What about the example of Ireland? There is the situation where 26 counties are in one state following the compromise of the 1920s and six are in Northern Ireland. Only in two are the Protestants a majority.
No, in Northern Ireland there are six counties and in 1969 two thirds of the population in those six counties were Protestant and one third Catholic. The demographic pattern has changed today but the Protestants are still in a majority.
You have the situation that the revolutionary movement always supports a 32-county state…
Marx and Engels did, yes. Trotsky and Lenin, yes.
You have the imperialism of Great Britain, which separated one part of the country from the rest, split on religious grounds. We know the situation. But does the working class and socialist movement in the South support a unified country where the Protestant minority can live? Because this division is artificial historically.
That cannot be said now. That position had some validity prior to the partition of 1921. Ireland was a colony of British imperialism up to 1921. After partition, 26 counties formed the Irish ‘Free’ State. The six counties in the North were left behind –a population one third Catholic, two thirds Protestant. It was an artificial creation. But in the consciousness of the majority of the population – the Protestants – it has become more than that. It is a separate state linked to Britain which has existed since 1921, for 85 years now. The Protestant population’s consciousness is that they will not be coerced into a united Ireland. Southern Ireland has been dominated historically by the Catholic Church, with no divorce, no contraception, democratic rights severely curtailed historically (it is different now). Protestants will not go into a state where they will be a discriminated-against minority. They wish to maintain ‘British democratic rights’ which, ironically, were severely curtailed by Thatcher and now by Blair, But that is their consciousness, not just the petty-bourgeoisie but the working class too.
The minority Catholic population, the bulk of whom has never been reconciled to that state, has been discriminated against. The CWI has a very good organisation in Northern Ireland which has fought to create class unity between Catholic and Protestant workers. In 1969 I was in Northern Ireland, in Derry and in Belfast, and we won over Catholic and Protestant workers and youth. Ted Grant and I spoke at a meeting of about 300 young people in 1970 in Derry city. We went into the Bogside in that city and in Belfast with armed gunmen and met the IRA. We always disagreed with them. We said that you are pursuing a terrorist campaign, a guerrilla struggle in an urban area, not in the traditional rural areas, and it cannot succeed. This is not like Vietnam, where a majority of the peasant population supported the guerrilla struggle. It is not even like Algeria, where the FLN in the Algerian war of 1956-62 fought as a national resistance to which we gave support, including practical help, against French imperialism. The ‘colons’ who supported the French there were only 10% of the population and they were driven out. A guerrilla struggle, as with the IRA’s 30-year campaign in Northern Ireland, based upon a minority of the population could not succeed.
The dialectic, the paradox, is that by 1969, the British bourgeoisie would have accepted a united Ireland. The political, military and strategic factors – which led it to divide Ireland in 1921 – had evaporated. With the disappearance of the British ‘Empire’ and with the collapse of the world role of its military, particularly its naval prowess, the naval bases in Ireland were no longer vital for the British ruling class. A united Ireland would have been cheaper for Britain. But they had helped to foster the Protestant population’s opposition to a capitalist united Ireland. They were implacably opposed – and still are – to going into a united Ireland and they will fight to avoid this. In answer to the IRA’s campaign of terrorism, directed against the British state, we said your campaign cannot succeed. Mao’s famous aphorism was that the guerrilla is a fish that swims in water, you must have favourable and sufficient water in which the fish can swim and be successful. But a minority will not coerce the majority. The IRA’s answer was: ‘we have a majority of the population of the 26 counties supporting us.’ But the situation had moved on since 1921.
We were for the withdrawal of British troops but it is necessary to put an alternative in their place. If the British had withdrawn their troops from Northern Ireland, it would have been a bit like Lebanon, a civil war would have broken out unless there was a class alternative. In that civil war, you would not be dealing with a population which was unprepared to fight. The Protestants were armed. In such a civil war, Catholics could be driven out of parts of the North and Protestants from other parts. There would be a repartition of the North. The repercussions of this would be a nightmare, not just in Ireland but in England, Wales and Scotland too, which could be flooded with refugees.
