For a United Irish Workers Republic!

The national liberation of Ireland from 800 years of English domination is an unfinished task that poses a challenge to revolutionaries. After centuries of struggle for freedom, including numerous insurrections, in 1921 the nationalist leaders accepted independence for 26 counties but acceded to partition which conceded six counties in Ulster to the British imperialists. The partition of Ireland divided the nation, intensified the oppression of the Catholics within the Orange state and deepened the religious divide in the working class. In the 1990s, 30 years of armed resistance by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) resulted in a repeat of 1921: the nationalist leaders gave up the gun and bowed to the rule of the British Crown. And yet today Sinn Féin promises that in the foreseeable future Ireland will be reunited through a gradual, mutually agreed upon process. The notion that Ireland is continually progressing toward unity, which has been embraced by much of the left, rests on liberal faith in the goodwill of British and U.S. imperialism.

The Marxist movement’s approach to national oppression proceeds from the understanding that national and social emancipation are interlinked. Applied to Ireland, this means that national liberation is not separate from the struggle of the working class to overthrow its exploiters, but central to it. For Marx and Engels, the task of revolutionaries of that era was “to make the English workers realize that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation” (Karl Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, 9 April 1870). Lenin too argued that “we must link the revolutionary struggle for socialism with a revolutionary programme on the national question” (“The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” October 1915). He insisted that imperialism intensified the oppression of small nations, which increased the likelihood of national revolts, and that the task of revolutionaries was to support every act of resistance by oppressed nations and use every crisis of the imperialist powers to advance the struggle for their overthrow. In “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up” (July 1916), Lenin also took aim at those socialists who dismissed the Easter Rising of 1916 as opponents of self-determination, for whom small nations “cannot play any role against imperialism,” and who believed “that support of their purely national aspirations will lead to nothing.” Lenin continues: “Whoever calls such a rebellion a ‘putsch’ is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon.”

Likewise, James Connolly wrote that “We cannot conceive of a free Ireland with a subject working class; we cannot conceive of a subject Ireland with a free working class” (“Economic Conscription,” December 1915). Connolly fully understood that England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity. Amid the carnage of WWI, before leading his Citizen Army into the Easter Rising, he had expressed his hope that:

Our task is to draw the lessons of the past and put forward a perspective for a united Irish workers republic. This requires an anti-imperialist, anti-sectarian, working-class-centered struggle against British imperialism and the Irish national bourgeoisie. Today, a revolutionary perspective must also include opposition to U.S. imperialism, which exploits Ireland for the benefit of finance capital.

Origins of the Irish National Question

Today, Irish liberal historians equate the struggle for independence with sectarianism, for which they overwhelmingly blame the nationalists. The present Taoiseach (prime minister), Micheál Martin, stated this view bluntly last year. The Troubles did not have two sides, he said, it was “a war imposed by the IRA on its own people.” The sectarian divide pitting Catholics against Protestants was not caused by the struggle for independence but rather was engineered by the British to thwart independence. Throughout the history of the struggle, the sectarian divide has been the strategic obstacle to freeing Ireland from British domination. For the nationalist movement, it has been an insurmountable obstacle to victory.

The Irish question as we know it has its origins in Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland in the 17th century and the plantation of Ulster with Protestant colonial settlers from Scotland and England. The settlers were a significant class of tenant farmers renting their land from the English aristocracy. In return for defending the landlord’s land from the dispossessed Irish peasants, the settlers were given tenancy agreements which enabled those who were better off to accumulate capital. Over time, a national bourgeoisie arose out of the settlers, who became increasingly hostile to the shackles that the Empire placed on their trade and business interests. A bitter struggle developed between the rising Irish capitalist class, which was mainly Protestant, and the British Empire, which led to the first struggle for Irish independence.

