on a regional and na-tional level so that the power of the work-ers and peasants could have swept thegovernment aside. This would have meantrefusing to share power with the remnantsof the ruling class, it would have been a bigstep in making the social revolution com-plete.

Review

The ‘Friends of Durruti’ appear in just about every book on theSpanish Civil War, especially in relation to the 1937 May Days inBarcelona. They get mentioned but we are told very little abouttheir politics or activities. Some organisations, like the WorkersSolidarity Movement, see their political stance as important tothe tradition of revolutionary anarchism. Other anarchists,most notably sections of the syndicalist movement, condemnthem for ‘flirting with Bolshevism/Leninism/Trotskyism’ orfor ‘advocating an anarchist dictatorship’. So who werethey, where did they come from, what did they say, andwhat did they do?

by Agustin GuillamónTranslation by Paul Sharkey

£7.95 (AK Press)


The CNT’s leading committees refused todo this. After July 19th Prime MinisterCompanys of Catalonia called them to hisoffice and told them that the CNT had themass support, they controlled the region,and he would be their faithful servant ifthey took over. They refused. Instead theCNT joined the Catalan government, andlater the national government in Madrid.

This collaboration was in direct oppositionto all anarchism holds dear about endingthe division of people into rulers and ruled.Their reasoning was that the Western de-mocracies would not supply arms to beatFranco’s rebels if there was a social revolu-tion. (No arms ever came anyway!). Theyhad decided that winning the war andmaking the revolution were two differentthings, and that winning the war camefirst. This meant collaborating with all theanti-Franco forces.

Over the next year the capitalist state,aided by Stalin’s loyal servants in the Com-munist Party, set about rebuilding itself.All states demand a monopoly of armedforce and October 10th 1936 saw a“militarisation” decree making provisionfor putting the workers’ militias undergovernment control.

Five days later Jaime Balius wrote inSolidaridad Obrera, a CNT daily paper,that the working class should push on andhe warned against applying a brake to therevolution. He was a journalist with arecord as a hard-line anarchist, whichearned him several spells of imprisonmentby the Popular Front governments duringthe 1936-38 period. Balius was later tobecome secretary of the Friends.

In November, the legendary anarchist mili-tant Buenaventura Durruti told the maga-zine Anti-Fascist Spain,

“This decision by the government hashad a deplorable effect. It is absolutelydevoid of any sense of reality. There isan irreconcilable contrast between thatmentality and that of the militias. Weknow that one of these attitudes has tovanish in the face of the other one”.

On November 20th Durruti was killed onthe Madrid front. Over 500,000 attendedhis funeral in Barcelona. In December theGerman volunteers in the Durruti Col-umn’s International Group expressed theiropposition to militarisation and listed anumber of items they wanted incorporatedin any new military code: they wanted thedelegate system retained along with egali-tarian features; they wanted soldiers’ coun-cils to represent the army as a whole.

The beginning of 1937 saw the governmentissue an order that no pay and no equip-ment would be issued to non-militarisedcombat units. The anarchists and otherrevolutionaries were viewed by the gov-ernment as a bigger threat than Franco’smilitary rebels. The state authorities wereeven prepared to weaken the front if thatwas the cost of preserving capitalism.

March 5th, Solidaridad Obrera an-nounced the formation of a new group-ing: “The Friends of Durruti” is notjust another club. We aim to see theSpanish Revolution pervaded by therevolutionary acumen of our Durruti.The FoD remain faithful to the lastwords uttered by our comrade in theheart of Barcelona in denunciation ofthe work of the counter revolution. Toenrol in our association it is vital thatone belong to the CNT and show evi-dence of a record of struggle, a love ofideas and the revolution.” Applica-tions for membership could be made at theoffice of the CNT journalists union.

April 1st saw, Ruta, the paper of the Liber-tarian Youth in Catalonia, print an articleby the Friends which says

“We point the finger at no one. We feel aburning love for our precepts and ourorganisations. But as militants of them,we have an indisputable right to speakout. There is still time for us to rescue therevolution and revitalise our preceptsbut we must press on with the revolu-tion”.

On May 2nd the Friends held a publicmeeting in the Goya Theatre in Barcelonaat which they warned that an attack uponthe workers was imminent. The followingday the Stalinists seized the TelephoneExchange. This signalled the start of theMay Events which saw the CNT, IberianAnarchist Federation (FAI), Iberian Liber-tarian Youth Federation (FIJL) and thePOUM fighting against the Stalinists, re-publicans and Catalan nationalists, andthe official security forces.

The revolutionary forces soon controlledmost of the city. The next day, just as theCNT-FAI Defence Committee had resolved

Want to find out more?The Spanish Civil War: Anarchism in Action by Eddie Conlon. Why the warstarted, the workers’ response, was a revolution possible, the anarchist contributionin industry and on the land, their role in organising the anti-fascist militias, theStalinist sabotage of the revolution, why Franco won. £1.50

Lessons of the Spanish Revolution by Vernon Richards. Investigates the defeatof the Spanish Revolution and looks critically at the CNT “leadership”. £5.00

Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution by Jose Peirats. The first 100 pages area brief survey of the working class movement from the founding of the Spanishsection of the first International in 1969, and the struggles that were a prelude to theevents of 1936-39. The rest of the book is taken up with a comprehensive, criticalhistory of the Spanish Civil War and the role played by the anarchists. £6.00

Durruti: The People Armed by Abel Paz. Biography of the legendary BuenaventuraDurruti. A rich and passionate documentary of a man and his time. £8.95

Spain: Revolution and Counter-Revolution Reprints of articles from theBritish paper Spain and the World which appeared from 1936 - 1939. First handaccounts of the constructive aspects of the revolution: the collectives in industry,agriculture and public services; reports from the front. £5.00

The Maydays in Barcelona 1937 by Emma Goldman, Jose Peirats, BurnettBolloten and Agustin Souchy. Barcelona members of the CNT and Marxists of thePOUM party responded to provocations of the state police - backed by Catalanrepublicans and the Communist Party - by seizing control of the city. £2.50

Towards A Fresh Revolution by the Friends of Durruti. Why workers’ power andliberty were not won in Spain in 1936/37. This was written by a group of anarchistmilitants after the May Days of 1937, an excellent assessment of the mistakes thatshould not be made again. £0.80

A Chronology of the Friends of Durruti by Paul Sharkey. A short history of the‘Friends’, goes well with the above pamphlet. £0.50

Please add about 20% to cover postage & packing, and send your order to WSMBooks, P.O. Box 1528, Dublin 8.


to make a final assault on the governmentbuilding, the police HQ and the Hotel Co-lon, there came the radio appeals by CNTleaders Garcia Oliver and Marano Vazquezfor a ceasefire. The state forces availed ofthis chance to renew their attacks. Theconflict ignited again.

