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WORKERS SOLIDARITY
Paper of the Irish anarchist group,
Workers Solidarity Movement
No 43 Autumn 1994 (electronic addition)
Part 2 (Ireland & Imperialism) 21k
In this section
It was always time to go..Troops out now!
When British army chiefs refused to obey orders
Nationalism...No Thanks
When the Falls & the Shankill fought together
**********************************
IT WAS ALWAYS TIME TO GO
TROOPS OUT NOW
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, on Thursday, August
the 15th, 1969, 400 soldiers from the Prince
of Wales Own Yorkshire Regiment took up
positions around Derry city. Why they
arrived has been the subject of myth making
and distortion for the last 25 years. The
myth is a simple one, that the function of
the British army in the 6 counties is to
preserve the peace, to keep apart fanatical
Catholics and Protestants who would
otherwise tear each others throat out at the
first opportunity.
It is a myth, which like all good ones,
incorporates elements of the truth. After
the last months few need to be reminded of
the vicious actions of the loyalist death
squads. But despite this grain of truth it
is in fact a distortion, even a lie. Far
from the aim of the army being to break down
such sectarianism their role was to support
it and prevent the development of an
alternative to it. The point the army moved
in was the point at which the Stormont
controlled sectarian police was losing
control of Derry and there was a danger that
if this situation continued an alternative
centre of power could develop.
The troops arrived in the six counties, not
to enforce equality, but in opposition to
what the demand for equal rights had come
to. The refusal to grant reform and the
deployment of considerable state force to
smash the reform movement had led not
surprisingly to people fighting back. It
was this fightback that the troops had
arrived to defuse and if necessary smash.
The northern state was created in 1921 as a
sectarian state, "a Protestant state for a
Protestant people" as Lord Brookeborough,
one of its Prime Ministers called it. Its
ruling class protected their power by
maintaining sectarianism; from calls by
Brookeborough (again) to only employ loyal
Protestants, to loyalist death squads
killing and driving out those who resisted
(Catholic or Protestant). It was created as
a society where your chances of housing and
employment depended on your religion. This
happened with the full approval of the
British ruling class.
In 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Association (NICRA) was formed. Its demands
were most striking for their extreme
moderation:
o one man - one vote
o allocation of housing on a points scheme
o redrawing of gerrymandered electoral
borders
o repeal of the Special Powers Act*
o abolition of the B specials**
o laws against discrimination in government
- The Special Powers Act allowed arrest on
suspicion, and imprisonment without trial.
An additional clause gave the Minister for
Home Affairs authority to do anything else
required!
- * The B-specials were a state paid armed
militia of the Unionist Party, officially an
auxiliary of the RUC.
In August of 1968 NICRA called its first
march. 2,500 marched from Coalisland to
Dungannon to protest against local housing
discrimination. Since 1945 71% of local
houses had gone to Protestants, yet the area
was 53% Catholic. The march was peaceful
despite the occupation of Dungannon town
centre by loyalists. Yet when a second
march was called in Derry the Home Affairs
Minister (William Craig) banned it.
Local left wing activists along with the
Derry Labour Party announced they would
march anyway, and NICRA decided then to go
ahead. 2,000 people turned up and that
evening the TV footage of the police
attacking the demonstrators with batons,
punches and water cannon were seen around
the world. A march for peaceful reform was
met by the northern state with physical
violence and smashed off the streets.
Faced with the violent state repression of
such mild demands, Catholics (with the
support of the small number of socialists
from a Protestant background) decided this
time they were not going to just lie down.
Six weeks later 15,000 marched through
Derry. The RUC, outnumbered 50:1, stayed in
their police stations. In Belfast an
earlier march of 800 had resulted in the
formation of Peoples Democracy (PD) which
aimed to extend the campaign to winning
improvements for working class Protestants
as well. In November part of the ruling
class around Terence O'Neill tried to defuse
the situation by granting some of the
demands and promising a review of others.
This was sufficient to satisfy the
'respectable' leaders of the civil rights
movement, like John Hume.
However this was too much for other elements
of the bosses who started an "O'Neill must
go" campaign, including William Craig who
ranted on about "unnecessary reforms". And
they were all united in saying nothing more
would be given. When PD organised a march
across the north from New Years Day 1969 it
was harassed by the RUC all the way, until
it was finally forced into an ambush at
Burntollet bridge outside Derry. Here it
was attacked by 350 loyalists, including
many off-duty B-specials with rocks and
clubs spiked with nails.
Despite the fact that many marchers were
seriously injured, two nearly being killed,
the RUC made no move to intervene and none
of the attackers was ever brought before a
court. O'Neill indicated his approval by
going on TV and saying "we have heard
sufficient for now about civil rights. Let
us hear a little about civil
responsibility".
