The ideological concept of Irish nationality, and its practical adherence of Irish self-determination can easily, if superfically, be characterised as rather oldfashioned, even politically backward. Socialists tend to regard nationalism as a substitute for, or even enemy of class politics, and indeed for this there is much evidence, particularly in the nationalism of western European states. Examples of this nationalism, as evident most obviously in Britain and Germany in the 19th and present centuries, are associated both with a racist contempt for those outside the nation in question and an imperialist drive for the subjection of other peoples and nations.
The Irish nationalist tradition is the antithesis of such politics, as indeed is the nationalism of other peoples and countries subjected to colonial and imperialist domination: it is a nationalism motivated not by a desire to inflict such domination on others, but rather to build a world free of it, in which self-determination is the nor.
And such self-determination is not only a case of small nation; to be effective it also means small nations being rid of the domination of the capital, the industrial companies, the financial institutions of larger nations or groups of them. As James Connolly put it in what became one of his most famous quotations in 1897:
If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through the whole array of commercial and individualistic institutions she has planted in this country. (1)
The nationalism of James Connolly was, it is clear, not a substitute for class Connolly's nationalism politics, but an expression of them. Accordingly, developed not in the direction of a narrow "green" parochialism but in a profoundly internationalist direction.
Connolly was in the minority of European socialists to oppose participation in the first world war, a war which he saw as "the most fearful crime of the centuries" in which "the working class are to be sacrificed that a small clique of rulers and armament makers may sate their lust for power and their greed for wealth." In the same article Connolly also stated his alternative: To me, therefore, the socialist of another country is a fellow - patriot, as the capitalist of my own country is a natural enemy. I regard each nation as the possessor of a definite contribution to the common stock of civilisation, and I regard the capitalist class of each nation as being the logical and natural enemy of the national culture which constitutes that definite contribution (2).
Connolly's opposition to participation in the first world war was both an example of his socialism and an expression of an Irish nationalist tradition which
had long sought to differentiate between the international interests of the Irish and those of the British ruling class. If one person can be singled out for establishing this Irish nationalist tradition it was Theobold Wolfe Tone, the leader of the United Irishmen whose uprising of 1798 has been the inspiration of generations of Irish republicans ever since.
"We should spurn the idea of moving an humble satellite round any power" wrote Tone in 1792 (3), and for him and the tradition he helped to establish, Irish independence involved not just the winning of the Irish republic but the pursuit of an independent foreign policy by the republic once it has been established.
This did not mean that Tone, any more than Connolly, was neutral as far as international class politics was concerned. The 1798 Risingwas an alliance between the Irish Republican leadership, large sections ofthe Irish poor and the revolutionary government of republican France. Tone and his comrades allied themselves with France not simply because it was Britains enemy; they did so because of their identification with the social and economic aims of the French revolution, The 1798 Rising was thus both a nationalists war and a class one. For the British ruling class it was the worst possible nightmare: a rising which threatened not just their political hold on Ireland but the entire social and economic order within Ireland and, by implication, within Britain itself. It was not suprising that the rising was put down with great ferocity or that in 1800 Britain imposed the Act of Union which abolished the devolved Irish parliment, imposed 'direct' rule from Westminster and thereby sought to bind Ireland ever lighter to British ruling class control.
"The Union is the only means' wrote Irish under secretary Cooke to Prime Minister Pitt in 1799, 'of preventing Ireland becoming to0 great and too powerful' (4). An Ireland not just independent politically and internationally but possibly one in alliance with the enemies of the British ruling class, is a spectre that has haunted that class ever since. It was precisely to prevent such a possibility that the ideological demigod of British Conservatism, Edmund Burke, argued that consessions were necessary to the Irish in order to prevent them going the way of revolutionary France, and whenever Irish reforms have been forced out of British governments it is invariably because of the fear of somthing worse. In the 1870s Gladstones conversion to Irish reform and later Irish home rule was, he himself explained, caused by the activities of the revolutionary Fenians or Irish Republican Brotherhood.
The Tory administrations adopted a different approach, believing that even home rule was too revolutionary, and opted for trying to kill home rule by kindness. Whichever tactic was adopted the aim was always to keep Ireland safe for British interests, politically, economically and internationally. Even those who after the Easter Rising of 1916 believed some measure of Irish self rule was necessary usually framed their proposals in such a way so as not to endanger the British Empires foreign interests. Thus, when the Labour Party leadership in 1920 was finally won over to Irish self-determination thay also added the
proviso that a free Ireland should not be allowed the potential of becoming a militry or naval menace to Britain.
And, even when the 26 counties of Ireland won a measure of independance from Britain, the state that emerged was under constant threat by Britain, not just economically but militarily as well. Thus in the early years of the second world war the British government drew up invasion plans of the 26 counties in the event of such action being deemed necessary for progress in thesea war against Gemany.
The experience of the second world war reinforced militry considerations in respect to Ireland. When southern Ireland declared a republic in 1949 the policy adopted in respect to the north by the Labour Government was summed up in the following cabinet office memoranda:
Now that Eire will shortly cease to owe any allegience to the crown, it has become a matter of first class strategic importance to this country that the north should continue to form part of his majesty's dominions. So far as can be foreseen it will never be to Great Britains advantage that northem Ireland should form part of a territory outside His Majesty's jurisdiction. Indeed it seems unlikely that Great Britain would ever be able to agree to this even if the people of Northern Ireland desired it. (5) From 1800 to 1949 there is then a continuity in British military strategic altitudes towards Ireland. Total Irish independence was never to be permitted. here is also a continuity on the part of the heirs of Tone. The internationalism of the United Irishmen found another airing in the rising of the young Irelanders in 1848, motivated by the suffering of the Irish famine, and inspired by the "Young Italy" movement and the radical revolutionary movement throughout Europe during that momentous year.