The modern nationalist movement began with the United Irishmen, a revolutionary democratic movement inspired by the French Revolution whose goal was an independent Irish republic. The father of modern republicanism is Wolfe Tone, a Protestant revolutionary who was clear about his life’s aims:

Tone worked with the leaders of the First Republic in France in organizing military expeditions to Ireland. The United Irishmen mobilized the Protestant vanguard in the cause of an Irish republic. Tone’s famous 1791 pamphlet, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, won the support of the Catholic peasantry.

The example of the United Irishmen shows that the struggle for Irish independence began not as a sectarian struggle of Catholic vs. Protestant but as a united national movement. It was pledged to forming a brotherhood “among Irishmen of every religious persuasion.” The lesson for us today is clear: the struggle for Irish independence must be waged as a revolutionary movement that unites the nation across the religious divide.

Sectarianism was deliberately fomented by the British imperialists in their determination to crush the United Irishmen. The Orange Order was founded for this purpose, using Protestant religious zeal to foment anti-Catholic bigotry and deepen the religious divide. Its purpose has been unambiguous, as the Museum of Orange Heritage website makes clear: “The whole influence of the Order was to be on the side of continuing union with Great Britain” (orangeheritage.co.uk). Orange reaction played a crucial role in the defeat of the United Irishmen’s uprising of 1798. As a result, in 1801 all of Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom.

What Are the Protestants?

A perspective of united working-class struggle must start by addressing prevalent myths about what the Protestants are, and are not. This is not simply an analytical question. The idea that the Protestants have separate national rights leads to reactionary conclusions: acceptance of partition and rejection of struggle for a united Ireland. The Protestants of Ulster are not a nation, nor do they aspire to become one. They do not meet even one of the criteria for nationhood specified in Stalin’s famous checklist, according to which a nation must have a common territory, economy, language and culture (“Marxism and the National Question,” January 1913). Unlike the Israelis, the Ulster Protestants have no common national territory; they are not trying to expand their land, to drive the Catholics off it or subject them to genocide. Unlike the Palestinians, the Catholics are not fighting to take back the land that was seized from their ancestors.

Furthermore, the Protestants do not have—and never did have—a separate economy. The Northern Ireland economy is intimately tied to that of the south, as the post-Brexit hoopla over cross-border trade shows. Far from having a separate language and culture, Catholics and Protestants who grow up there can barely tell who belongs to which denomination, if not for the rigid system of segregation that separates them. Belfast’s Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods exist side by side but are physically divided by miles of metal barriers that are up to eight meters high and known as “peace lines.” Only 7 percent of pupils attend integrated schools.

The Ulster Protestants have lived in Ireland for centuries and are every bit as Irish as the descendants of the Puritans are American. They were regarded as part of the Irish nation by Wolfe Tone: the clue is in the name of his Protestant-led movement, the United Irishmen. Connolly was of the same opinion. He wrote that “the rank and file of the armies of the conquerors” and their descendants “are now an integral part of the Irish nation” (The Reconquest of Ireland, 1915). The Protestants are Irish. They are a religious minority within the Irish nation. Their struggle does not aim for national independence—quite the opposite. They identify as British as an expression of their political desire for the six counties to remain within the UK. But a Unionist political orientation does not change one’s nationhood: a Scottish Unionist who identifies as British remains unquestionably Scottish.

The Protestants were designated by the British overlords as a separate people purely for the purpose of denying independence to the whole of Ireland. The British establishment only reluctantly embraced partition to prevent independence for all of Ireland. Indeed, many prominent politicians previously rejected separate status for Ulster Protestants on the grounds that their purpose was to ensure that all of Ireland remained in the Empire. Far from advocating separation of Ulster, until partition, England had ruled Ireland as a single entity for some 750 years, during which Protestants lived there for at least 250 years.

The Bankruptcy of Irish Nationalism

To understand why the nationalist movement failed to achieve an independent united Ireland we must look at the position of the Irish bourgeoisie, both in relation to British imperialism and to the Irish masses. The Irish bourgeoisie yearned to shake off the constraints imposed on its business and trading interests by the Empire, but were too weak to defeat the British on their own. So, they leaned on the anti-imperialist sentiments of the masses to achieve their aims, but they knew only too well that mobilizing the masses to defeat the British would pose a risk to their interests as a property-owning class. The weak national bourgeoisie was forced to choose between the pressure of the insurgent proletariat and peasantry on the one hand, and their interest as an aspiring ruling class which needed to maintain business relations with the British. The Irish capitalist class put itself at the head of the national struggle but applied the brakes and prevented it from developing into a mass revolutionary upsurge that could have defeated the imperialists.