As opposed to the sectarians on both sides of the religious divide, we launched the idea of a united struggle of the working class including a trade union defence force, linking Catholics and Protestants together. The main meeting point of Catholics and Protestants was in the factories. So we put forward this demand in order to try and cement class unity.
The IRA conducted a 30-year campaign. The SWP in Britain, the USFI, the Morenoites in Latin America, because they did not understand the national question and its reflection in Northern Ireland, usually gave uncritical support to the Republicans, to the IRA. The Good Friday agreement between the leaders of the Republican movement and a section of the Unionists, presided over by the British and Irish governments, was, in effect, an admission by the IRA of what we had said. They could not win this military struggle and so they ended the war. ‘The war was over’, they declared. They did not win the war, they did not drive British imperialism out. They tried to rationalise it for their own supporters by saying: we have ‘legitimacy’, we have become a political force and party and, in the course of time, we will become the majority in Northern Ireland as a whole. That might happen in time but the Protestant population would still not go into a united capitalist Ireland. A united socialist Ireland which would be no threat to them would be an entirely different proposition.
Even then, all sides, and particularly the Protestant population, would have to be convinced of this. And that can only be achieved by a united working class in Northern Ireland linked to the workers’ movement in Britain and in the South. The forces of the CWI, both in Northern Ireland and in the South, have been the only socialist organisations which have had a consistent and principled position on this issue. We are very proud of them.
Germany
But look at the situation in Germany. There was one nation but politically divided, East and West, which separated families. During the Cold War, the German people, in general, wanted reunification. During the Cold War, perhaps the people thought it would take 200 years!
We supported reunification but on a socialist and class basis.
When in 1961 the Berlin Wall was built and the situation was closed, there was an economic contradiction because workers in the East wanted to go and live in the West. They knew the workers in the West were better off than them; the standard of life was ten times better than in Romania. There is one language, one culture, tradition, family connections, it was an intolerable separation and I think it was similar in Ireland.
The German people wanted to be united. There was nothing in their consciousness, as a general idea, to prevent it. That is not the situation in Northern Ireland. The Protestants do not want to go into a united Ireland, we would say into a capitalist united Ireland. There are one and a half million Protestant people who are still the majority in the North. Are they going to be coerced into a united Ireland? Are they going to be forced to do this?
The Liga Internacional de los Trabajadores (LIT – International Workers’ League) in Latin America, the Morenoites, have this ridiculous theory. They maintain that there are a series of imperialist ‘enclaves’: Israel is an imperialist enclave; Northern Ireland is an imperialist enclave, etc. These enclaves must be forced into more unified states. That is not a policy for Marxism to take into the mass movement. It may sound ‘neat’ in a small room of sectarians but it is not a policy for going out to confront the real consciousness of working-class people in a specific situation. Concrete questions cannot be replied to in an abstract way especially today and particularly on the national question. It is more complicated than even at the time of Lenin and Trotsky, and they began to solve only some of the problems. Look at the way the national question has come back in the former ‘Soviet Union’ with a vengeance because of the mishandling of the national question by Stalinism.
The way this question is approached is not one of territory alone or of culture. It is also a question of consciousness. In the last couple of days, a scientific study has been published which shows that the DNA of all the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland comes from Spanish fishermen 6,000 years ago. It seems that the Celts are not ‘ethnically’ different from the English from a DNA point of view. But it would be silly to conclude from this that the whole of the population of Britain and Ireland are the same because they have the same DNA. From cultural, national and psychological angles, they consider themselves ‘British’ – English, Scottish, Welsh – or Irish. That consciousness may dissolve in a future communist society but, between now and that society, there must be no compulsion or enforcement of people to live in states that they do not support. The example you gave of Germany is good. Before 1989, there was a German national consciousness although there were different attitudes in the East and the West. There was a general feeling that ‘we are all German and we want to live together’. It is a bit like the Hungarian people in Romania. In ideal circumstances they would like to be part of Hungary because they are discriminated against in Romania. There is a patchwork of nationalities in Central and Eastern Europe, but the Protestant population of Northern Ireland do not consider themselves to be the same as the population in the South. How do you deal with that?
