Reaction to Scotland's No vote.

So the votes are in. Scotland has voted 44.7% for independence and 55.3% to remain within the United Kingdom. Voter turnout was close to 87% in a display of participation greater than we have seen in any recent election. The EU elections in May drew 33.8% of the British electorate out of their homes to the local voting booth. It’s standard in UK general elections for turnout to be almost twice as high as in EU elections. Consequently, the protest vote looms large in one and not the other (at least usually this is the case).

It was said in the run-up to the referendum that Alex Salmond couldn’t lose either way: if it’s a ‘yes’ then Scotland becomes an independent state, if it’s a ‘no’ then Scotland will win more powers. Originally the proposed referendum was to include three options, not just yes or no, but the option of maximal devolution would have been on the table too. This led many to suggest Salmond was really pushing for greater powers. If Salmond was aiming for independence then this might not be the end of the story, as we have seen in Quebec where there have been two referendums on independence. The major issue for Whitehall is how they can prevent such an occurrence in the British Isles.

No wonder then David Cameron has raised the West Lothian question. He speaks of a ‘devolution revolution’ for the English and not just Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Endless bifurcation has its appeal to international capitalism as each entity can be picked off, its economy chiselled and its workforce disciplined. The appeal is to English parochialism, the same mobilising force behind UKIP, Powellism, and the EDL, can be seen as a move to strengthen the rightward trend of British politics through coalescence and triangulation. Boundary changes would have to be made in any large-scale constitutional shake-up in a country where such questions have been held-off for far too long. So devolution may not necessarily result in an automatic Conservative stranglehold in Westminster.

Decentralisation in a neoliberal world would suit Cameron and his party just right. The Conservatives are facing inexorable decline, having only increased their share of the vote by 3% in 5 years against the Brown government. It’s highly unlikely for any governing party to increase its share of the vote, even if you have the Liberal Democrats as human shields. Meanwhile, the Labour Party lacks any vision or impetus to stand up for its traditional social base. The bet may not be for a rejuvenated Tory Party, that fight may have already been lost. It’s not just that the social democratic model is rotting before our eyes; the old Toryism is going the way of the dodo too. In that regard, what is left but to fall back on the trilateral consensus and devolve the Union into a morass entrenching austerity.

As for the Scottish National Party, it was once the case that the left-right coalition (which composes the SNP) was set to break apart once they had achieved independence. It looks unlikely that will be the case as long as Scotland remains within the UK. Salmond will try to maintain the public services and welfare provisions in Scotland for as long as he can. Additional powers may help this, or hinder this, it’s difficult to foresee. It still is the case that the SNP is not a socialist party, it isn’t even a republican party, and it was willing to accept NATO, as well as international free-trade agreements, and the vanity projects of Donald Trump. I can see the ultra-left in Scotland pinning the blame on the SNP for not being pure enough and Salmond will rebuke this with the language of pragmatism.

This post was written as an immediate reaction to the outcome of the referendum on Scottish independence. It will be reproduced at Souciant later.

Scotland's Future.

In a matter of a few weeks Scotland will decide on its future. The Left seems to have lined up behind the Yes-side of the referendum on Scottish independence. We should be asking ourselves, what is the case for unionism here? Surely, there has to be a progressive case here. After all, the Union stood firm against the rising tide of Fascism in the early decades of the twentieth century.

First of all, it has to be affirmed that there is a fundamental principle – the right to self-determination – which is without question. If the Scottish people demand an independent sovereign Scotland then they are entitled to it. The English don’t have a right to impose a form of government not accepted by Scots over Scotland. This goes to the heart of democratic concerns.

What we might call ‘red patriotism’, or traditional revolutionary patriotism, as Hobsbawm called it, has its time and place. English nationalism was tapped into by both Winston Churchill and JB Priestley. The war against fascism coincided with forces vying for the future of the social order. The people who had seen the worst of the 1930s did not want to return to those days and wanted a better life. This is why in 1945 the national government under Churchill’s leadership helped to win the war, but the Labour Party won the election. It marked the beginning of three decades of social democracy.

It was in the Union that the Welsh and Scottish people found a voice in British political life, not through nationalist organisation, but through the opposition – the Liberals and Labour. It was only with the decline of the post-war establishment and rise of Thatcherism, coupled with the death of Empire, that the Labour Party pursued devolution. Then Scottish nationalism became a contender. This should not surprise us. So a vital part of the picture is the rise of neoliberalism.