British rule in Ireland was shaken to its foundations by the 1916 Easter Rising. The war of independence, led by Michael Collins, forced the British to offer a treaty. British PM Lloyd George threatened Collins with “immediate and terrible war” if he refused to accept Britain’s terms, which included partition. Britain in 1921 was in no position to wage a war on Ireland. It was losing its position of world dominance, facing revolts in the colonies and had been forced by the working class at home to end its military intervention in Soviet Russia. But instead of Collins calling Britain’s bluff, Lloyd George called the nationalists’ bluff, forcing them to make a choice: either escalate the Irish struggle to full-scale insurrection, or back down. The nationalists had reason to fear the masses—the landless peasants were seizing land; workers struggles were spreading; Dublin dockers were refusing to handle British military goods; workers had taken over the city of Limerick. The way forward to victory was to escalate these struggles to revolutionary heights. But that was unthinkable for the Irish bourgeoisie, who had waged an all-out battle in 1913 to crush the Dublin working class and feared the wrath of the working masses more than the British.

The nationalist leadership had no strategy to prevent partition. Far from being able to appeal to Protestants to join the national struggle, the nationalist leadership was identified with the Catholic church. Politically, the nationalists could only pursue the struggle in the north along sectarian lines. As a result of the class interests of the Irish bourgeoisie and their inability to win over the Protestants, Collins caved to the demands of the British, including partition. The nationalists came to power in the 26 counties and, at the behest of the British, crushed the most militant republican fighters against British imperialism in the civil war. This act of treachery set the stage for the Irish bourgeoisie, led by what became Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, to run the country for decades as lackeys of British and more recently U.S. imperialism.

From Michael Collins to Gerry Adams

Partition divided the nation, deepened the sectarian polarization in the working class and created the reactionary Catholic state as well as the Orange supremacist state in the north. The subjugation of the Catholics in the north gave rise to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Its leadership restricted its demands to calling for an end to discrimination against Catholics, deliberately avoiding the question of Irish unity. Nonetheless, the movement was met with a ferocious Orange backlash and ultimately the British army was deployed on the streets. For three decades, the Provisional IRA waged a guerrilla struggle against the British army. And while armed defense of the besieged Catholic areas was certainly necessary, the nationalist strategy meant that its armed struggle inevitably targeted Protestants, who were seen as the enemy. Sectarian atrocities are totally counter to the interests of the working class. They strengthen the hold of the Loyalist paramilitaries over Protestant communities and perpetuate a cycle of communalist violence that deepens the divide in the working class. Similarly, indiscriminate attacks by the IRA in English cities fuel anti-Irish chauvinism and squelch any sympathy for the Irish cause among the British proletariat.

The IRA’s armed struggle caused a split in the republican movement, with the Officials cloaking themselves in Marxist phraseology while renouncing the armed struggle. Marxists do recognize the need for armed resistance and we are in favor of united-front actions with nationalist forces. But this must be part of a broader anti-imperialist, anti-sectarian strategy. Winning over a section of the Protestants, particularly its working class, to an anti-imperialist, anti-sectarian perspective is the only way to break the connection with Britain and achieve a united Ireland. It means appealing to the Protestant working class that their own class interests lie in joining with Catholics in a united struggle against British imperialism.

The IRA failed to defeat the British army; the army failed to defeat the IRA and in 1998 both sides signed the Good Friday Agreement. The successor to the 1921 Treaty was brokered by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, who convinced the IRA to disarm itself and paved the way for British troops to be withdrawn from the streets. In a rerun of the dead end reached by Michael Collins in 1921, the nationalist leadership under Gerry Adams agreed to ongoing British rule of the Six Counties. Sinn Féin leaders today bow down to King Charles, Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment which carried out the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. Today, almost three decades after the end of the armed struggle, Northern Ireland is more segregated than ever and ranks among the poorest regions of the impoverished, run-down United Kingdom.

