Ireland 1969: the year of mass revolt

Forty years ago the mobilised masses of the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland took the fight against their social and national oppression into their own hands. It was a year of crucial political opportunities in which Irish revolutionary socialists were severely put to the test. That test proved them to be politically bankrupt. The subsequent fate of the whole struggle in the North is in part due to the failure of the Irish left to recognise the roots of their mistakes or to learn any of the key lessons.

The Northern Irish state was founded upon a systematic social oppression of Its Internal minority on the basis of their nationality-their identification with Irish nationalism and its goal of a united Ireland.
From the end of the 1960s the development of the British "Welfare State" increasingly drew the mass of ordinary nationalists into dealing with the state as the provider of elementary needs-the National Health Service, improved educational provision, and especially enhanced unemployment benefits.

Slowly the basis of the Catholic Church's hegemony over its "community" was being undermined. By the 1960s it was no longer the only safeguard against poverty, and its influence over political conciousness was eroded to some degree.

The growing dealings of the masses with the welfare state were principally via the local authorities-precisely where sectarian discrimination operated most systematically against nationalists. Local authorities thus became the focus of a growing nationalist sense of grievance.

The old requirement of house ownership as the precondition of having a vote in local elections had not been abolished in the North. The system awarded more than one vote to some citizens on the basis of their rateable property the "business" vote. When eventually it was brought into line with Britain after 1968 the local government electorate leapt from 694,483 to 1,032,694.

Though undemocratic towards protestant and catholic alike, this class-based system operated worst against the more impoverished nationalists. But it was surpassed by the crude gerrymandering of electoral divisions which allocated a minority of the seats to the wards of the nationalist majority in Derry.

The power of local authorities to allocate housing on a sectarian basis was perfected in Derry where delegation of powers by a contrived protestant majority meant that houses were ultimately allocated, without any accountability and in secret, by a single "loyal" official the Mayor.

Confronting the Northern state

Any fight against the ugliest features of this prison-house stateIet would inevitably kindle a national struggle, fuelled by the hope for (and illusions in) a united Ireland as the solution to oppression.
It is possible that some aspects of this sectarian state could have been modified by unionism itself such as reform of local government-and that the loyalist backlash could have been effectively controlled in the process.

Indeed, the catholic nationalist middle classes would have been happy to settle for limited political reforms to guarantee their place in the sun. Thus they would do all in their power to limit the mass movement to peaceful agitation for limited political reforms.

But discrimination against the mass of the catholic working class was too large in scale and too materially entrenched to ever be erased by political reforms. This was doubly true in a dependent and backward capitalist colony of an imperialist power increasingly faced with its own internal crisis of profitability.

Indeed, the unionist class alliance depended directly on the system of anti-nationalist discrimination and of marginal privileges for its "loyalists". Any attempt to genuinely democratise the north state challenged its whole foundations.

A revolutionary offensive against the northern state would not, in itself, end the misery of the oppressed nationalist working class and small farmers. Discrimination against the mass of catholic workers, especially in employment and housing, was but one local feature of their exploitation by Irish and British capitalism. That exploitation was fully shared by protestant workers.
However, the discrimination suffered by the catholic working class was far more sharply felt as a grievance than the common exploitation of protestant and Catholics. It was almost inevitable that struggle against this class-based system would begin as a democratic revolt, for equality, against discrimination.

Civil rights

The year 1968 saw a rapid growth of protest action among nationalists in the sectarian Northern Ireland statelet. It focused especially on issues of housing discrimination and against unionist bans on nationalist parades and republican clubs. It was against this background that the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), formed in 1967, found itself the focus for all the political discontent of the nationalists. At its core was a group of members of the Stalinist "Communist Party of Ireland" determined to create a cross-class protest campaign to lobby peacefully for a limited programme of civil liberties.

The committee thus embraced figures from the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), Republican Labour, the republican movement and even a co-opted "Young Unionist". Its demands included reform of the local election system and the abolition of emergency legislation and the B-Specials (Ulster Special Constabulary).