This was how the northern state dealt with
peaceful attempts that stayed within the
normal rules of "democracy" to reform it.
Not surprisingly this caused massive anger
among Catholics. On August 12th 1969 the
Apprentice Boys in Derry marched and threw
pennies off the city wall into the Bogside.
Local youths threw stones back. The police
used this as an excuse to charge in,
cracking heads open and storming into
houses. But the local people fought back
and drove them out, erecting barricades to
keep them out.
The RUC tried to fight their way in over the
next few days using CS gas but met with an
increasingly organised defence force armed
with bricks and petrol bombs. In
inspiration, and also to draw some of the
RUC off, other working class nationalist
areas rioted. Huge numbers of RUC were
injured and it was clear that there were
unable to restore 'stability' on their own.
To help them out the British army was sent
in on the 15th. In the meantime the
loyalists got their revenge in Belfast,
storming the Falls with the aid of the RUC
and burning down 200 houses.
Up to this stage the IRA were non-existent
in terms of activity. They had last been
active in a failed and short lived border
campaign from 1956 to 1962. Their
unpreparedness for the "troubles" was
reflected in graffiti at the time which read
"I Ran Away". But the gun had been re-
introduced into Northern politics by the
forces of the British state, most notably
when the RUC had driven up the Falls on the
14th firing Browning sub-machine guns from
armoured cars (their victims included a 9
year old boy in bed and a British soldier
home on leave). If even the moderate
demands of the NICRA had been met with force
from the state, the lesson was clear that in
order to fight back you had to meet force
with force. The left at the time failed to
offer a coherent alternative and so people
turned to the politics of republican armed
struggle.
Andrew Flood
*****************************
WHEN BRITISH ARMY CHIEFS
REFUSED TO OBEY ORDERS
The Ulster Workers Council (UWC) strike of
May 1974 was just one of the incidents that
showed, far from being "impartial", the RUC
and the British army did their best to prop
up loyalism.
This strike was a response to the
Sunningdale agreement signed in the Autumn
of 1973. This allowed for a "power-sharing"
government made up of the Unionists,
Alliance and SDLP parties. The agreement
also bought into existence, in the spring
1974, the so-called "Council of Ireland".
This was somewhat like the existing Anglo-
Irish Secretariat, i.e. a talkshop mainly
concerned with cross-border security co-
operation.
However loyalists reacted angrily to what
they saw as Southern Irish "taigs" being
given a right to meddle in the affairs of
"Ulster". They launched a strike which
aimed to shut down the six counties and
bring the power-sharing government to it's
knees. They succeeded.
The strike was entirely controlled by the
UWC. This council was set up in 1973 by
loyalist politicians and paramilitaries.
The presence of UDA paramilitaries was to
prove vital. Andy Tyrie, a UDA leader,
described the strike as a triumph of
"intimidation without violence".
INTIMIDATION AND COLLUSION
In Belfast a total of 862 UDA roadblocks
were erected under the watchful eye of the
RUC and British army. They did nothing to
hinder the para-militaries from shutting the
city down and many soldiers and cops chatted
and joked with the UDA men on the
barricades. Shops and small businesses were
systematically visited and ordered to close.
Most did.
The RUC's F division at Castlereagh received
709 reports of intimidation. Only two of
these were "detected" through their
fantastic policing ability! On May 19th the
Northern Ireland Secretary, Merlyn Rees,
declared a state of emergency giving him
power to use troops to maintain essential
supplies. They never were.
MUTINY?
It is now clear that the Labour government
and the power-sharing executive faced a
virtual mutiny as senior army officers
refused to co-operate. One of the major
successes of the UWC was their shutting down
of virtually all of Northern Ireland's power
generating capacity. Army engineers might
have been able to maintain at least some of
this power. But no attempt was made to do
so.
Three months after the strike a senior
British officer boasted in the ultra-right
"Monday Club" magazine:
"For the first time, the army had decided
that it was right and that it knew best and
the politicians had better tow the line"
According to another general quoted 10 years
later (Irish Times 15th May 1984):
"If you'd a decisive man who had arrested
the strikers on the first day it would have
created chaos and bought the province to the
point of no return."
These sort of veiled threats make it clear
that the army top brass backed the strike
and wanted the power-sharing government to
fall.
*************************
SINN FEIN'S STRANGE 'SOCIALISM'
NATIONALISM...NO THANKS
Anarchists are for the defeat of British
imperialism. We would like to see an end to
the killings in the 6 counties but we
understand that the ultimate cause of the
troubles lies at the feet of Britain and the
northern sectarian statelet. But we want
more, we stand for the creation of a new
society in the interests of the working
class and against the bosses, both orange
and green.