The Left Rejects Nationalism… for Pro-Imperialist Labourism

The IRA’s armed struggle posed a test for the Marxist movement, which responded in one of two non-revolutionary ways. The first was to uncritically support the nationalists, which was fashionable in the 1970s. Leftists who tailed the nationalists rejected any perspective of uniting the whole working class, Protestant and Catholic, against imperialism and denied any independent role for revolutionaries. Leaving the struggle against imperialism in the hands of the nationalists is counterposed to the tasks of revolutionaries, which are to intervene into the national struggle with an independent working-class perspective aiming to show in practice that the nationalist strategy is a dead end.

The other wing of the socialist movement completely renounced the struggle for national liberation in the guise of opposing IRA nationalism and sectarianism. The result was an abject capitulation to British imperialism through the embrace of the pro-imperialist politics of the British Labour Party. On Ireland, Labourite politics means unity with imperialism against the national struggle. A grotesque example is Arthur Henderson who, as a member of the British cabinet, cheered on the executions of the leaders of the Easter Rising. This rotten tradition was represented by the (now defunct) Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) which accepted partition and refused to mount any opposition to British rule in the Six Counties. Instead, it claimed to offer a non-sectarian, class-based alternative to the Unionists and nationalists by focusing on “bread and butter” issues faced by the working class. The NILP’s tradition was embraced by Peter Hadden of the former Militant tendency which also accepted partition and rejected the national struggle. This rotten perspective was also prominently upheld by our own international tendency for half a century (codified in “Theses on Ireland,” Spartacist No. 24, Autumn 1977) until we repudiated it in 2023. Our old position explicitly rejected the struggle for a united Ireland, accepted partition, peddled the Unionist myth that Protestants are not part of the Irish nation, denied that Orange ideology is Great Power chauvinism and claimed to offer a path toward class unity between Catholics and Protestants by forgetting about national oppression and focusing instead on economic struggles of the working class.

But economic struggle by itself while ignoring the national question cannot unite the working class. The clearest example is the 1919 Belfast engineering strike which paralyzed most of the city. The strike of overwhelmingly Protestant skilled workers was led by a Catholic, Charles McKay, who was a socialist. The strike was immensely powerful in forging unity in struggle between Catholic and Protestant workers. The Independent Labour Party attracted the support of many Catholic workers and class-conscious Protestants. But despite a public fight waged by Connolly against leading ILPer William Walker in 1911, the ILP refused to take a position in favor of Home Rule. This capitulation to Unionism undermined the ILP’s ability to win over Protestant workers to a program of opposition to Unionism, the ideology of the trade-union leadership, which tied the workers to the Orange bosses and to British imperialism. The Belfast strike went down to bitter defeat at the hands of this pro-imperialist leadership and was followed by bloody pogroms which drove Catholic workers and Protestant socialists out of their jobs.

To this day, Labour politics means unity with the British establishment, dividing the working class and weakening its struggle. In a crass example of Labourite leaders kowtowing to the British establishment against the interests of the working class, outgoing RMT union leader Mick Lynch—a son of Irish republican parents—called off strikes by his union as a mark of “respect” when the Queen died. Also at that time, Pat Cullen, who was then leader of the RCN union and is now a Sinn Féin MP, also paid homage to the Queen on the occasion of her demise. With leaders like these, it’s no wonder the Irish struggle and the class struggle have been driven into the ground.

For a United Irish Workers Republic!

