WORKERS SOLIDARITY Paper of the Irish anarchist group, Workers Solidarity Movement No 43 Autumn 1994 (electronic addition) Part 2 (Ireland & Imperialism) 21k In this section It was always time to go..Troops out now! When British army chiefs refused to obey orders Nationalism...No Thanks When the Falls & the Shankill fought together ********************************** IT WAS ALWAYS TIME TO GO TROOPS OUT NOW TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, on Thursday, August the 15th, 1969, 400 soldiers from the Prince of Wales Own Yorkshire Regiment took up positions around Derry city. Why they arrived has been the subject of myth making and distortion for the last 25 years. The myth is a simple one, that the function of the British army in the 6 counties is to preserve the peace, to keep apart fanatical Catholics and Protestants who would otherwise tear each others throat out at the first opportunity. It is a myth, which like all good ones, incorporates elements of the truth. After the last months few need to be reminded of the vicious actions of the loyalist death squads. But despite this grain of truth it is in fact a distortion, even a lie. Far from the aim of the army being to break down such sectarianism their role was to support it and prevent the development of an alternative to it. The point the army moved in was the point at which the Stormont controlled sectarian police was losing control of Derry and there was a danger that if this situation continued an alternative centre of power could develop. The troops arrived in the six counties, not to enforce equality, but in opposition to what the demand for equal rights had come to. The refusal to grant reform and the deployment of considerable state force to smash the reform movement had led not surprisingly to people fighting back. It was this fightback that the troops had arrived to defuse and if necessary smash. The northern state was created in 1921 as a sectarian state, "a Protestant state for a Protestant people" as Lord Brookeborough, one of its Prime Ministers called it. Its ruling class protected their power by maintaining sectarianism; from calls by Brookeborough (again) to only employ loyal Protestants, to loyalist death squads killing and driving out those who resisted (Catholic or Protestant). It was created as a society where your chances of housing and employment depended on your religion. This happened with the full approval of the British ruling class. In 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed. Its demands were most striking for their extreme moderation: o one man - one vote o allocation of housing on a points scheme o redrawing of gerrymandered electoral borders o repeal of the Special Powers Act* o abolition of the B specials** o laws against discrimination in government * The Special Powers Act allowed arrest on suspicion, and imprisonment without trial. An additional clause gave the Minister for Home Affairs authority to do anything else required! ** The B-specials were a state paid armed militia of the Unionist Party, officially an auxiliary of the RUC. In August of 1968 NICRA called its first march. 2,500 marched from Coalisland to Dungannon to protest against local housing discrimination. Since 1945 71% of local houses had gone to Protestants, yet the area was 53% Catholic. The march was peaceful despite the occupation of Dungannon town centre by loyalists. Yet when a second march was called in Derry the Home Affairs Minister (William Craig) banned it. Local left wing activists along with the Derry Labour Party announced they would march anyway, and NICRA decided then to go ahead. 2,000 people turned up and that evening the TV footage of the police attacking the demonstrators with batons, punches and water cannon were seen around the world. A march for peaceful reform was met by the northern state with physical violence and smashed off the streets. Faced with the violent state repression of such mild demands, Catholics (with the support of the small number of socialists from a Protestant background) decided this time they were not going to just lie down. Six weeks later 15,000 marched through Derry. The RUC, outnumbered 50:1, stayed in their police stations. In Belfast an earlier march of 800 had resulted in the formation of Peoples Democracy (PD) which aimed to extend the campaign to winning improvements for working class Protestants as well. In November part of the ruling class around Terence O'Neill tried to defuse the situation by granting some of the demands and promising a review of others. This was sufficient to satisfy the 'respectable' leaders of the civil rights movement, like John Hume. However this was too much for other elements of the bosses who started an "O'Neill must go" campaign, including William Craig who ranted on about "unnecessary reforms". And they were all united in saying nothing more would be given. When PD organised a march across the north from New Years Day 1969 it was harassed by the RUC all the way, until it was finally forced into an ambush at Burntollet bridge outside Derry. Here it was attacked by 350 loyalists, including many off-duty B-specials with rocks and clubs spiked with nails. Despite the fact that many marchers were seriously