Bob Labi: “Things change. Germany has moved on. For instance, when Austria was formed after the First World War, the Austrians did not want to form Austria, they wanted to go into Germany. The first name of Austria was actually ‘German Austria’. They were not allowed to join Germany by the victorious powers. Every political party in Austria in the 1920s and 1930s had in its programme some form of unification. The Communist Party stood for a ‘Soviet Greater Germany’. It was part of their programme. It was part of the consciousness of Austrian nationality; if you look at the 1920s population breakdown, it was described as German. But consciousness changed, for different reasons, After the Second World War, the idea of unification with Germany was completely off the agenda. At this moment, Austrians see themselves as Austrian not German. Nobody in Austria, not even the far right, except a few sections, has a different attitude. Even Haider, when he became a big force, started stressing Austrian nationalism. He used to be a ‘pan-German’ then he realised there was a limit on that and he became an Austrian nationalist. It is a question of how consciousness changes.
“It could be said that Ireland 200 or more years ago was not so divided. The impact of the French Revolution in Ireland was bigger amongst the Protestants than the Catholics. They led the rebellion. Partly because of that, British imperialism consciously went for divide-and-rule tactics in Northern Ireland, basing themselves largely amongst the Protestant population. This is the factor we have to take into account now because the situation is always moving on, it is not fixed for all time. This is the consciousness, as has been said, that we are actually dealing with in Northern Ireland.”
If in 1918, when the struggle against the British was under way, the Irish labour movement and trade unions had taken an independent class position, they may have been able to win over the Protestant workers of the North. Or if James Connolly had not engaged in the 1916 uprising and been killed, it is possible history would have taken a different turn and we could have seen a united movement. It is not set in stone. But history turned out differently with the creation of two states, first of all ‘artificial creations’. But they are not ‘enclaves’ any more. The Protestant population of Northern Ireland considers they are part of a separate state. The Catholic population felt discriminated against and we had to fight against that discrimination. If the Protestant population of the North said, in a referendum, we want to go into the South, we would support that, including possible autonomous rights for them if they so wish. But it is not on the cards. The only way that the obstacles in their consciousness to entering a united Ireland can be removed is on a class, socialist basis. Also, it is necessary to remove any element of compulsion, that they will be forced into such a state. The only way that can be done is by a united class movement of Catholics and Protestants overcoming their divisions and prejudices.
Iraq and the resistance
In Iraq there is a very complicated situation because of the occupation of the country mainly by the US and Britain. There are big problems within the ‚coalition’. There are big ethnic and religious divisions but also political divisions. The Ba’ath party had roots in the Sunni peoples but it was not a religious party, it was completely secular, and is playing a major role in the resistance. The Shi’ite parties are in government but they do not want the occupation to continue. It is a very complex situation. There is some sort of guerrilla resistance. There are sometimes also class struggles but many clashes between Sunni and Shias. So there is the struggle against occupation and a struggle between the different ethnic and religious groups. In your propaganda material you never, unlike the SWP, say you support the ‘resistance’, critically or otherwise.
No, we have said we support the resistance of the Iraqi people against the occupation but we cannot give carte blanche support to all actions and organisations claiming to lead the ‘resistance’ because of the situation. To describe the situation in Iraq as turmoil is an understatement. In the British press today, they make the point that the level of torture is now worse than it was under Saddell sic The title of the book Republic of Fear can now be applied to the current situation in Iraq, in the torture chambers of the occupiers but also in those of the government. It is an absolute catastrophe. It is a situation that could have been predicted and was predicted by us, because we warned that the situation in Iraq was more complicated than the simplistic position put forward by imperialism, by Blair and Bush, but also, unfortunately, by others on the left such as the SWP.