This is very different from the politics of
Sinn Fein. We see the way forward as unity
of Catholic and Protestant workers in a
common fight against capitalism. They look
for alliances of bosses and workers. Their
interest in Protestant workers seems to stop
at who can best control them. Hence Gerry
Adams speech at this years Ard Fheis said
that Protestants needed a De Klerk to lead
them to compromise.
This is alternated with the idea of the
British controlling Protestant workers,
presumably through the army, as seen in
Adam's statement of Sunday 17th July when he
said:
"The London Government which has
jurisdiction over part of Ireland cannot
forever dodge its responsibilities"
and asked of John Major
"Is he prepared to become a persuader for
peace and for justice for all the people of
Ireland?"
Who is he calling on them to persuade, and
which responsibilities are being dodged?
Indeed this whole approach to the British
government, where it is seen as one of the
forces for peace and progress, must stick in
the guts of all those who supported Sinn
Fein in the 1980's because they saw them as
socialist and anti-imperialist in a general
(rather than merely local) sense. But it
should come as no surprise. After the Hume-
Adams talks of 1988 Adam's described them as
"part of a quest for common interests
between nationalist parties", again talking
in terms of an all-class alliance.
There is a real danger of this current round
of talks with the British government just
serving to fuel the loyalist death squads.
Sinn Fein has made it clear that it sees a
settlement as being in the interests of the
British government rather than being forced
on them. So this means that either the
settlement will not solve the real economic
inequalities suffered by Catholic workers or
it will only solve them at the expense of
Protestant workers.
Catholics are still two and a half time more
likely to be unemployed. The option of
bringing Catholic workers living standards
up at least to the level of Protestant
workers would involve a massive cost to the
bosses. Anything else would promise at best
a temporary peace, with the real possibility
of sectarian massacres.
For anarchists, the way forwards lies in
workers' unity. There has been significant
unity around economic issues in the past,
from the 1919 Belfast Engineers strike to
the 1932 Outdoor Relief riots. Both these
saw thousands of Catholic and Protestant
workers uniting to fight their common enemy,
the bosses. Both of these were smashed by
the bosses using sectarianism to win
Protestant workers back to loyalism. This
is why unity cannot be maintained by
ignoring the border.
More recently we have seen strikes in the
DHSS against sectarian threats and a walkout
by the mostly Protestant shipyard workers
over the killing of a Catholic workmate.
These demonstrate the potential of workers'
unity in the north, but for this unity to
become lasting Protestant workers need to be
won to a clear anti-imperialist position and
opposition to the British presence.
Anarchists should continue to defend the
right of the IRA to fight back against
imperialism. But we must be clear that
their nationalist politics and military
methods offer no way forward. Our task is
to begin the difficult task of building a
mass anti-imperialist movement, uniting all
workers in Ireland.
Joe Black
*****************************
INTERVIEW
WHEN THE FALLS AND
THE SHANKILL FOUGHT TOGETHER
THIS YEAR is the 60th anniversary of the
Outdoor Relief strike in Belfast, which saw
unemployed Catholics and Protestants
fighting alongside each other. In 1982 one
of the few survivors from the strike,
William Burrows, talked to Outta Control, a
local anarchist paper in Belfast. Twelve
years later we are pleased to help uncover a
small bit of anti-sectarian working class
history be reprinting William's
recollections. He talked firstly of a march
up the Newtownards Road, and secondly
described the rally of 40,000 at Queens
Square.
"I remember the march up the Newtownards
Road. It was organised by the Revolutionary
Workers Group. The agitation was against
the 10% cut in welfare benefits the
government imposed. The bru was 17/- but
they brought it down to 15/-. It was the
same year as the Invergordon mutiny in
Scotland when the sailors struck against a
reduction in their wage.
"There were about 1,500 of us on the march,
with a red flag, and we were to have a
meeting at Templemore Avenue. Bob Stewart
from Scotland was to speak but there was a
mob of about 40 to greet us. They went
under the name of the Ulster Protestant
League and were out to get him as he was
well known. They had lambeg drums, deacon
poles (with a spear at the end), and a union
jack.
"John Crumlin, a notorious bigot from the
shipyards (during the early '20s he stirred
up sectarian hatred against the Catholics,
which drove many of them out) carried the
Union jack. He was one of the 'three Cs' -
Carson, Crumlin and Connor, who ten years
earlier had been responsible for stirring up
sectarian hatred in the shipyards and
chasing Catholics out. Crumlin, in
particular, made the most maledictory
speeches then.