injured, two nearly being killed, the RUC made no move to intervene and none of the attackers was ever brought before a court. O'Neill indicated his approval by going on TV and saying "we have heard sufficient for now about civil rights. Let us hear a little about civil responsibility". This was how the northern state dealt with peaceful attempts that stayed within the normal rules of "democracy" to reform it. Not surprisingly this caused massive anger among Catholics. On August 12th 1969 the Apprentice Boys in Derry marched and threw pennies off the city wall into the Bogside. Local youths threw stones back. The police used this as an excuse to charge in, cracking heads open and storming into houses. But the local people fought back and drove them out, erecting barricades to keep them out. The RUC tried to fight their way in over the next few days using CS gas but met with an increasingly organised defence force armed with bricks and petrol bombs. In inspiration, and also to draw some of the RUC off, other working class nationalist areas rioted. Huge numbers of RUC were injured and it was clear that there were unable to restore 'stability' on their own. To help them out the British army was sent in on the 15th. In the meantime the loyalists got their revenge in Belfast, storming the Falls with the aid of the RUC and burning down 200 houses. Up to this stage the IRA were non-existent in terms of activity. They had last been active in a failed and short lived border campaign from 1956 to 1962. Their unpreparedness for the "troubles" was reflected in graffiti at the time which read "I Ran Away". But the gun had been re- introduced into Northern politics by the forces of the British state, most notably when the RUC had driven up the Falls on the 14th firing Browning sub-machine guns from armoured cars (their victims included a 9 year old boy in bed and a British soldier home on leave). If even the moderate demands of the NICRA had been met with force from the state, the lesson was clear that in order to fight back you had to meet force with force. The left at the time failed to offer a coherent alternative and so people turned to the politics of republican armed struggle. Andrew Flood ***************************** WHEN BRITISH ARMY CHIEFS REFUSED TO OBEY ORDERS The Ulster Workers Council (UWC) strike of May 1974 was just one of the incidents that showed, far from being "impartial", the RUC and the British army did their best to prop up loyalism. This strike was a response to the Sunningdale agreement signed in the Autumn of 1973. This allowed for a "power-sharing" government made up of the Unionists, Alliance and SDLP parties. The agreement also bought into existence, in the spring 1974, the so-called "Council of Ireland". This was somewhat like the existing Anglo- Irish Secretariat, i.e. a talkshop mainly concerned with cross-border security co- operation. However loyalists reacted angrily to what they saw as Southern Irish "taigs" being given a right to meddle in the affairs of "Ulster". They launched a strike which aimed to shut down the six counties and bring the power-sharing government to it's knees. They succeeded. The strike was entirely controlled by the UWC. This council was set up in 1973 by loyalist politicians and paramilitaries. The presence of UDA paramilitaries was to prove vital. Andy Tyrie, a UDA leader, described the strike as a triumph of "intimidation without violence". INTIMIDATION AND COLLUSION In Belfast a total of 862 UDA roadblocks were erected under the watchful eye of the RUC and British army. They did nothing to hinder the para-militaries from shutting the city down and many soldiers and cops chatted and joked with the UDA men on the barricades. Shops and small businesses were systematically visited and ordered to close. Most did. The RUC's F division at Castlereagh received 709 reports of intimidation. Only two of these were "detected" through their fantastic policing ability! On May 19th the Northern Ireland Secretary, Merlyn Rees, declared a state of emergency giving him power to use troops to maintain essential supplies. They never were. MUTINY? It is now clear that the Labour government and the power-sharing executive faced a virtual mutiny as senior army officers refused to co-operate. One of the major successes of the UWC was their shutting down of virtually all of Northern Ireland's power generating capacity. Army engineers might have been able to maintain at least some of this power. But no attempt was made to do so. Three months after the strike a senior British officer boasted in the ultra-right "Monday Club" magazine: "For the first time, the army had decided that it was right and that it knew best and the politicians had better tow the line" According to another general quoted 10 years later (Irish Times 15th May 1984): "If you'd a decisive man who had arrested the strikers on the first day it would have created chaos and bought the province to the point of no return." These sort of veiled threats make it clear that the army top brass backed the strike and wanted the power-sharing government to fall. ************************* SINN FEIN'S STRANGE 'SOCIALISM' NATIONALISM...NO THANKS Anarchists are for the defeat of British imperialism. We