AT THIS year's Sinn Fein Ard Fheis Gerry Adams made a very remarkable presidential address. It summarised the entire last years of work by Sinn Fein. It is reported on page eight of this week's Socialist Action. But the speech was an event worth taking note of for the entire left in Britain itself.
The theme of the speech was the radical, and in the case of Sinn Fein, revolutionary struggle for democracy. That theme went through the address right from the title An Phoblacht, or Gerry Adams, chose to give the speech - 'We have the His starting point was the right of the Irish people to independence and sell-determination. But to develop that theme Gerry Adams went far beyond purely political democracy. For Ireland economy. For Ireland to be free it was necessary for Irish women to be liberated. For Ireland to be free it was necessary that democratic rights exIn fact, if one wanted to be theoretical, it was a rather good recapitulation of how the first Marxist actually came to be one. Karl Marx, it 'Marxist' - or even a socialist. He started as a democrat who found, logically, that the consistent extension of democracy is incompatible democracy you have to eliminate expioitation, oppression in the family, dictatorship at work.
In short any thorough democracy, a struggle that does not stop half way, will blow up capitalist society itself.
for Irish independence. Or, to put it in the words used by Sandino of Nicaragua, only the workers and farmers will go 'all the way'. And precisely by going 'all the way' capitalist society itself comes under attack which is exactly why the capitalist class itself long ago gave up any thorough going fight for Any thorough going fight for democracy in our society therefore inevitably becomes inextricable intertwined with a struggle that goes far Gerry Adams, in Ireland, is not a socialisi lespite the fact that he is a nationalist. He is a socialist because he is a thorough going fighter for the national rights of Ireland.
And what does all this have to do with the British left? It is not a matter simply of solidarity - vital as that is. The point is Gerry Adams is actually tapping the same vein as the most popular and advanced mass labour movement itself.
If one were to summarise the real cutting edge of the Benn or Ken Livingstone it would be in their Stens central there is democratistion o. Benn's central theme parliament, the Labour Party, every sphere of politics. Ken Livingstone's cenconcept in London, the huge popularity of the GLC, is the 'state as resource — a state that expands the sphere of democracy, by providing a material base for it, and not restricts demöcracy.
Arthur Scargill's best speeches and acts are also those, as at the Labour Party conference, where he acts as a tribune of the entire history of the labour movement and its fight for the right to exist.
It also happens, not by accident, that the most authentically tionary tradition in British and Irish society is that of indepete de, the Chatties gle for independence, fragettes.
Gerry Adams' speech was not just a question of solidarity. It was an object lesson for the entire left within what is now (unfortunately) the British state. it was necessary to control its own