SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Mary Reid (1953-2003)

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20th Century Ireland - Mary Reid (1953-2003)

Mary Reid was born in County Donegal. She was educated at UCD and joined the IRSP in 1976 and was editor of the Starry Plough until her resignation from the IRSP in 1979. On August 26th, 1982 she together with her baby son; Mick Plunkett, former General Secretary of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, and Stephen King were arrested by the French Army in a Parisian suburb. The French Army alleged they found a 'death list', three pistols and 500 grams of explosives in the 'Vincennes Three's' apartment. The three said the pistols were for their personal protection as they believed they were in danger of being assassinated by the British Secret Service organisation MI6. After 24 hours they were put in French police custody amid widespread media reports linking the three with the INLA. The three were tried in Creteil and later in Paris where the prosecution attempted to link them with Action Directe. The three were sentenced to five years imprisonment but were released nine months later on Appeal in 1983. This extract is from Reid's speech on 'Women and the National Question' delivered to the UCD Women's Week Conference on February 20th, 1978 and first published in the Starry Plough April, 1978.©

Because I am a socialist, I am a republican and I am a feminist. It is necessary to approach the topic 'Women and the national Question' in theoretical terms to express the inevitability of such a position. A problem immediately arises in self-definition as a feminist. Republican socialists could justifiably argue that feminism is a class based phenomena reflecting essentially bourgeois reformist demands while essentially not objecting to capitalist society in general or in particular, in the Irish context, to the nature and role of imperialism in Ireland.
Radical feminists will object that as all women are oppressed regardless of class then it follows that women form an oppressed class and that therefore it is reactionary to be a republican socialist and to particularise the anti-imperialist struggle as the key to revolutionary change in this country.
My answer to radical feminists I borrow from Simone de Bouveoir 'I never cherished any illusion of changing women's condition: It depends on the future of labour in the world: It will change significantly only at the price of a revolution in production: That is why I avoided falling into the trap of feminism.'
Feminism is a trap in its contention that oppression within the private sphere ie: the family is fundamental to oppression within the public sphere ie: labour market. This position is incorrect because its subjectivism ignores the objective reality that the prevailing system of production, exchange and distribution determine in any historical period women's socio-economic condition. Indeed, the women's movement itself is the progressive response to women's changing status. This changing role is the result of the technical revolution of the post-war period which created the need for a highly qualified labour force. Advances in education allied with the development of the anovulent pill are endeavours to meet this need. This process has created a labour aristocracy which benefits some women.
By failing to realise their class position and accepting a sex/class equation, these women, despite the progressive historical position they occupy, have succeeded only in raising liberal demands behind the slogan of liberation.
Finally having agreed with the criticism that republican socialists make of feminism, I must again say that I am a feminist - for this reason. I believe that feminism does contribute an important element to our analysis of the woman [sic] question. Whilst woman must be defined in terms of her socio-economic condition she must also be defined in terms of her sexuality. Woman's subordination to the family is an historical development and can be changed in event of a revolution in the relations of production. Woman's subordination to her reproductive system is however a natural phenomena and cannot change. A woman is limited in adulthood by her generative function and a woman is also under a social obligation to reproduce.
As a socialist I find it illogical and impossible to believe in the right of the Irish people to the unfettered control of their own destinies without applying that right to women also. The republican tradition is the tradition of revolution in this country and continues to be so. The national question dominates Irish life. The actual partition of this country is the device of imperialism. The Government of Ireland Act which created partition presented a two tier solution to the Irish question by (1) giving colonial status to the six counties (II) and neo-colonial status to the twenty-six counties.
The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement 1965 and the application for entry into the EEC both clearly indicate that the British Government and its pro-capitalist Irish allies (ie: both the Southern Government and significant sections of the Northern Protestant and Catholic bourgeoisie) considered the colonial position of the six counties no longer tenable as far back as the early '60's. They therefore combined forces and began to move through economic policies towards an integration of the artificial statelets on a political federal basis. They recognised that the function of the Irish economy in advanced capitalism is totally neo-colonial ie: to provide a pool of cheap, mobile labour; exploitable agricultural/ fishery/ mineral resources; with an Irish industrial worker operating in an ancillary service capacity to centralised European industry.
The British and Irish Governments along with the O'Neill section of the Unionist Regime miscalculated however and moved ahead of the bogey-man of their own creation: ie: the Protestant mass whose consciousness was manipulatively and deliberately rooted in sectarianism and whose ready identification with its collective position bears no relation to its real situation vis-a-vis British imperialism.
Changing economic conditions sparked off the political events of the late '60's and thereby the economic designs of imperialism has been foiled for the time being - though the transformation of the country into an integrated neo-colony remains the prime objective. The political upheaval once underway developed into a struggle for national liberation. I emphasise national liberation and am not under the illusion that simply any solution of the national question augurs the threshold of socialist revolution. Sections of the national liberation forces whose understanding of the struggle is not based on a class analysis of Irish history might well welcome a federal solution as being necessarily progressive - which would not be the case at all.
I give this sketchy summary of the national question to indicate the necessity for a socialist to be a committed republican. I make no apologies for being a republican and get infuriated when feminists dismiss the republican tradition on the basis that it is reactionary and reflects a Catholic/nationalist mentality. This analysis is as apolitical as it is sexist. It fails to identify the dynamic core of the republican tradition and to see the component parts of that tradition in their historical context. Quite apart from this, such a facile dismissal of the prime moving force in Irish history provides dishonest cover for women who primarily do not care about the oppressive role of imperialism. Such women sound very facile when talking of their personal politics of experience but are blind to the politics of experience of the Irish people. Despite radical slogans they aim only to achieve a liberal bourgeois nationalisation of their own individual annomulous position within the status quo. � Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008

20th Century Ireland (1947-2000)
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