would like to see an end to the killings in the 6 counties but we understand that the ultimate cause of the troubles lies at the feet of Britain and the northern sectarian statelet. But we want more, we stand for the creation of a new society in the interests of the working class and against the bosses, both orange and green. This is very different from the politics of Sinn Fein. We see the way forward as unity of Catholic and Protestant workers in a common fight against capitalism. They look for alliances of bosses and workers. Their interest in Protestant workers seems to stop at who can best control them. Hence Gerry Adams speech at this years Ard Fheis said that Protestants needed a De Klerk to lead them to compromise. This is alternated with the idea of the British controlling Protestant workers, presumably through the army, as seen in Adam's statement of Sunday 17th July when he said: "The London Government which has jurisdiction over part of Ireland cannot forever dodge its responsibilities" and asked of John Major "Is he prepared to become a persuader for peace and for justice for all the people of Ireland?" Who is he calling on them to persuade, and which responsibilities are being dodged? Indeed this whole approach to the British government, where it is seen as one of the forces for peace and progress, must stick in the guts of all those who supported Sinn Fein in the 1980's because they saw them as socialist and anti-imperialist in a general (rather than merely local) sense. But it should come as no surprise. After the Hume- Adams talks of 1988 Adam's described them as "part of a quest for common interests between nationalist parties", again talking in terms of an all-class alliance. There is a real danger of this current round of talks with the British government just serving to fuel the loyalist death squads. Sinn Fein has made it clear that it sees a settlement as being in the interests of the British government rather than being forced on them. So this means that either the settlement will not solve the real economic inequalities suffered by Catholic workers or it will only solve them at the expense of Protestant workers. Catholics are still two and a half time more likely to be unemployed. The option of bringing Catholic workers living standards up at least to the level of Protestant workers would involve a massive cost to the bosses. Anything else would promise at best a temporary peace, with the real possibility of sectarian massacres. For anarchists, the way forwards lies in workers' unity. There has been significant unity around economic issues in the past, from the 1919 Belfast Engineers strike to the 1932 Outdoor Relief riots. Both these saw thousands of Catholic and Protestant workers uniting to fight their common enemy, the bosses. Both of these were smashed by the bosses using sectarianism to win Protestant workers back to loyalism. This is why unity cannot be maintained by ignoring the border. More recently we have seen strikes in the DHSS against sectarian threats and a walkout by the mostly Protestant shipyard workers over the killing of a Catholic workmate. These demonstrate the potential of workers' unity in the north, but for this unity to become lasting Protestant workers need to be won to a clear anti-imperialist position and opposition to the British presence. Anarchists should continue to defend the right of the IRA to fight back against imperialism. But we must be clear that their nationalist politics and military methods offer no way forward. Our task is to begin the difficult task of building a mass anti-imperialist movement, uniting all workers in Ireland. Joe Black ***************************** INTERVIEW WHEN THE FALLS AND THE SHANKILL FOUGHT TOGETHER THIS YEAR is the 60th anniversary of the Outdoor Relief strike in Belfast, which saw unemployed Catholics and Protestants fighting alongside each other. In 1982 one of the few survivors from the strike, William Burrows, talked to Outta Control, a local anarchist paper in Belfast. Twelve years later we are pleased to help uncover a small bit of anti-sectarian working class history be reprinting William's recollections. He talked firstly of a march up the Newtownards Road, and secondly described the rally of 40,000 at Queens Square. "I remember the march up the Newtownards Road. It was organised by the Revolutionary Workers Group. The agitation was against the 10% cut in welfare benefits the government imposed. The bru was 17/- but they brought it down to 15/-. It was the same year as the Invergordon mutiny in Scotland when the sailors struck against a reduction in their wage. "There were about 1,500 of us on the march, with a red flag, and we were to have a meeting at Templemore Avenue. Bob Stewart from Scotland was to speak but there was a mob of about 40 to greet us. They went under the name of the Ulster Protestant League and were out to get him as he was well known. They had lambeg drums, deacon poles (with a spear at the end), and a union jack. "John Crumlin, a notorious bigot from the shipyards (during the early '20s he stirred up sectarian hatred against the Catholics, which drove many of them out) carried the Union jack. He was one of the 'three Cs' - Carson, Crumlin and Connor, who