Northern Ireland, 1921-1994: Political Forces and Social Classes

In this review, I will concentrate on the global approach of Bew, Gibbon and patterson on the Irish question. Their book itself is very good, especially their analyisis of contradictions within the unionist bloc. I recommend it to anyone interested in Northern Irish politics. But I think that what is highly contestable is their "red marxist" approach on the national question. in Ireland; they claim that the struggle for emancipation is opposed to the struggle for reuniting the country. They argue that "the democratic, that is to say the national stage of the Irish revolution seems to have been complete as it ever could in 1921." They claim elsewhere that recent "urbanisation and industrialization have relegated the national question to the margin of Irish politics" ; thus "there is nothing inherently reactionary about a national frontier which puts Protestants in a numerical majority". They even adavance that "Imperialism's real impact upon Irish society has not been a substantial one"!!! Thus, for them, the issue of partition has no substantial material basis, it divides catholic and protestant workers (thus hinders socialist struggle) they refuse to see it as a question of democracy and emancipation regarding it as an issue of "territorial completion". Socialists should work to democratize the two partition states and not concern themselves with national reunification as "reactionary nationalists" do. As to the mythical nature of the national question today, nothing could be further from the truth. Every single aspect of economic, political, and ideological life in the north of Ireland is overlaid, "overdetermined" by the national question. Until the national question is settled, there can be no "pure" class politics in Ireland. To presume that the left can organize solely on class issues is to judge that the national question will go away if we only ignore it. Or to presume that the working class in the north can forget about the national question and unite on social and economic isssues only is volontarism of the most crass kind. The conflict over territorial boundaries is not a question of some instinctual "territorial completion". It is not the struggle over the territorial extent of the NI state per se which, in an emancipatory perspective denies its legitimacy. The border is a geographical expression of the sectarian class relations through which the state operates, and on which its very existence depends. The border is the over-arching manifestation of the structural inequality between catholics and protestants. This is why socialists work to "smash the orange state", one of the main reasons being the irreformable caracter of the state. But, this is not to say that nationalism is suficient (or synonymous with) to bring socialism about. But, appart from their contestable views, it should be well stressed that the book is really worth reading, the authors are very rigorous in their analyses which attain a high level of quality, unfort