In 1968 NICRA was reluctantly forced by the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) to go ahead with the 5 October demonstration in Derry which had been banned by Home Affairs Minister William Craig. The DHAC was the initiative of radical leftists in the local NILP branch, most notably Eamonn McCann, who with two others were afterwards charged with organising that famous march.

Television pictures that day drew the attention of the world to the savagery of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as it batoned the defenceless marchers, including public figures such as Gerry Fitt MP, leaving 96 people in need of hospital treatment.

The first Bogside barricades

The two months following the dam-burst of October 1968 witnessed unprecedented mass demonstrations under the banner of civil rights-several in Derry of up to 15,000. Prime Minister O'Neill was forced to make concessions.

On 22 November he announced his acceptance in principle of a points system for allocating houses, the appointment of an ombudsman, an end to the business vote and a review of the Special Powers Act, plus a Development Commission for Derry to replace the loyalist-packed Corporation. On 28 November Stormont passed an Electoral Law abolishing the business vote in Parliamentary elections and the university seats. But the general question of local government voting was left to a two year review

In December O'Neill broadcast an appeal for popular support. NICRA called a "truce"-no marches or demonstrations from the shadows to take advantage of period. Meanwhile in Derry the growing nervousness in the new middle class elements in the catholic community-such as John Hume-had formed the Citizens Action Committee (CAC). Almost immediately it moved to dampen the spirit of revolt in the catholic ghettos. Taking a lead from NICRA the CAC pledged to discontinue marches until 11 January 1969.

Free Derry

But not all forces were controlled by NICRA or CAC. In the wake of the Derry March of October 1968 a group called Peoples Democracy (PD) was formed at Queens University in Belfast. Influenced by the semi-anarchist trend dominant in the European student movement it adopted an essentially similar civil rights charter as NICRA but added social reforms (e.g. housing and jobs), together with a commitment to pursue these aims by more radical methods.

It was during the NICRA/CAC "truce" that PD decided on a Civil Rights march from Belfast to Derry on 1 January. The powers at Stormont decided to permit it because it was to be small. But on 4 January the marchers arrived in Derry covered in blood having been beaten up repeatedly by loyalist thugs with police assistance. Derry was inflamed.

After the city had quietened down a mob of police invaded the catholic Bogside area, broke into houses and beat up citizens. The mass anger on the following day resulted in the first barricades and the declaration of Bogside as "Free Derry".

The police were told to stay out of the area, and they did for 5 days during which vigilante groups patrolled the barricades and the left controlled a local "Radio Free Derry, the Voice of Liberation". But the left had no definite plan of action and the CAC emerged from the shadows to take advantage of the growing nervousness in the area. They had the barriers taken down overnight on the fifth day.

Week after week for the first eight months o£ 1969 saw mobilisations of nationalists often involving many thousands in an ongoing battle for electoral and housing reform and an end to repression. It was a period of mass direct action which was to quickly fracture the Unionist Party and force it inch by inch towards meeting the civil rights demands.

O'Neill called a new Stormont general election for 24 February. It was a watershed in the nationalist camp. PD got 23,645 votes in eight constituencies. In Derry John Hume took a nationalist seat, as did Ivan Cooper-both future architects of the SDLP which was to consign the old Nationalist Party to the bin. On 2 April Bernadette Devlin, a unity candidate of all the pro-civil rights forces, took the Westminster seat in the Mid-Ulster by-election. Her election further underscored the scale of radical support that was there for the left to consolidate.

Political watershed

After Easter there were unusually large crowds (6,000 in Derry and 2,500 in Armagh) at republican commemorations of the 1916 Rising. Significant rioting, originating in response to loyalist provocations and police attacks, led to the sending in of 500 new British troops on 23 April. They were not to be deployed in areas of strife but would relieve the police by protecting installations. NICRA and the Derry Citizens' Action Committee again used this atmosphere to justify a "pause" on demonstrations.