ten years earlier had been responsible for stirring up sectarian hatred in the shipyards and chasing Catholics out. Crumlin, in particular, made the most maledictory speeches then. "There were about fifty police there. But they weren't there to protect us. It was a sham defence. They let the mob through and then joined in. There was a lot of fighting and it ended with nine arrests. Jack White had his neck cut by one of the deacon poles, not too seriously. He was fined #10 and bound over to keep the peace. So was Harold Davidson, a student from Malone. But the rest, who had no connections, got about three months each. "We had an improvised band to lead us. We borrowed three drums from St Malachy's pipe band in the Markets. But they were destroyed that night. I remember Tommy Hill being there. He was a tram driver, and was known as Red Tommy because he always wore a red tie. He wasn't in the RWG, but was an independent from the Shankill Road. He spoke at all the meetings. "October, fifty years ago, was a wonderful event in the workers' struggle for better conditions. On that occasion there was a fight against the Poor Law Guardians of Belfast, who were controlled by the Unionist Party. The Guardians had imposed extremely harsh conditions on unemployed workers. "Whenever the benefit of an unemployed person ran out due to not having enough stamps, they had to do task work three days a week. They got paid 16/- a week, not in cash but in the form of a chit. This was given to the grocer who gave you groceries for that amount. "The workers, of course, took exception to this form of payment and thousands of Outdoor Relief workers took to the street to protest against it. Some of these protests ended up in clashes with the police and in a series of riots, with a large number of people being arrested. The worst riot occurred on the Falls Road where two protesters were shot dead. They were Samuel Baxter and John Keenan. "The Outdoor Relief workers replied with a massive protest to Queens Square, organised by the Revolutionary Workers Groups. There were about 40,000 workers in Queens Square that night on 11th October 1932. They came from all parts of Belfast, and from Derry and Coleraine. Four hundred workers set out to walk from Dublin to Belfast, but as they reached the border the RUC stopped them and turned most of them back. But some did manage to reach Belfast and took part in the march. "The main speakers that night were Tommy Greehan, Davey Scarborough, Jimmy Koter, Betty Sinclair, Sean Murray and Arthur Griffin. Thomas Mann came over from England to speak at the funerals of the two Falls men. He was arrested and deported to Clogher Valley, before returning to his home. Other well known speakers I remember of that time were Bob Stewart from Dundee, Willie Gallacher and Charlotte Despard. "Two weeks after that march I lost my job. I was a farm labourer employed by David McAnse. He was the father of Anne Dickinson, who until recently was a Unionist politician in East Belfast. "There were RWGs in different parts of the city. In East Belfast were Bob Ellison, Bob Stewart, Eddie and Sadie Menzies, Jimmy Woods, James Connolly (no relation!), Davey Greenlaw, Jimmy McKenzie, Joe Lather, Jimmy Spence, Jimmy Kernoghan, John Lavery, Billy Bishop, Billy Tomlinson and his brother Joe, Billy Somerset Snr., and Lofty Johnson. "The Falls Road group members were Johnny McWilliams, Jimmy Quinn, Tom Picken, Johnny Campell and Jimmy Hughes. Jimmy McKurk was a very militant worker in the ODR strike from the Falls but wasn't in the group. "Group members from the Shankill were Norman Taggart and his brother Bob, Bob McVicker and his brother Sam, Billy Johnson, John Sinclair, Aggie Young and Martha Burch. >From the Donegal Road were John, Mary and Nora Griffin. Billy Boyd came from York Street. Other members of the groups included Maurice Watters, Jack White and Ben Murray". ******************* Part 1 (Intro & Shorts) Socialism & freedom 10 years of the WSM Thats Capitalism World Unemployment Revolutionaries letter from Serbia Part 3 (Drugs) In this section Legalise it The heroin menace Part 4 (Campaigns & Struggle in Ireland) TEAM workers told not to expect a decent job Lets get together Anti-Water charges campaign gets off ground Reasons to bin the bill Part 5 (A rotten world) Interview with Italian anarchist Ireland..The land of a 1000 welcomes? Hicksons chemical spill 37% illegally underpaid *********************** Workers Solidarity currently comes out four times a year. For subscription details write to WSM, PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland. Also appearing in the near future will be a theoretical magazine called Red and Black Revolution. ***************** +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Workers Solidarity Movement can be contacted at PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland or by anonymous e-mail to an64739@anon.penet.fi Some of our material is available via the Spunk press electronic archive by FTP to etext.archive.umich.edu or 141.211.164.18 or by gopher ("gopher etext.archive.umich.edu") or WWW at http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/spunk/Spunk_Home.html in the directory /pub/Politics/Spunk/texts/groups/WSM