Debates with the IBT on the National Question: Ireland

The North of Ireland was—together with Cyprus and Palestine—one of the three main examples of “interpenetrated peoples” commonly cited during the period of revolutionary Spartacism. As we have already heard, you reject “interpenetrated peoples” as a “theory,” which obscures its content. No reasonable person would disagree that there are cases of distinct peoples who intermingle in the same territory. Nor could they disagree that there are situations where two peoples have exhibited some drive to form a polity of their own in that area. What we disagree on is whether Marxists should develop a careful programmatic approach to these situations or simply support the struggle for self-determination of whichever people is currently oppressed.

The historical Spartacist position on Ireland is outlined in the 1977 “Theses on Ireland” (Spartacist No. 24) published alongside a talk “Workers must Crush Sectarian Terror,” which incidentally reads a lot like a polemic against you. These documents greatly developed revolutionary Spartacism’s approach to interpenetrated peoples. I’m going to discuss them in some detail because this approach has been so distorted by your recent publications and because it remains foundational for a revolutionary approach to the national question in Ireland. Spartacist No. 68 devoted a handful of paragraphs to repudiating a complex set of programmatic demands originally developed over years of research and practice. We have already heard the only argument with much content:

Yes, the 1977 documents did proclaim socialist revolution as the only way to protect mutual rights to self-determination in cases of interpenetrated peoples, that is, without genocide, population transfers or other forms of oppression. Find us a case where bourgeois self-determination in such a situation didn’t result in historic crimes. And in Cyprus this actually happened. Until the Turkish army invaded in 1974 the Turks were the oppressed population. However, the invasion resulted in the brutal expulsion of some 200,000 Greek Cypriots from the northern portion of the island, which effectively reversed the situation.

You may object that such a thing would never happen “under communist leadership” but the point is that Protestant workers will fear a reversal of the terms of oppression, particularly if the “communist leadership” is “centering” the rights of Catholics and denying the very existence of Irish Protestant national rights.

Indeed, the claim that the “theory” of interpenetrated peoples did not “center” the liberation struggles of the oppressed Catholic population is revealing. What does that mean concretely in terms of actions advocated in a transitional program? What specific demand for liberation should the Spartacists of the 1970s have taken up which they did not? They blocked with the politicized Catholic population on a huge number of questions: militant opposition to British troops, civil rights, the Special Powers Act, wages, discrimination in housing and employment, RUC brutality, internment and raids on Catholic communities. The content of your critique would appear to be that the original Spartacist line dared to also emphasize the need to reduce sectarian tensions, avoid zero-sum games over limited resources, find opportunities for joint working-class struggle and form mixed defense guards against sectarian violence. Such measures were not some attempt to mollycoddle an “oppressor people,” but were necessary to make Catholic liberation possible by denying the state various tools it could use to mobilize the Protestant population.

We consider the claim that the revolutionary Spartacist tendency offered only “unity on economic demands and liberal solidarity” in its program for interpenetrated peoples to be a lie. Should we tally up all the “minimum” economic demands in old materials, and compare them to democratic and transitional measures? We think the latter would handily outweigh them. And we think the onus is on you to explain what is “liberal” about advocating joint struggle against British troops and for socialist revolution.

For a while after 2023, you had no program for Ireland, having repudiated your old one in a few throwaway lines. Two years later you came out with:

You claim the Protestants don’t meet any of the Leninist criteria for a nation, but nations are never born completely formed. The “Theses on Ireland” recognized that the Protestants are not a fully-fledged nation but had cohered a nation-like consciousness with the potential for further development, largely defined against the Irish Catholic nation and as loyalist allies of British imperialism. Strangely, nationalists don’t give up when you tell them they’re not a proper nation, and history has shown that nationalists with guns and financial backers can do a pretty good job of carving one out for themselves. This is one of the potential outcomes of the increased sectarianism that would arise amidst any looming bourgeois-led unification.