The FoD proclaimed

"we anarchists have arrived at the limitof our concessions... not another stepbackwards. It is the hour of action. Savethe revolution. If we continue to give upour position there is no doubt that in ashort time we shall be overwhelmed. Itis for this fundamental reason that it isnecessary to develop a new orientationfor our movement”.

“To beat Franco we need to crush thebourgeoisie and its Stalinist and Social-ist allies. The capitalist state must bedestroyed totally and there must be in-stalled workers’ power depending onrank & file committees. A-political an-archism has failed.”

They called for the formation of a revolu-tionary Junta, the disarming of the police,socialisation of the economy, and the disso-lution of parties which had turned againstthe working class. In effect they called forworking class power.

The confusion caused by CNT ministersappealing for the barricades to be takendown demoralised the fighters. CNT andPOUM militia columns preparing to marchon Barcelona were turned back after pleasfrom their leaders, but thousands of pro-government troops did arrive. The work-ers were defeated and the repression thatfollowed was severe.

The regional committee of the CNT issueda statement denouncing the Friends as“agents provocateurs” and saying they wereexpelled from the CNT. The Friends re-plied that only the local unions had thatpower, and, interestingly, not a single CNTunion was prepared to expel a single mem-ber for being in the FoD. But the strugglehad been lost, their offices were taken overby the police. The revolution was finishedand it was only a matter of time beforeFranco’s forces won the war.

It sounds disturbing to hear anarchiststalking about the need for a “junta”. Tomost of us in the English speaking world itconjures up an image of Generals in darkglasses running a dictatorship. However,in Spanish, it means no more than a com-mittee or council. CNT unions each had ajunta, as did the Mexican Liberal Party (ananarchist organisation - which shows thatlabels can be deceptive!).

In their pamphlet ‘Towards A Fresh Revo-lution’ the Friends spelled out what theymeant

“The body will be organised as follows:members of the revolutionary Junta willbe elected by democratic vote in the un-ion organisations. Account is to be takenof the number of comrades away at thefront. These comrades must have a rightto representation. Posts are to come upregularly for re-election so as to preventanyone growing attached to them. Andthe trade union assembles will exercisecontrol over the junta’s activities”.

The task of this junta was to be that of aNational Defence Council: to oversee thewar, control public order, and deal withinternational relations. Alongside it theunions were to take control of the economyand the free locality was to be the basicdecision-making level of territorial organi-sation.

The Friends - despite the claims of theirdetractors - represented no break withanarchism. Their break was with the tra-ditional a-politicism of the CNT. Theyknew that state power would not disap-pear just because that was the wish of themajority; it would have to be smashed andreplaced with the power of workers’, peas-ants’ and soldiers’ councils.

They saw the defects of syn-dicalism. Nothing and no-body can take away from themilitancy of the CNT. AsEddie Conlon remarked inAnarchism in Action:

“The rank and file literallytore down capitalism andput workers’ and peasants’collectives in its place. Theyfought heroically in the mi-litias and the members ofthe CNT surpassed all oth-ers with their bravery.”

The problem for the CNT wasthat after the workplaces and

lands had been seized the state shouldhave died. It didn’t. The CNT had greatideas about what the anarchist futurewould look like, it knew that the workingclass wold have to make a revolution, but itcould not make a connection between theexisting revolutionary situation and theanarchist objective. The majority endedup behaving like a minority.

The Friends put it this way:

“We (CNT) did not have a concrete pro-gramme. We had no idea where we weregoing. We had lyricism aplenty butwhen all is said and done we did notknow what to do with our masses ofworkers or how to give effect to the popu-lar effusion.” The anarchists shouldhave “leapt into the drivers’ seat in thecountry, delivering a severe coup de graceto all that is outmoded and archaic”.

The CNT did not see things this way.Garcia Oliver, one of the CNT representa-tives in the government, said “The CNTand FAI decided on collaboration and de-mocracy, renouncing revolutionary totali-tarianism which would lead to thestrangulation of the revolution by the anar-chist ...dictatorship”. But nobody was sug-gesting an anarchist dictatorship or theCNT becoming a new government.

The question was whether or not new bod-ies would be created and co-ordinatedthrough which the working class couldassert their power. Syndicalism did notsee this, because it holds that the unionsare structures upon which the new societyis to be built.

When the state did not simply pack its bagsand vanish, they felt they had to partici-pate in order to have some control. TheFriends were an expression of oppositionto this thinking. In their paper, the Friendof the People, and in numerous local publi-cations of the CNT, the Libertarian Youth- and, indeed, the UGT and POUM youfound the same sentiments.

However this was only given a clear ex-pression when it was too late. The Friendsdid not have enough time to win over themajority to their position. What they haveleft in their wake are the lessons they haddrawn from their experiences in a livingrevolution. By understanding what went

wrong in the past we canprepare ourselves for thefuture. The lessons theyleft us were a re-affirma-tion of the need for politi-cal anarchism, foranarchist political organi-sations which can becomea “leadership of ideas” (andcertainly not a leadershipof personalities or would-be-dictators like the Rus-sian Bolsheviks). Thestate and political powerdoes not “die” or “witheraway”; it has to besmashed.

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spaindx.html

Spanish Revolution on the Web

Also over 100 otherdocuments andphotographs

Includes new translations into Englishfrom the Friends of Durruti paper ElAmigo del Pueblo


The authors had participated in the Rus-sian revolution and saw all their work,their hopes and dreams fail as an authori-tarian Bolshevik state triumphed and de-stroyed real workers’ power. They wrotethe pamphlet in order to examine why theanarchist movement had failed to build onthe success of the factory committees, whereworkers organising in their own workforcesbegan to build a society based on bothfreedom and equality. In the first para-graph they state

"It is very significant that, in spite of thestrength and incontestably positive char-acter of libertarian ideas, and in spite ofthe facing up to the social revolution,and finally the heroism and innumer-able sacrifices borne by the anarchists inthe struggle for anarchist communism,the anarchist movement remains weakdespite everything, and has appeared,very often, in the history of working classstruggles as a small event, an episode,and not an important factor."

