The lame-duck Tory government has also allowed the ‘Grand Committee’ to sit in Belfast and question British ministers in the colonial administration there. The move is a further cementing of British rule extracted from John Major as a result of his absolute reliance on the nine UUP MPs for the survival of his government in the Westminster parliament until the British general election on May 1.

That position was weakened further on February 28 when the Conservative Party suffered a humiliating defeat with the election of a Labour Party candidate in Wirral South.

The loss of the former Tory stronghold on a 17% swing put the Tories in a one-vote Commons minority.

However Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble is not worried by the impending doom of his Tory allies in Britain. Labour party leader Tony Blair has successfully turned his front bench into clones of the Conservatives who are only too happy to ape Tory policies in Britain and Occupied Ireland.
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Revolution in Ireland – popular militancy 1917 to 1923, by Conor Kostick, Pluto Press £12.99.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 inspired many people to believe that a socialist society was a viable prospect. According to Kostick: “The struggle for Irish independence emerged in this context of a Europe-wide revolt against discredited and spent authorities.”

By 1917, the situation for workers all over Europe was deteriorating. In Ireland, for instance, working class poverty combined with a sense of national injustice led to growing discontent with capitalism and imperialism.

In addition, this discontent did not merely apply to Catholic workers. The ‘Great War’ began to alienate the Protestant working class. “There was growing resentment at talk of sacrifice and restraint, particularly as the employers were making fortunes from the war,” says Kostick. “The mood amongst workers, including Protestants, was a changing one, where it was becoming increasingly clear that the continuation of the ‘Great War’ was the cause of their declining living standards.”

With the end of the ‘Great War’ a mood of militancy developed amongst the Protestant workers, particularly in Belfast. After making so many sacrifices they now wanted something in return for their loyalty. However, in 1919, the demand for a shorter working week was refused thereupon a general strike was initiated by workers in Belfast.

Although the strike was eventually compromised by the reformist nature of the leadership, it illustrated that unionism was not a smooth monolith of common interests between Protestant worker and Protestant employer.

This radicalism, according to Kostick, was a vigorous part of a European-wide upsurge in working class militancy. Unfortunately, in the same way that the Belfast workers were compromised by the leadership, so too did the labour leadership fail the strikers in Limerick. Due to the absence of a revolutionary socialist party to replace the Labour leadership, the struggle for a Workers’ Republic in Ireland never emerged.

Kostick argues that because the workers’ struggle in the 26 Counties was limited to a nationalist agenda, Protestant workers became alienated thus allowing sectarianism to grow in the Six Counties. Adding that the two-stage approach of independence first, followed by socialism subsequently made partition inevitable. Nevertheless, Kostick’s analysis is too dismissive of the role that militant Republicans played in the independence struggle whilst over emphasising the role of militant workers in the struggle. The rank and file of the IRA were overwhelmingly working class and it was such people who were at the vanguard of the struggle.

In addition, Kostick criticises the Republican strategy of conducting the national struggle before the class struggle because it creates a barrier between Protestant and Catholic workers. This argument has also been espoused by the Workers’ Party which eventually led them to the path of reactionary politics.

Whilst Ireland remains under British rule the Catholic and Protestant working class will remain divided. It is not the Republican strategy of national liberation that divides the working class but the strategy of British imperial rule in Ireland.

Kostick’s premise of uniting Protestant and Catholic workers before tackling the national struggle in order to achieve a Workers’ Republic has to be questioned. Within the context of a sectarian state under imperialist rule, such as that which operates in the Six Counties, a privileged section of the working class are not going to voluntarily relinquish their triumphalist position.
— Eugene Egan
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