The Lessons

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appropriate grounds that it had shed its internationalism; 17 years before Connolly's Irish Citizen Army took up arms against the British Crown.

More specifically, Connolly was ostracised by British socialists for his stand on Irish sovereignty and armed struggle in 1916, something which Lenin defended to the hilt.

Polemic

Secondly, Connolly's polemic was pitched against the late 19th century Invincibles who in the middle of perhaps the only Irish generation not to launch a serious armed assault against British rule emphasised political adherence to physical force without seriously engaging in either political or physical Connolly understood this and criticised it. But what O'Mahony, like other British socialists before him has done is to use that understandable criticism to condemn present day revolutionaries engaged in both types of struggle. Anyone who wishes to compare the invincibles and this generation to the IRA or INLA is either seriously misinformed or malajusted or both.

Yes we distinguished between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in the election. The latter earned full backing of all sections of unionism, the British media and such as Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Workers in the 26 counties also distinguish between the two in a similar way as do the British working class between the two main imperialist parties in Britain. One, Labour, bases much of its appeal on the aspirations of the working class while the Tories make no such pretence. In Ireland Fianna Fail pitches much of its propaganda at workers and small farmers (partly through economic and partly through republican propaganda) while basing itself primarily on Irish capitalism and thereby ultimately on imperialism. Fine Gael, once again makes no attempt to even pretend to be in favour of either workers or the republic in the same was as do Fianna Fail.

Fianna Fail not the IRSP, is the nearest thing to a populist party in Ireland today. Doubtless O'Mahony would riposte by pointing to sociological and even class difference between Fianna Fail and British Labour (the fact that they are in different countries may occur to him).

What he cannot do is dispute the essential political and historical division between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael; a division which most closely approximates to that between Labour and Tory in his own country An understanding of Irish class politics demands more than the trite label 'greer tory' used to describe Fianna Fail. Such an understanding would also explain why the phrase "Irish People" which the Marxist O 'Mahony objects to, is as legitimate as that of the "Irish working class". • The former implies a republican potential; the latter implies a republican socialist one. In Britain it would be wrong to appeal to the British people, for obvious reasons. But, and this is deliberate repitition -we live in Ireland a country dominated by imperialism.

The fact is that both Fianna Fail and British Labour have aspired to the description designated to Fianna Fail by O'Mahony, ie. "the main government party of the bourgeoisie for 40 of the last 50 years"

Pious condemnation for making the distinction we have made in Ireland is a little rich coming from someone who, however understandably, has actually joined such a party in Britain.

We distinguish between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. We also distinguish between ourselves and all bourgeois parties. Does O'Mahony really not understand these distinctions or is he just making political capital from the misconceptions British reformists? If he does not understand these categories in Irish politics he should cease posturing as some learned Marxist.

Incidentally, from where we stand, there is no difference between imperialism of the respective British governdo not condemn British socialists for involvement in the British Labour Party it is hard to stomach platitudes from the same quarter on the distinctions we draw between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

The IRSP never called for a broad front with Fianna Fail or the national bourgeoisie. A careful perusal of O'Mahony's text and his misleading use of single quotes indicates a jesuitical mind at work here.

O'Mahony's depiction of IRSP's attitudes during the hunger strike is similarly dishonest. Unlike others we regarded the main target as Thatcher, not Haughey.

In O'Mahony's previous article on the elections he spoke uncritically of SFWP's left opposition to the government. Since then SFWP have gone into government with Haughey as Taoiseach on the basis that his economic programme is more generous to the working class than that of Labour or Fine Gael! In the same article O'Mahony dismissed the IRSP's election effort by quoting two of the three lowest voting figures achieved by our candidates.

We realise the limitations put on British socialists arguing inside the party of Mason and Concannon (incidentally, whatever happened to the threatened campaign to oust Concannon) but your coverage of Ireland could at least bear some resemblance to socialist reality.

We sincerely hope that your readers and supporters inside the British Labour Party do not derive any inspiration from such 'left' philosophy.

In summary: the development or degeneration of SFWP and Irish Labour has to be seen against the arguments inside the Irish working class of the 26 counties on how to provide jobs, houses and a general level of prosperity.

The arguments are the same as they have always been in oppressed countries. One argument says that investment, financial solvency and so on can only be provided by outside forces.

The alternative argument is republican and claims that only an independent nation can properly provide such things in the long run.

The socialist republican viewpoint is that only in the framework of independence can socialism develop. And vice-versa. Put crudely, how can the working class control the forces of production without controlling the nation?

At the same time one cannot separate the struggles for independence from workers' emancipation. This has led in the past to the failure of both struggles.

O'Mahony would have us walk right into this trap. While condemning De Valera's message that labour must wait he turns it around to conclude that the republic must wait. We wish for neither to be postponed and unlike straight nationalists or British economists refuse to counterpose one to the other.

Today much of the Irish labour movement is still polarised by this false choice. SFWP believe that to be socialist involves rejecting everything not 'much of a republican tradition'. Part of their appeal is to sections of the working class who fear that the development of republicanism will jeopardise investment from outside.

Instead of combatting such fears as they did some ten. years ago, SFWP is their replacement of the Irish Labour Party whose abandonment of the national question has always deprived them of majority support inside the Irish working class, the industrial working class in particular. Labour are now, ironically, under electoral threat from a new, mark 2 model of Labour in the shape of SFWP.

The essential political debate inside the Irish left today has not changed since the turn of the century. On one hand there are those who see the way forward via British methods of class struggle within the status quo of imperialist domination. On the other hand revolutionaries in Ireland realise the centrality of the national question in Irish class politics.

Over 60 years ago that debate was exemplified in the Connolly-Walker controversy. Walker demanded that Connolly and his Irish Socialist Republican Party reject their backward nationalism and join with the army of British Labour. Is John O'Mahony issuing the same invitation? What was that remark by Karl Marx about history repating itself?

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ments, be they Labour or Tory. Once again while we