This is strong stuff, a wake up call for theanarchist movement. It is a call that westill need to hear. Despite the virtualcollapse of almost all other left wing ten-dencies, anarchism is still not in a position

of strength. Even though the Trotskyistorganisations have either evaporated intothin air, shrunk drastically in size or movedto social democracy, it is a sad fact, thatwere there a revolution tomorrow, theystill would be in a better position to havetheir arguments heard and listened to thanwe would. This fact alone should give uspause for thought. We cannot be compla-cent, and rely on the hope that the obvious

strength and rightness of our ideas willshine through and win the day. The worldwe live in is the product of struggles be-tween competing ideas of how society shouldbe organized. If the anarchist voice is weakand quiet, it won’t be heard, and otherarguments, other perspectives will win theday.

It is not my intention to go through ThePlatform with a fine-tooth comb. It wasnever intended to provide all the answers,in the introduction they make this clear

We have no doubts that there are gaps inthe present platform. It has gaps, as do allnew, practical steps of any importance. Itis possible that certain important posi-tions have been missed, or that others areinadequately treated, or that still othersare too detailed or repetitive.

It was hoped, however, that it would formthe beginning of a debate about how anar-chists could escape from the doldrums theywere in.

Instead I will look at some of the docu-ment’s underlying principles, in particularthe problems which they identify in anar-chist organisations, which they describe asfollows.

In all countries, the anarchist move-ment is advocated by several local or-ganisations advocating contradictorytheories and practices, leaving noperspectives for the future, nor of acontinuity in militant work, andhabitually disappearing hardly leav-ing the slightest trace behind them. (myemphasis).

Their solution is the creation of certaintype of anarchist organisation. Firstly themembers of these organisations are in theo-retical agreement with each other. Sec-ondly they agree that if a certain type ofwork is prioritised, all should take part.Even today within the anarchist move-ment these are contentious ideas so it isworth exploring them in a little more de-tail.

The Platform’s basic assumption is thatthere is a link between coherency and effi-ciency. Those who oppose the Platformargue that this link does not exist. To themefficiency has nothing to do with how co-herent an organisation is, rather it is afunction of size. This position argues that

The introduction is brief, it describes thepoor state of the anarchist movement andexplains why they felt it necessary to for-mulate a new approach to organisation.The authors then describe the followingtwo sections as the "minimum to which it isnecessary and urgent to rally all the mili-tants of the anarchist movement". Theseare the basic issues on which they believeit is important to have agreement, in orderto have an organisation which can co-oper-ate and work together in practice.

General SectionThis section outlines what they saw as thebasic anarchist beliefs. They look at whatis meant by class struggle, what is meantby anarchism and libertarian communism.They explain why they oppose the stateand centralised authority. The role of themasses and of anarchists in the social strug-gle and social revolution is also explained.They criticise the Bolshevik strategy ofobtaining control of the state. Finally theylook at the relationship between anarchismand the trade unions.

The Constructive SectionThis outlines how a future anarchist soci-ety would be organised, they look at howthe factories would operate and how foodwould be produced. They warn that therevolution will have to be defended, andtalk a little about how this might be done.

The Organisational SectionThis is the shortest and most contentioussection of The Platform. Here the authorssketch their idea of how an anarchist or-ganisation should be structured. They callthis the General Union of Anarchists.

By this they seem to mean one umbrellaorganistion, which is made up of differentgroups and individuals. Here we woulddisagree with them. We don’t believe therewill ever be one organisation which encom-passes everything, neither do we see it asnecessary. Instead we envisage the exist-ence of a number of organisations, eachinternally unified, each co-operating witheach other where possible. This is what wecall the Anarchist movement, it is a muchmore amorphous and fluid entity than aGeneral Union of Anarchists.

However, what we do agree on are thefundamental principles by which any an-archist organisation should operate.

The Platform: What’s in it?The PlatformAnarchists are constantly thinking about how society is and how it couldbe. We strive towards the ideal of a free and democratic society. We knowthat, in order to get there, it will be necessary to tear down the presentauthoritarian system of government. Our struggle for freedom throws upmany areas of controversy and debate. One of these has always been, andalways will be, how do we get to a revolution? How do we organise forchange? An important contribution to this debate was the OrganisationalPlatform of the Libertarian Communists, a document which was written in1926 by a group of exiled Russian and Ukrainian anarchists, and which stillhas much to offer to today’s debates around the question of organisation.


the Platform, in its search for theoreticalagreement, excludes those not in absoluteagreement, and thus will always be smallerthan a looser organisation. As size is ofmore importance than theory, practicallythese organisations will not be as effective.

This debate takes us to the centre of one ofthe most important debates within anar-chism. How does a revolutionary change ofsociety occur? What can anarchists do toassist in the process of bringing such changeabout?

Capitalism is an organized economic sys-tem. Its authority is promoted by manyvoices, including the parliamentary politi-cal parties, the media and education sys-tem (to name but a few). A successfulrevolution depends on the rejection of thosevoices by the majority of people in society.Not only do we have to reject capitalism,but we also need to have a vision of analternative society. What is needed is anunderstanding both that capitalism shouldbe defeated and that it can be replaced. Foran anarchist revolution there has to be therecognition that we alone have the powerand the ability to create that new world.

The role of an anarchist organisation is tospread these ideas. Not only do we need tohighlight the negative and injurious as-pects of capitalism (which is obvious tomany anyway), we also need to developexplanations of how the system operates.This is what is meant by theory, simply itis the answer to the question ‘why arethings as they are?’. And we need to do onemore thing, we need to be able to put ourtheory into practice, our understanding ofhow things work will inform how we strug-gle.

