(en) Ireland, anarchist WSM paper Workers Solidarity #128 - Oppose the internment of Marian Price despite the reactionary politics of the 32CSM

In August 400 people marched through Dublin to protest the internment without trial of a 
58 year old woman in ill health for over a year. In May her husband told the Belfast 
Telegraph she ?is so ill that she had to be taken to a recent visit in a wheelchair. Her 
hair is falling out, she has lost a lot of weight, and her arthritis has got worse. She is 
suffering from severe depression after a year in solitary.? ---- Her case could be 
described as an obvious stitch up, except that she hasn?t been charged with any crime. So 
why only 400 people on a protest march? With the exception of the WSM and other 
anarchists, the left, the far left and the radicals involved in Dublin NGOs were almost 
entirely absent. Despite being a well-known republican (she received two life sentences 
for bombing the Old Bailey in London) there were only a handful of Sinn Fein members on 
the demonstration.

There is no mystery to this lack of support. Price is a member of one of the most 
unpopular political organisations on the island: the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, 
associated with the ?Real IRA.? This was the organisation that in 1998 bombed Omagh 
killing 29 people and injuring 220, as well as the shooting of two pizza delivery workers 
who were being used as bait to lure soldiers out of Massereene barracks in 2009.

The 32CSM embody some of the most reactionary aspects of Irish ?republicanism?, 
particularly the view that there is no need for any popular base to their ?war?: that the 
dead hand of the dead generations gives them the only mandate needed. Faced with a million 
northern Protestants (and growing numbers of Catholics) with no interest in unity with the 
south, their strategy is a campaign of bombing and assassinations aimed at deepening 
sectarian divisions, alongside a bombing campaign in Britain that could easily result in 
large scale civilian casualties, and a subsequent major retaliation by the British state 
in the North or against the Irish community in Britain.

All of this is aimed at provoking the resumption of a war in Ireland that no one wants, 
while their former republican comrades now hold distinguished positions within the 
Northern Irish devolved government ? a further explanation as to why there is little 
support coming from the ranks of Sinn Fein, other than a respectable nod in favour of her 
release.

Add to this that one of the other prisoners interned (this time on ancient charges from 
1981) is the far-right Catholic nationalist Gerry McGeough, who used his magazine to 
attack ?left-wing revolutionaries and anarchists? and their ?strong homosexual 
undercurrent?. This makes the lack of opposition to internment understandable but it is 
still short-sighted, counter- productive and wrong. To put it simply: we can?t only oppose 
human rights abuses when they happen to those we agree with.

After the overwhelming majority accepted partition by voting for the Good Friday 
agreement, the Workers Solidarity Movement went through a period of debate about what that 
meant for anti-imperialist politics in relation to Ireland. We recognised that the 
agreement opened up the possibility of a reactionary end to partition. While the armed 
actions of the RIRA are hardly likely to succeed, they illustrate that sort of possible 
outcome, where revolutionary republicanism is replaced by sectarian head counts. But we 
also recognised that state repression needs to be opposed, even if it is directed at this 
sort of reactionary nationalism (or indeed loyalism), writing ?We generally support all 
calls for public enquiries and oppose all state repression even where we disagree with the 
politics of those who are the victims of the repression.?

No revolutionary can allow the state to define and intern its enemies arbitrarily. Once 
that practise becomes established all of us are targets. It?s worth remembering that as 
recently as 2004 sections of the Irish media were claiming that anarchists were planning a 
bombing campaign and to ?Gas Bertie and 10,000 Dubliners.? Once a state is allowed to use 
these tactics with one group it rapidly expands their use to target others it defines as 
enemies. We would urge our readers to actively oppose the internment of Marian Price and 
other prisoners despite the contempt you may hold for their politics.