O'Neill's concessions did not find favour within the whole Protestant community by any means. Then as now Paisley led the loyalist resistance. In the closing months of 1968 it was he who led the provocative counter-demonstrations to the civil rights events. In the weeks leading up to Devlin's election several loyalist bombs had damaged public utilities.

The right wing challenge to Premier O'Neill's concessions, which had led to the general election, gradually developed into a backlash, forcing him to resign. This decision was announced on 28 April and Major Chichester-Clarke took over on 3 May.

The turbulent season of loyalist street demonstrations over the summer culminated in the Apprentice Boys March in Derry on 12August. The preceding two weeks had seen mob attacks in West Belfast by up to 1,000 loyalists at times and the preparation of barricades .

Troops moved into police headquarters on stand-by. In Derry the Republican Club convened a self-appointed "Derry Citizens Defence Association" (DCDA) of two delegates from the major organisations. The bourgeois John Hume's Citizens' Action Committee also joined it in order to use its platform to appeal for peace at a public meeting of 1,000 on 10 August.

The Defence Association was thus to be the real leadership in Derry in the weeks ahead. But it did little or nothing to promote disciplined and democratic self organisation of the masses. In no sense was it an organ of the masses. It resigned itself to "inevitable" conflict with the Apprentice Boys' demonstration. It ensured that the materials were made ready to barricade the vulnerable Bogside area but it had not won the influence to control the catholic youths who, on 12 August, responded with stone throwing to the taunts of the loyalist thugs.

The ensuing battle with the police set the whole province alight. For three days stones and petrol bombs rained down on the repeated forays of the RUC who replied with endless tear gas. The police were driven back and demoralised. Their officers had to use physical force to prevent weeping and hysterical policemen from running away from the fight.

B-Specials were mobilised to replace the regular police - carrying pick-handles and cudgels. Before they could be used the British government ordered the withdrawal of these hated security forces of the Six County state and put its own troops on the streets in the guise of peace-keepers.

Solidarity

Meanwhile the nationalist masses had moved in solidarity with Derry in Dungannon, Dungiven and Newry. Their demonstrations were met by loyalist attacks. RUC stations in nationalist areas were attacked. In west Belfast barricades were erected. There matters quickly became far more dangerous than in Derry. Loyalist crowds massed against the Catholics in the streets.

On 14 August houses in several catholic streets were burned down by attackers, and police patrolled the area firing Browning submachine-guns indiscriminately from their vehicles. 200, Catholic homes were burned, ten Catholics were killed and 100 wounded in the two day police attack on the slums of west Belfast. 'Troops were put in place on the evening of the 15th.

Only now did the Defence Association in Derry draw in representatives of streets and areas, but still it had no orientation to the workplaces or organised workers, and no open democratic methods of self-organisation. Incredibly, no link-ups had been created with defence organisations even in Belfast.

The radicals began to lose the loyalty of the youth who turned to the traditional republicanism that was welling up to fill the vacuum of leadership with its promise of armed guerrilla action against British rule in Northern Ireland.

The IRA began steadily to recruit youth throughout the north.

The Defence Association spelt out its demands to the "peace keeping" troops. The barricades would remain until Stormont was abolished, the B-Specials disbanded etc. However, no demand was raised to withdraw the troops. Bernadette Devlin from the start had railed against any trust in the troops, but the left was no less confused than the masses as to how to counteract what was evidently the real purpose of the troops.

This was a disastrous weakness. Far from coming to the "aid" of the nationalists the troops were a strategic weapon of re-imposing order without fundamentally altering the sectarian state. Many of the limited demands of the movement would soon be met - the scrapping of the B-Specials and disarming of the RUC- but the masses were to be steadily demobilised as the radical leaders floundered in confusion

Bourgeois Nationalists

The Labour Government's Home Affairs Minister, James Callaghan, was greeted by the nationalist masses of Derry as a champion when he visited the Bogside with flowery promises, strengthening the hand of the Humes and Coopers who soon had some of the barricades dismantled. In Belfast, by mid-September Bishop Philbin was able to talk down the barricades and parade himself through the Falls Road on an army Landover in his ecclesiastical robes.

