Get Up, Stand Up… Don’t Give Up the Fight! - David Armes

Jeremy Corbyn’s Neo-Marxist anti-imperialism remains widely supported and still lacks a robust political response. This is symbolised by the controversy over rugby and football players who either kneel in BLM style during matches or refuse to do so entirely. English players are largely the ones who feel the need to kneel in opposition to continued racism acknowledging its relationship with former British Imperialism, whilst the Irish, Welsh and most of the Scottish teams stand defiantly- as if they and their ancestors had nothing to do with it.

Concentrating on Ireland will shed greater light on the independence issues also facing Scotland and Wales. So if we dig a little deeper, a peculiar spectacle emerges given the large proportion of the Ireland team born in the UK or in former British colonies. It’s this very fusion of Irish, British, and historically British-Irish imperial-colonial identities that make an All Ireland Rugby Football Union team possible. Irish unity, however, is a very contested area and the rising political force on both sides of the Irish border is Sinn Fein whose raison d’etre is Irish unity. They see things very differently.

History is weaponised by Sinn Fein, highlighting racial oppression of the Irish Gaels and ‘Old English’ Catholics back when Henry VIII’s 16th century Reformation resulted in Protestants establishing Irish ‘plantations’. The English Civil War that spilled out into Ireland resulted in 600,000 estimated deaths. Two centuries later, census statistics show that approximately one million Irish people died of starvation and disease whilst an additional two million fled the Potato Famine overseas. Social class genocide, created by the British ‘Whig’ Government’s cruel determination to stick with laissez-faire economics, was paralleled before World War I through genocide in Belgian Congo. Colonialism and unfettered capitalist greed created these disasters leading to two World Wars and a bad feeling remains in Ireland regardless of being the offspring of survivors who became much wealthier. It is possible that the strength of present-day bitterness partly began in unacknowledged shame because the survivors themselves helped evict and refused to feed starving lower-class Irish Gaels. Obviously, these complexities were not reflected in the politics of the French Revolution inspired Irish nationalists through the Fenian Movement, the 1916 Easter Uprising, the 1919-21 War of Independence and the 1967-98 Northern Irish ‘Troubles’- all of whom were primarily motivated by entirely blaming and ejecting the British.

Ironically, Catholic and Protestant Irish soldiers and settlers were at the forefront of expanding British Imperial territories and the genocidal dispossession of native populations. 80 million descendants of Irish ancestors now form large communities in Scotland, England, Wales, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, overwhelmingly outnumbering the contemporary 5 million Irish born citizens and citizen-subjects.

The ‘Republic’, however, attracts worldwide respect from many non-white people because it extricated itself at the height of British Imperial power through the War of Independence, costing 750 IRA volunteer and civilian lives and by that act alone after a bloody First World War toend all wars’ that left 703,000 British and Irish dead. Nevertheless, Irish people could today be easily dismissed, similarly to Scottish people, as ‘white, racist British imperialists’ if the War of Independence had been lost and if Catholicism wasn’t as compatible with being British as it is today. Indeed, 48,000 black skin and white skin (Dutch origin Afrikaners with their own religion) South Africans who helped each other perished in the 1899-1902 2nd Boer War Imperial concentration camps because the Afrikaners rebelled against British rule.

Critical race theory clearly has no shortage of historical atrocities to draw on, but it sadly demonises white skin British people’s ancestors by failing to recognise they reluctantly gave their lives yet again supporting a Second World War that bankrupted their Government and ended all European Imperialism. Black, brown, red, and yellow skin veterans of our ‘finest hour’ also knew Nazis would have reintroduced slavery and perhaps even worse. Irish politicians didn’t see a significant distinction between British Imperialism and Nazi Germany despite Britain already granting and negotiating home rule throughout the Empire and being the first non-revolutionary country in world history to liberate slaves in 1833. Neutrality was preferred and Taoiseach Eamonn de Valera was the only European leader to sign condolences after Adolf Hitler was dead. Fifty-three Commonwealth countries attest to having worldwide benefit from defeating the Nazis, Fascist Italy, Japanese militarism as well as a comparatively peaceful end to empire. Even India joined the Commonwealth despite the horrendous and avoidable Bengal Famine. The Republic, however, left the Commonwealth in 1949 and volunteers for the WWII Allies were often persecuted.

Paradoxically, a united Ireland may create space for new, better conversations. With one million Irish people identifying with Protestant and other UK identities, maybe this could challenge Sinn Fein’s narrative? Sinn Fein’s sudden rise in the Republic, in particular, demonstrates the power of their anti-imperialist, one solution ‘Brits out’ historical narrative. Coming after decades of demographic trends favouring Irish nationalists and a majority remain vote in Northern Ireland, all these factors make things very difficult for those hoping Northern Ireland would somehow continue after Brexit as an EU-UK trading space.

Sinn Fein’s electoral victories also enthuse anti-imperialists, the British hard Left and nationalists in Scotland and Wales. BLM protests receive huge support from British youth which forced uncontested declarations of support by the Establishment last summer. Government ministers held that line until Home Secretary Priti Patel made it clear last month that she neither supported kneeling at sports matches, anti-imperialist narratives, nor the June 2020 BLM protests that left Winston Churchill’s statue desecrated. One way of interpreting this is that Priti Patel sees a new political consciousness emerging that has no leadership to articulate it. Three weeks after George Floyd’s public asphyxiation, a much smaller, but aggressive and alcohol-fuelled ‘statue defending’ demonstration declared itself to be motivated by patriotism rather than racism. Despite drunken confusion, it appears that a very wide tacit recognition of modern immigration not being akin to ‘reverse colonisation’ now exists.

In December, at home in formerly Blitz-flattened South East London, some Millwall FC fans booed their players kneeling. Anti-racism banners were held by standing players at their next match and some fans applauded. Clearly, there appear to be Millwall fans who regard this as a victory for more nuanced stances on empire and how to best challenge racism. Millwall fans’ stubbornmindedness on continued racism is in part explicable through the historic popularity of the Docklands and Bermondsey football club, where large English-Irish and Irish dock-worker communities were established long ago. This is ironic since East End dockers took a strike action supporting Enoch Powell after his Rivers of Blood speech and because Millwall fans have had a gruesome reputation of nationalism, racism and violence since the 1970s, despite voting a black player their favourite more recently.

The boos and applause of Millwall fans should give a pause for thought. Building up the creative knowledge-based economy, that British prosperity increasingly depends on, requires greater numbers of empowered, liberal-minded, multi-ethnic, patriotic citizen-subjects who oppose racism and respect each other. Certainly, Anglo-Irish celebrities linked to Fascism, such as Tommy Robinson and Morrissey, offer much less hope than even Neo-Marxist critical race theory. The existence of some Millwall fans who appear to be achieving the very difficult task of synthesising a ‘no-one likes us – we don’t care’ mentality, nuanced anti-racism and patriotism is encouraging. The irony of ironies is that it would be if, in words of the Prophet Isaiah, “this stone the builders [of modern Britain] rejected has become the cornerstone”, led the way forward for working-class and minorities rather than being ‘left behind’?