Of course you would be justified in pointing out that much has changed in Ireland since 1977, most significantly the “peace process” and the Good Friday Agreement. This has seen a reduction in both sectarian violence and British troops on the streets of Belfast and Derry. Sinn Fein, in North and South, attempt to position themselves as reasonable nationalists that can forge an Irish nation without upsetting anyone too much. Even the Catholic state in the South is less Catholic, with liberalization on gay marriage and abortion law. But none of this takes the Protestants any closer to being part of an Irish nation. You claim:

The idea that Catholics and Protestants in the North are indistinguishable is nonsense. Segregation creates cultural difference, and once that difference exists it cannot be simply wished away. The 93 percent of children at the segregated schools learn their identity very fast. They learn whether to support Celtic or Rangers. The metal “peace lines” reinforce it. The Irish language is increasingly used (positively or negatively) as a symbol of identity, such as Kneecap’s Mo Chara’s demand to speak Irish in court. Kneecap themselves are an interesting example—their name, their clothes and their lyrics put them in the nationalist camp, yet as a gesture of the non-sectarianism that they often advocate, they invited Young Spencer, a “proud Protestant” rapper to join them on stage at a gig in Belfast. But there are still Catholic rappers and Protestant rappers. Finally, if any proof of cultural difference were needed, it is only necessary to go back to last weekend. The Orange marches and other celebrations of the Twelfth of July are an expression of political Loyalism, but also of Protestant culture, to which children are introduced via bonfires and marching bands. We may not like it, but it exists.

You can slap the label “Irish” on Protestants, but the question is whether they will view themselves as Irish if that word becomes synonymous with “citizen of a Catholic-dominated state.” We aim to break through the cultural, religious and political segregation with class struggle, including around democratic demands—seeking opportunities for joint action, for instance in integrated workplaces, or in opposition to specific instances of oppression. Your call for a border poll on Irish unification open to the entire island, on the other hand, seems perfectly designed to present unity as something imposed by an uncaring majority in alliance with the Catholic bourgeoisie. You yourselves note the Catholic bourgeoisie can’t deliver unity, and you yourselves note that the Protestants aren’t any closer to wanting it.

What you are proposing is “nation-building” by forcibly incorporating the Protestants into the Irish Catholic nation the way you want to forcibly integrate non-francophone immigrants into the Quebec nation, granting the oppressed nation the right to violate the rights of workers from other communities (whether part of an oppressor nation or not) in the name of national liberation.

So “centering” the national liberation struggle of Irish Catholics means denying the national rights of the Protestants—a qualitative step beyond what you are so far prepared to do in Israel/Palestine. Your article in Spartacist No. 70 states:

Again, nonsense. The Spartacist tendency never rejected the idea that joint class struggle might produce a united Irish workers’ republic as one of several different possible configurations of workers’ power across what is now Britain and Ireland. Nor did it “accept partition.”

The “Theses” do argue that the situation changed with partition and say “it was necessary to oppose the forcible reunification of the six counties with the rest of Ireland.” But it continues: “At the same time the present statelet guarantees the political and economic privileges of the Protestants. We oppose the Orange state and the demand for an independent Ulster as forms of determination for the Protestants which necessarily maintain the oppression of the Irish Catholic population of Ulster, an extension of the Irish Catholic nation.”

Orange ideology is certainly in support of Great Power chauvinism, but it is not exactly the same thing, and Great Power chauvinism does not always support the Northern Irish Protestants. The “Theses” note that the iSt found “inadequate” the presentation of “the Protestants as simply a backward sector of the Irish nation, whose loyalism/Orangeism is purely an imperialist ideology given a certain nationalist tinge in order to attract a mass base.” In other words, Orange ideology is not simply “imperialist ideology” (or “Great Power chauvinism”) but also the nationalism of the oppressor nation in the North of Ireland.

Your assertion that the iSt’s joint class-struggle perspective was one of “forgetting about national oppression and focusing instead on economic struggles of the working class” is contradicted again by the “Theses,” which link democratic demands and economic demands via a transitional program that transcends the framework of capitalism: “Without the demand for a sliding scale of wages and hours, for example, the call to end discrimination will simply imply levelling in an already economically depressed situation.”

The fact that you are compelled to misrepresent the programmatic document you are rejecting suggests that you have no serious way of challenging it from a Leninist perspective. Meanwhile, the tasks of revolutionaries remain broadly the same as in 1977 (albeit with different opportunities and problems along the way). We still call for troops out, which is effectively a call for the British state out of the North of Ireland without prescribing either an independent Ulster or a united Ireland. We still fight discrimination against Catholics in healthcare, housing, jobs etc.

