Post by dangeresque on Oct 6, 2006 7:14:38 GMT
The Legacy of Seamus Costello
—by Liam O Ruairc
Republican Socialists commemorate this year the 25th anniversary of the
assassination of Seamus Costello. If he is unsurprisingly remembered as
the founder of the IRSP and the INLA, he should also be commemorated as
one of the main architects of the left turn taken by the then unified
Republican Movement during the 1960s.
In contrast to Connolly, whose background was the workers movement,
Costello came from the conspiratorial politics of the "secret army",
understood their limits, and developed a strategy to reconstruct them on a
left-wing basis .
Born in 1939, Seamus Costello applied to join the IRA aged 16, and became
the commander of an ASU in South Derry during the border campaign. He was
arrested in 1957, and was interned in the Curragh. Like others, he
reflected on the reasons for the failure of the 1956 – 1962 campaign, and
came to realise that there was an objective need to move away from a
purely military conception of struggle. The IRA had separated itself from
the people. Costello thought that the Republican movement should be
organically linked to the masses develop a solid political programme to
give political leadership and if necessary complement mass struggle by
military action.
Through the efforts of Costello and others, the Republican Movement
adopted a socialist stance by 1966/1967. This part of Costello's political
life has much relevance in 2002. Forty years after the end of the border
campaign, Republicans have still to understand the defeat of the 1990s.
While some Republicans join the status quo and other "pan nationalist
fronts", Republican Socialists will find inspiration in Costello's 1960s
strategy. What is required of Republicans is to be organically linked to
the struggles of the working class and give political leadership.
With the outbreak of the struggle in the North and the split in the
Republican Movement, Costello remained with the Officials. He was on the
left wing of the Officials, pressing the rest of the leadership to adopt a
more militant stance. It was mainly due to the pressure of Costello and
his supporters that the Official IRA adopted a more aggressive policy in
1971. But under the pressure of reformist elements, the Official IRA
called a ceasefire in 1972.
The strategy of the Officials in the North was seeking to unite Catholic
and Protestant workers under the Civil Rights banner, reform Stormont and
demand a Westminster Bill of Rights. The Official leadership argued that
military activity alienated the loyalist working class and endangered
electoral prospects in the 26 counties.
The Official leadership was totally out of step with the mass struggle
that was going on. They stated that the abolition of Stormont was a
regressive measure! They were still stuck at the Civil Rights stage when
the struggle against British rule was the main issue. No wonder that the
Officials lost a lot of political credibility with the Nationalist working
class. This political line was opposed by Costello and his supporters.
Strategically, Costello argued that there was too much emphasis on
appeasing loyalists rather than defending Nationalists, that the principal
contradiction was partition and not the reform of Stormont. Tactically, he
criticised the absence of armed struggle and the over-emphasis upon
electoralism in the 26 counties.
One of the lessons of this period, is the necessity for Republican
Socialists of never being out of step with the mass struggle. Any struggle
out of step with mass struggle is condemned to fail. It is also important
to understand what the main contradiction is, and how the principal aspect
of that contradiction manifests itself. The Officials failed to see what
the principal contradiction was and embarked on the road to nowhere.
At first, Costello tried to reform the Official Republican Movement from
within. In 1972, in an attempt to open up a discussion on political and
military strategy, Costello (who was still OIRA Director of Operations)
and Sean Garland jointly formulated a policy document called "A Brief
Examination of the Republican Position: An Attempt to Formulate the
Correct Demands and Methods of Struggle". Their position was critical of
the then leadership's gradual downgrading of the national question. The
document was adopted at the October 1972 IRA convention and the subsequent
Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, but never implemented.
The Goulding-MacGiolla faction attempted to reverse the decision and tried
to isolate and undermine Costello by perverting methods of internal
democracy. In 1973, the Offical Sinn Féin and Army Council adopted new
organisational principles as part of a strategy of isolating the
opposition without creating a split. Costello was weakened when Garland
changed sides. Things came to a head when Seamus Costello was court
martialled and dismissed from the Official IRA in July 1974. At the 1974
Offical Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Costello was also dismissed from the party.