The neoliberal context

The question of Scotland’s viability is not so uncertain. The country has a GDP per capita of over £24,000. No doubt Scotland would undergo economic reform in order to reorder the institutions which underlie its standing. The real issue is what exactly an independent Scotland will look like.

It seems plausible that an independent Scotland would be opened up to international forces and exposed to the full brunt of neoliberal reforms. This might even be the case if Scotland heads for greater integration into the European system. The power of monetary policy may still be held by Whitehall and this could constrain any government in its policies. Likewise it would be possible for corporations, and even small-scale businesses, to hold the state to ransom – threatening to disinvest the fledgling economy – to shift policy in their own favour. The English government could easily initiate a race to the bottom on fiscal policy with Scotland forcing down its rate of tax and expenditure.

The possibility of a flat-tax haven north of England shouldn’t be dismissed as we have seen the same thing happen in Ireland (where there always was a much stronger nationalist/republican case). Michael Portillo has described this as the Tory case for Scottish independence. He argues it would thrust Scotland into the cold winds of global competition and, by the looks of Brussels these days, we can see how independence may lead to greater neoliberal reform and not less.

This is a point that can’t be dismissed easily as the national takes shape within the international. Contrary to the claims of nationalists globalisation does not oppose nation-states, or even nationalism. Sovereignty of national bodies has long been embedded in a global economic context. Just as the freedom and sovereignty of the individual is not absolute, neither is that of the body national. Capital can easily exploit the proliferation of borders in a world already too bifurcated. This is the reason Scotland will remain within the EU and its currency will remain sterling after independence.

The prospects for distribution

We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the Barnett formula. It’s not the case that there is a ‘trickle-down’ of wealth from the financial colossus in the City of London; but there is a case for widespread redistribution within the Union. It may be said that the United Kingdom has a greater pool of tax revenues together and from the 1940s to the 70s there was a modicum of distributional change. This led to the workers’ share of GDP rising to a peak in the late 60s and early 70s. The battle to restore profitability to the system, firstly, by the Labour government of the late 70s and then by the Thatcher administration ultimately succeeded. Since then the workers’ share of GDP has stagnated while the bosses’ share has skyrocketed.

However, once independent, Scotland would not necessarily have access to capital if a programme of redistribution were secured. The Glasgow Media Group calculated that the top layer of income-earners in the UK – around 10% of the population – were sitting on around £4 trillion in wealth in 2010. The vast amounts of capital amassed over the generations and concentrated in southern English hands would largely remain in London. The potential for redistribution would be left stunted and Scotland would be on the receiving end of a self-imposed scarcity. Under such conditions it seems likely that the Scottish government would take the side of one class over another.

It can certainly be argued that the Union has done much to preserve inequality in Scotland, where the richest 10% now have 273 times as much wealth than the poorest 10%. The richest 100 men and women increased their wealth from £18 billion to £21 billion in 2012. Just in terms of land ownership there is immense inequality in Scotland. Out of the rural landscape, which makes up 94% of Scottish land, a little over 83% of it is privately owned. Out of a population of over 5.2 million people less than a 1,000 people control 60% of the country. It seems plausible that the social inequalities preserved in Scotland by the Union would remain and could potentially be deepened by independence. So the strongest case for Scottish independence has to be a socialist case and not a nationalist one.

Except the world situation seems to make a socialist Scotland unlikely. In the distributional struggle inside the EU the biggest sparks of resistance have been in Spain and Greece. The disenchantment elsewhere in Europe, including in the UK, has not translated into electoral change. This matters because Scottish independence could well open up a new distributional struggle in the country. In the absence of a mass movement capable of waging a fight for workers’ rights the conservative tendencies of the SNP may win in the end.

This article was originally written for The Third Estate on August 23 2014.

Saying Yes!

There has been a lot of talk of referenda lately. We will soon have the results of another referendum in Ireland this week. The same can't be said for the prospect of Scottish independence, even as the campaign for a ‘Yes’ to Scottish independence in 2014 has just started. Then there is the usual talk of a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, which will remain as long as there is enough ink to waste on Euromyths in the gutter press. The option without competition is austerity has relevance to each instance of referenda as the Irish had to consider the neoliberal agenda of the EU. The Scots took have to choose how they wish to relate themselves to the austere doctrines of Whitehall and Brussels. Meanwhile there are a vast number of British people who think that the European Union are a threat to British sovereignty. The fact that Angela Merkel is as conservative as David Cameron doesn't enter into the picture as the libertarian tendency would have you believe the EU is just another left-wing exercise in utopianism.