We still argue for joint class struggle against the bosses and the bourgeois state, whenever glimmers of non-sectarianism provide opportunities. It is both necessary and possible to bring workers together to fight for the common interests of the working class, whether for wages and conditions or for defense against oppression based on religion, race or gender. As the politics of the North of Ireland seeps across the Irish border and the Irish Sea, we also fight for united class struggle between different nations and national groups.

What we don’t do is tell the Protestant workers that they can only be part of this struggle if they accept a united Ireland. “Not orange against green, but class against class” is still the correct slogan.

For almost 50 years, the iSt and the organizations in its tradition have upheld the “Theses on Ireland” (Spartacist No. 24, Autumn 1977) as a revolutionary program for Ireland and even a unique extension of Marxism. As my presentation will show, it is neither.

In our last issue of Spartacist (No. 70, May 2025), we published an article titled “For a United Irish Workers Republic!” This article does not claim any new theoretical discovery but rather defends the long Marxist tradition on the question of Ireland. Our article presents the Irish question in its historic evolution and offers a revolutionary program for Ireland based on a critique of Irish nationalism and British Labourism.

However, the article does not offer a detailed refutation of the “Theses on Ireland.” Since we defended this program for decades, it is only right that we offer such a refutation. I welcome today’s discussion with the IBT as a chance to do just that.

The difficulty in refuting the “Theses on Ireland” is that it is a centrist document. It covers what is essentially a traditional Labourite program on the Irish national question with all kinds of Leninist phraseology and overcomplicated theoretical schemes. By Labourite program on Ireland, I mean a program which advocates all kinds of supportable reforms while fundamentally upholding the unity of the United Kingdom.

Bait and Switch

For anyone not already predisposed toward supporting the unity of Ireland, the Theses can appear to offer a left-wing working-class perspective. Early on it makes a strong declaration against British imperialism:

However, right after this passage it states:

Here you get a classic bait and switch. The Irish have fought for British imperialism to leave their island for centuries. This has been the focal point of their struggle. The Theses appears at first to support this struggle, basically calling for Britain out of Ireland, only to then present the main conflict in Northern Ireland not as one against imperialism but as a national struggle between two peoples fighting for the same territory. From this it goes on to present the realization of Irish unity, the natural outcome of any successful struggle against British imperialism, as a reactionary outcome.

The Theses later goes on to quote the Observer (!) presenting the continued presence of Britain in Northern Ireland as motivated by “moral” considerations. It uncritically quotes this and goes on to state that British imperialism “is not now committed to the preservation of the Orange statelet and would prefer a settlement which would remove its direct political responsibility on the island” and that “British imperialism is constrained to maintain capitalist law and order and prevent a complete breakdown in the social order.” Really? That is the reason why Britain is still in Ireland? Of course not.

There is a reason that Britain partitioned Ireland, and it sure as hell wasn’t for humanitarian reasons. Ireland has always been viewed as an essential part of the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland leaving the UK would undermine the unity of the entire state, opening the door for Scottish secession and maybe even Welsh independence. This is why to this day British imperialism will not part with its Irish territory.

The point of all of this is to once again deny the centrality of the fight against British imperialism. Despite the strong words at the start, this is the common thread of the entire Theses.

Straw Man

But what about the Protestants? This is the straw man argument used by the British to partition Ireland. The Theses recycles this argument, covers it with Marxist verbiage about the national question and uses it to present the reunification of Ireland as undemocratic.

To promote this charade, the Theses needs to present the Protestants as some kind of proto-nation akin to tribal people whose language, culture and economy were not yet sufficiently developed to lay the basis for a nation-state. This is total bollocks.

The dominant ideology of Protestants in the North of Ireland is not national but anti-national. It’s all in the name: Ulster loyalism. The whole point is to stay in the United Kingdom, not form an independent state.

It is true that sometimes the loyalists clash with the British government and they have on occasion threatened separation. But these were always maneuvers to stimulate in the rest of Britain a reactionary royalist response to giving democratic concessions to the Irish. They are loyal first and foremost to the British monarchy and have no intention whatsoever of breaking with it, since loyalty to the crown is the core of their ideology. Here is an excerpt from the Ulster Covenant of 1912 against Home Rule in Ireland.