Facing the Trump era, which will mean sharp shocks including for Ireland, the challenge for the Irish working class and the left is to break with liberal gradualism which Sinn Féin, the left and trade-union leaders are mired in. From the era of the Celtic Tiger to the calamity of the 2008 crash, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael adopted liberal colors while fleecing the working population to compensate the global banking system. As a consolation prize, they offered social liberalism, which cost nothing. Inevitably, these twin parties became despised by working people, and Sinn Féin positioned itself as a viable alternative for the bourgeoisie. As true heirs to Michael Collins and the Free State government, Sinn Féin signaled its support to U.S. imperialism, dropping its pledge to withdraw from NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” and the EU’s military arrangements, while promising to keep Ireland’s non-jury courts that were set up to convict republicans. This was part of Sinn Féin’s assurances that, if elected, it would keep Ireland profitable for U.S. tech giants and for the global banking system. At the same time Sinn Féin soothed the working masses with populist rhetoric about easing the housing crisis, supporting Palestine and promising a referendum on Irish unity—none of which they can deliver.

According to Sinn Féin’s perspective, Irish unity will be achieved without a struggle against the imperialist powers. This fantasy comes from their liberal faith in the benevolence of U.S. imperialism and its junior partner, the EU. Irish liberals regard support for the EU as sacrosanct. They went apoplectic over Brexit, which ruptured the liberal European order. In their view, membership in the EU put an end to Ireland’s status as a poor country and allowed it to sit at the top table. The 2008 crash brought a sharp reminder that Ireland is a dependent minion of the Great Powers: the EU forced Ireland to repay in full the debts of all the country’s banks—which were largely owed to foreign banks.

As regards Irish unity, Sinn Féin built its reputation, north and south, on the Good Friday Agreement which was intended to bury the national question. But the national question will not go away as long as Britain occupies the north. It is very much alive among the Catholic working class and youth, who want to see a united Ireland. To realize this goal, they must reject the myth that a united Ireland will be achieved by a gradual alignment of factors, without a struggle against imperialism. For starters, the Catholics becoming a majority in the north does not mean the Orange state will leave the scene without a fight. Likewise, social liberalism in the south has not caused the Catholic church to disappear, to give up its influence in the schools, or to surrender its vast real estate holdings. Liberalism has not made a united Ireland more attractive to Protestants.

Another gradualist myth is the view that Britain will simply hand Northern Ireland back. The supposed evidence for this is the fact that after Brexit, British rulers antagonized Unionist politicians who have taken to howling against an imaginary border in the Irish Sea. But it’s delusional to imagine the British imperialists handing back the six counties which they conquered and held by force for centuries. Imperialist domination is not reducible to an economic system whereby the Great Powers return the unprofitable bits to the rightful owners. The British establishment is obsessively concerned with its own decline in the Great Power league tables. It is liberal fantasy to imagine that it will accelerate its own downslide by handing over the six counties, opening the door to Scottish independence and pulling the plug on the United Kingdom.

The way forward for the Irish struggle today requires struggle against imperialism, and against its liberal front men, on two essential questions:

1. Oppose NATO!

Ireland out of the Partnership for Peace and all EU military commitments. In the face of renewed pressure on Ireland to massively increase its military budget—not a cent for the army! To end all U.S. military use of Shannon airport, build a movement in opposition to NATO and to the EU military agreements.

2. Demand a referendum on Irish unity!

Sinn Féin has promised one but won’t campaign for it. The Good Friday Agreement promised a referendum, but only if the British government agrees to it. This is an outrage—the Irish people should decide if they want a united Ireland, not the British imperialists! We Marxists do not share Sinn Féin’s touching faith that Irish unity will be achieved by a vote. History shows that it will take revolutionary, anti-sectarian, working-class-based struggle against the imperialists and the Irish bourgeoisie.

But many people in Ireland do believe in a referendum. That is a progressive aim and we will support them in trying to achieve it. We will appeal to Protestants not to go down with British imperialism’s sinking ship, which has brought them deindustrialization, misery and ruin. We will campaign for a referendum on Irish unity as a step toward reviving the Irish movement, breaking illusions in liberalism, and showing that the path to Irish unity cannot be divorced from revolutionary struggle by the working class against the imperialists and the local capitalist exploiters on the road to a united Irish workers republic.