got just a little less than 2%, although this was not evenly spread, ranging from a little less than 1% to more than 5%. The best results for us and Lutte Ouriere [another revolutionary group with whom the Ligue had an electoral agreement] were in the working class areas, especially where the Communist Party is well implanted.
That was the case in the East of France, in the Ardennes, where our candidate was a worker well known after four strikes in four different factories last year. In these four strikes there were strike committees, support committees and so on. We intervened in each of these strikes, both inside the strike (because we had one or two comrades in each of these strikes)
and outside, organising support, etc. And what is interesting is that in this town, where we got more than 5%, the branch of the Ligue is very small six or seven comrades, all workers, with a few students and high school students around us. I think that result was clearly produced by the experience of the workers during these strikes, and by the activity of the Ligue within Take another example, Sète, a town in the South where the CP is strongly implanted and where in the past not a single revolutionary dared to enter. Here we wanted to make a test, and so we sent a candidate. In the course of the campaign we were able to debate with the CP mayor in front of 400 workers-who insisted on staying till I o'clock in the morning until they were clear on the issues at stake!
And we got nearly 2%, votes which could have come only from the CP. We also now have in this town, where before we had no-one, a Red Committee of 14 militants, including the former leader of the Young Communists who brought with him five other workers.
Then you have other examples: in Tours in the centre of France, in Caen, and so on, where there have been strikes, and where the CP is strong but where the working class has had new experiences of struggle. This is the most important thing for us.
You also have to understand that this vote was a very political vote; it was all the more difficult because it was not an 'efficient" vote at all.
This election was not a 'normal' election there was a big political polarisation, and for the first time many workers had the impression that they could change something by voting.
even in the first ballot, for the Socialist Party or the CP. We did not expect more votes, but the result is that the vote did not accurately reflect our real influence.
During the campaign the Ligue held more than 500 meetings. What was most significant about these?
The nature of the attendance at these meetings:
Fianna Fail. The electoral illusions in the South have a material basis, and will not be broken down through propaganda but by the development of concrete alternatives to electoral action.
Again the Northern experience does not provide an answer. Since 1969 the self-activity of the minority, organised in the ghettoes, has been sufficient to offset reliance on the old Nationalist Party system of local MPs and councillors with a personal base of support built up through patronage. The problem in the South is to create such self-activity. And such mass action in the South will have to throw up more solid and powerful organs of dual power than the street committees in the North, if Leinster House is to be by-passed.
In such a situation intervention by revolutionaries is very difficult. There are no material alternatives to which they can point, and the temptation is either to lapse into "lesser evilism", and call for the election of the less reactionary political alternative, or to substitute for an intervention with abstract propaganda about why the masses, who are not going to break from electoralism, ought to. The RM's position was correct, because it proposed a form of action, within the electoralist framework, which nevertheless brought out the main question in the political conjuncture (resistance to anti-Republican repression) and if followed it would take the masses into struggles which would face them with the necessity for transcending their electoralist consciousness. It is true that there was no objective possibility of the masses following the RM's lead, but this was a result of the weakness and lack of influence over any section of the population of the revolutionary vanguard in Ireland. The RMG strengthened that vanguard by demonstrating a viable course of political action. By supporting the Officials election campaign, and at the
Left: Alain Krivine
we found that only the most politicised of even the revolutionary students came to our meetings - or rather, they came when the meetings were organised in the universities themselves, but not for the most part to the central meetings. But we had new people, in particular many workers; in Rouen, for example, there were approximately 800 workers at our meeting. Another example: we organised a meeting at 6 o clock in Nilvanches, which is a steel town in the East of France, and 90 workers came to the meeting from a big factory called Vendel Sidelau, which is one of the biggest steel trusts in France.
I think the majority of these people probably voted for the Union of the Left in the first ballot. But the fact that they came to our meetings shows that they do not have complete confidence in the Union of the Left.
More and more have begun to be critical of the fact that the Union of the Left retreated in its speeches and so on as the elections approached, and so they want to know what is our position.
That means that for these people we are losing our image as a student grouplet and beginning to appear as a serious political organisation.
The questions they asked us were very important, too: about the kind of socialism we want to build, what is workers" control, what is the relationship between the vanguard party and the trade unions, how to fight in the economic struggle, the problem of strike committees, the problem of self-management in the factory, and so on. All these problems were touched upon in the discussions.
Apart from this, we even organised some meetings of peasants in the South - small meetings.
One of the most striking things has been the growth of the Socialist Party's influence. Why have even working class militants been turning towards this party in the elections?
It is due to many things. The majority of the votes for the SP are coming not from the worksame time projecting their own independent slogans, agitation and propaganda, the RMG was able to intervene within the ranks of Sinn Fein, and explain the weaknesses of their election campaign, pose an alternative political methodology, and at the same time get close to that rank and file. If Dublin PD had supported the RMG in this, the forces of revolutionary Marxism in the South would have emerged from the election campaign with a proportionately greater influence and political impact.
PARTY-BUILDING AND INTERNATIONALISM The necessity for PD to transcend the experience of the North is the more urgent since they are in the best position to regroup those young Republican volunteers in the North who are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the political limitations of Republicanism. If a viable revolutionary organisation emerged from this process then the prospects for the Irish revolution would be greatly enhanced. Even if the uneven development of the revolutionary crisis in Ireland breaks, and the North is stabilised before the Southern masses are drawn into the struggle, the interregnum could be not only shortened, but used as a very necessary breathing space while the revolutionaries prepare themselves for the next round of struggle. But PD has a long road to travel, and a very short time scale if it is to achieve this task. If it is inadequate to the task, the young Republicans will be diverted into the pattern of previous generations: a brief military campaign, soon smashed, and the de-politicisation of the majority, while a small number go over to reformism.