Iraq is divided, as you said, into different ethnic and religious groups: Shias, Sunnis Kurds, Turcomen – most of the Christians have fled because of persecution. Society has imploded absolutely into a ‘near civil war’. We warned of this even before the Iraq War began. We said that Bush would be going into a Vietnam type of situation.*‚ In the Sunni areas there is an Arab nationalist resistance to American imperialism, largely in the middle belt of Iraq and some other isolated areas. It is composed, from what we can see from the outside, of elements of the Ba’athist party, ex-army officers, ordinary people, workers and peasants in opposition to the occupation, which is now overwhelmingly rejected, especially by the five million Sunnis. Then there are the jihadists, who are a minority as far as we can see, and who are tolerated by parts of the resistance, but are not supported or liked necessarily because of their methods: beheadings, indiscriminate suicide bombing, sectarian murders, etc.
The Sunni resistance by itself cannot successfully evict imperialism because it is a minority in Iraq. It can cause big difficulties by tying down foreign troops in a long-term and bloody occupation. The Shias were in opposition to Saddam because he persecuted them and used state terror to keep Iraq together. This came after the crushing of the left and the workers’ movement. He kept the lid on the religious and national divisions in Iraq. But now that lid has been lifted, a Pandora’s Box has been opened which has resulted in a catastrophe. The relationship between the different groups is confused but a tit-for-tat sectarian war is under way.
What are the likely perspectives for Iraq? Sections of the American ruling class are now saying this is an unwinnable war. There is no possibility of a military victory in Iraq. But what is the alternative? It is one thing to go into a quagmire, another to get out of it. This task is almost impossible. What we have in Iraq are a number of ‘least worst’ alternatives as far as American imperialism is concerned. There is no easy alternative. One perspective urged on the US is to hand over power to the Shia bourgeois parties. We do not agree with the SWP that al-Sadr’s party represents a radical wing of Shi’ite politics. At one stage, he urged a kind of collaboration between the Sunni and the Shia resistance but that broke down and now religious conflict has become rooted.
The US generals’ perspective before the invasion was to hand over power, to Chalabi or some other figure, hope for the best, and then withdraw to their 110 bases in Iraq. They went into Iraq for the oil reserves and they will not give up easily. If the US withdraws from Iraq without an independent working-class force in its place, the consequences for the rest of the Middle East are serious. There is a ‘Shia arc’ with big Shia populations in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, parts of Saudi Arabia – where the Shias live in the areas where the oilfields are located – and the Gulf states. In some states, the Shias are a majority. If Iraq fractures on religious lines it will have enormous repercussions throughout the Middle East. The Iraqi people should decide their own fate.**
We support the legitimate, nationalist resistance of the Iraqi people against imperialism. We do not give uncritical support to any organisation in Iraq. The working class wants to know what their programme and policies are, whether they are prepared to reach out to the other religious and ethnic groups on a class basis. We suggest to Iraqi workers the idea of mixed militias, of Shias and Sunnis. Now the situation seems to be very polarised. Whether mixed militias are a possibility, we have to see but we have to suggest a way out on the lines of class unity. We are in favour of the withdrawal af all foreign troops from Iraq. But in the changed situation this will not automatically solve the situation. This is a complicated situation, We have to find a thread, a class and a socialist thread, which could reach out to the best workers.
At the moment, the class struggle is skewed by this sectarian nightmare. There have been some strikes amongst the oil workers. There have been strikes of workers in the north. We have to support this tender plant, especially those workers who resist privatisation and so on. At the same time, we have to put forward a political alternative, a general political alternative, which should include the demands for the withdrawal of all foreign troops; for a socialist, democratic confederation of Iraq with the right of self-determination for the Kurdish areas, the Sunni areas and the Shia areas if necessary; opposition to the privatisation programme; support for workers on strike. But it is not the most favourable position at the moment for the class struggle and socialism.