Returning to the Platform, the key prob-lem with anarchist organisations as theyexisted is that they were not only incapableof developing such an approach, but didn’teven see it as necessary. Because therewas no agreement on theoretical issues,they could not provide answers to the work-ing class. They could agree that women’soppression was wrong, but not explain whywomen were oppressed. They could agreethat World War One was going to lead todeath and destruction, but not why it hadoccurred. Such agreement is importantbecause without it cooperation on activity,agreement on what to do, is unlikely. Thisis how the Platform’s authors describedsuch an organisation

"Such an organisation having incorpo-rated heterogeneoustheoretical and practi-cal elements, would onlybe a mechanical as-sembly of individualseach having a differentconception of all thequestions of the anar-chist movement, an as-sembly which wouldinevitably disintegrateon encountering reality"(my emphasis).

• Theoretical Unity, that there is a com-mitment to come to agreement on theory.By theory they don’t mean abstract musingson the meaning of life. By theory theymean the knowledge we have about howthe world operates. Theory answers thequestion ‘why?’, for example ‘why is therepoverty?’ ‘why haven’t Labour Parties pro-vided a fairer society?’ and so on and so on.By theoretical unity they mean that mem-bers of the organisation must agree on acertain number of basics. There isn’t muchan organisation can do if half their mem-bers believe in class struggle and the otherhalf in making polite appeals to politi-cians, or one in which some people believeunion struggles are important and othersthink they are a waste of time. Of course,not everybody is going to agree with every-body else on every single point. If there wastotal agreement there would be no debate,and our politics would grow stale and ster-ile. Accepting this however, there is a com-mon recognition that it is important toreach as much agreement as possible, andto translate this agreement into action, towork together, which brings us to ...

• Tactical Unity, that the members of theorganisation agree to struggle together asan organisation, rather than struggle asindividuals in opposition to each other. Sofor example in Ireland, the WSM identifiedthe anti-water charges campaign (see R&BR 3 for more details) as an issue of greatimportance. Once it was prioritised, all ofour members committed themselves towork for the campaign, where possible.The tactics and potential of the campaignwere discussed at length at our meetings.It became the major focus of our activity.

• Collective Responsibility, by this theymean that each member will support thedecisions made by the collective, and eachmember will be part of the collective deci-sion making process. Without this, anydecisions made will be paper decisionsonly. Through this the strength of all theindividuals that make up the group ismagnified and collectively applied. ThePlatform doesn’t go into detail about howcollective responsibility works in practice.There are issues it leaves untouched suchas the question of people who oppose themajority view. We would argue that obvi-ously people who oppose the view of themajority have a right to express their ownviews, however in doing so they mustmake clear that they don’t represent theview of the organisation. If a group ofpeople within the organisation oppose themajority decision they have the right toorganise and distribute information sothat their arguments can be heard withinthe organisation as a whole. Part of ouranarchism is the belief that debate anddisagreement, freedom and opennessstrengthens both the individual and thegroup to which she or he belongs.

• Federalism, which they define as "thefree agreement of individuals and organi-sations to work collectively towards com-mon objectives".

By a ‘mechanical assembly of individuals’they mean a group of individuals meetingtogether, yet not united in mind or inaction. This undermines the entire mean-ing of organisation, which is to maximisethe strength of the individuals through co-operation with others. Where there is noagreement, there can be little co-opera-tion. This absence of co-operation onlybecomes obvious when the group is forcedto take a position on a particular issue, aparticular event in the wider world.

At this point, two things happen. Either,the individuals within the group act ontheir own particular interpretation ofevents in isolation, which raises the ques-tion, what is the point of being in such anorganisation? Alternatively the group candecide to ignore the event, thus preventingdisagreement.

This has a number of unfortunate sideeffects for anarchist politics. Most seri-ously, it means that the anarchist inter-pretation of events still will not be heard.For no matter how large the organisation,if all within it are speaking with differentvoices, the resulting confusion will resultan unclear and weak anarchist message.Such an organisation can produce a weeklypaper, but each issue will argue a differentpoint of view, as the authors producing itchange. Our ideas will not be convincing,because we ourselves are not convinced bythem. The second side effect is that ourideas will not develop and grow in depthand complexity because they will never bechallenged by those within our own organi-sation. It is only by attempting to reachagreement, by exchanging competing con-ceptions of society, that we will be forced toconsider all alternatives. Unchallengedour ideas will stagnate.

Without agreement on what should be done,the anarchist organisation remains no more


than a collection of individuals. The mem-bers of that organisation don’t see them-selves as having any collective identity.Too often the lifetimes of such groups arethe lifetimes of those most active individu-als. There is no sense of building a body ofwork that will stretch into the future.Considering that in these times the revolu-tion is a long term prospect, such shortterm planning is a tragic waste of energyand effort.

Often the experience of anarchists is thatthey are energetic and committed activ-ists, but fail to publicize the link betweenthe work they do and the ideas they believein. One example of this is the successfulanti-Poll Tax Campaign in England, Scot-land and Wales. Although many anar-chists were extremely involved in thestruggle against this unjust tax, when vic-tory finally came, anarchists didn’t comeout of it, as might be expected, in a strength-

Its ideas have been developed and modi-fied in the light of experience over theyears. Two other relatively well knowndocuments are Towards A Fresh Revolu-tion by the Friends of Durruti (which arosefrom the experience of the Spanish revolu-tion) and the Manifesto of Libertarian Com-munism by Georges Fontenis (which arosefrom French experiences in the post-WorldWar II years). The WSM stands in thistradition because it is the best one we havefound, but it is a continually developing,modifying and growing one. We have notablets carved in stone, and we don’t wantor need any.

Organisations which are influenced, tovarying degrees, by this tradition can be

Platformistgroups today

for agreed goals; and what they describe as“the right, above all, to manifest one’s ‘ego’,without obligation to account for duties asregards the organisation”. As they pointout, there is no point making decisions ifmembers will not carry them out.

However, when they went on to talk abouta General Union of Anarchists they foundthemselves under attack from prominentanarchists such as Voline, Fabbri,Malatesta and Camilo Berneri who ac-cused them of trying to “Bolshevise anar-chism”. I believe that this criticism waswrong. On one hand Voline and his fellowthinkers were opposed because they sawno problem with organisations which werea pick ‘n’ mix of anarcho-syndicalism, an-archist-communism and individualismwith all the incoherence and ineffective-ness that implies. On the other hand manyanarchists saw the proposed General Un-ion of Anarchists as some sort of monopoly

found in countries where anarchism hassunk deep roots, like France (LibertarianAlternative), Switzerland (LibertarianSocialist Organisation) and Italy (Federa-tion of Anarchist Communists); and also incountries where anarchism is a fairly newforce, like the Lebanon (Al Badil alTaharouri) and South Africa (Workers Soli-darity Federation). In the last year newtranslations of the Platform have appearedin Polish and Turkish.

