Fifty years ago, Northern Ireland exploded.
On 5 October 1968, about 500 people assembled in Duke Street, in Derry, to march for civil rights, in defiance of a ban imposed by the Unionist government that had ruled the roost since the partition of Ireland in 1921.
The ensuing brutal police violence that cracked skulls and hospitalised at least 100 protesters was televised across the world. That was the day most commentators designate the start of 'the Troubles'.
Many myths surround this whole period of history, and many rich lessons for today need to be unearthed.
This was a period of vast opportunities for working class unity in Ireland - which then turned into the bloody conflict for nearly 30 years, marked by deepened sectarian division and 3,700 deaths.
But could history have been different? What were the roots of sectarianism? What did the civil rights movement signify and achieve? What role did the trade union and labour movement play 50 years ago? Was workers' unity possible? Why were British troops sent in by a Labour government in August 1969? And have the claims by Sinn Fein today, that they are the modern inheritors of the civil rights struggle of 50 years ago any basis in the historic facts?
We don't study history for the hell of it; we do so to learn from success and failure, in order to apply the lessons to the current world - including Ireland. The biggest crime of much that is written on Irish history is the way it excludes the many glorious displays of workers' unity in struggle.
Below is the opening section of Chapter 1 of a 110-page book I wrote in 1989, entitled Socialism - not Sectarianism. This chapter deals with the main events of 1968-9.
If you would like the full chapter (the book is now out of print), please pay a modest £3 via PayPal, to the account with the email address jim.sspfinance@gmail.com
We will then send you the full Chapter.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
LESSONS OF THE 1968 CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE [Chapter 1 of Socialism - Not Sectarianism]
Twenty
years ago, British and Irish capitalism was rocked to its foundations by the
social explosions surrounding the civil rights campaign in Northern Ireland.
Mass demonstrations,
significant signs of Catholic and Protestant unity, police thuggery,
barricades, no-go areas and pogroms against the Catholic minority - were
features dominating events from the first big Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Association (NICRA) march on 5 October 1968 to the entry of British troops on
14 August 1969.
What were the roots of these
social convulsions?
British imperialism mastered
the arts of exploitation, bloody suppression of revolts and the cynical use of
divide and rule tactics, in its centuries of rule in Ireland. By the early
1900s, it faced its most powerful foe: the young Irish working class, united in
movements threatening socialist revolution. Despite the poisons of
sectarianism, Catholic and Protestant workers combined against their common
enemy in the 1907 Belfast docks strike, led by Jim Larkin, during which Belfast
police mutinied. The 1913 eight-month Dublin lockout involved Protestant
Belfast workers giving solidarity to Catholic Dublin workers in their showdown
with Catholic Dublin bosses.
Workers unite
Under the shadow of the 1917
Russian revolution, the capitalists faced a mobilized Irish working class in
1918-21.
In 1919, Belfast engineering
workers, whose majority were Protestant, formed a united Protestant-Catholic
strike committee, with a Catholic elected as chairman. They led a virtual
general strike which involved mass trade union patrols. Belfast was temporarily
in the workers' hands, and even the capitalist media were forced to admit 'law
and order' was better than when the police were in control.
The 1919 Limerick Soviet
involved price controls by the workers' committees and production of their own
currency - 'Labour Notes' - distinct from the national currency.
Arigna miners
occupied their pits and forced compensation from the bosses at the end of their
action for the improved productivity during the period of workers' control of
the mine.
Creamery workers seized their
workplaces, hoisted red flags, and declared on banners "We make cream, not
profits".
Land labourers, road workers
and numerous other layers were involved in a wave of strikes, sit-ins and
embryonic soviets throughout every corner of Ireland.
This workers' movement was met
by military savagery and pogroms against Catholic and Protestant socialists in
Belfast. The latter were orchestrated by big business, executed by the UVF
thugs, and encouraged by the
British Tories. In the period June 1920 to June 1922, a total of 428 died and
1,766 were injured in these pogroms. And 25% of the 9,000 driven from their
jobs, in four days in August 1920, were Protestants: trade unionists and
socialists, including those involved in the 1919 general strike.
Partition
In 1921, British imperialism
was guilty of the crime of partition - the culmination of their divide and rule
tactics in the face of a workers' movement threatening their power and
privileges. Two unviable, poverty-stricken, undemocratic, capitalist statelets
were thus born.
Partition met the naked cash
calculations of the capitalist class. It allowed them to maintain the most
industrialized region around Belfast, and vital naval bases to help 'Britannia
rule the waves'. Above all, it threw back the workers' movement for decades.
However, the capitalists in the
South were incapable of developing a healthy, independent economy. Neither
tariffs nor free trade could end the miserable conditions that blighted the
population. For instance, by 1946, 46% of the population still depended on
agriculture for an income! As writer Tim Pat Coogan put it: "Had it not
been for the safety valve of emigration (400,000 in round figures 1950-60), the
frustration and desperation of these years must have led to mass riots."
Now read on... order the full chapter by paying £3 via PayPal, account jim.sspfinance@gmail.com