The history of the Irish revolutionary movement shows that it cannot haul itself up by its own bootstraps. It has never been capable of understanding the dynamic of the uneven development of Irish capitalism, and has thus been divided and weakened by it. rather than acting to deepen the contradictions for capitalism and imperialism caused by ing class but from the middle class people who in the past usually voted more to the right. That is a sign, perhaps not of radicalisation but of a shift to the left if you like; the more so in that because of the SP-CP alliance it means they are not afraid of working with the CP. The second thing, which concerns the intellectuals and even a small section of the working class, is the effect of Stalinism. After 1968, many workers were completely disgusted by the policy of the CP, its sabotage of the strike movement and so on, and today they feel that maybe the Socialist Party is changing. This is, of course, generally false, but it is true that today there is a left wing in the SP called the Centre for Socialist Studies. This is a big fraction with perhaps 20% of the votes inside the party, led by young men who were not involved in the organisation in the past, many of them coming from the United Socialist Party (PSU). Because of the public image of these people - some of them are members of the national leadership and so on - sections of the working class feel firstly that this organisation has changed, and secondly that as it's stronger than the revolutionary groups it may perhaps be an effective counter-balance to the obstacle of Stalinism in the factories.
In your speech tonight you said that there was a prospect of very big class struggles in the coming months. Why is this likely? First of all, because there is now a new combativity among the working class which has grown up in the last few years: in new fights and very hard, long struggles. Secondly, the demands of the working class are increasing. There are now almost 800,000 unemployed: the speed-up in the factory is more intensive; in the nationalised industries the new policy of what they call profitability" is destroying security of employment; and so on. Problems of housing and even of pollution are also being taken up; not only economic demands, but the when the workers see that they have gained nothing substantial from the elections, they will say, 'we have waited for months and months because of the elections, and now we are going to fight.
What are the principal tasks that the Ligue puts forward in preparing for this upsurge?
Today we are launching many campaigns against the army, against militarism, etc. This is very important now to educate the vanguard. The CP has completely abandoned this work, and it is very important to educate people in action against the army and against the repression. But as far as the development of the working class movement is concerned, we have three main axes.
The first of these is the problem of workers' democracy and the experience of workers' dem ocracy through the strike committee. The second is the problem of making an alliance in specific strikes, preparing for what will happen in a General Strike and in the fight for socialism: this means the support committee, with peasants, high-school students, teachers and so on. Thirdly, we have to develop the habit of self-defence when there are strikes; to show the workers that they do not have to capitulate when the police occupy their factory, or the "yellow workers - the fascist workers who try to smash the pickets and enter the factory One of the most important problems for the revolutionary left in France must be how to achieve unity in action in the face of the CP and SP?
We think that today, especially because there is a new vanguard, the united front is possible no only when you have the reformists but when you have a strong revolutionary force able to intervene in the united front. When Lenin talked about the united front it was not a united front between two reformist organisations; there was also the revolutionary organisation. We think that today we are too small to build a real united front from the top down wards. If we limit ourselves to asking the reformists for a united front it will never take place. So we prefer to apply the English phrase: do it yourself; we have unity in order to outflank, and we outflank in order to have unity.
Concretely, this means that when there is an action which is necessary and which we have the forces to initiate, then instead of demanding that the CP do it we do it ourselves with our own forces. Then we ask the CP to continue the action with us. They usually refuse, of course, but some of their members now accept the need to take part in such actions, eg. the Young Communists in some places over Vietnam. And then of course if we can reach unity in action with them, then we try te go further with them.
that uneven development. As we have argued, PD has not been able so far to integrate the experiences of the struggles in the North and South of Ireland. Moreover Irish Marxists, while needing to develop a precise analysis for the Irish revolution, have not had the analytical tools necessary, and they have not been able to integrate forms of action, tactics, strategy, etc., appropriate to Ireland, but developed elsewhere. That is why the Irish revolutionary movement has to be Irish, but also internationalist.
PD has a very strong internationalist consciousness, and has helped in stimulating interest in the international class struggle amongst young Republicans. But PD has not progressed beyond an internationalism which solidarises with struggles elsewhere, but does not incorporate the experiences of these struggles in developing theory and strategy. An interest in the international class struggle will inevitably be one-sided and haphazard if it is seen as a question of general intormation about other struggles, combined with the development of friendly relations with revolutionaries in other countries. PD's relationship with Lotta Continua in Italy, for example, does not enable PD to understand the powerful industrial struggles there, which are very relevant to the South of Ireland, while Lotta Continua's devotion to direct action reinforces some of the less broadly applicable acnects of PD's experience.
The Fourth International has a completely different concept of internationalism, and one which is much more appropriate to the problems faced by Irish revolutionaries. That is why, while the Fl works independently of all other forces in Ireland, the development of a discussion between PD (and other Irish revolutionaries) and the Fl would be a valuable contribution to more effective action, jointly or independently: and could have very positive results in developing the necessary forces to lead the Irish revolution, which both the Fl and PD recognise as being a key to the European and World revolution.