At the same time the people are excluded from the decision-making process in the spheres of economics and foreign policy especially. The people are practically just there to reaffirm the status quo in various respects, not just at the ballot box but in polls too. Every state on earth seeks legitimacy, even to fake legitimacy and create the appearance of a democratic mandate. It is part of the long-term triumphs of the Enlightenment. There was never a referendum on whether or not Britain should hold onto nuclear weapons as part of the American nuclear command system. There was never a referendum over whether or not Britain should invade Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not to be taken as a reason for direct democracy, but it is clear that the democratic machine needs to be reinvented and deepened in a variety of ways. There would still be a place for vertical structures of power in order to maintain and coordinate horizontal developments of workers' democracy. There is a place for instantaneous decisions whether we like to admit it or not.

John McAllion put forward the socialist case for an independent Scotland in Red Pepper. The idea is that nationalism sets the pre-conditions for internationalism as Scottish independence would undermine Britain as a state-capitalist nexus and mercenary of the US. Still it seems to be divisive, even as McAllion notes that the Scottish working-class  have had to pay for the chaos caused by an unregulated banking colossus in London. And they are lucky to hold onto the social services that the UK government would like to destroy. He argues that Scottish independence could open up a space for an end to austerity and privatisation in Europe. He goes further to hold that independence could upon a space for a relaxation of laws against trade unions, giving workers greater power in the workplace just north of the border with England. There is some truth to the view that a country can break out of the neoliberal order. But it can only secure itself by reaching beyond its borders. The national is dependent upon the international sphere, just as the local relies on the national.

Its clear that the opening up of a space for better working conditions, rights and higher pay would undermine the anti-union measures in Britain. There could be a coordinated effort by the labour movement to strengthen workers’ rights and power across the mainland. It could also be used by the right-wing, to stew resentment and anger against the pampered Scottish workers. This would definitely be the case if Scottish independence led to disaster for the fledgling republic. The workforce may want to move north for better pay but the businesses might move south for a more vulnerable workforce. It would take state intervention to rejuvenate the manufacturing sector in Scotland, the matter isn't really whether or not this could be accomplished without the British military as a market. The real worry should be that the EU with its addiction to austerity would look to limit any attempts to raise public expenditure in Scotland. The EU could replace the UK in this way, leading to a shift towards economic nationalism and possibly even autarky in Scotland.

It isn't outside of the coordinates of the possible as manufacturing has a predisposition towards protectionism. It is compatible with anti-union measures in the private sphere because it has the most to lose to rising wages. Even with the financial colossus in London there may be more chance of progressive leaps as banking can live with unionisation and higher public spending. It is taxation and regulation that the financial sector fears, but it was banks that backed the New Deal in the US in order to buy-off socialism in the long-term future. When David Cameron stood up to the EU as a "bulldog" months back to protect the banks he resisted the limits that the EU wants to set on public spending. It may be possible to reconstruct industry and the labour movement in an economy which has undergone financialisation. But it will take a great push from below to initiate this change. Even if Scotland struck out on an independent line of development, it could not accomplish the level of public investment let alone redistribution that Britain can as a union.

David Mitchell recently wrote an article on the Strasbourg decree to extend voting rights to the prison population. It was a u-turn from his endorsement of the proposal when this was a major issue last year. The European Court of Human Rights is commonly seen as an extension of the European Union, a foreign force which interferes with the internal matters of a sovereign island. It just so happens that the proudest of islanders, who won't yield to a foreign court, feel more American than European. The illusion of nationalism is that we can stand as a proud and strong nation, free of international determinants and hegemons, in a position of glory not seen since the 19th Century. You might claim that it is better for the British to side with the Americans because of the obvious power the US still holds in the world. On the other hand, you might argue that the European Union is the only road left for a country aligned with an ailing superpower. Whatever the case it has to be noted that the issue of human rights as dictated from Strasbourg is not a pure matter of integration.