Costello supporters had been so thoroughly purged from both the party and
the army, that there were only 15 votes against the motion. Costello was
certainly no "splitist". He tried to work within the Officials until he
was expelled, and when the conflict later erupted between the Official IRA
and his movement, he did everything in his power to resolve matters
peacefully. He was probably correct not to leave earlier, as he ultimately
would have ended up isolated.
Costello and his supporters had little choice but form a new political
movement. On 8 December 1974, Costello and eighty of his supporters set up
the Irish Republican Socialist Party. The same day, they discussed also
discussed the formation of a new armed group that would continue the
struggle the Official IRA had abandoned.
They recognised the need for a revolutionary socialist party who would
understand the relationship between the national question and the class
struggle in Ireland, and would have a programme of political action based
on this understanding. Costello and his supporters were at first busy
laying the foundation and structures of their party.
In April 1975 was the first national conference, the same year the party
paper "The Starry Plough" was established and party premises were
purchased in Dublin. But the party had to fight for its very survival
before even thinking of developing. The party was faced with very serious
objective and subjective problems that crippled its development and
growth.
First, the Officials attempted to wipe out Costello's organisation before
it got off the ground, beating, pistol whipping and kneecapping its
members, and on 20 February shooting dead Hugh Ferguson. Until a ceasefire
between the two organisations was brokered in May, three comrades lay dead
and over forty injured. But the Officials never lifted their directive to
execute Costello, and assassinated him in 1977.
Those who had refused to use their weapons against the armed forces of
British occupation had not qualms about turning them against fellow
Republicans ! If the fighting with the Officials had been mostly
concentrated in Belfast, it nevertheless had a debilitating effect on the
movement in the country as a whole. Costello's supporters had also to cope
with hostility of some Provisionals.
A number of people left the Provisional IRA (then on ceasefire) to join
Costello's organisation. To dissuade further defections, the IRA
assassinated one of its members that had joined the IRSP, and blamed the
killing on the Officials. In such a climate, the immediate threat to the
movement was not even the state or the loyalists, but former comrades.
On top of that, state repression attempted to crush the IRSP, in the 26
counties in particular. This was no ordinary Garda harassment. In June
1975, they lay the blame on the IRSP for a UDA attempt to blow up a train
carrying Officials to Bodenstown.
On 31 March 1976 at Sallins, the Cork-Dublin train was robbed. Although
the Provisionals later admitted responsibility for the robbery, the Free
State government used it as an excuse to launch a vicious political attack
on the IRSP. About 40 IRSP members were arrested, and most reported that
they were tortured, deprived of sleep and food, brutally kicked and
beaten. Doctors and human rights observers later confirmed their injuries.
Three IRSP members were eventually sentenced to long term prison
imprisonment by the Dublin Special Criminal Court in December 1978. All
three had been framed, and after intense efforts by organisations such as
Amnesty International to prove their innocence, two were released in 1980.
The last, Nicky Kelly, had to wait 1992 before being officially cleared!
Costello always maintained that there had been a state conspiracy to smash
the IRSP. What is certain is that round 1976, the Free State took a
particularly repressive stance against left-wing groups. For example, Noel
and Marie Murray, two Anarchists accused of killing a Garda during a
robbery, where threatened with death penalty. But the IRSP particularly
suffered.
Ta Power estimated that the IRSM had by late 1975 about 800 members. Up to
15% of them had been injured –or even killed- in arrests or by the
Officials. That means that for the first two years, due to these difficult
objective circumstances, the movement had little breathing space and
simply struggled for survival.
At the same time, Costello was busy building an armed organisation
organically distinct from the party. The resumption of armed struggle was
one of the decisive reasons for leaving the Officials. As Connolly wrote,
"agitation to attain a political or economic end must rest upon an implied
willingness and ability to use force. Without that, it is mere wind and
attitudinising" (Selected Works, p.45) In early 1976, the Army Council of
a "National Liberation Army" issued its first statement.
