IRA , anarchists and N.Ireland

I think Jack has got confused somewhat, escalation was the policy of the Provies that dovetailed with the suppression of the Civil Rights movement, not the policy of secret Provies in the Civil Rights movement.

Peoples Democracy weren't Provo's but they saw the Civil Rights movement as a stepping stone for a war of national liberation and socialism. The tragic thing is that those voices in the civil rights leadership who could have made the best links with the protestant working class around a class politic were enthralled to a Connellite analysis and were convinced partition was the fundamental lynchpin of injustice and sectarianism on the island and that the struggle against it came above all.

Minor point (or maybe not), but the line about Sands being arrested for possession of guns is wrong, I think. If I remember rightly, I read he was involved in an incendiary attack at a furniture warehouse and was lifted for that (possession of explosive material maybe?) The same kind of craic that the Real crowd are now at in Newry and other places.

I think this calls for a separate thread on the NICRA and Peoples Democracy. Does anyone have any avaliable info on them?

Jack it would hardly be a fucking diservice to Bobby Sands to suggest he might have been involved in an arson campaign, I mean the guy was pretty serious about his politics and no doubt prepared to kill and die for them, the notion he might have been more involved than hiding weapons is hardly crazy.

Being told that speculation isn't helpful by someone who just implicated the NICRA in a grand republican plot is a tad rich.

Not really - they were the student trouble makers who were considered by everyone else to be too provocative - those involved in it included anarchists as well as trots. The event which made them famous, the Belfast to Derry march only had around 100 on it and they quite quickly turned into a small rump that joined the USFI trots. Actually I think Organise are working in the Water Tax struggle with the last remenants in Belfast who now call themselves Socialist Democracy - http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/ - (I may be out of date on this). But even PD can't be explained as a republican plot - it was more a case of a mixed bag of (often republican influenced) revolutionaries who saw an opportunity to drive the situation to the left and soon lost what little control and relevance they had. With the emergence of the provos that rump became little more that useful idiots.

I actually can't find a good article on PD online which is weird and a gap that shold be filled - I though the Socialist Democracy website might have one but there is nothing in sight. The wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Democracy is pretty shit as it is obviously written from someone in Socialist Democracy and with one exception (the 1986 conference) does not give a picture of how far the later PD had declined in numbers and influence.

Actually more than that I think it calls for an anarchist history and analysis of PD to be written and stuck online. Your in Belfast and so have fairly easy access to the Linen Hall library, why not have a go - in a lot of ways it might be the most useful document anarchists could write about what happened. I'd read it for sure.

LOL That's fucking hilarious, awh bless the lil martyr's, "sure aren't they just like the lovely Jaysus on the cross".

what you mean most anarchists aren't died in the wool outlaws, constantly in and out of jail? you mean anarchists are just proles too, trying to get by?

So tell us you big macho twat, what exactly have you been doing that's any different? Duelling over custody of the kids instead of using burga curts? Organising bands of insurrectionary supermarket workers and laying seige to Police stations?

Um, the Wee Black Booke of Belfast Anarchism published by Organise! as a fundraiser for Just Books has some information on the civil rights movement and Peoples Democracy in it including anarchist involvement. Maybe we could start there with reading up on these events, should provide a nice introduction at least.

re Peoples Democracy.

you might be able to find copies of paul arthur's "the peoples Democracy 1968-73" published by Blackstaff press in 1974. (Abebooks has a couple that are very expensive secondhand)

In the 1969 elections they got 23,645 votes
NILP got 45,121,
Republican Labour got 13,155
Nationalists got 42,315

(before the days of SDLP and sinn fein as political parties standing in elections)

unionists (pro and anti o'neill got over 350,000 votes to give you a sense of proportion.)

PD from what i remember started off as a radical off-shoot of the main civil rights movement.

it was the rapid escalation in the troubles which eventually lead them to being cheer leaders for PIRA - by about 1972/3.

Wilkipedia has some info on Peoples Democracy here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Democracy

Following on from this thread it turns out a WSM member has a copy of Anarchy from around 1971 in which a lot of the articles are written by PD members. He is going to see about scanning them.

nice one, i would like to have a look as it is an important part of our recent past that needs to be explored and hopefully these documents can encourage this.

well Peoples Democracy where kinda all over the shop theoretically, it was only really their position that inequality could not be reached without the destruction of partition and a socialist united ireland that kept them together. Some members when onto the INLA, others joined Sinn Fein and the rest kind of moved into a critical support position for the IRA. Socialist Democracy came from the small rump that was left and they are linked to one of the hundred trot internationals for the reformation of the fourth international or some such shite.

Ret Marut (from Page 3, a long time ago)
I've only just come back to the forum...sorry for leaving you unanswered for such a long time. I think words are still being put in my mouth. I don't see anything inconsistent with what I wrote. If you re-read what you quote, you'll see that I don't praise IRA members: I said I had respect for them. Similarly, it is not the IRA I find admirable, it is the realisation that individuals can work together to bring about political change.Nevertheless, whilst I am not an anarcho-nationalist, I do accept that I am probably guilty of operating in accordance with the hierarchy of sympathy. This is undoubtedly because my earliest political affiliations were Irish republican and, like Catholicism, it takes a lot to get over that.

In brief, I take your point and consider it well made. Consequently, I stand corrected.

I'll have you know that Socialist Democracy is the irish section of THE fourth international. All the other trot international were kinda splits from it.

Thanks. Your mode of exchange is exemplary.