By an Irish Comrade

I am becoming physically impaired too with the lack of movement. I’m also alone virtually all the time and only speak to family members on the phone or on Skype, sometimes I don’t speak to anyone for a couple of days. I was asked was it like being in prison?  I said yes it is a bit like that except in prison you have much more interaction with other people and you’re happy enough when night time lock-up comes and you have uninterrupted time for writing or reading, and then take a little time off with watching television.  In prison you settle to your own routine, but this current restriction seems to take a toll on you which is a new thing, and getting a routine that works for you is something I haven’t worked out yet – too many things on hold and so on.

I scanned through the document from the CPI which you posted recently.  I just wanted to make a couple of points in relation to that document.  Firstly: it is a declaration of support for the Unionist party’s position at this time.  It is an extension of the CPI’s pro-Brexit position.  The CPI has a long history of support for British imperialism in Ireland, particularly at every crucial historical point.: their treachery at the Republican Congress of 1934 and in the byelection where Bobby Sands was elected they called for support for the Workers Party, which if taken up by the voters could have taken a crucial number of votes away from Sands and ensured the election of the Unionist candidate.

They were enthusiastic supporters of the GFA [1] at the time of its inauguration but like the DUP, who opposed the Agreement at the time, they kept their options open to allow for any swings necessary in support of British/Unionist interests.  And now with Brexit the GFA has become somewhat of an obstacle to its implementation in the six-counties.  While pretending to decry the Agreement for its inherent surrender of the national cause, they are in reality promoting the British and Unionist calls to abandon it as it has served the interests of US and British imperialism sufficiently and it is no longer of any use in that respect.

It is significant that the CPI should come out now with this pro-Unionist document.  It shows the insidious role they have consistently played, using faux nationalist rhetoric when necessary to ingratiate themselves with republican groupings in the six-counties who are unacquainted with Stalinist obscurantist mendacity, while at the same time supporting unionism.  And on the other hand, they can maintain their base in the Shankhill and elsewhere including with their Unionist trade unionists, that the united Ireland they speak of is the same one that unionism supports: a united Ireland under British imperialism.  This is the long standing position of the CPI, greatly strengthened with the Stalin/Churchill pact of WWII, and it remains the bedrock of that party’s politics and methodology today.

When the document says the GFA is as bad as the Anglo Irish Agreement, [2] this is almost laughable.  The GFA is in principle actually worse insofar as there was no real tangible gain in terms of territory etc.  But really whether it is worse than the Anglo Irish Agreement or not, is not the important point.  The purpose of invoking that historical issue for the CPI was to dazzle, as they might see it, certain republicans into thinking the document represented a new path forward for them in the face of the major issues now posed.  But of course it’s not that at all.  What it is, is the CPI’s old enrapturement with the Stalin/Churchill pact repackaged, which they are galvinised to and it doesn’t upset unionist sensitivities to much.  And the only path they are trying to make is one for their pro-Brexit policy.

[1] Wikipedia: The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, a political conflict in Northern Ireland that had been ongoing since the 1960s. It served as a major development in the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s. Northern Ireland’s present devolved system of government is based on the agreement. The agreement also created a number of institutions between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement Issues relating to sovereignty, civil and cultural rights, decommissioning of weapons, demilitarisation, justice and policing were central to the agreement.

[2] Wikipedia: The Anglo-Irish Agreement was a 1985 treaty between the United Kingdom and Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The treaty gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland’s government while confirming that there would be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless a majority of its people agreed to join the Republic. It also set out conditions for the establishment of a devolved consensus government in the region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Irish_Agreement