No to a ‘Your Party’ Irish Colony

Labour Movement for Irish Unity (LMIU) submission to ‘Your Party’ discussion on the draft constitution.

This is a submission to the discussion Your Party is having on its proposed constitution and “nations and regions”. In particular on its stance on organising and standing for elections in Northern Ireland.

 It is a contribution from Labour Movement For Irish Unity, who work in the labour movement and the Irish community in Britain. We support the reunification of Ireland, while stressing that a decision on this rests solely with the people of Ireland.                

The draft constitution of Your Party has an ambiguity in respect to operating in Northern Ireland. On the one hand it says party membership should be open to anyone in the UK. On the other hand, while it endorses organising in Scotland and Wales, it omits this in respect to Northern Ireland. This has the appearance of avoiding the central issue of organising and standing for election in Northern Ireland: trying to please everybody by specifying as little as possible. Your Party needs to come off the fence.

We say it should not organise in or accept membership from Northern Ireland. This is consistent with the socialist and anti-colonialism to which Your Party espouses.

Discussion on British socialists organising in both Ireland and then Northern Ireland is not new. Indeed, it goes back to the First International, the first organisational attempt by European socialists to associate beyond national boundaries. In 1873 members of the English wing of the First International said they should have representation rights on the International for Irish workers. All of Ireland was, of course, then part of the UK, but an unwilling part. On behalf of the First International leadership, Friedrich Engels was scornful of the idea that Irish workers and socialists should be subsumed into a British organisation. He said:

“Would [the International] inform the Irish working man [sic] that after the domination of the English aristocracy over Ireland, after the domination of the English middle class over Ireland, they must now look forth to the advent of the domination of the English working classes over Ireland?”

The First international rejected the proposal, as have all British based Labour movement and socialist parties ever since.

It is also worth noting that the Northern Ireland Green Party is part of the (all) Ireland Green Party, not the British Greens. This all-Ireland perspective is a general principle Your Party should follow.

The truth is that those British or Northern Ireland socialists who advocate a British majority party organising in Northern Ireland are taking an explicit and implicit unionist and colonialist position. They are telling the Northern Irish that their future best belongs in a party controlled by a British majority and, from that, in a British state. They are endorsing a unionism which objects to Irish self- organising. They are implying that the Irish/Northern Irish do not have the capability to politically organise as well as a British party. It is a repeat of the old colonial message to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland that British is superior to anything the “mere Irish” can produce.

Moreover, to stand at this conjuncture in Northern Irish politics when in the last council elections, and for the first time, Irish nationalists out-polled Northern Irish unionists would fail to recognise the direction of politics in Northern Ireland: unionism of any variety is the politics of diminishing returns. Indeed, for Your Party to intervene now would be seen by many as an attempt to stop the swelling nationalist/republican tide. It may be offering a better, kinder form of British rule, but it would still be foreign rule.

All Irish community-based organisations in Britain operating in or outside the Labour Party have, in the past and most recently, urged that party not to organise or stand for elections in Northern Ireland. This includes LMIU, the Labour Party Irish Society and, further back the Labour Committee on Ireland. These are voices of the Irish in Britain that should be listened to.

To sum all this up. If Your Party stood and/or organised in North of Ireland it would be just another British “plantation”.

Accordingly, we propose:

The proposed constitution of Your Party should be amended to open its membership to those in Britain only. This should be a founding principle of Your Party.

Geoff Bell, November 2025.