Hi Contrary to what Kieran Allen claims in his article, The Death of Radical Republicanism, the conflict within the six counties of Ireland led to the strengthening rather than the weakening of the Northern state. It was the ongoing strengthening of the six county state that shaped the conditions facilitating the making of The Good Friday Agreement (The Sunningdale Agreement dusted down). The IRA bombing campaign provided the reactionary environment for the promotion of the growing strength of the six county state. The Orange state, an integral part of the British state, constituted a decisive obstacle standing in the way of the radicalisation of the masses in the North, in Ireland and Britain itself. The Provos played a key role in contributing to the fortification of that very obstacle. Instead of helping to shrink and abolish it, the Provos helped make it stronger. In general their theory, programme, strategy and tactics strengthened the six county statelet, the 26 county state and the and the British state itself. Had the North/ South talks between Lemass and O Neill been free to proceed in the early seventies, who knows, there may by now exist an independent 32 county democratic Irish republic. It has been the very strengthening of the northern state, as an integral part of the UK state, that has facilitated the reaching of The Good Friday Agreement and prevention of the establishment of a formally independent 32 county Irish Republic. In that sense the politics of the Provos promoted the sustenance of the Orange state while preventing the evolution of a 32 county bourgeois democratic republic. The strengthening of the two states North and South of the border rendered the emergence of a formally independent 32 county democratic Republic impossible. The result was victory for British Imperialism over the native Irish bourgeoisie. The IRA had become so weak in relation to British imperialism's six county state that it had no alternative but to surrender in the form of TGFA. The Good Friday Agreement constitutes a definitive defeat for the Provos. The only distinction between Trimble and Paisley is that the latter was able to extract the maximum terms of surrender from the Provos. What was a defeat for the Provos has been paraded as their victory. The Provo movement had become so weakened and demoralised that McGuinness and Adams were able, with ease, to win the vast bulk of its rank and file over to a position of surrender. Indeed the Provos had become so weakened that the British ruling class itself had turned the Provos into a colony serving the class interests of imperialism. What was imperialism's (the British state's) strategy for surrender of the Provos was presented as the IRA's brainchild (TGFA). Indeed so much had the colonisation of the IRA by the British ruling class progressed that it was increasingly difficult to ascertain whether significant elements in the leadership of the IRA were agents of British intelligence. The Donaldson affair is an indicator of this. There is an entire history here that has yet to be made public. Indeed the history of the Provos is the history of its take-over by the British state. Her majesty's Sinn Fein/IRA has been transformed from a petit bourgeois republican movement to a reactionary bourgeois party. Incidentally I was once a very active member of Sinn Fein who believed Sinn Fein could be turned into a Marxist party. However my experience of the republican movement and growing political consciousness taught me that this could never be. There were others, within Sinn Fein at the time, who had entertained a similar utopianism.
Yours etc., Paddy Hackett Hackett Blog http://hakett.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
