https://iclfi.org/pubs/wh/256/ireland-review
The presentation printed below was given during a day of discussions, focussed on the national question, between representatives of the ICL and the International Bolshevik Tendency. The debates, which took place in London in July 2025, are collected in Spartacist Letters no 2 (August 2025).
For almost 50 years, the iSt [international Spartacist tendency—former name of the ICL] 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:
“British imperialism has brought centuries of exploitation, oppression and bloodshed to the island. No good can come of the British presence; the existing tie between Northern Ireland and the British state can only be oppressive to the Irish Catholic population, an obstacle to a proletarian class mobilisation and solution. We place no preconditions on this demand for the immediate withdrawal of all British military forces or lessen its categorical quality by suggesting ‘steps’ toward its fulfilment (such as simply demanding that the army should withdraw to its barracks or from working-class districts).”
However, right after this passage it states:
“At the same time we do not regard the demand as synonymous with or as a concrete application of either the call for Irish self-determination (that is, a unitary state of the whole island) or for an independent Ulster—two solutions which within the framework of capitalism would be anti-democratic, in the first case toward the Protestants and in the second toward the Irish Catholics.”
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:
“BEING CONVINCED in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament 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.