"There were about fifty police there. But
they weren't there to protect us. It was a
sham defence. They let the mob through and
then joined in. There was a lot of fighting
and it ended with nine arrests. Jack White
had his neck cut by one of the deacon poles,
not too seriously. He was fined #10 and
bound over to keep the peace. So was Harold
Davidson, a student from Malone. But the
rest, who had no connections, got about
three months each.
"We had an improvised band to lead us. We
borrowed three drums from St Malachy's pipe
band in the Markets. But they were
destroyed that night. I remember Tommy Hill
being there. He was a tram driver, and was
known as Red Tommy because he always wore a
red tie. He wasn't in the RWG, but was an
independent from the Shankill Road. He
spoke at all the meetings.
"October, fifty years ago, was a wonderful
event in the workers' struggle for better
conditions. On that occasion there was a
fight against the Poor Law Guardians of
Belfast, who were controlled by the Unionist
Party. The Guardians had imposed extremely
harsh conditions on unemployed workers.
"Whenever the benefit of an unemployed
person ran out due to not having enough
stamps, they had to do task work three days
a week. They got paid 16/- a week, not in
cash but in the form of a chit. This was
given to the grocer who gave you groceries
for that amount.
"The workers, of course, took exception to
this form of payment and thousands of
Outdoor Relief workers took to the street to
protest against it. Some of these protests
ended up in clashes with the police and in a
series of riots, with a large number of
people being arrested. The worst riot
occurred on the Falls Road where two
protesters were shot dead. They were Samuel
Baxter and John Keenan.
"The Outdoor Relief workers replied with a
massive protest to Queens Square, organised
by the Revolutionary Workers Groups. There
were about 40,000 workers in Queens Square
that night on 11th October 1932. They came
from all parts of Belfast, and from Derry
and Coleraine. Four hundred workers set out
to walk from Dublin to Belfast, but as they
reached the border the RUC stopped them and
turned most of them back. But some did
manage to reach Belfast and took part in the
march.
"The main speakers that night were Tommy
Greehan, Davey Scarborough, Jimmy Koter,
Betty Sinclair, Sean Murray and Arthur
Griffin. Thomas Mann came over from England
to speak at the funerals of the two Falls
men. He was arrested and deported to
Clogher Valley, before returning to his
home. Other well known speakers I remember
of that time were Bob Stewart from Dundee,
Willie Gallacher and Charlotte Despard.
"Two weeks after that march I lost my job.
I was a farm labourer employed by David
McAnse. He was the father of Anne
Dickinson, who until recently was a Unionist
politician in East Belfast.
"There were RWGs in different parts of the
city. In East Belfast were Bob Ellison, Bob
Stewart, Eddie and Sadie Menzies, Jimmy
Woods, James Connolly (no relation!), Davey
Greenlaw, Jimmy McKenzie, Joe Lather, Jimmy
Spence, Jimmy Kernoghan, John Lavery, Billy
Bishop, Billy Tomlinson and his brother Joe,
Billy Somerset Snr., and Lofty Johnson.
"The Falls Road group members were Johnny
McWilliams, Jimmy Quinn, Tom Picken, Johnny
Campell and Jimmy Hughes. Jimmy McKurk was
a very militant worker in the ODR strike
from the Falls but wasn't in the group.
"Group members from the Shankill were Norman
Taggart and his brother Bob, Bob McVicker
and his brother Sam, Billy Johnson, John
Sinclair, Aggie Young and Martha Burch.
>From the Donegal Road were John, Mary and
Nora Griffin. Billy Boyd came from York
Street. Other members of the groups
included Maurice Watters, Jack White and Ben
Murray".
*******************
Part 1 (Intro & Shorts)
Socialism & freedom
10 years of the WSM
Thats Capitalism
World Unemployment
Revolutionaries
letter from Serbia
Part 3 (Drugs)
In this section
Legalise it
The heroin menace
Part 4 (Campaigns & Struggle in Ireland)
TEAM workers told not to expect a decent job
Lets get together
Anti-Water charges campaign gets off ground
Reasons to bin the bill
Part 5 (A rotten world)
Interview with Italian anarchist
Ireland..The land of a 1000 welcomes?
Hicksons chemical spill
37% illegally underpaid
***********************
Workers Solidarity currently comes out four
times a year. For subscription details write
to WSM, PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Also appearing in the near future will be a
theoretical magazine called Red and Black
Revolution.
*****************
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Workers Solidarity Movement can be contacted at
PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland
or by anonymous e-mail to an64739@anon.penet.fi
Some of our material is available via the Spunk press electronic archive
by FTP to etext.archive.umich.edu or 141.211.164.18
or by gopher ("gopher etext.archive.umich.edu")
or WWW at http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/spunk/Spunk_Home.html
in the directory /pub/Politics/Spunk/texts/groups/WSM