Killing British Security Forces

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis

Thursday March 26, 2009 10:52

by PADDY HACKETT

rasherrs at eircom dot net

Is armed struggle legitimate?

Popular armed struggle by workers' militias is a legitimate form of struggle under certain circumstances.

Killing British Security Forces
Paddy Hackett
25th March 2009

This is a brief comment on an article called, Are The Troubles Set To Return, and written by Eamonn McCann. It was published by the SWP on March 19th 2009. The parts in quotation remarks are taken from Eamonn’s article.

“The killing of two soldiers and a policeman was utterly futile. It can lead nowhere but into a blind alley. What did the RIRA and CIRA hope to achieve?
The fundamental problem with “armed struggle” is that it is necessarily carried out behind the backs of the people in whose name it is waged...

“Armed struggle” is as undemocratic as the murderous manoeuvres of MI5 and other “security” agencies which have acted as a law unto themselves and organised the murder of civilians and political activists over the past 30 years. We need a way forward that strengthens the unity of working people and offers hope for a solution.”

Armed struggle is a legitimate form of action under specific circumstances. To simply attack armed struggle as undemocratic and similar to the role played by the security agencies of the state is to restrict the actions of the working class in their struggle against capitalism. It is thereby an attempt to weaken the working class movement. Workers’ militias may find it necessary to engage in armed struggle against the capitalist state under certain circumstances. The Russian working class engaged in armed popular struggle to defend its interests during the period of the 1917 Russian revolution.

“The trade union protests on Wednesday pointed the way forward. They brought people together to oppose the killings at a time when the need for working-class unity was never clearer.”
Working class unity in itself is not necessarily revolutionary or even what some would call progressive. The decisive factor concerning class unity is the political basis on which it is constructed. Working class unity constructed from a reactionary basis that sustains capitalism is a form of unity that is unacceptable. In that the workers in Britain and Ireland, generally speaking, practically accept the status quo it could be concluded that this constitutes class unity. But this is a unity in support of the capitalist social system. Such unity must be exposed and fought against in the interests of the revolutionary unity of the working class.

The trade union protests that opposed the killings of members of British imperialism’s security forces is not a demonstration of class unity that advances the class interests of the working class. Furthermore it has nothing to do with the popular resistance to sustained attacks on the living standards of the working class. Essentially the Wednesday protests were all about maintaining the status quo –the sectarian Good Friday Agreement. The GFA constitutes a defeat for the IRA. In many respects it was a remarkable defeat in that it has been successfully dressed up as a victory for the IRA. What better defeat than to make the vanquished perceive themselves as victors. The three recent killings of members of the British security forces is a reflection of the defeat of the IRA and its abject failure to achieve its formal aim of a 32 county democratic socialist Republic. The killings are a reflection of the deep divisions within the working class and its failure to defend its class interests at a time when the onslaught against the Irish working class is unprecedented in its ferocity.