"The National Liberation Army was recently formed with the aim of ending
British imperialist rule in Ireland and creating a 32 county Democratic
Socialist Republic. As revolutionaries, we recognise the paramount
necessity for the existence of an armed anti-imperialist organisation
which will play an effective role in the current struggle. (…) After five
years of struggle against imperialism, the Irish people have victory
within their grasp. We see it as our task, as revolutionaries, that they
are not deprived of victory through the acceptance of any compromise
solution negotiated without reference to the long term interests of the
Irish working class."
The statement ended with a list of 15 operations carried out since May
1975 ("New Army Announced", The Starry Plough n.10, January 1976, p.4) Due
to the lack of weapons and ammunitions, it was not easy for Costello's
army to make an impact. In May 1977, the Starry Plough stated for example:
"There is little known about the National Liberation Army (NLA) who have
remained relatively quiet since December 1975." ("National Liberation Army
on the Offensive", The Starry Plough n.21, May 1977, p.6)
The 1978 British Army document "Future Terrorist Trends" barely mentions
Costello's organisation. The name of the group itself was not even clear.
It is only in March 1978 that the armed group adopted the INLA name, and
by that time Costello was already dead.
Even if he was undeniably left-leaning, Costello remained true to the
physical force Republican tradition, and for him the army was the
privileged vehicle for revolutionary struggle. This gave rise to a debate
leading to a split (or resignations) in the IRSP in 1975. A faction led by
Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey argued that the army should be subordinated to
the party on the basis of democratic centralism. Otherwise, "Group B"
would just be a smaller version of the IRA with left-leanings. The split
significantly weakened the movement, as it lost experienced political
cadres.
Whether with the party or the army, Costello was committed to the Connolly
position on the relation between the national question and the class
struggle. The Officials concentrated on the class question while ignoring
the national one, and the Provisional Republican movement concentrated on
the national question while ignoring class issues.
In contrast, the Republican Socialist movement would concretely link the
two. Unfortunately, since Costello's death, the idea of "For National
Liberation and Socialism" merely remained a slogan and was not developed
into a concrete programme. This partly related to the fact that the IRSP
put too much emphasis upon the strategy of the Broad Front. For its time,
the proposal to form a united front was very advanced –it broke with
exclusivism and elitism latent within Republican politics to this day.
Costello recognised that armed struggle on its own could not succeed, it
needed to be grounded on a mass movement and collaborate with other
progressive organisations. One must also note that the Broad Front
envisaged by Costello had little to do with the so-called "pan-nationalist
front" of today, as it would be limited to progressive social forces. T
he problem was that Costello elevated the tactic of the Broad Front to the
level of a strategy. As a tactic, it is very valid for the IRSP to engage
in joint actions, in a united front with other political organisations on
specific issues and specific goals. However, the Broad Front is not the
decisive catalyst for struggle. The development of the Broad Front should
be subordinated to the necessity of building the revolutionary vanguard
party based on scientific socialism as the decisive vehicle to bring about
national liberation and socialism. T
here was a problem of priorities because in effect, the IRSP tended to
subordinate the development of the party to the construction of the Broad
Front, and was willing to submerge its particular political outlook in a
Broad Front (see for instance the experience of the Irish Front in Derry
in 1977-78). Costello called for the Broad Front without clear indications
of the dangers of popular frontism. The result is that the party was
unable to develop a clear ideology nor define its politics beyond the
slogan "For National Liberation and Socialism" and a vague call for the
"Broad Front". However, this failure is not unique: from the 1930s
Republican Congress to the League of Communist Republicans in the 1980s,
no group really solved the problem of the relation between the strategy of
party building and the constitution of the united popular front.
Added to objective (attacks on the movement) and subjective (resignations,
political hesitations), the assassination of Seamus Costello in October
1977 by the Official IRA was a decisive blow against the IRSP. To all
intents and purposes, he was the party. He was the main political and
organisational brains behind the movement. It left the party in confusion
and without direction.
Today, the organisational strategy of the Republican Socialist Movement
would differ significantly from that of Costello in at least one important
aspect: the stress on collective leadership. Collective leadership would
have helped avoid many of the problems that rose within the movement after
the death of Costello. Twenty-five years after the assassination of Seamus
Costello, those are just some of the most important issues of Costello's
legacy that Republican Socialists should reflect on.
