In a book published in 1996 entitled "The real Irish Peace Proc-ess" my co-authors, Joe Craig and Paul Flannigan, and I argued that the process represented a major imperialist offensive, that the republican leadership were capitulating to that offensive and that a new, socialist, political opposition would have to be built.

The first two propositions have been convincingly endorsed by events since then. It's time to move on. The first issue of Fourthwrite, I believe, showed a general acceptance even by those of the contributors who were not republican that the process involved republican defeat. We need to start constructing an alternative and it is relatively easy to demonstrate that that alternative must be socialist. The starting point is republicanism itself.

Irish republicanism's history is of a revolutionary and democratic tradition - a movement for national liberation. As such it contains the hidden assumption that Irish democracy should be the property of all classes.

The truth is that this idea has been a pipe dream. Neither Irish capitalism as a whole nor any substantial section of it endorses a programme of democracy in Ireland. On every practical test over the past thirty years the SDLP and Fianna Fail have been on the same side of the barricades as the British, with Fianna Fail mobilising Southern state forces in defence of partition. Mobilisations against repression have equally consistently involved alliances between republicans and socialists. The Good Friday Agreement wipes away the last visages of nationalist rhetoric and spells out publicly the Nationalist programme, now endorsed by Sinn Fein, for continued British rule, partition and a Unionist veto.

Many republicans would answer this critique by pointing mutely to the record of those who claim to represent the working class. Trade unions and so-called socialist parties in Ireland have an absolutely appalling record when it comes to opposing state repression and defending democratic rights. The truth is that they have appalling records on every other issue as well - only matched by republican leaderships when they themselves come to the negotiating table. Isn't the class metaphor for the Good Friday Agreement the Programme for Fairness and Prosperity agreed by the trade unions in the South? Socialists explain that bureaucrats act in their own interests when the working class is passive and that the answer to betrayal is working class mobilisation.

Socialists would argue that much of the British action of the past thirty years was constrained by their private concerns about the possibility of such working class mobilisation. It was both within their power and a routine of their history to follow up Bloody Sunday with overwhelming force. The fact that they did not is largely due to the reaction of the Southern working class and, more generally, to the reaction of a world- wide solidarity movement which was largely socialist.

In contrast to the British, republicans paid almost no attention to this wider working-class support and did not modify their politics to the left in response. They stayed in their ghetto and when they finally broke out did so decisively to the right and into the hands of John Hume.

Again the decisive argument is from the international stage. The fog surrounding the collapse of what used to be called "actually existing socialism" is beginning to disperse. What is revealed is still the working class and the capitalist class. They are still locked in conflict. And, as recent examples like the Scottish Socialist Party and the London Socialist Alliance show, when recomposition occurs it is the ideas of socialism that provide the foundation for such recomposition.

Those who reject capitulation and also reject the militarist misconceptions that led to that capitulation must look to the working class. An identity as a member of the Irish working class offers an immediate alternative to the increasingly sectarian identity politics of the Good Friday agreement. If we go on to ask people to mobilise as workers we must adopt the political programme that represents working class interest.