It does raise interesting questions of sovereignty. This was a case where Strasbourg infringed upon the coordinates of British sovereignty and that just intolerable for the Eurosceptics. The sovereignty of the state comes down to its capacity to exclude and include people in the realm of rights and freedoms. Only the state holds the monopoly - in its sovereignty - over the power to declare an exception, to suspend normal legal guarantees and deny basic rights to people. The state has sovereignty insofar as it can divide the people into those who qualify as politically recognised and those who don't. The former are adorned with the meaning that comes from recognition and representation in political society. This is what the latter is deprived of, it's the difference of being a human being and being a citizen in the moral sense. But sovereignty isn't just about prisons. This goes for states of emergency declared, for the suspension of habeas corpus in civil war, for assassination and for the torture of 'terror suspects'.

The normal expectations of life no longer apply in these instances. Prison may just about fall within in the framework of sovereignty, which is why there are calls for the return of the death penalty. This isn't the case with 'terror suspects', asylum seekers and gypsies who are just on the boundaries of sovereign power. We see this in 'renditions', in the detainment of asylum seekers and when Dale Farm was brushed away. It was act of American sovereignty that put Osama bin Laden to death and it was religious sovereignty that put a fatwa on Salman Rushdie's head. There was the more recent instance of the Libyan revolutionaries excluding Colonel Gaddafi in killing him as to establish the sovereignty of the new order. It's significant that the constitutional monarchy, which you fetishise, originates in the restoration - when Charles II had republicans gutted in Charing Cross and their guts burned in front of them. Then Oliver Cromwell was unearthed and his body decapitated. This is what established the monarchy until it took on a constitutional guise after 1688.

The financial crisis has hit Ireland hard and has blown away Fianna Fail, the old party of the Free State, with its 14 years of precarious coalitions with Progressive Democrats, Greens and independents. Now the country is in the hands of a coalition between the Labour Party and Fine Gael, a party of far less noble origins than Fianna Fail. The sight of social democrats climbing into bed with cultural conservatives is an old story in Ireland. This came only after the Fianna Fail had signed away Ireland's future to the bureaucrats of financial liberalism in Europe. There was the usual nativist noise in Britain at the prospect of bailing out Ireland at the time and the UK government maintained its commitments to Ireland anyway. To be more accurate, the UK as part of the  EU sought to safeguard banking interests in Ireland and ram austerity measures down the throats of the Irish people soon afterwards. Of course, the tendency towards self-pity will continue to see the British as the real victims of bailing out feckless hordes abroad in Ireland, Greece and elsewhere.

The British don't like to remember the crimes committed against the Irish and the brutish manner of occupation that the island was subjected to for far too long. Back in 1867 Karl Marx noted that the Irish needed self-government and independence from England, to achieve an agrarian revolution it would be necessary to implement protective tariffs against England. From 1783 to 1801 the Dublin Parliament, which represented the Protestant land-owners and bourgeoisie, maintained protectionist measures to insulate Irish industry from England. These measures were possible because the Dublin Parliament was able to attain a degree of independence from England in 1782. The rebellion of 1798 gave the British the opportunity to ensure impoverishment in Ireland, the Dublin Parliament was done away with and its decrees reversed. By 1801 the Irish had become subject to free trade that had been imposed over their country. The life of industrial life was quickly suffocated, with only the small linen industry surviving.

It was certainly the case with Australia, Canada and the United States that independence had turned to protectionism against the British Empire. Ireland didn't strike out on an independent line because of its unfortunate proximity to Britain. The island would only move to independence once the popular sentiments converged with the decay of imperial Britain. It could be argued that the reunification of Ireland may be a pre-condition for recovery and development in the country. From the same line of thought we could argue that Ireland really needs reunification coupled with independence from Europe. But this would leave a poor country vulnerable to foreign investment that can't be influenced in the Parliamentary systems of Europe and Britain. The case for a united Ireland as well as for European integration are really political, we should avoid economism here and stick to the political. What the referendum result may have proven is that there is a desire for security and that the EU, as it is, is incapable of providing that to the Irish people.

The ultra-Politics of Powell.

Delusions of Nationhood.

The economist Friedrich von Hayek was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and so was Enoch Powell at the same time. Powell would later garner a reputation as a 'maverick' in the Conservative Party. He posed as a libertarian critic of the welfare state, immigration and European integration. Even though Powell voted for Clement Attlee in 1945 out of disgust over the way that the war ended and stood in opposition to immigration controls in the 1950s. As Health Secretary under Macmillan, Powell personally oversaw the employment of the Commonwealth immigrants at the NHS which was understaffed at the time. He was opposed to attempts to restrict employment of immigrants in the public sector on the basis that it was wrong to treat an individual differently on the basis of their origins. Powell was a libertarian and a staunch nationalist who believed in the Empire, which he saw collapse in his own lifetime and he yearned for it to be restored. As MP Powell drew up a plan to reconquer India in 1950, which Churchill dismissed as "madness". He was opposed to US influence, Irish reunification, Communism and European integration out of this belief in the British Empire.