In the English speaking world, however,many anarchists are either unaware ofwhat is in the Platform, or are hostile to it.Why? The authors drew a distinction be-tween real federalism, the free agreementto work together in a spirit of free debate

Anarchist organisations that have been influenced by the Platform arewell aware that it is no Bible full of absolute truths. There is no groupinganywhere that would be so stupid to treat it as one. Anarchists have noneed of such things. It is just one of the signposts pointing us in what webelieve is the direction of making anarchism the most realistic and desir-able alternative to both the present set-up and the authoritarian alterna-tives served up by most of the left.

ened position. We need to ask ourselveswhy this is so.

It would seem to be because anarchistsconcentrated their efforts making argu-ments against the tax, and sidelined argu-ments in favour of anarchism.Furthermore, though many worked as in-dividuals they couldn’t give any sense thatthey were part of any bigger movement.They were seen as good heads, and thatwas all. In contrast, despite the WSM’sextremely small size when a similar cam-paign - the Anti-Water Charges Campaign- ended, we had heightened the profile ofanarchism in Ireland. We emphasisedthat our opposition to an unjust tax waslinked to our opposition to an unjust soci-ety and our belief that a better society ispossible.

Returning to the question of efficiency andsize, organisations in the ‘Platform’ tradi-

tion agree that size is important and theyall seek to grow so that they are in aposition of importance in society. How-ever, they emphasise that all the positiveattributes of belonging to a larger organi-sation, the increased work that can beundertaken, the increased human poten-tial that can be drawn on, are underminedif such an organisation is directionless.The key point is that it is not a case ofchoosing between size or coherency, ratherwe should aim for both.

The importance of the Platform is that itclearly highlights the serious problemscaused by the disorganised nature of looselybased anarchist organisations. It exposesa problem, it highlights how fatal this flawin anarchism can be, it emphasises theurgency with which we must deal with itand compels us to come up with someanswers.


organisation that would incorporate allanarchists. It is a fault of the authors thatthey did not say explicitly that the GeneralUnion would, as all anarchists should, workwith others when it is in the interests of theclass struggle.

Neither did they spell out that all thedecisions, the policies and the direction ofthe organisation would be taken by themembers after full and free debate. Itshould not have had to be spelled out whenaddressing other anarchists but seeminglyit did, and the ‘Platform’ was misunder-stood by many as a result of this omission.Further signs of authoritarianism wereseen in the proposal for an executive com-mittee. Maybe if they had called it aworking collective or something similarthe same threat would not have been seen.

The tasks of this executive committee werelisted as

“the execution of decisions taken by theUnion with which it is entrusted, thetheoretical and organisational orienta-tion of isolated organisations consistentwith the theoretical positions and gen-eral tactical line of the Union, the moni-toring of the general state of themovement, the maintenance of workingand organisational links between all theorganisations in the union, and withother organisations. The rights, respon-sibilities and practical tasks of the ex-ecutive committee are fixed by thecongress of the Union”.

The last sentence of the document talksabout the aim of the Union to become the

“organised vanguard of the emancipatingprocess”. It appears that what is beingtalked about is winning the best militants,the most class conscious and revolutionaryworkers to the Union. But it is not clearlyspelled out. A doubt could exist. Did theymean a more Leninist type of vanguard?When read as part of the entire pamphletI don’t think so, but even if this is not thecase it still does not invalidate the rest ofthe work. It would be very stupid to throwaway the whole document because of oneless than clear sentence.

Two arguments get used again and againagainst the Platform. Firstly we are toldthat it is Arshinov’s ‘Platform’ as if theother four authors were just dupes, butthen it would be far less credible to throwthe same accusation at Nestor Makhno. Itis done because in 1934 Arshinov returnedto Russia, where three years later he wasmurdered in Stalin’s purges. WhatArshinov did eight years after helping towrite the ‘Platform’ surely does no more toinvalidate what was written in 1926 anymore than Kropotkin’s support for Alliedimperialism in the First World War invali-dated all his previous anarchist writings.

The other reason is the experience in Brit-ain where the Anarchist Workers Associa-tion in the 1970s and the Anarchist WorkersGroup of the early 1990s both claimed the‘Platform’ as an inspiration. Both groups -after very promising starts - declined, de-generated, died and then saw their rem-nants disappear into the Leninist milieu.This has been held up as some sort of proofthat the basic ideas of the Platform inevi-

tably lead to an abandonment of anar-chism.

Of course, even the briefest look at themovement beyond the shores of Britainshows that this is clearly not the case at all.But what did go wrong with both the AWAand the AWG? After all, mistakes that arenot understood can easily be repeated.

One factor shared by both organisationswas that they were formed by people whowere already anarchists and who saw theneed for an alternative to the loose organi-sation and lack of theoretical clarity soprevalent in British anarchism. Or to putit simply: they saw a movement with greatideas but a very poor ability to promotethem. They started off by concentratingtoo much on what was wrong with themovement; they lost sight of all that issensible and inspiring, and increasinglyonly saw the problems.

In so far as there was regular internaleducation and discussion it tended to beabout strategies and tactics. New mem-bers were recruited on the basis of activityin strikes and campaigns, and often hadlittle understanding of basic anarchistideas. These people had, however, comefrom a background where anarchists werepresented as a group of clowns without twoideas to rub together or as dropouts, inca-pable of dealing with modern society andwishing for a return to living on the land.There were no formal educationals on theanarchist tradition but a fair few slaggingoff other anarchists.

At the last conference of the AWG oneobserver was shocked to discover that some-one who had been in that organisation forover a year knew, by his own admission,virtually nothing about the biggest everpractical anarchist experiment - the Span-ish revolution. Not surprisingly many ofthese new members came to believe thatthe AWG must be a radical departure fromanarchism for it seemed radically differentfrom what they had been told anarchismwas. This, in turn, strengthened a feelingthat there was little to learn from theanarchist tradition.