—by Liam O Ruairc
Republican Socialists commemorate this year the 25th anniversary of the
assassination of Seamus Costello. If he is unsurprisingly remembered as
the founder of the IRSP and the INLA, he should also be commemorated as
one of the main architects of the left turn taken by the then unified
Republican Movement during the 1960s.
In contrast to Connolly, whose background was the workers movement,
Costello came from the conspiratorial politics of the "secret army",
understood their limits, and developed a strategy to reconstruct them on a
left-wing basis .
Born in 1939, Seamus Costello applied to join the IRA aged 16, and became
the commander of an ASU in South Derry during the border campaign. He was
arrested in 1957, and was interned in the Curragh. Like others, he
reflected on the reasons for the failure of the 1956 – 1962 campaign, and
came to realise that there was an objective need to move away from a
purely military conception of struggle. The IRA had separated itself from
the people. Costello thought that the Republican movement should be
organically linked to the masses develop a solid political programme to
give political leadership and if necessary complement mass struggle by
military action.
Through the efforts of Costello and others, the Republican Movement
adopted a socialist stance by 1966/1967. This part of Costello's political
life has much relevance in 2002. Forty years after the end of the border
campaign, Republicans have still to understand the defeat of the 1990s.
While some Republicans join the status quo and other "pan nationalist
fronts", Republican Socialists will find inspiration in Costello's 1960s
strategy. What is required of Republicans is to be organically linked to
the struggles of the working class and give political leadership.
With the outbreak of the struggle in the North and the split in the
Republican Movement, Costello remained with the Officials. He was on the
left wing of the Officials, pressing the rest of the leadership to adopt a
more militant stance. It was mainly due to the pressure of Costello and
his supporters that the Official IRA adopted a more aggressive policy in
1971. But under the pressure of reformist elements, the Official IRA
called a ceasefire in 1972.
The strategy of the Officials in the North was seeking to unite Catholic
and Protestant workers under the Civil Rights banner, reform Stormont and
demand a Westminster Bill of Rights. The Official leadership argued that
military activity alienated the loyalist working class and endangered
electoral prospects in the 26 counties.
The Official leadership was totally out of step with the mass struggle
that was going on. They stated that the abolition of Stormont was a
regressive measure! They were still stuck at the Civil Rights stage when
the struggle against British rule was the main issue. No wonder that the
Officials lost a lot of political credibility with the Nationalist working
class. This political line was opposed by Costello and his supporters.
Strategically, Costello argued that there was too much emphasis on
appeasing loyalists rather than defending Nationalists, that the principal
contradiction was partition and not the reform of Stormont. Tactically, he
criticised the absence of armed struggle and the over-emphasis upon
electoralism in the 26 counties.
One of the lessons of this period, is the necessity for Republican
Socialists of never being out of step with the mass struggle. Any struggle
out of step with mass struggle is condemned to fail. It is also important
to understand what the main contradiction is, and how the principal aspect
of that contradiction manifests itself. The Officials failed to see what
the principal contradiction was and embarked on the road to nowhere.
At first, Costello tried to reform the Official Republican Movement from
within. In 1972, in an attempt to open up a discussion on political and
military strategy, Costello (who was still OIRA Director of Operations)
and Sean Garland jointly formulated a policy document called "A Brief
Examination of the Republican Position: An Attempt to Formulate the
Correct Demands and Methods of Struggle". Their position was critical of
the then leadership's gradual downgrading of the national question. The
document was adopted at the October 1972 IRA convention and the subsequent
Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, but never implemented.
The Goulding-MacGiolla faction attempted to reverse the decision and tried
to isolate and undermine Costello by perverting methods of internal
democracy. In 1973, the Offical Sinn Féin and Army Council adopted new
organisational principles as part of a strategy of isolating the
opposition without creating a split. Costello was weakened when Garland
changed sides. Things came to a head when Seamus Costello was court
martialled and dismissed from the Official IRA in July 1974. At the 1974
Offical Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Costello was also dismissed from the party.
