Republican Movement in 1969/1970 they gave five reasons for doing so.
The 'recognition of Westminster, Stormont and Leinster House; extreme socialism leading to dictatorship; internal methods being used in the movement; failure to give maximum possible defence in Belfast and other northern areas in August 1969; campaigning to retain Stormont instead of seeking its abolition' (1)
The more aggressive stance of the Provos allowed them to grow, as young nationalists sought the means to hit back not only, or even primarily, at the loyalists but at the British Army whose widescale repression rapidly made them the sharp end of the State assault on the nationalist working class.
The Provos were completely clear that they opposed the hated Stormont regime and in this, for all their political primitiveness, they had a policy that easily marginalised the Officials.
stormont was the instrument of the sectarian State, which articulated its policies and rallied the unionist alliance, behind which the British could hide its own responsibility for what was happening.
It was the weakest link in the machinery of imperialist control of the island and correctly the object of opposition of the radicalising nationalist working class.
When fourteen civil rights demonstrators were murdered by the British Army on Bloody Sunday at the beginning OI 19| ln a failed attempt to terrorise the opposition, and action spread to the South, Stormont was effectively finished. It was prorogued a couple of months later in March.
The Provisionals recruited heavily after each wave of repression. They were seen as the most effective way to hit back at the British. They also promised victory and 'victory '72', 'victory '73' and 'victory '74' became not just Provo slogans but Provo predictions.
The defeat of Stormont was claimed as a victory for their armed campaign and for a long time afterwards became the primary argument used to justify the effiof their armed campaign, until it became embarrassing when their primary objective became ILS ICLULI. Strategy
The Provisionals have never been more than a small military force facing a much more powerful enemy. The British State for the last thirty years has been part of the world's most powerful military alliance, NATO, for most of this time ready for war with the Soviet Union.
The Provos however claimed that because of their campaign the British wanted out, but this claim prevented them from coming to a realistic assessThe peace process ended a resistance to imperialist rule that was already effectively dying. ment of British interests.
Such an assessment would have shown that their efforts were so tar trom out-weighing British determination to stav that their military activities were always going to be a failure.
The determination of the British to fight over the last thirty years is itself eloquent testimony to their calculation of where their interest lies. Britain is in Ireland, partly by default, because there is no Irish capitalist class that could guarantee its, and others', strategic political and economic interests.
Even if these weaknesses of their political thinking had been overcome Republicans would have had to accept that if a strategy of mobilising the workers of the South was key to the liberation of the whole Irish working class, North and South, Protestant and Catholic.
This could not be done by elitist methods and could only be done in opposition to all the other nationalist parties. They would have had to oppose the existing nationalist leadership, trade union leaders and the Catholic Church.
They would have had to define their politics in class terms and reject the idea that only a purely national revolution was the agenda.
The Southern working class could only be mobilised to destroy the Northern State if it was prepared to destroy the other partitionist State in Ireland and they could only pose this task for themselves as part of a socialist programme, which would have made the national question only a part of its perspective.
No one in the Provisionals appeared to understand all this or have had any inkling as to the revolutionary changes required Republican thinking to carry it through. After the hunger strikes
The 1981 hunger strike had to be called off after the deaths of ten IRA prisoners demanding political status. Although the British gave some concessions quite quickly, it was clear that the campaign had been летелтес
But it was from the hunger strikes that the electoral policies that have shaped Sinn Fein's development for the TWO decades emerged.
During the hunger strike, the left had emphasised the importance of electoral intervention but only in order to demonstrate support and as a spur to organiThe Provos had rejected such interventions; afraid of failure, dismissive of its efficacy in achieving real change and critical of the possibility of electoralism.
Having stumbled into elections they then went on to prove that they were indeed unable to contest elections without succumbing to the latter danger.
Within five years of the hunger strike the Provos WELC seeking nationalist unity with the Green wing of middle class and capitalist Ireland in secret negotiations facilitated by the Catholic Church - the constellation of forces that had betrayed the hunger strikCIS
Peace Process
The road to the capitulation which Republicans call the "peace process" followed two political signposts. The first was about the nature of the British presence and the second was the rights of
In the original dialogue between Sinn Fein and the SDLP the Republicans had argued that the British were a colonial power and the unionists, the 'child of imperialism', had no right to a veto on national self determination, which was a democratic demand.
On both counts they were absolutely correct.
The SDLP argued that the British were neutral and that the British would accept whatever were the wishes of the Irish people.
The Irish people, they maintained, were primarily divided not by the border but by tradition and while the unionists had 'no right whatsoever' to a veto over British policy they had a 'natural veto since they live on this island. They had a veto based on 'numbers, geography and history
The Provisionals have changed by degrees, through revolutionary opposition to the SDLP to loudly championing nationalist unity.
From describing the British as imperialists who had to get out to seeing them as allies who had to act as persuaders for Irish unity. From seeking negotiations in order 'to smash the union' (Martin McGuinness) to seeking a role in its administration.
The peace process ended a resistance to imperialist rule that was already effectively dying.
Just as the history of the Provisionals contorms to the previous failures of armed Republicanism there is no reason to assume that its tuture erstwhile Republicans in constitutional nationalist mode will be any different from previOUS incarnations of this Republican evolution.
Whether it becomes a new Fianna Fail or Clann na Poblachta hardly matters for socialists.
What does matter is that its many genuine members and supporters from the movement to a real revolutionary banner, the banner of Marxism.
As for genuine Republicanism, the Phoenix has returned to the ashes -and that is where it must olay • A much fuller version of this article can be found at www.socialistdemocracy.org (1) "Freedom Struggle", Provisional IRA 1973.
page 21 of the scan
Setback for Schroder's "third way", but