Vietnam and Iraq
I have read your book on Vietnam and the subtitle is ‘the lessons for today’. When the war began, many people started to think that the situation in Iraq was similar to Vietnam. I always thought there were big differences. In| Vietnam there was a typical national liberation war, with the support of a big power (USSR) whereas in Iraq the global economic situation now is far worse than at the time of Vietnam. What are the lessons for today?
I wrote the book on Vietnam on the eve of the Iraq War. There are general lessons but I think, paradoxically, the lessons of Vietnam apply more to Lebanon at this stage than they do to Iraq. In Lebanon we saw that, in an ‘asymmetrical war’, a big military power with huge advantages of personnel and arms could not defeat an indigenous national resistance movement, which is what Hezbollah became. Such a force has not existed up to now in Iraq – but in Lebanon it did, at least temporarily. Hezbollah did unite the different religious groups behind its resistance to the Israeli ruling class and the IDF. There is no such organisation in Iraq which is capable of acting in this fashion.
At the beginning of the Iraq War, while we saw the ethnic and religious divisions, nobody could predict exactly what would happen. We did say that an element of the Vietnam War could develop. Even if US imperialism or any other government decided to withdraw from the central provinces of Iraq ~ for instance, an American general has recently suggested that US troops should be withdrawn and based in the Kurdish areas – it would still leave the problem of five million Sunnis who would resist either a Shia-dominated government or American imperialism. The earlier example we gave of Northern Ireland has shown that, even though they enjoyed support only from a minority, the IRA could not be defeated militarily by British imperialism. There was a 30-year war. The same lessons apply as far as the Sunnis are concerned today. So that is one element of the lessons of Vietnam.
The lessons of the Vietnam War have been vindicated in Iraq in the sense that the mood of the American people after Vietnam was ‘never again shall we be involved in a foreign war, especially against a nationalist resistance or guerrilla force’. The majority of the American population now say that the war was wrong and that the US should get out of the Middle East. We even have sections of the American ruling class, such as the former ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, saying quite simply that the US should evacuate its forces from Iraq. Also, in relation to Afghanistan, there is now a big section of the British bourgeoisie who say ‘get out of Afghanistan’, When the British Empire existed it was not possible to defeat the Afghans, nor could the Russians defeat the Afghans with 150,000 troops. What chance has the NATO force of 25,000 troops, even given the medieval barbarism of the Taliban? In that sense, the lessons of Vietnam apply to Afghanistan and Iraq. On the other hand, they do not fully apply because there is not in Iraq one unified national resistance movement with majority support in the population.
Central Asia
Iraq is also in the centre of the Middle East and Central Asia, between big powers and regional powers struggling for control. There is the question of Afghanistan, which is becoming worse and worse. It is a poor country. There is the question of Pakistan. On the other side is Kazakhstan, rich in natural resources, Uzbekistan, where there was a rebellion last year. From Europe we look at the Iraqi situation as more connected to the Middle East but we want to look at its connections with Central Asia.
The relationship between the Middle East situation and the Central Asian situation, from the point of view of world capitalism and imperialism, is very simple. It is oil. The whole reason for the invasion of Iraq, despite all the attempts to cover it up, was that Iraq had the second largest oil reserves in the world. If they captured the oil of Iraq, Cheney, Wolfowitz and others said we will reduce the world price of oil to $6 a barrel. Energy plays a key role in capitalism. The oil price increase of 1974-75 was a trigger for the world economic crisis of that period, one of the factors at least. The rise in the price of oil to $70 or $80 a barrel has not yet triggered a crisis. But if Iran is bombed, it would block the Straits of Hormuz and that could raise the price of oil to $100 or even $150 a barrel and it would have a colossal effect on world capitalism. So oil is a connecting factor.