The result of this was that, as the anar-chists got demoralised and drifted away,the remaining members felt they had tomove ‘beyond anarchism’. In both casesthe surviving rumps ended up moving intoauthoritarian politics. We cannot be sur-prised when organisations where the ma-jority of members have little understandingof anarchist ideas cease to be anarchistorganisations. To expect anything elsewould be crazy.

The ideas of the Platform can aid anar-chists to organise more effectively, but thisis meaningless if we have not first ensuredthat those in the anarchist organisationshave a good grasp of anarchist ideas, areconfident enough to disagree and debate,and are united by the common cause ofmaking anarchism a reality.


Hobson's choice...

Until the Real IRA blasted the heart out of Omagh and its people, theNorthern “peace process” appeared to be close to achieving the impossible.Loyalists and Republicans alike signing up to the “Good Friday Agree-ment”, its acceptance by large majorities on both sides of the border, GerryAdams and Ian Paisley sitting down in the same room as part of the newAssembly - it seemed as if what had appeared for decades to be impossiblehad been overtaken by the realpolitik of the pragmatic. All sides in the“conflict” - we were led to believe - were looking to a new beginning.Countless column inches in the popular press had been written eulogisingthe “statesmanship” of David Trimble and Seamus Mallon, the “peacemak-ing skills” of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern and the “pragmatism” of GerryAdams and David Ervine.

At the time of writing it remains to be seenwhat the ramifications of the massive car-nage wreaked on the people of Omagh bythe Real IRA will be. What is already clear,however, is that the working-class peopleof the 6-Counties are once again the peoplewho suffer. Following on from the sectar-ian murders of the 3 Quinn brothers inBallymoney during the Drumcree stand-off, another working class community wason the morning of August 16th countingtheir dead and injured. Jumping on thebandwagon of populism, right wing politi-cians and commentators such as ShaneRoss (Senator and “Sunday Independent”columnist) and Michael McDowell (formerProgressive Democrats TD) were scream-ing for the introduction of internment andeven hinting that the extra-judicial mur-der of those associated with the Real IRAand the 32-County Sovereignty Commit-tee should be considered.

While the reactions of the mainstreammedia commentators and political partiesNorth and South and on both sides of theIrish Sea and in the United States to the“Good Friday” Agreement have been wellcommented on, this article is a look at thereactions to this deal from left wing partiesand organisations in Ireland.

Desire for peaceIn the May 22nd referendum on the deal theWorkers Solidarity Movement called for anabstention, stating that “Neither a ‘yes’vote nor a ‘no’ vote will advance the cause ofworkers unity and socialism”. We noted ina statement issued before the referendumthat the great desire for peace was being

“….used to pressurise us into choosingbetween two completely flawed alterna-tives. The agreement, which was drawnup in secret by our so-called ‘representa-tives’, does not challenge the sectariandivisions which have bedevilled thiscountry.”

Indeed our statement went on to note thatthe structures proposed in the agreementactually institutionalise sectarian divi-sions. Politicians elected to the proposedAssembly must declare themselves either

‘unionist’ or ‘nationalist’.

“Those who refuse,” we noted, “will nothave their votes counted in measuringthe cross community support necessaryfor passing legislation…..As the agree-ment was drawn up in the interests ofthe ruling class, the concept of workingclass interests is not evenconsidered…..The division between rul-ers and ruled, between bosses and work-ers, between rich and poor remains. Thebiggest change will be a few nationalistfaces sitting down with bigots likeTrimble and Taylor, to make laws whichpreserve the dominance of the rich overthe poor.”

In relation to the aspect of the referendumwhich proposed changes to Articles 2 and 3of the Southern Constitution, the state-ment pointed out that these amendments

“mean nothing to us…..Articles 2 & 3have never made one whit of differenceto the real lives of anyone on this island.”

While rejecting the agreement as havingnothing to offer the working class North orSouth, we went on, however, to point outthat

“Those urging rejection of the agree-ment have no alternative to offer, justmore of the same conflict that has ruinedtens of thousands of working class lives.The republican forces of the 32 CountySovereignty Committee, RSF [Republi-can Sinn Fein] and IRSP [Irish Repub-lican Socialist Party - the political wingof the Irish National Liberation Army]have nothing but increased communal-ism and sectarian tension to offer. Theloyalist opponents - whose rallies areattended by vocal supporters of the Loy-alist Volunteer Force death squads -want a return to a time when Catholicslived on their knees and in fear.”

The WSM statement further criticised theundemocratic nature of the referendumitself. The manner in which the deal wasput to the people was such that it was notpossible to support or oppose the manyindividual components of the agreement,allowing only one vote for or against theentire complex package.

Failed armed struggleHaving called for an abstention in the voteon the deal, our statement went on to urgethe continuation of the IRA and loyalistceasefires, stating that there must be nogoing back to the failed armed struggle“which gave us nothing except repression,suffering and increased sectarian hatred.”We then outlined the task facing anar-chists, socialists and trade unionists in thecoming period:-

“When working class people begin to askwhat kind of country they want to live in,and what kind of country they wanttheir children to grow up in, the politicsof anti-imperialism will start making

The 'Good Friday Agreement' & the Left


sense to people who up to now have beentrapped in green and orange communal-ism.

Our struggle is for liberty, we are for theremoval of the British troops from Ire-land - and the destruction of the sectar-ian Orange state in the North and theGreen conservative state in the South.

We remain committed to a united IrishWorkers Republic, run by working classpeople in their own interests, and demo-cratically controlled through a feder-ated system of workers and communitycouncils. Nobody has the right to wagewar on our behalf, working people them-selves must discuss the future they wantand fight together for that future. Ourstruggle is for liberty, and no minoritycan impose liberty on the majority. Theemancipation of the working class is thetask of the working class itself.”

Nothing to offerOur analysis that the agreement had noth-ing to offer working class people was sharedby the majority of socialists and anarchistsin both Ireland and Britain - although allother organisations ended up by comingdown on either the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ sides. Per-haps one of the most realistic assessmentsof the realities of the deal was offered bythe British-based Solidarity Federation inthe Summer 1998 edition of “Direct Ac-tion” when they stated

“Just maybe the peace agreement willtake the gun out of Northern Irish poli-tics, or at least limit its impact. Asectarian political scene without gunswill be preferable to one with guns. Per-

haps this is the best we canhope for from this agreement.”