Costello supporters had been so thoroughly purged from both the party and
the army, that there were only 15 votes against the motion. Costello was
certainly no "splitist". He tried to work within the Officials until he
was expelled, and when the conflict later erupted between the Official IRA
and his movement, he did everything in his power to resolve matters
peacefully. He was probably correct not to leave earlier, as he ultimately
would have ended up isolated.
Costello and his supporters had little choice but form a new political
movement. On 8 December 1974, Costello and eighty of his supporters set up
the Irish Republican Socialist Party. The same day, they discussed also
discussed the formation of a new armed group that would continue the
struggle the Official IRA had abandoned.
They recognised the need for a revolutionary socialist party who would
understand the relationship between the national question and the class
struggle in Ireland, and would have a programme of political action based
on this understanding. Costello and his supporters were at first busy
laying the foundation and structures of their party.
In April 1975 was the first national conference, the same year the party
paper "The Starry Plough" was established and party premises were
purchased in Dublin. But the party had to fight for its very survival
before even thinking of developing. The party was faced with very serious
objective and subjective problems that crippled its development and
growth.
First, the Officials attempted to wipe out Costello's organisation before
it got off the ground, beating, pistol whipping and kneecapping its
members, and on 20 February shooting dead Hugh Ferguson. Until a ceasefire
between the two organisations was brokered in May, three comrades lay dead
and over forty injured. But the Officials never lifted their directive to
execute Costello, and assassinated him in 1977.
Those who had refused to use their weapons against the armed forces of
British occupation had not qualms about turning them against fellow
Republicans ! If the fighting with the Officials had been mostly
concentrated in Belfast, it nevertheless had a debilitating effect on the
movement in the country as a whole. Costello's supporters had also to cope
with hostility of some Provisionals.
A number of people left the Provisional IRA (then on ceasefire) to join
Costello's organisation. To dissuade further defections, the IRA
assassinated one of its members that had joined the IRSP, and blamed the
killing on the Officials. In such a climate, the immediate threat to the
movement was not even the state or the loyalists, but former comrades.
On top of that, state repression attempted to crush the IRSP, in the 26
counties in particular. This was no ordinary Garda harassment. In June
1975, they lay the blame on the IRSP for a UDA attempt to blow up a train
carrying Officials to Bodenstown.
On 31 March 1976 at Sallins, the Cork-Dublin train was robbed. Although
the Provisionals later admitted responsibility for the robbery, the Free
State government used it as an excuse to launch a vicious political attack
on the IRSP. About 40 IRSP members were arrested, and most reported that
they were tortured, deprived of sleep and food, brutally kicked and
beaten. Doctors and human rights observers later confirmed their injuries.
Three IRSP members were eventually sentenced to long term prison
imprisonment by the Dublin Special Criminal Court in December 1978. All
three had been framed, and after intense efforts by organisations such as
Amnesty International to prove their innocence, two were released in 1980.
The last, Nicky Kelly, had to wait 1992 before being officially cleared!
Costello always maintained that there had been a state conspiracy to smash
the IRSP. What is certain is that round 1976, the Free State took a
particularly repressive stance against left-wing groups. For example, Noel
and Marie Murray, two Anarchists accused of killing a Garda during a
robbery, where threatened with death penalty. But the IRSP particularly
suffered.
Ta Power estimated that the IRSM had by late 1975 about 800 members. Up to
15% of them had been injured –or even killed- in arrests or by the
Officials. That means that for the first two years, due to these difficult
objective circumstances, the movement had little breathing space and
simply struggled for survival.
At the same time, Costello was busy building an armed organisation
organically distinct from the party. The resumption of armed struggle was
one of the decisive reasons for leaving the Officials. As Connolly wrote,
"agitation to attain a political or economic end must rest upon an implied
willingness and ability to use force. Without that, it is mere wind and
attitudinising" (Selected Works, p.45) In early 1976, the Army Council of
a "National Liberation Army" issued its first statement.
