by Paul Little

Any careful examination of the politics that drive the current political process show clearly that those of us who advocate radical social change - Revolution, have been marginalised and demonised consistently as out of date or impractical, backwoods men with no vision. Instead we are told by the pro-agreement republicans/nationalists to buy into the illusionist politics of the Good Friday Agreement. Whenever valid concerns about where the agreement will lead us as a people, from those who advocate evolutionary republicanism/nationalism, the answer is always the same, manjana, manjana!

Those supporters of revolutionary republicanism/nationalism fail on every count to give a plausible explanation as to why ‘labour’ should wait. The evolutionary republican/nationalist argument is that in reality what they were asking the people to accept was partial exploitation and that was better than the total exploitation of our people,- ‘half a loaf is better than no loaf’. The IRSP reject this fanciful notion, We believe that it is not in the gift of anyone party and certainly not one that claims to be republican to offer up the Irish working class for either partial or total exploitation. We demand the whole loaf, that is our people’s by right.

I believe it is futile to enter the side arguments thrown up by the Good Friday Agreement, a document so duplicitous that not only does it have different meanings for both nationalists and unionists it is also open to differing interpretations within singular identities. The IRSP prefer to look at what we do know about the GFA. It is an international treaty that has brought a number of constitutional changes to the relationship between Ireland and Britain; it legislates for a number of possibilities in the future including that of a singular Irish state.

Whether the Good Friday Agreement will or will not lead to a singular Irish state (united Ireland) in the future is open to debate; what is certain is that it will not deliver at any time in the future the republican goal of an independent socialist republic. True national liberation will come with not only the liberation of the geographical Ireland but with the true freedom of every Irishman and women. It is the failure to achieve this freedom that today’s evolutionary republicans/nationalists will and should be judged.

’Look at how much better things are today compared with pre 1994' is the illusion that the pro-agreement republicans/nationalists point to when confronted with the lack of real and meaningful change for our communities. Well lets look at ‘how much better things are’; the rich of today are the same people who were rich in 1994, they are the same people who are in control of the economy, of housing and of social welfare. In fact the same people who controlled our lives then control our lives now. What political pro agreement party representative heads up each department is irrelevant as is whether we are governed from Stormont or Westminster - they are still implementing a British budget and administering British rule in Ireland.

Supporters of the GFA quite rightly point out that we are less likely to be killed than in pre-cease fire times. The jury on the factuality of that statement is still out. What it should actually say is that we are less likely to be killed by people of another religion. Ask the loyalist working class on the Shankill Road just emerging from a feud that essentially had its cause firmly rooted in the pro-agreement/anti-agreement argument; ask the family of Joseph O’Connor in Ballymurphy or the republicans who dared to speak out against his murder if they feel less likely to be killed. The assassin’s raison d’etre have changed but they are still firing capitalist and imperialist ammunition. For those of us who have always been engaged in a social revolution as well as a liberation struggle evolution has never and can never take the place of revolution. Republican socialism is about revolutionary change for the Irish working class it cannot be represented by those who seek a minimal change for the Irish working class within a capitalist Ireland.

This is an honest political posi-tion and analysis that has been misrepresented by pro-agreement republicans/nationalists as anti-peace and anti-negotiation. Nothing can be further from the truth. Revolution can be non-violent. Honest negotiation on the basis of each communities political analysis is a necessary requirement for a durable peace. What has happened in Ireland has not been an honest negotiation; rather the negotiations have been restricted by the capitalist requirements of the ruling classes in Britain, Ireland and America.

Paul Little, from Belfast, is a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party