There is a geopolitical issue here too, in the sense that after 9/11 American imperialism has tried to extend its operations by establishing a firm base in Iraq. They have also extended their influence into the former spheres of influence of Russian Stalinism in Central Asia. The Caspian Sea is obviously an important area for its energy potential alone. Pakistan is crucial for the ‘war on terror’. President Musharraf has revealed that Richard Armitage, who was an alleged ‘liberal’ in the Bush regime, a supporter of Colin Powell, told Musharraf after 9/11 that if he did not agree to the waging of a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and allow Pakistan to be used as a base for this, the US would bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age! Musharraf is saying this now because Bush is unpopular and he is looking towards the future. Pakistan is an important geopolitical factor as well, not just for the US and Western imperialism, but also China is trying to establish a sphere of influence. China is trying to create a counterweight to NATO in the form of the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation, an ‘Asian NATO’. It is trying to group together Asian capitalist nations as a counterweight to the US and even linking up with Russia as well.
There is another factor which is perhaps not posed in your question but which is important and that is the ramifications of the struggles in Iraq and the Middle East in general, and in Central Asia on the question of Islam and what is called ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. We call this phenomenon ‘right-wing political Islam’. In Hezbollah, there is an element of ‘radical’ Islam just beginning to appear but it should not be exaggerated. It is nowhere near the same as the radical Islamic ideas at the time of the Khomeini movement in the Iranian revolution, with its demand for a ‘republic of the poor’. Ahmadinejad is a populist and echoes a little the original aims of the Iranian Revolution at the present time. His radical populism involves support for the poor and criticism of the 1,000 families that control Iran. But at the same time, the regime has a repressive policy towards the working class, crushing the Tehran bus workers’ strike, opposition to democratic rights in general. On the question of women, he is ambivalent. He is in favour of women being allowed to attend football matches but not to free them from the imposition of the chador and so on. So the question of right-wing political Islam and the Middle East does have a bearing on Central Asia.
Bob Labi: “One of the key issues at the moment is that there is not an independent workers’ movement in Iraq. It is a very difficult situation. Where are the actual forces to start from? Obviously, US imperialism has got the main responsibility for what has happened in Iraq, with the invasion and war. But there was also the failure of the workers’ movement as a result of the policies of the Stalinists. This led to the defeat of the Iraqi workers’ movement. The whole opportunism of the CP in relation to the Ba’athist movement led to, first, the beheading of the workers’ movement and then its destruction. That, I think is an important question, While each country is unique, in other countries similar situations have faced the workers’ movement. If the workers’ movement is not able to develop an independent role then it will lead not just to the defeat of the workers’ movement but also the unravelling, the break-up of countries and the development of sectarian conflicts.
“Also, in a different way, this is one of the factors behind the development of right-wing political Islam. In many of these counties, it has been the failure of the workers’ movement and, in some of the Arab countries, the failure of the bourgeois nationalist movements, which are important background features. It is not just historical but also could be posed in the future, in different ways, in other countries – the question of what the workers’ movement actually does. From the point of view of the CWI, for example in India or in Nigeria, there are multinational or multi-ethnic states which could fracture, But the future for those particular states depends on what happens in the workers’ movement and in future struggles. If the workers’ movement fails in these countries, you could have the break up – every case is different – on national or religious lines. In Nigeria, there are thousands of people who have been killed in Muslim-Christian clashes. It has not happened in the big cities yet but it is a warning.”
*I wrote a book at the outset of the war drawing some parallels. Even Bush has now conceded that the Vietnam parallel with Iraq is valid. He also admitted that the military situation there is comparable to the ‘Tet Offensive’ in 1968 in the south of Vietnam. That was ultimately a ‚military victory‘ but a major political defeat; the American people turned decisively against the war. This paved the way for the first outright military defeat of US imperialism, after the ‘draw’ in Korea. The element of the Vietnam War – the Tet Offensive – is valid when related to the current situation in Iraq; the American people reject this war and Bush.
** In desperation, even the Republican Party ‘establishment’ is urging Bush to come to a deal with Iran and Syria, previously pariahs, Iran being part of the ‘axis of evil’. Iran has been significantly strengthened as a regional power by the Iraq War, increasing its influence with their Shia co-religionists. The US hopes that Iran will lean on the Shias to prevent the break-up of Iraq but it is not certain they will succeed. American people reject the war and Bush.
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