This was an assessment sharedin large part by Sol. Fed.’s sisterorganisation in Ireland Organ-ise!-IWA. In an interview witha spokesperson for Organise! inthe same edition of “Direct Ac-tion”, it was stated that somemembers of the organisation hadsupported the WSM position ofabstention on the referendum.“Other members of Organise!.”it was stated, “like many work-ing class people, voted ‘yes’ to the‘Agreement’, not because they inany way support sectarianism,or want anything to do withchoosing the form of governmentwhich oppresses us, but becauseof a simple desire to see the gunsremoved from the sectarian poli-tics in the north.

Sectarian politicians agreeinga format in which to argue isbetter than the prospect of con-tinued or worsening sectarianviolence being counted in thelives, maiming and imprison-ment of working class peo-ple…… Social issues, theposition of workers and the

unemployed at the bottom of society etc.,will not and cannot be tackled throughthis agreement - but surely at least a vastreduction in sectarian violence must bewelcomed. Beyond this, we may also seethe development of an atmosphere inwhich anti-sectarian working class poli-tics may be given room to develop.”

'Normalisation'It was this hope that the agreement mightlead to some ‘normalisation’ of the politicalscene which also appeared to be the pri-mary factor behind the Socialist Party’scall for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum. In anarticle in the May 1998 edition of the SP’snewspaper “Voice”, Joe Higgins the party’sTD (Teachta Dala - member of the IrishParliament) wrote

“Tragically, but inevitably, the termsdrawn up are a reflection of the stuntedpolitics that have dominated NorthernIreland for generations, the work of poli-ticians and political parties, most ofwhich are hopelessly sectarian-based orright wing or both....….It appears in-conceivable to those who have framedthis agreement, that the ordinary peopleof Northern Ireland might want to electindividuals or parties which are notsectarian based but which representworking class people equally from Prot-estant and Catholic backgrounds, andwho would have a vision utterly differ-ent to the narrow sectarian politics thathave dominated Northern Ireland fordecades with disastrous consequences.”

According to Higgins’ article, the choicewas a stark one. Rejection of the dealwould be seen as a victory by the most

reactionary elements -

“Bitter sectarian polarisation in the com-munities would be the background toparamilitary outrages and open war-fare on issues such as parades.” If thedeal was accepted “This may at least seethe main political parties carry on theirstrategies within the framework agreedeven though they will stumble from onepolitical crisis to the next. It wouldallow the continuation of the peace proc-ess and could provide a space for work-ing class politics to emerge which couldchallenge the grip of the sectarian basedparties.”

In the same edition of “Voice”, PeterHadden, Secretary of the SP in the Northwrote

“A yes vote is likely in the referendum,more because of the lack of an alterna-tive rather than any conviction that theAgreement will work.”

“On offer,” he wrote, “is a choice of tworoads towards sectarian conflict. Theimmediate and direct route is via the Nocamp. A Yes victory would mean aslightly longer road. There might be alimited breathing space which wouldgive more time to the working class tochallenge the sectarians. We believe thebest option is to vote Yes, not in supportof the Agreement, but for a continuationof the peace process and to allow moretime for class politics to develop.

ChallengeHadden went on to offer what he saw as thechallenge for socialists in the post-referen-dum scenario:-

“The real issue is not just to vote in thereferendum but to use this time to builda socialist alternative and campaign fora socialist solution……One advantageof the Assembly would be that the antiworking class policies of the major par-ties on issues such as Health, Educationand Economic development would beexposed to view - but this will only hap-pen if a socialist opposition is built. Thisis now the key task.”

This was a theme to which the SP returnedin an editorial in the June 1998 issue of“Voice”:-

“If the situation holds together over thesummer”, they wrote, “then there is apossibility that the agreement can hold,at least for a period. This can open up aspace for working class and socialistpolitics.

Local politicians will lose the luxury ofblaming London and the Northern Ire-land Office for cuts in services, hospitalclosures and other unpopular decisions.

Their real nature will be exposed as theytake the decisions in these areas in theAssembly. The Assembly would providea focal point in the North for workers’struggles and community campaigns.”


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Window of oppertunityThe Socialist Party decided to contest theelections to the Assembly on the basis that

“It is likely that small parties will makea breakthrough by winning seats in theAssembly. All of this can open up anopportunity for building a socialist al-ternative to the sectarian basedparties……If a window of opportunityopens up for class based politics, we aredetermined to go through it.”

In a lengthy article entitled “Will the Agree-ment bring peace?” in the May 1998 issueof “Socialism 2000”, the political journal ofthe Socialist Party, Peter Hadden expandedon how this ‘window of opportunity’ mightbe represented:-

“There is only one way out for the work-ing class. It is not to imitate the leadersof the trade unions and sit back andapplaud the Agreement and the politi-cians who produced it. Rather it is tobegin to build an alternative to sectar-ian politics, to unite working people,Catholic and Protestant, around com-mon class interests and in opposition toall who attempt to maintain sectariandivision …… From a working class pointof view the best scenario is that theAgreement would hold, that a new localadministration would form and that asmany as possible of the existing partiesaccept the ministerial reins they are of-fered. On the one hand this would allowthe working class movement the pre-cious ingredient of time to begin to putan alternative to these parties in place.On the other hand the fact of these par-ties holding responsibility for local serv-ices and for the low pay, contracting outand privatisation which goes with them,would be a positive assistance to thedevelopment of a class opposition …….United class movements directed againstlocal politicians would open the way forpolitical conclusions to be drawn, forsocialist ideas to begin to take on flesh……. Forces and obstacles which todayappear unshakeable, the various sectar-ian forces included, can be melted downin the furnace of struggle. The buildingof a socialist organisation which caninfluence and effect events can be a cru-cial factor in determining whether thecoming political and social upheavalleads towards a ‘carnival of reaction’ ortowards united class action to bringabout socialist change.”

“The way to solve the national question,”according to Hadden’s analysis, “is tobuild unity between the working class incommon struggle against the presentrotten system and for …a socialist soci-ety …… We stand for the unity of theworking class to achieve a socialist Ire-land as part of a democratic and volun-tary socialist federation of England,Scotland, Wales and Ireland.”

