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Title: After Nationalism...
Author: James McBarron
Date: 2005
Language: en
Topics: nationalism, Ireland, Red & Black Revolution
Source: Retrieved on 9th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr9/nationalism.html
Notes: This article is from Red & Black Revolution (no 9, Spring 2005)

James McBarron

After Nationalism...

I joined Sinn Féin in the mid eighties with many others on the back of

what we saw as a radical shift to the left and a commitment to build a

32 county Democartic Socialist Republic. I find myself outside that

movement now, thoroughly disillusioned with it and its shift to a left

nationalist and social democratic electoralist future.

We are many years into the Irish peace process — how many depends on

your perspective — but we can at least agree that the Good Friday

agreement of 1998 is a key point in the evolution of the process. The

current impasse centres largely on the question of accomodating Sinn

Féin into the political establishment north and south. Though the IRA

was defeated and Sinn Féin began the journey towards an accomodation

with imperialism and the southern state, many of the activists and

indeed many in the communities from which the republican movement drew

its most hardcore support have had a difficulty adjusting to the new

realities. This has arisen primarily because of the lies that the

leadership of that movement have fed the grassroots in order to keep

them on board.

Mostly this has consisted of pretending that the road they are now on is

something new and innovative that will lead them to the Republic. But

time has taken its toll and the British and Irish states have become

impatient of the Adams leadership’s slow softly approach and want the

open capitulation of the republican movement, an end to the IRA and the

full integration of SF into the system.

This isn’t easy either for the republicans or the unionists who have to

also abandon their stated hardline approach. (Unionism represents the

politics of the former ruling class in the north, almost exclusively

protestant and pro the union with Britain, they monopolised power after

partition and used this power to build a sectarian little state.

Unionist politicians enjoy the support of the vast majority of the

protestant working class at election time. Unionists are a majority in

the north. The unionist leadership has realised that a carve-up of power

with nationalism is their only future hope of any power). The various

crises around the process have revolved around these issues.

Of course it is inevitable that Sinn Féin in its current manifestation

will go in to the system and fully endorse policing, the courts the

prison system, the civil service etc. Sinn Féin have always believed in

the use of the state and the division of people into leaders and lead.

All institutions of the state will be accepted and Sinn Féin will become

the new and more organised SDLP of the north. They will share in power

eventually with a pragmatic and realistic unionist leadership which will

emerge more strongly as the old guard die off or become marginalised

with time. What we will have then will probably be a government in the

north enjoying a large degree of acceptability or at least benign

indifference amongst the population. Sinn Féin n in the south will

follow the well worn path to participation in administering power in the

Dail. Outside of the mainstream republican movement some few of those

embittered by their experience will hang onto the old politics and

recruit, drill, train, fundraise and prepare for another round at some

day in the future.

And us, the working class, well we will again be faced with the same old

problems of exploitation, oppression, inequality and constant struggle

that we always are. But we will have to fight a movement that once

proclaimed itself revolutionary and keen to abolish capitalism north and

south but that is now bought and part of the structure. How many good

sincere activists will be destroyed, buried in the bullshit of

paliamentary politics, trying to get the odd pot-hole filled whilst the

whole show goes on as before and past dreams of social revolution slowly

ebb away to “a favour here or there” and a few dry empty commemorations

of past deeds.

If all the peace process had done was end the armed struggle that would

have been great, but it has done far more than that. It has strenghtened

the states north and south. The struggle for social justice continues.

Today fighting the Water Tax in Belfast, on a picket line in Dublin,

pushing for abortion rights in Cork, fighting racism in Galway,

demanding housing in Derry. All these struggles and many more push our

class interests forward. Unifying them in ideas of self reliance, mass

democracy and direct action, libertarian ideas, anarchist ideas — that

is where the struggle is at. Republicanism will rise again, taking many

good young activists to the grave, prison and despair unless we

popularise truly revolutionary ideas to act as a positive pole of

attraction.