The Caus of Ireland

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Cause of Ireland' (shown on Channel Four TV, Frank Higgins reviews 'The Monday October 3) IS THERE any other failure in the recent history of the British Left so gross and so complete, or so scandalous, as our failure to mobilise the labour movement in support of a just settlement with Ireland?

The question is rhetorical because the answer is indisputable.

One important aspect of the Left's ineptness on Ireland is the very low quality of our educational and propaganda material - in writing and on film - over the last dozen years.

There are basic political reasons for our failure. Ireland is in fact a very complex question. ,And the way it appears to people who have not probed behind the surface seems to justify the British government.

The Six Counties is as old as such European states as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, and much older than most of the states of the Third World. It has the support of a two-to-one majority of its population, and an does the Pritish connection.

It looks as if Britain is apholding the rights of the majority, and in doing so playing the irreplaceable role of a peacemaker. To see it differently you have to roll back the film of history for decades to see how the present situation emerged, and how the present conflict is inescapably a part of the original injustice.

The second reason for our failure is the state of the far left itself. Instead of proceeding like Marxists from an analysis of the concrete complexities of the problem - that is, from the real situation, with all. its unique WHY DO we and the other "higher" animals suffer from features, and from the real problems to be faced - the Left has avoided them and pretended that Ireland is just Britain's last colony int Left has pretended that the insue is a straight, uncomplicated imperialism vs. anti-imperialism conflict. Following the Irish Republican 'left', ', it talks as if the one million Protestants don't exist.

it tries to use a simplified model of a Third World country fighting garrison colonialism -for one of the advanced countries of Europe, in which a comparatively small minority of the Irish people, the Northern Catholics, are fighting to undo the settlement' reached between Britain and the Irish vourgeoisie 60 years ago, and now effectively accepted by most of the Irish people.

Thus, to the British labour movement, the Left taus !. riddles and enigmas. Issues are dissolved into a historical jargon about imperialism, which is. difficult to follow for the uninitiated - and even more difficult to foliow for anyone who tries to fit together what is going on in. Ireland with the theories referred to in the jargon, for example Lenin's theory of imperialism. Specialised "Irish activists' have been selected and educated. They are sincerely committed to the struggle of the oppressed Catholics, but intellectually and emotionally they live in a world of their own. The oppression of the Northern Ireland Catholics gives some resonance to what they say, but there is no coherence to it, except what they take from the petty bourgeois Irish nationalists.

The 'Marxist' talk - of permanent revolution, for example have hundreds of types of cell, but each must carry the DNA that codes for all the proteins the body needs to produce, though 99% of it may' be unused by a particular cell.

This vast amount of DNA is:

the source of the diversity and success of the Bilateria in adapting to their environment, but it - is for the consumption and consolation of devotees who in practical politics are in tow to the Republicans.

Thus much chat the ieft tries to say to the British labour movement is impenetrable to most people. It is Irish nationalist emotion wrapped in portable 'Marxist' jargon.

It is the complexities of the Irish situation, and the difficulty of seeing a way out of the impasse, that has defeated the Left.

All this leads to pretty dire propaganda. The numerous proRepublican amateur and semiprofessional documentaries and videos made over the last dozen years are mostly useless. "The Cause of Ireland' is an exception.

In two hours it presents a coherent account of the way the Catholic revolt moved between 1968 and 1971 from a civil rights movement, modelled on Martin Luther King's black movement in the USA, to the armed IRA offensive which is now in its 13th year.

It is plainly on the side of the Catholics, whose leaders, like Gerry Adams MP and. Danny Morrison, eloquently explain their politics in the film.

What is unusual about "The Cause of Ireland' - written by Geoff Bell, author of "The Prot estants of Ulster' - is that il does not, like most pro-Republi can 'left' propaganda, ignore the Protestants (and thus largely ignore the working class).

Not without sympathy, explores the attitudes of Protest ant workers and lets many o them talk for themselves -shop stewards, a Protestant soc ialist, UDA activists, a Protest ant who married a Catholic...

It is possible to understan fore essential that they evolved defences against mutations and cancers and defences to ensure precise copying of the DNA when celis divided.

These defences include: 1. Strict controls over production of body cells. Bilaterians are less able to regenerate; JOHN LLOYD or Loyalist paramilitries: this film expl their viewpoint. Une of them explains: The Provos say 'Brits Out" - but we are part of the British family..' It comes across as 'Protestants out' Many of the Protestants call themselves 'British'. One man taiks of his shock, him 'a wee British man' , on being classed as Irish in Britain.