Milton Friedman, a fellow member of the Mont Pelerin Society, praised Enoch Powell as a principled man. Powell stood by monetarism throughout the predominance of Keynesian theory and the widespread practice of social democratic policies throughout the Western world. The sumptuous distance from power that Powell enjoyed later functioned as a plateau from which a shot could be fired at the Establishment in standard populist manner. Of course, the distance served the ultra-right as a comfortable place for indulgence away from any chance of serious reflection on policy and theory. The point of excessive rhetoric for Hayek was to bolster support for the old system reconstituted behind the mythic guise of 'free-market'. The state-planners of social democratic capitalism would be placed by a managerial state-capitalist nexus, whereby the 'competitive order' is maintained. Powellism is no different, it was the standard Tory combination of classical liberalism and cultural conservatism. It parades before the rabble in the proto-populist garb of parochial nostalgia for the imperial glory and unfettered capitalism of the Victorian era.

Enoch Powell became a strident opponent of immigration after Ted Heath became Conservative leader in 1965, with Powell coming third behind him and joined the Shadow Cabinet as Secretary of Defence. Around this time Powell became increasingly critical of immigration and came out in opposition to Sikh men wearing turbans at work. It may have been a bid to position himself for the leadership role in the long-term. It couldn't have been pure opportunism on his part given that it was a position he maintained for the rest of his life. He saw himself as a prophet and it came through in his language, it was the words of Virgil he invoked. But it is clear that the 'Rivers of Blood' speech was timed to put Ted Heath on the spot and shape immigration policy dramatically. He was silent in opposition to the Race Relations act when it was discussed by the Shadow Cabinet just 10 days before he made his notorious speech. If Ted Heath failed to undertake tough policy-decisions on immigration it could have meant another Labour victory in 1970, after which Powell could have challenged Heath and become party leader.

Tried and Tested.

Once in power Ted Heath abruptly castrated Powell as a potential rival with the 1971 Immigration act, which reduced immigration to zero in the early 70s. Heath rejected the suggestion, as Powell had, that the state could manage the economy. The Conservative government embarked on a new approach to the economy, which hoped that the unhindered market would reconstruct British industry and society. Powell had long been a proponent of such an approach and now there was the chance to see it realised. But the Heath government abandoned the approach abruptly as unemployment started to rise and industry was left devastated. The new strategy was a "dash for growth" with the liberalisation of credit and a higher level of public spending. It was for a moment that the British economy boomed before the phenomenon of stagflation emerged as inflation and unemployment to rise simultaneously. The Keynesian orthodoxy was left perplexed and the monetarists found the chance they had been looking for.

Even though Heath had abandoned the market as the instrument to organise society and, much to the chagrin of Powell, saw Britain join the European Economic Community, the Conservative government helped set the conditions for Thatcher - which was heavily influenced by Powellite thinking. The Heath administration had removed exchange controls and opened up the UK economy to the international financial markets, money could now be moved in and out of the country on a whim. The threat to democracy of deregulated finance proved correct as we have witnessed a political stasis in the West since the global economy underwent the first stages of financialisation. It was the stagflation which opened up the space into which monetarism could enter as an alternative to Keynesianism. The failure to manage the economy gave credence to the position that the state could not manage the economy and should not be expected to. The way that the labour movement defeated the Conservative government demonstrated that the working-class had to be broken.

Powell was the consummate precursor to Thatcherism, in many respects, and had good reason to take delight in the collapse of the Heath government. Of course, Powell had a lot in common with Heath and a lot more than he would have admitted. The immigration policy of Heath was crafted to neuter him and the economic doctrine could only be salvaged for Powell as it was aborted. Under successive Labour governments there was an increase in deportations and the introduction of virginity tests on Asian women coming to live with their husbands in Britain. Again, Powell could languish at a distance from power and comfortably refuse any critical self-reflection at all. The Heath administration was not 'pure' in its approach to economic affairs and it sold out to the Europeans at the first chance. Powell could reassure himself that the ideas in his mind had yet to be realised. Then came the rise of Thatcherism and this time it would be different as Thatcher made clear when she said "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to."

