New Socialist Alliance

THE IRISH LEFT has been characterized by a sectarianism of its own for several decades - Brendan Behan said of republican organisaations that the first item on the agenda at all their inaugural meetings was 'the split' - so perhaps it is salutory that two such groups are contemplating fusion over the next few months. By Gene Kerrigan

These are the mainly Norrthern People's Democracy, which has been at the foreefront of the civil rights and civil resistance struggle since 1968, and the Movement for a Socialist Republic (MSR), a Dublin-based Marxist organisation, whose most' prominent member has been Raynor Lysatt, author of two books, The Republic of Ireland and The Making of Northern Ireland, the latter published as a pamphlet.

The PD and the MSR are the only two left-wing organisations which over the last five to six years have supported the Provisional IRA, albeit critically, and regarded it as a genuine anti-imperialist organisation. All other left-wing groups have either taken the 'two nations' line (i.e. regarded Ireland as made up of two nations, both entitled to statehood) or supported Offiicial Sinn Fein/IRA, which has taken a 'reformist' posiition - i.e. the North must first be democratised before the national question can be solved or a socialist state brought about, therefore in the meantime people should engage in conventional poliitical activity, community pollitics, etc., in the hope of advancing democratisation.

The People's Democracy has its origins in the civil rights struggle dating from October 5th, 1968. It sprung up as a loose populist organiisation at Queens University and in its early days it inncluded such diverse personallities as Bernadette Devlin and Ciaran McKeown, the Peace leader. The latter quickly dropped out as the PD developed along Marxist lines and formed a coherent struccture. So too did Bernadette Devlin, whose more freeeranging line was unsuited to the discipline of a rigid lefttwing organisation.

The PD's main ideologue was and is Miehael Farrell, author of 'Northern Ireland: the Orange State'. Its generral secretary, John McNulty, was recently held in Long Kesh under the new form of internment in the North, held on remand on a spurious charge and then released. There have been two splits in PD over the last five years, both resulting in memmbers advocating a more naationalist and less Marxist line leaving to form other groups.

PD has published a paper since October 1969, first called Free Citizen and then Unfree Citizen, following innternment in August 1971. Arguably it has been the most coherent left-wing newsspaper in the country, rigorrously arguing its antilist position and the sectaarian nature of the Northern state.

The MSR has grown partly out of the remnants of the left wing of the Labour Party in the 'sixties - Lysatt was active in Labour from 1965 - and partly from a number of left-wing groups who went either 'reformist' or adopted the two nations line in 1972. It first called itself the Revolutionary Marrxist Group, but a year ago changed its name to Moveement for a Socialist Republic.

While PD has been primaarily activist, MSR has been very theoretical, but both organisations were involved in common fronts against repression etc. And it was there that the liason first began.

Already the two organiisations have amalgamated their papers (MSR published The Plough) and discussions are taking place on a fusion, which it is expected will materialise in late summer. The fusion will give the new organisation a significant base in both North and South and will combine the actiivist tradition of one with the theoretical tradition of the other.

The principle theoretical plank of the new organiisation will be that the nationnalist question is the sharppest contradiction (used in the Marxist sense) of Irish Society - that the Northern state is irreformable in the bourgeois sense and that conventional capitalist poliitics cannot bring about a united Ireland, therefore the solution of the national quesstion can come about only with the conjuncture of a socialist and nationalist revolution.