50 YEARS SINCE TROOPS SENT INTO IRELAND

It's hard to believe it was 50 years ago today, on 14 August 1969, that the Harold Wilson Labour government sent troops into N Ireland, declaring it a stop-gap, emergency, temporary measure. 

They first arrived in Derry, the next day were also deployed in Belfast, and were to remain for 30 years, during the bleak, dark days of sectarian division, 3,720 violent deaths, and ruthless state repression; the 'Troubles'.

The vast majority of people today - whether Protestant, Catholic or neither - are absolutely determined there will be no going back to those days. 


During election times, the Orange and Green sectarian politicians still today rely on headcounts of 'their own' communities to hold onto their overpaid positions, trading on the Good Friday Agreement to climb to office - where they are quite relaxed about cosying up to politicians of 'the other side' to carry out Tory austerity cuts; privatise services; impose the miseries of Universal Credit; slash budgets by cutting Corporation Tax on big business; and make a fortune for friends and family through the corrupt Renewable Heating Initiative scam. 


The same politicians would prefer us not to know that it was repeated waves of strikes and rallies by workers, united in opposition to the sectarian killings, that were instrumental in bringing about the ceasefires 20 years ago. 

What is equally unknown and unspoken of - including outside of Ireland - is that during the period immediately prior to the British army's arrival, multiple opportunities for working class unity and indeed socialist change were thrown up. 
Opportunities created by the courageous struggles of ordinary people, including trade unionists at shopfloor level, but unforgivably squandered by the leadership of the trade union and wider labour movement. 

Background reading on why troops sent in & results

In this short pamphlet - Class not Creed, 1968 - I sketch out the bloody and pernicious history of Britain's ruling rich in their exploitation of Irish land and labour, in particular their coldly calculated incitement of sectarian divisions; their divide-and-rule tactics, culminating in the 1921 partition of Ireland. 

That side of history is relatively well known; the pamphlet also unearths some of the many, many examples of working class Catholics and Protestants uniting in struggle, in defiance of their political 'masters', who sought to keep them divided and thereby easier to exploit.  


That happened right throughout the 20th century - including on the eve of the violent eruptions of August 1969, when the Labour government deployed troops rather than a united workers' movement to confront the Paisleyite mobs and RUC/B Special police who went on the rampage in Derry's Bogside and parts of Belfast, burning Catholic families out of their homes. 

Even less known, are the heroic efforts of shop stewards in the Belfast shipyard - who set the tone and set the pace for others in workplaces where the bigots threatened assaults on workers, by calling a mass meeting of all 8,000 workers, passing a declaration of opposition to sectarian division and intimidation, leading them out in a token strike against sectarian violence; actions unanimously agreed by the 8,000 and acted upon that day, 15 August 1969. 


Or the Peace Patrols and Vigilante groups - many of them joint Protestant/Catholic in composition - who patrolled several Belfast estates in August 1969, quelling the bigots from attacking people's homes, preventing a slide into outright civil war, in a way that the British army was simply incapable of doing. 

With very rare exceptions, these defence groups were not only non-sectarian but anti-sectarian. 

In the Ardoyne and Unity Walk, they stopped attacks on Protestant families. In East Belfast they prevented attacks on the homes of the Catholic minority. Joint Catholic/Protestant peace patrols operated in several areas, including Ballymurphy, Turf Lodge, New Barnsley, Springmartin and Springhill. Far more homes would have been burnt out, far more murderous attacks would have happened, had it not been for these courageous efforts. 

Troops take aim on Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972

The tragedy is that the leaderships of the trade unions and labour movement in 1969 did nothing to coordinate and build on these ground-level and workplace efforts to stem the sectarian tide, relying instead on pious pleas for 'calm', and support for use of the British army.  


The latter went on to prove in action that working class people have to rely on our own forces, our own unified communities and organisations, not the forces of a capitalist state. 
Far from being defenders of the Catholic community, the army was soon deployed in an array of repressive measures, including house raids; curfews; internment without trial; shoot-to-kill policies; torture - and as some socialists warned at the time, practiced methods later used by the British government and its state against workers in struggle, most spectacularly against the 1984-5 striking miners. 

Workers' unity in action, 2019 

The failures of the leaderships of the Civil Rights, Labour and trade union movements turned a golden opportunity for unity and socialist change into decades of bitter sectarian reaction, starting in August 1969, as the bigots drove the peace patrols out of existence and put the workplace shop stewards on the defensive. 


To their eternal credit, however, these same rank and file union leaders led several waves of strike action against the killings - from both sides - during the 1970s and 1980s, preventing outright civil war. 
Meantime, the best the army could offer was - in the cold, cynical phrase of Tory Minister, Reginald Maudling - to reduce the North "to an acceptable level of violence"! 


I encourage you to have a read of Class not Creed, 1968. It gives background context to the deployment of the British army 50 years ago, why the ruling class through the Wilson government decided to send them in. It recounts some of the main events afterwards. And it describes what might have been if there had been a large, cross-community socialist party that could have built on the real events and heroic efforts of thousands of working class activists, 50 years ago. 


We need to study and learn from the past to ensure there is no going back. We need to base our efforts on class, not creed. 

Order copies here (£3 including postage): 
https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/class-not-creed-1968/

CLASS NOT CREED, 1968...

PLEASE BUY MY NEW PAMPHLET:
Class not Creed, 1968

I've just today published a pamphlet - Class not Creed, 1968 - describing the tumultuous events in my native N Ireland 50 years ago.

It seeks to rescue the truth about the background to the 30-years-long Troubles; the lost opportunity for working class unity and socialism in Ireland, in the mass civil rights movement of 1968-9.

Much is hidden in what passes for the history of Ireland. In particular, the many and heroic episodes of Catholic/Protestant workers' unity in struggle - as opposed to the myth of two irreconcilable tribes that nice British governments are obliged to sort out!!

The events of 50 years ago need to be understood by anyone seeking to help build an alternative to the Orange and Green politicians, 50 years on. This pamphlet provides useful background reading.

Please order your copy today. It's only £2.50 in person - plus 50p towards the cost of postage & packaging.

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N Ireland Explodes - 50 years ago

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.

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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."

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