No more U-Turns?

This time the government did not back down to the trade unions and instead systematically crushed every union it provoked into confrontation. In many respects Thatcherism was Powellism adjusted to the processes of globalisation and financialisation. The austerity measures of the early 1980s led to violent riots across the country in some of the most deprived and vulnerable communities. The ideological justification for the cuts came out of neoliberal doctrines which Enoch Powell supported and propagated throughout his career. The process by which the state was "rolled back" left the population devastated. It required the shock of the Falklands war to bolster patriotic support for the government. But it also required a means to explain away the social problems that the process generated. This is where Enoch Powell is on the side of the Establishment. The riots just supported his thesis that there would soon be violence and destruction on a huge scale if immigration were not reversed. Conveniently Powell could spout this line and not confront the consequences of the economic policies which he supported.

At the same time, Powell could hide behind the fact that the policies did not go far enough and the social democratic settlement was not obliterated totally. The doors were periodically opened to permit a spurt of immigration in order to boost the supply of labour. The so-called "special relationship" between the US and the UK continued as the US permitted the British retaliation to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. This was a war fought in America's backyard against an action undertaken by a dictatorship that Washington had supported. The days when the British rebelled against American foreign policy were long gone. Integration with Europe continued steadily as it had since the 1950s, with Thatcher pushing through the single European act - perhaps one of the most integrationist measures. Thatcher was also a member of the Heath Cabinet which took Britain into the European Economic Community in 1973 and campaigned for a Yes vote in the 1975 referendum. Margaret Thatcher was no bastion of 'national sovereignty' rather she never deviated from the traditional Conservative position on European integration which we might describe today in the vein of UKIP as Europhilic as opposed to Eurosceptical.

The Euro was a right-wing project from the very beginning as the European Central Bank has no qualms about the level of unemployment. Yet it is often portrayed as a leftist project by the ilk of Powell for the reason it is a state-system and we are reminded that the state fails to do good even on the rare occasions that it means to. The convenient blind-spot is to the neoliberal role of the state as a managerial system of a 'competitive order' in Hayekian theory. The right-wing opposition to social democratic capitalism was just an opposition to the particular form of the state-corporate nexus. Instead of state-planners looking to provide services and a social safety-net to the poor and most vulnerable, people like Powell were looking for a bureaucracy which would do more for business than society. As convenient as it may be for reactionaries like Powell to dismiss the Left for having ideas, it has to be said that the return to the glory of Victorian Britannia really is utopian. The only acceptable state project is on the side of 'national sovereignty' which has no place for the poor except as a dis-empowered rabble to be exploited.

The Luck of the Irish.

The Blood Never Dried.

It was on October 3rd 1981 that the Irish Hunger Strike came to an end, it was the culmination of a five-year protest by Republican inmates at Maze Prison. For the Thatcher government it was a Pyrrhic victory as the protest came to an end and Sinn Féin became an established party of the mainstream in the wake of the protests. Margaret Thatcher became a Republican hate-figure as she maintained "We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political". So the British refused to budge on the withdrawal of Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners as 10 inmates starved to death. When Bobby Sands died Thatcher had to comment in Parliament "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". Naturally Thatcher has since been hated almost as much as Oliver Cromwell, who expropriated Irish land and allotted it to officers and soldiers in his army.

The IRA reacted with violence and in 1984 bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton where Thatcher stayed to attend the Conservative Party Conference. In the aftermath the IRA issued the statement: "Mrs. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war." Bare in mind that the British government introduced internment in order to detain suspected terrorists without charge. The intention being to crush the IRA but it actually turned into a major recruiting pitch for Republicans. Then came Bloody Sunday in 1972 in which British soldiers fired on unarmed protestors and bystanders, hitting 26 and killing 13 on the spot. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry of 2010 concluded that the shooting was unjustifiable and came without any warning. None of the dead posed a threat to the British soldiers. Finally David Cameron issued an apology for the massacre which was long overdue.