The illusions among ordinary nationalists in the immediate role of the army was understandable. But the confused response of the revolutionary left to the troops in Ireland and in Britain-and their impotence when faced with the extraordinary events of August 1969, revealed the political bankruptcy of the groups and organisations which claimed to be the modern representatives of revolutionary communism.

This failure of leadership opened the door to the eventual reinstatement of a new bourgeois catholic leadership increasingly able to control and demobilise the nationalist masses. It also allowed the diversion of the most combative nationalist youth into a guerrilla struggle which would relegate the masses to the sidelines.

Both of these newly re-created forces, despite the profound antagonism to each other, shared a determination to limit the struggle within a narrow nationalist programme hostile to the class struggle and opposed to the perspective of permanent revolution

Permanent Revolution

Agitation for democratic rights in the North had to explicitly take account of the nationalists' aspirations for a united Ireland. Most importantly, it had to confront their illusions in nationalism. It could not do this without explicitly arguing for the completion of the Irish national struggle-but under working class leadership. No other force had the consistent need or ability to carry through the necessary challenge to the existence of both of the partition states. Nothing less could dissolve the divisions in both nation and class.

Socialists had to argue that real democratic rights and equality could not be achieved for the Northern minority without fighting to end the common exploitation of both catholic and protestant workers.

Misery was not confined to catholic workers.

The highest unemployment and emigration, and the worst housing in the UK along with the smallest rate of increase in housing stock, made "Northern Ireland" the cesspit of British capitalism. And in the 1950s and 1960s a common sense of class exploitation among sections of protestant and catholic workers did lead to a modest growth of support for the candidates of the admittedly conservative Northern Ireland Labour Party and Republican Labour. Hence it was necessary to fight for demands that addressed the sharpest features of their common exploitation-for massive public works to create jobs and houses for all.

Yet at the same time socialists had to confront the reality-borne out in every decade of this century-that the majority of protestant workers would not be broken from their loyalism, and their own complicity in discrimination against Catholics, simply by joint economic struggle. To pretend otherwise would be to ignore political reality and leave the catholic working class prey to a resurgence of a spontaneous nationalism which would have no truck with any class programme.

A working class leadership and action programme among the nationalist minority in their revolutionary democratic struggle would inevitably open up a conflict along class lines against the nationalist bourgeoisie and all those sections of the catholic petit bourgeoisie not prepared to fall in behind the workers. This was and remains the only hope of appealing to the more advanced sections of the protestant working class.

North and South

But such a programme could not limit itself to the Six Counties. The working class majority in the South also shared the powerful sentiment for a united Ireland. The mobilisation of the workers of the Southern Republic was essential for any lasting success of the anti-unionists in the North. In Dublin masses had demonstrated outside the British embassy and were baton charged by the Gardai for their trouble.

Throughout the South there was a tide of pro-nationalist mass anger, but no political force to channel it. Indeed, even the radicals in the fray in the North themselves had done little to win organised solidarity apart from a spontaneous appeal for help in a Southern TV interview during the Battle of the Bogside.

The Southern workers' own class interests were bound up with all facets of Ireland's subordination to imperialism. In the 1960s the much more rapid development of the South led to a growth in the working class, in its confidence, and also in its militant vanguard.

In the decade before 1969 a serious scientific analysis of Irish society and a programme based on it could have powerfully equipped the small circles of revolutionary socialists to give a real lead in the subsequent events. Certainly the forces were there to be mobilised on the Irish left but the leadership on offer in 1969 was not adequate to the tasks posed.

Sun 22, March 2009 @ 19:59