Hopes & realitiesThe Socialist Workers Party, on the otherhand, called for a ‘no’ vote on May 22nd. TheMay 1st - 14th 1998 edition of their paper“Socialist Worker” stated that many hopedthat the deal “…brings peace to the work-ing class areas that have suffered mostduring the conflict.” Pointing out howeverthat the Agreement “…does nothing to dis-mantle the sectarian structures of theNorth…..institutionalises sectariandivision….doesn’t even begin to tackle thepoverty that affects both Catholic and Prot-estant workers” and that “Having GerryAdams in a cabinet with David Trimblewill only mean that both preside over stu-dent fees, cutbacks and poverty” the SWPcalled for a ‘No’ vote in the referendum.

“The alternative,” the SWP stated, “isnot civil war or armed conflict…..Thepressure for a settlement came from boththe elite at the top and workers at thebottom of society. Tens of thousands ofworkers turned up to peace rallies todemand an end to the armed campaign.In the unlikely event of the settlementbeing rejected that same pressure forpeace would continue and socialistswould give it every support. The realsolution to sectarianism lies in commonclass struggle……It is time to break fromall the sectarian agendas and put classpolitics to the fore. Voting No to this dealwill mark a start.”

What's the alternative?All in all then it can safely be said that theGood Friday Agreement excited little posi-tive support on the left. It must be statedhowever that those who adopted a positionwhich might best be described as ‘criticalsupport’ were much more honest than thosewho opposed the deal without actuallyputting forward any credible alternative.The SWP view that a ‘No’ vote would haveresulted in the coming to the fore of classpolitics ignores completely the fact thatthe deal’s rejection would have been hailed

by the most reactionary elements on bothsides of the sectarian divide - from Paisleyand the LVF through to the 32 CountySovereignty Committee and RSF - as theirvictory. A more likely scenario than thecoming to the fore of working class politicswould have been a demoralisation of suchtiny progressive forces as currently existand the filling of the subsequent politicalvacuum by the forces of sectarian hatred.We would quite possibly have been facinginto a Lebanon/Balkan type situation witheach community retreating into ‘its own’area and the possibilities of cross classunity would at the very least have beendealt a severe blow.

As Andrew Flood wrote in Workers Soli-darity 54(Summer 1998) “For anarchistslooking at the future the old saying ‘if I wasgoing there I wouldn’t start from here’ ringsparticularly true.” The challenge facing allof us is to attempt to break down thesectarian barriers and to build unity be-tween Catholic and Protestant workers.The question is not whether this is desir-able - All sections of the left are agreed thatit is. How to do it is however the problemthat remains. What is achievable in theshort to medium term? And - provided thatthe guns remain silent - does the newsituation make this task any easier?

The WSM has always drawn a distinctionbetween the ceasefires and the “peace proc-ess”. In a statement issued on September7th 1994, following the first IRA ceasefirewe welcomed the decision to end the ‘armedstruggle’ but pointed out that

“The ‘peace process’ as it is called, willnot deliver a united socialist Ireland, orsignificant improvements apart fromthose associated with ‘demilitarisation’.In addition it represents a hardening oftraditional nationalism, and the goal ofgetting an alliance of all the national-ists, Fianna Fail, SDLP, Sinn Fein andthe Catholic Church.

Its appeal to Protestant workers is no


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greater than the military campaign (i.e.none) and to date republican statementshave focused on the need for a De Klerktype figure to lead the Protestants tocompromise…… This approach shouldcome as no surprise to us, it is the under-lying bedrock of nationalism. It is thereason we are anti-imperialists ratherthan socialist republicans……..The end-ing of the armed struggle cannot simplybecome part of history. The issue ofpartition cannot be quietly dropped inthe interests of winning over Protestantworkers. In the short term it would bepossible to build workers unity on day today economic issues without mention-ing partition but it would be building onsand. In the past we have seen howinstances, some involving very largenumbers, of working class unity havebeen swept away on a tide of bigotry.What is needed is a revolutionary move-ment, with consistent anti-imperialistpolicies that is composed from both Prot-estant and Catholic backgrounds.”

Although 4 years have passed since theissuing of this statement, these sentimentsstill stand as an accurate assessment of thechallenge facing revolutionaries today. The“Good Friday Agreement” is a consequenceof the failure of republicanism and the leftto win over any section of northern Protes-tant workers to an anti-partitionist, anti-imperialist stance. Right now, this failureis complete and it may even seem utopianto put forward such a project as the princi-pal challenge facing us. But historically,most notably at the time of the RepublicanCongress of 1934, sections of the Protes-tant working class have proved open tosuch a strategy and the idea of uniting“Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter” be-came more than a catchphrase.

A step too farAt the Bodenstown Wolfe Tone commemo-ration of 1934, some 500 Belfast Protes-tant workers marched to Tone’s gravesidebehind banners proclaiming “Wolfe Tone

Commemoration 1934, Shankill Road Bel-fast Branch. Break The Connection WithCapitalism” and “James Connolly Club,Belfast. United Irishmen of 1934”. Unfor-tunately the Belfast comrades found them-selves confronted by, and ultimatelyattacked by, a body of IRA men with ordersto prevent them marching unless theyagreed to take down their banners. Thestrategy of “breaking the connection withcapitalism” was one step too far for the

Republican leadership whose politicalproject looked no further than the exten-sion of the Southern clerical state north ofthe border. Making the links with Protes-tant workers would have involved break-ing the links with the Catholic Church andwith the southern ruling class. The Repub-lican leadership then were unwilling to doso and, following in their footsteps - despitethe occasional left-wing rhetoric - the re-publican leadership of today see their al-lies in the likes of Bertie Ahern, Bill Clintonand John Hume.

Republicanism will be forced to drop com-pletely the remaining elements of its so-cialist rhetoric in the coming years.Certainly an opportunity has opened upfor the development of class politics butthis will not be built successfully by ignor-ing partition. The challenge is to build amovement of working class people involv-ing people from all religious backgrounds -a movement which will be anti-capitalistand anti-imperialist. Northern workershave united across the sectarian divide inthe past to fight on economic issues, thiswill happen again in the future. We mustbuild an anarchist movement on this is-land which will be big enough to be in aposition to turn future battles into thefight for an anarchist Ireland.

The 'Good Fridayagreement' & the Irish Left

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