Fourthwrite .............................Issue No. 6

Physical ForceArgument 

by Liam O’Ruairc

For a very long time, in the eyes of public opinion in Ireland and abroad, Irish Republicanism has almost exclusively been associated with support for the use of violence to reach political aims; a political violence which Republicans define as "armed struggle" and existing governments as "terrorism" (for reasons of convenience, this article will term it "physical force"). For many people, it seems that the main difference between an Irish Republican and an Irish nationalist is that the former supports the right of the IRA and the INLA to use physical force to reach their aims, and the latter not. Irish Republicanism and support for physical force are viewed as intrinsically linked, if not identical; and this is what makes Irish Republicanism so controversial in their view.

But, that Irish Republicanism is ready to support the use of physical force is in fact totally unproblematic. Apart from radically pacifist philosophies, there are no political doctrines that do not advocate the right to use of physical force. Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism; all legitimise physical force in some shape or form. Even the Roman Catholic church’s theology, Thomism, legitimises what it views as being "just wars". So in itself, it is hardly a case against Irish Republicanism to accuse it of advocating the use of physical force.

That the vast majority of political views support the right to use physical force does not come from some innate aggressiveness in human nature or pathological taste for violence, but flows from the very nature of politics. Politics is fundamentally about how societies, or relations between different societies, should be organised and in whose interest. As societies are not harmonious totalities, but are made up of different social groups with antagonistic interests, conflicts will inevitably rise up at some stage. Conflict is the central paradigm of politics. Relations between those social groups in conflict (whether this conflict is open or latent, violent or non-violent is conjunctural) are structured around a specific balance of forces. To maintain or change this balance of forces, physical force will be used by some of the parties involved to advance their interests if it is necessary, or because no other means have proved to be successful. Politics is less about the force of argument than about the argument of force. To believe that one can "talk" an opponent into giving up power through the force of argument alone, is an utopian illusion that no individual involved in politics can seriously hold.

It is because of the nature and realities of politics, and not because of some morbid fascination with violence and romantic cult of arms, that Irish Republicans support the right to use physical force. Irish Republicans have supported this not just as an abstract right, but through actually taking up arms on many occasions. On what basis is it legitimate for Irish Republicans to take up arms and use physical force ? To answer this question, Irish Republicans would be wrong to invoke some quasi-theological abstract dogmas of some innate God-given right of "the Irish People" to liberate themselves through the force of arms, as such justifications are abstract and mythical. And explaining that it is right to use physical force because British denial of the Irish people’s right to self-determination is ultimately based on force, is too limited. It is only, based on objective and realistic observations, by pointing out to the the specific configuration of the balance of forces, that Irish Republicanism will be successfully advocating the case for the use of physical force. Unfortunately, this has not enough been the case.

Irish Republicanism is a set of ideas, and ideas do not exist by themselves, in the abstract; they do not have a life of their own. Ideas are created and developed by living individuals, and ideas cannot be properly understood without reference to the people that hold them. It is not the idea of "dialectical materialism" that has triumphed over US forces in Vietnam, but the Vietcong and the military divisions of the North Vietnamese army. The concept of dog does not bark, and the idea of Irish Republicanism does not take up arms. It is not the idea of "Irish Republicanism" that has taken up arms so many times over the years, but concrete individuals and social forces with specific interests: sections of the Protestant bourgeoisie in late eighteenth century, tenant farmers and peasants in the nineteenth, or the urban unemployed of the Nationalist ghettos over the last three decades, etc. The ideas of Irish Republicanism and their evolution, including that of supporting the right to use physical force, have to understood as an expression of the interests and aspirations of specific social forces. When Irish Republicans advocate the use of physical force, it has to be seen as the crystallisation, or echo, of the social protest of a social group.

Over the last thirty years, the most marginalised sections of the Nationalist population in the North of Ireland that have been the most militantly Republican. They have found within Irish Republicanism a means to understand and make sense of their experience. For them, the right to use physical force was not understood as an abstract transhistorical imperative to take up arms, but as the most adequate means to effect social and political change. It is the practical difficulties to remove the economic discrimination, political and cultural exclusion and state authoritarianism through conventional political means that put physical force on the agenda rather than the cult of arms.

The "Northern Ireland" entity was not a "normal" democratic society, so there were many constraints working against the Nationalist population in general, and the most marginalised sections within it in particular, to effect change through "normal" and "peaceful" means. The fact that Westminster intervened in Northern Irish affairs more actively than before from 1969 onwards did not change much given the difficulty to implement reforms that came too late, not to mention the structural irreformability of the "Northern Ireland" entity. Civil rights marchers were beaten – if not shot as during Bloody Sunday- in the streets, and loyalist gangs attacked Catholic areas. The absence or failure to implement reforms, the violent reactions of the state to peaceful protests and the need for defence against loyalist attacks were conjunctural factors that played a decisive part in Irish Republicanism’s advocacy of using physical force finding an echo among the Irish nationalist population. Had those factors not taken place, Irish Republicanism and physical force would have found little echo within the Northern Catholics.

Another decisive factor was that no political actor was willing to actively back the efforts of the Northern Nationalist community and its underclass. It would have maybe been possible to effect change through reforms if it had been backed by others in a position of influence and power. The UK is still a major power, and few countries in the international community would be willing to actively back Northern Nationalists against the British Government. The UK is too precious an ally for countries of influence like the USA for example, for the American government to pursue a policy of confrontation with Great Britain over the plight of Northern Nationalist. The population in the "Republic of Ireland", a part from a few emotional upsurges (such as after Bloody Sunday or during the Hunger Strikes) is effectively indifferent to the national question; and its government cannot afford -even if it wanted- a major confrontation with the British government. The British government wants to involve itself in the internal affairs of "Northern Ireland" as little as possible, and is thus not prepared to invest the necessary resources and political efforts to confront the Unionists and address the grievances of Northern nationalist in a meaningful way. The Unionist bloc is hostile to the Northern Nationalist population, and will not give any concessions unless compelled to do so. The so-called "moderate" Nationalists represent the interests of the Catholic middle classes and have no "punching power" to create enough pressure for change. The Northern Nationalist community, and especially its underclass, was effectively abandoned on itself. In the overall balance of political and social forces, it was in a position of weakness.

It is their position of weakness in the overall balance of forces that makes it difficult for Northern Catholics to get change. And physical force is precisely used to remedy that fundamental weakness. In the absence of conventional peaceful means and in a context of violent conflict, the appeal of Irish Republicanism’s support of the right to use physical force can be understood. If politicians don’t move (whether at an international or national level), something has to make them move. A political catalyst has to be introduced. For contemporary Irish Republicanism, physical force functions as a "catalysing agent" rather than an abstract principle. The use of physical force is a political catalyst that sets out a political dynamic that would not have existed without it. The success, or failure, of physical force can be assessed by the political effects generated by it. The major reforms of the Northern Ireland state (The fall of Stormont in 1972), Republicans argue, would have not come about without physical force. It gave an impetus for change that nothing else could have given. But the limitations of physical force have to be also understood. The relevance or irrelevance of the use of physical force in specific conjunctures can only be assessed by reference to shifting strategic contexts. Anything short of this will make Irish Republicanism regress to the realm of mythology.