Let's not forget about Irish history. The Easter Rising led to the War of Independence and then to the Irish Civil War of 1922-24, a very savage affair, fought between Irish nationalists on the issue of the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British, which established dominion status for Ireland (a self-governing Free State, but still part of the British Empire) with the right of exclusion (to be left out) for loyalist Northern Ireland. The partition was established in a desperate political compromise with the Irish to save some face before the country could be sufficiently humiliated once more. The seemingly age-old antagonism between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland was instigated by the British in collusion with land-owners looking to exploit religious sectarianism. The division remains a source of great strife in Ireland, while class is pushed aside as an issue of debate at all. Republicanism remain the official means by which the Catholic working-class is supposed to express its' interests. The great irony being the role of Protestants in the roots of the Irish Republican movement.

Back in 1867 Karl Marx noted that the Irish needed self-government and independence from England, to achieve an agrarian revolution it would be necessary to implement protective tariffs against England. From 1783 to 1801 the Dublin Parliament, which represented the Protestant land-owners and bourgeoisie, maintained protectionist measures to insulate Irish industry from England. These measures were possible because the Dublin Parliament was able to attain a degree of independence from England in 1782. Then came the Irish Rebellion of 1798, after that the Dublin Parliament was abolished and the measures it had introduced were reversed. Free trade was established once more between Ireland and England in 1801. All industrial life in Ireland was destroyed, with the exception of a small linen industry, in a manner reminiscent of the measures imposed under Anne and George II to suppress the Irish woollen industry. As Marx pointed out, Canada and Australia had achieved independence only to go protectionist and maintain economic independence from England. The same can be said of the United States.

By the time that WB Yeats was writing the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy had failed to provide any meaningful leadership at the political level and had resorted to a cultural leadership in order to revive the Gaelic culture that they had previously repressed. It was the possibility of a cultural common ground on which all the Irish could head for and leave behind the old politics. What came before the Reformation was the ancient myths which were conveniently excluded from sectarian enmity, the project of the enlightened Anglo-Irish tradition, while it remained an opponent of conservatism. This is where a marginal element of the Protestant elite became fused with Catholics through Celtic revivalism, nationalism and idealism. As Terry Eagleton notes the irony of the Anglo-Irish who dismissed the Catholics as superstitious only to flounder in the supernatural and the spectral, from Bram Stoker to Oscar Wilde. The occult and strange magic served the Irish Protestants as a substitute for Catholic doctrine. But then Dracula could be seen as an Irish landlord deprived of the sustenance of his soil.

In the aftermath of the Rising the British soon put to death the seven, and eight others, who had signed the proclamation of an Irish Republic after the General Post Office in Dublin was seized. This is what Patrick Pearse described as the "blood sacrifice" of the Easter Rising, which was necessary in order for the War of Independence to be fought. The so-called "progressives" of the time in the British Parliament declined to issue a certificate of support for the Irish rebels. The survivors went on to shape history, the 'Big Fella' Michael Collins became leader of the Free Staters and Éamon De Valera went on to help establish the Republic. Incidentally, De Valera had escaped death because his mother was an American and the British government feared alienating the US, whose entry into the First World War on the British side was of top priority in Westminster. De Valera went on to become a cultural conservative and founded Fianna Fáil in 1926 - which has since degenerated to the point that it has signed away Ireland's future to European bankers. By the mid 1920s the small country had been left devastated by civil war and a war of liberation from Britain.

Over the course of the Civil War the same men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in the War of Independence. It began with the antagonism consequent of the establishment of the Irish Free State. From one perspective it might have been seen as the "freedom to achieve freedom", but it was also seen as a betrayal of the movement. As Michael Collins signed the Treaty with David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to seal the deal in 1921 he remarked "I tell you, I have signed my death warrant." And so it was the following year, in the early months of the Civil War, the 'Big Fella' was murdered by Republicans in a roadside ambush in Cork. The people who had fought together for Irish independence then turned their guns and bayonets on one another. The Free Staters set about shooting their prisoners without mercy and the Republicans soon sought revenge. Out of all the slaughter the Free Staters emerged victorious but it would be the Republicans who triumphed in the long-run.  The Irish Civil War left a bad taste behind in the country, as civil wars tend to do even without the kind of partition Ireland has had to endure. Since then it has been sang by some:

"Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors,
The flag we Republicans claim.
It can never belong to Free Staters.
You brought on it nothing but shame…

You've taken our brave Liam and Rory,
You've murdered young Richard and Joe.
Your hands with their blood are still gory,
From fulfilling the work of the foe.

For we stand with Enright and Larkin,
With Daley and Sullivan bold.
We'll break down the English connection,
And bring back the nation you sold…"

Easter, 1916.

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

W.B. Yeats