"The National Liberation Army was recently formed with the aim of ending
British imperialist rule in Ireland and creating a 32 county Democratic
Socialist Republic. As revolutionaries, we recognise the paramount
necessity for the existence of an armed anti-imperialist organisation
which will play an effective role in the current struggle. (…) After five
years of struggle against imperialism, the Irish people have victory
within their grasp. We see it as our task, as revolutionaries, that they
are not deprived of victory through the acceptance of any compromise
solution negotiated without reference to the long term interests of the
Irish working class."
The statement ended with a list of 15 operations carried out since May
1975 ("New Army Announced", The Starry Plough n.10, January 1976, p.4) Due
to the lack of weapons and ammunitions, it was not easy for Costello's
army to make an impact. In May 1977, the Starry Plough stated for example:
"There is little known about the National Liberation Army (NLA) who have
remained relatively quiet since December 1975." ("National Liberation Army
on the Offensive", The Starry Plough n.21, May 1977, p.6)
The 1978 British Army document "Future Terrorist Trends" barely mentions
Costello's organisation. The name of the group itself was not even clear.
It is only in March 1978 that the armed group adopted the INLA name, and
by that time Costello was already dead.
Even if he was undeniably left-leaning, Costello remained true to the
physical force Republican tradition, and for him the army was the
privileged vehicle for revolutionary struggle. This gave rise to a debate
leading to a split (or resignations) in the IRSP in 1975. A faction led by
Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey argued that the army should be subordinated to
the party on the basis of democratic centralism. Otherwise, "Group B"
would just be a smaller version of the IRA with left-leanings. The split
significantly weakened the movement, as it lost experienced political
cadres.
Whether with the party or the army, Costello was committed to the Connolly
position on the relation between the national question and the class
struggle. The Officials concentrated on the class question while ignoring
the national one, and the Provisional Republican movement concentrated on
the national question while ignoring class issues.
In contrast, the Republican Socialist movement would concretely link the
two. Unfortunately, since Costello's death, the idea of "For National
Liberation and Socialism" merely remained a slogan and was not developed
into a concrete programme. This partly related to the fact that the IRSP
put too much emphasis upon the strategy of the Broad Front. For its time,
the proposal to form a united front was very advanced –it broke with
exclusivism and elitism latent within Republican politics to this day.
Costello recognised that armed struggle on its own could not succeed, it
needed to be grounded on a mass movement and collaborate with other
progressive organisations. One must also note that the Broad Front
envisaged by Costello had little to do with the so-called "pan-nationalist
front" of today, as it would be limited to progressive social forces. T
he problem was that Costello elevated the tactic of the Broad Front to the
level of a strategy. As a tactic, it is very valid for the IRSP to engage
in joint actions, in a united front with other political organisations on
specific issues and specific goals. However, the Broad Front is not the
decisive catalyst for struggle. The development of the Broad Front should
be subordinated to the necessity of building the revolutionary vanguard
party based on scientific socialism as the decisive vehicle to bring about
national liberation and socialism. T
here was a problem of priorities because in effect, the IRSP tended to
subordinate the development of the party to the construction of the Broad
Front, and was willing to submerge its particular political outlook in a
Broad Front (see for instance the experience of the Irish Front in Derry
in 1977-78). Costello called for the Broad Front without clear indications
of the dangers of popular frontism. The result is that the party was
unable to develop a clear ideology nor define its politics beyond the
slogan "For National Liberation and Socialism" and a vague call for the
"Broad Front". However, this failure is not unique: from the 1930s
Republican Congress to the League of Communist Republicans in the 1980s,
no group really solved the problem of the relation between the strategy of
party building and the constitution of the united popular front.
Added to objective (attacks on the movement) and subjective (resignations,
political hesitations), the assassination of Seamus Costello in October
1977 by the Official IRA was a decisive blow against the IRSP. To all
intents and purposes, he was the party. He was the main political and
organisational brains behind the movement. It left the party in confusion
and without direction.
Today, the organisational strategy of the Republican Socialist Movement
would differ significantly from that of Costello in at least one important
aspect: the stress on collective leadership. Collective leadership would
have helped avoid many of the problems that rose within the movement after
the death of Costello. Twenty-five years after the assassination of Seamus
Costello, those are just some of the most important issues of Costello's
legacy that Republican Socialists should reflect on.