Loyalism is difficult to understand today because most people understand the world through the prism of nationalities. But this was not always so. Under feudalism, there were no nation-states, and what mattered was the dynasty that owned the land, not the people who inhabited it. As such, the monarchies of Europe actively fought against national consciousness, viewing it as a dangerous, revolutionary idea—which for the feudal system it was. It is these reactionary royalist conceptions which are the basis of Ulster loyalist ideology. They owe their allegiance not to a nation with a definite territory but to a divinely ordained royal family and its rotting empire. It is no coincidence that their hero is the restorationist monarch William of Orange and that they hate Wolfe Tone, even if he was a Protestant.

The point is that pro-imperialist monarchism is not a national culture whose democratic rights Marxists should defend. It is a reactionary ideology which we must fight. We should, of course, defend the religious rights of the Protestant minority in Ireland. But they do not have, nor do they want, national rights.

Let me put it this way. What is left of the so-called Protestant national culture if you take away pro-imperialism, monarchism and anti-Catholic bigotry? Basically, Protestant religious beliefs and Irish culture. This is not the basis for a separate nation.

The “Theses on Ireland” confuses all of this. It falsely presents the conflict in Northern Ireland as one of “interpenetrated peoples” when in fact it is and always has been a conflict opposing republican Irish nationalism to British imperialism. Neither of the conflicting parties wants to displace the other population from the land to form a national state. The conflict is whether Northern Ireland should be part of the Republic or the United Kingdom. On this issue, communists all the way back to Marx have always had a clear side for Irish separation.

To reject this historic Marxist position, the Theses raises the specter of a genocide of the Protestants. This is another straw man argument. The Catholics do not want to drive the Protestants into the sea; they want to drive the British Empire out, a position that the Theses supposedly shares. Something we seem to forget is that there are Protestants who live in the Republic of Ireland. Were they put in camps and exterminated? No, they were not, because the existence of a Protestant minority—unlike the existence of the Palestinians for Israel—poses no existential threat to the Irish nation since they are part of the Irish nation. It is entirely false and quite reactionary to posit that a united Ireland would necessarily or even likely lead to a genocide of the Protestants.

One of the most outrageous statements in the Theses is that “the communalism/nationalism of the Protestants has a defensive character and is not the chauvinism of a great power.” This is wrong in so many ways. First of all, it is simply false historically. Protestants have never been oppressed in Ireland, and it is the Catholics who have always been the oppressed. There is nothing defensive about Protestant communalism. But also, it is self-evidently absurd to argue that so-called Protestant nationalism, which is expressed through British imperialist royalism, is not great power chauvinism! If this is not the ideology of great power chauvinism, then what is?

Dodging the Hard Question

Beyond explicitly opposing the reunification of Ireland, the Theses rejects in fact one of the main political tasks in Northern Ireland: fighting to break the Protestant working class from British imperialism and royalism. This is an essential condition for the unity of the working class, yet the “Theses on Ireland” does not so much as attempt to make an argument as to why Protestant workers have an interest in opposing British imperialism.

The thing is, there is a quite straightforward argument to make as to why British imperialism is bad for the Protestants. Just look at Northern Ireland—it is utterly devastated. The cause of this devastation is not the sectarian conflict but the City of London, which has also devastated the rest of Britain. Protestants just like everyone else on these Isles have an interest in fighting British imperialism for their own self-preservation.

Of course, it would be much easier to break Protestants from British imperialism on the basis of an internationalist revolutionary program rather than a Catholic-tinged nationalist one. This is one reason why it is essential that communists fight against the hold of the nationalists on the struggle for a United Ireland. But since the Theses rejects the very cause which animates Irish republicans, it of course cannot even begin to offer a program that could challenge the nationalists’ leadership of the Irish working class.

What we have instead is pure Labourite economism. The Theses expects Catholic and Protestant workers to unite on the basis of economic demands and certain democratic rights, but not based on support to Irish national freedom. The thing is that the Catholics will never abandon their struggle for reunification. And nor should they. As for the Protestants, if they are broken from their support to the British Empire and face an Irish workers movement which extends a fraternal hand, there will be no real basis to oppose Irish reunification. This is the only way true proletarian unity can be built.