The Young Ireland 'rising' was somewhat of a fiasco but it maintained an internationalist tradition and it bequeathed the green, white and orange tricolour to future Irish republicans, a flag the Young Irelanders modeled on the tricolour of revolutionary France. The revolutionaries who followed also showed their international credentials.
The Fenians or Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) of the 1860s and 1870s sought an alliance with the government of the United States of America, which they regarded as the most democratic in the world. It was a forlorn expectation, but that and subsequent IRB support for other national movements in British colonies again illustratean internationalist and anti-imperialist conciousness. Connolly the most radical of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, even attempled to put this action into an internationalist class context, hoping it would 'provide the spark' for a European wide revolution.
Neither Tone, or Connolly are being put forward as representative of the Irishnational movement as a whole but only the radical, class concious and internationalist wing. However even those to the right of such a tradition have often been informed by political positions which have run up against British imperialist interests. An example was the de Valera Fianna Fail government in the 26 counties in the 1930s which continually promoted the authority of the league
of Nations sactions against the big power politics of the larger European nations. De Valera, for instance was one of the strongest critics of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and was equally critical when the other major European powers, Britain included, refused to take seriously the questions of the League of Nations sanctions against the Italian Fascist government.
The failure of the League led to de Velera adopting a strictly neutralist position, to which, in sprit at least, successive governments of the 26 countieshave claimed to adhere. British imperialist and strategic interests have never accepted such neutrality. That remains true today, perhaps even more so than in previous times. In 1981 at the start of long-ranging talks between the then Irish premier Charles Haughey and Margeret Thatcher, Michael Mates, a Tory 'expert' on Ireland and chairperson of the party's defence committee said: To have a neutral Ireland if we were to have another conflict would be nothing like the same value to western defence as having an Ireland totally commited to the west. It would be important for us, for the two nations, to sing with one voice over defence. The strategic importance of the island cannot be overestimated. (6).
Two years later Michael Hesletine visited the north of Ireland in his role as Britishdefence secretary. Speaking publicly he strongly attacked neutrality, saying small nations like Ireland allowed NATO countries to carry defence responsiblities for the whole area, including those counries not committed to the pact. These remarks were widely interpreted as being an attack on Irish neutrality, with even the pro-british Fine Gael goverment of the 26 counties describing them as 'unwise and unhelpful' and feeling obliged to instruct the Irish ambassador in London to deliver a formal letter of protest to the British foriegn office.
The relevance of Ireland to NATO is almost self-evident. But is has been explained in 1983 by General Farrar-Hockley, a former General Officer Commander of the British Army in the north of Ireland, and former NATO commander in nortbern Europe:
Ireland would be of conserable value to NATO in the event of conventional war with the USSR. Irish ports and airfield would of considerable value in terms of covering the western appraoches from the north. There are parts of Ireland which would give consderable range out into the Atlantic for NATO air patrols. That would be of no mean value. Ofcourse it isn't a question of Ireland putting divisions into the field, but there is the question of solidarity with NATO.
None of this has gone unnoticed by the government of the United States of America, who were, initially atleast, one of the strongest supporters of the Anglo-Irish accord. The accord was sold internationally by the joint endeavours of the British and southern Irish governments with the promise that it would bring stability both to Anglo-Irish relations and to Irealnd as a whole. Enoch Powell, the Unionist MP and former Tory cabinet minister, repeatedly argued that it was USA policy to promote a united Ireland and that the British foreign office also favoured such a plan:
The United States has, in the form of NATO enjoyed in the territory and terrotorial waters of Northen Ireland important faciliteis for a number of years and wishes to extend those facilities which are regarded as vital by the stategists of NATO. The possesion of these facilities and the possiblity of continuing and expanding them is dependant on the complaince of the Irish Republic. This means that the Irish republic can exact the price that it has always held out as that to be paid before it will even consider collaboration with NATO.(7)
It is not necessary to agree with all aspects of Powells conspiracy theories to see that it does matter to US strategic interests what happens in Ireland. One way in which the USA has openly interfered in Ireland in recent years in through the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs which uses what is widely assumed to be "laundered" US government money for purposes for which the government is not prepared to admit openly. The bourgeois nationalist SDLP has been the recipient of such funds. The motivation for this was hinted at by John Hume, SDLP, in the prestigious State Department journal, "Foreign Affairs" in 1979.
He reminded his readership that Ireland was 'a strategically placed area in the Atlantic approaches' which was 'politically ripe for subversion.' He went on to call for 'a process leading to an agreed Ireland with positive roles for all.' There is little doubt that Hume, the British government and the US government saw the Anglo-Irish accord as the start of this 'process', and one which would also help to cut the ground from under the feet of the 'subversives'. Notes (1) Beresford Ellis: James Connolly Selected Writings (p124)
(2) ibid: (p242).
(3) Paterick Comerford Do You Want To Die For NATO.
(4) Dorothy McCardle: The Irish Republic (p50)
(5) Bell 1981.
(6) Coughlan (p42).
(7) Progress towards an all Ireland State: Coughlan (p66).