Strange report from the SWP

Monday September 09, 2002 12:54

by Freddie Cliff

Below you can find the Irish SWP's report to an International Socialists tendency discussion bulletin.

IRELAND
(1) 11 September allowed the ruling class in Ireland—as in other parts of the world—to take the
initiative and momentarily put the anti-capitalist movement on the defensive.We were able to
move quickly after 11 September, producing a special issue of Socialist Worker and setting up
with others a genuine Anti-War Movement which has been able to organise substantial anti-war
demonstrations and activities, including demonstrations of 3,000.
The anti-capitalist movement has been relatively slow to get off the ground in Ireland in
comparison to much of Europe. After 11 September the police crackdown has caused us
problems. Nonetheless, Globalise Resistance quickly responded to a police attack on a
demonstration and mobilised 3,000. Our strategic goal over the next period is to build up the
mass anti-capitalist movement.
The SWP is pushing for GR groups in all cities, and a major conference reflecting real breadth
and diversity, establishing a broad-based national leadership. Two important mobilisations are
ahead. While we expect to get tens to Seville, we are aiming to get hundreds to the ESF in
Florence in November, and through this to lay the basis for a solid anti-capitalist movement in
Ireland.
(2) The Celtic Tiger economy in the South of Ireland which grew on the back of the US boom is
over. The economy—which saw average growth rates of 9 percent from 1994 to 2000 — has
slowed to 3-4 percent growth an redundancies have shot up by 48 percent
The years of the Celtic Tiger saw a huge shift of the national economy to capital and away from
labour. The proportion of the economy going to profits, interests and rents rose from a third to a
half. Some corporate profits taxes fell from 50 percent to 16 percent, and are set to fall further.
This has fuelled massive alienation and bitterness among working class people. While the major
capitalist party in the South, Fianna Fail, saw a marginal increase in its share of the vote, this
has to be placed in the context of a massive decline over the past decade and picking up votes
from the rival Fine Gael whose support disintegrated. The Irish Labour Party vote also slumped.
At the same time Sinn Fein, the Greens and independents all saw their vote increase. SF, with
a national high profile and left wing rhetoric, was the major beneficiary of working class dissent.
The far left—the SWP, the Socialist Party (affiliated to the Committee for a Workers
International) and the Stalinist Workers Party—all saw their vote squeezed by the rise of Sinn
Fein, with the exception of two SP candidates.
The new Fianna Fail led government will set about responding to the economic slow down by
attacking the working class with a ruling class offensive.
(3) In the North, in addition to building Globalise Resistance and the Anti-War Movement, we
have to face structured religious sectarianism.
Since the Good Friday Agreement has stabilised capitalism and institutionalised sectarianism,
the Northern Ireland Assembly is the arena where representatives of the two communities
struggle over allocations to either Catholic or Protestant neighbourhoods. As such flare-ups of
sectarian violence are a constant feature. However, when a postal worker was murdered in a
sectarian killing the resulting strike action and rallies forced the UDA to lift death threats, and
showed how sectarianism can be challenged by mass workers’ action.
The past year has exposed the hollowness of Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionist Party’s
claims to act as representatives of working class people. Sinn Fein ministers in Stormont are
privatising education and health, and the PUP has defended the Loyalist blockade of Catholic
schoolchildren in North Belfast. The SWP now needs to openly and confidently take on the
politics SF and the PUP in front of their own supporters.
(4) Another strategic goal is the creation of a socialist bloc in elections and campaigns. The
attempt to establish a Socialist Alliance in the South failed when the CWI-aligned Socialist Party
refused to participate.
Notwithstanding the sectarianism of the CWI and SP, the objective situation—growing anger
currently finding a divided far left and being canalised into support for Sinn Fein and Greens—
demands an open alliance between the SWP and the SP to pose a distinctly socialist challenge
to political establishment, and to pose an alternative to Republicanism and the Greens.
In the North we established with others a Socialist Environmental Alliance which contested last
year’s local elections in four areas. We used this united front to pull people around us, raise
class politics and address the religious sectarianism of the political system in Northern Ireland. It
was a modest success, and it is likely we will use it again in future elections.
(5) The profile of the SWP has risen enormously during the Southern election, and our role in
the aftermath of the police riot mentioned above. For the first time serious numbers of people
applying to join from our website. We need to recruit widely in the next period, taking care to
fully integrate new members—a weakness in most of our branches.
As well as this the SWP has to change both qualitatively and quantitatively.
In the mid-1990s we were a propaganda group that had the ability to seize the initiative on the
streets. Over the past two years we have shifted to agitation and stressed the need for united
front work where we work alongside others in a leftward moving milieu.
This has been particularly successful in the Irish Anti-War Movement. In other areas local united
front work has too often been carelessly constructed and ineffective.
Our members need to immerse themselves in local struggles and get concrete experience of
working with others in genuine united fronts organising local activity rather than relying on
abstract formulas.
The election provided a test of this. In those areas where we had a record of effective and
consistent agitation our vote remained respectable—despite being squeezed by SF, etc. In
areas where this was not the case our vote was very poor.
Our branches must also break from the habit of being completely dependent on a small core of
cadre substituting for and failing to involve other members and supporters. Instead there needs
to be a functional division of labour. This is a long-running problem throughout the SWP from
top to bottom and needs urgently to be corrected.
We aim to launch Socialist Worker as a weekly at year’s end. For this we need a network of
correspondents feeding in reports of local struggle they are involved in etc. We also need to
push up the circulation and organisation of the Socialist Worker sales.
Socialist Workers Party (Ireland)