We see shipyard workers marching in early 1971 to demand internment without trial. Unemployed Protestant workers, whose privileged economic position - i.e., they had a job amidst permanent mass unemployment - is being eroded by the collapse of industry in Northern Ireland, speculate in a rather dazed way that the economic collapse reflects a British decision to withdraw by the back door.

A former UDA activist seems conscience-stricken about the sectarian assassinations that the UDA carried out against Catholics, because they were Catholics, in the early "70s.

Catholic Republican women critically discuss the South, which, they say, should be secular. Gerry Adams criticises the South because it is not secular and because it does not serve the cause of Gaelic Irish culture to which it pays lip-gervice.

Adams explains that all sorts of contradictions in society are being exposed by the Catholic struggle, and thinks this is clearmolecules) are constantly cruising along DNA molecules, repairing breaks and replacing damaged sections.

4. Destroying cancerous cells.

Many Bilaterians can identity and destroy "transformed"

cells. This ability is the basis of the development of the immune system.

Some 350 million years ago, Bilaterians overcame the threat if naked sunlight and colonised the land. Now we have two main groups of Bilaterians - the Arthropods jointed-legged animals) and the vertebrates (backboned animals). The two groups could hardly be more unalike and James Graham explains this in terms of defences against cancer each ains rather than ignores ing the road to a socialist solution.

¡the fim shows representaives of the New Ireland group, mal body oi Catiulics an Protestants who are for a united Ireland which allows some sort of autonomy for the Protestants and their tradition. Adams is shown rejecting this because, he says, It would perpetuate divisions. The Irish minority has to submit to the all-Ireland majority - it 'cannot have any say on the wishes of the majority of the Irish people' Unfortunately, 'The Cause of Ireland' does not clearly enough establish the all-Ireland framework. There is little about the The question is not asked whether there is any reason for the Irish Protestant minority to fear incorporation. To have Ad-, ams and a few others discuss the inadequacies of the South is to muddy the water, since, apart from being rather vague, they are not representative of their Northern Ireland Catholic supporters on this score, let alone of Catholic Ireland. What the Provisionals stand for in fact is in-. corporation of the Protestants into Catholic Ireland.

The film's explanation for the Protestants' separateness, and their hostility to a united Ireland, is too crudely and narrowly economic - 'marginal privileges' . That is part of it, but so lite span increase. This Ma, have granted an opportunity for the development of an ability learn, unnecessary to the short-lived insects.

There is a trade-off, though.

No system of defence is perfect, and as we, the most successful Bilaterians, extend our Get is the historically distinct character of the Protestant community - its religion, culture, and sense of its own identity, all of which pre-date by centuries the marginal privileges within partitioned Ireland, or even within industrial Belfast.

The film presents sectarianism as if it is a one-sidea, exclusively Protestant, affair. It is not. The oppression of the Catholics in the north does not make it so, nor does it change the basic all-Ireland Protestant/ Catholic sectarian framework to the conflict which is now nurderously intensed withi ne artificia sir County state Adams should not have been allowed to get away with vague talk about socialism and vaguer talk about secularism: a harder edge would have made the film's commitment to the oppressed Catholics, despite all the difficulties and problems. more convincing.

One regult of the film's politically 'soft' approach to the Provisionals is that it ends on a note of, optimiam on the basis of what seemed to me to be vague and incoherent assertions that the present struggle is going to lead in a socialist direction.

ilm give little reason for suc l'he previous two hours of thi bland confidence. Bather, it suggests the question whether the Provisionals are not - de.

spite their goal of a United Ireland, and despite the sincerity of those who talk about socialiam - unintentionally preparing the way for a bloody repartition of Ireland trout; all in all, The Cause of Ireland' - the title is derived from James Connolly's saying, "The cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour; thé cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland' - is a fine and valuable contribution to building an understanding of what the war ir Ireland is about.

It is a shame that it went out between 1lpm and lam on a Monday night. Showings of it should be organised throughout the country.

life-spans .by conquering external enemies, we increase the chance of internal sabotage by cancer.

To meet this we must either reinforce our immune defences medically or reduce the risk of mutagen slipping through our defences by altering our diets and habits, or by avoiding adiation, natural or artificial (another excuse for not getting nint of bed!).

*Bilateria are animals wiw distinct left and right sides, unlike jellyfish which have no particular sides.

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