THE Irish question, or the Irish problem as it is increasingly being seen in Britain, may energise some delegates at this week’s Labour party conference.

Many will continue to support the long-standing labour movement tradition of supporting Irish unity and independence.

However, there is a danger of delegates becoming distracted, at fringe events and on the conference floor, by a series of diversionary arguments: which political party British Labour should be seen to support in Ireland (north or south); whether British Labour should organise in Ireland; attempts to determine which social and cultural values people in Ireland should be told to live under by those who know best in Westminster; and finally which direction the fragile political process in Ireland should be kicked by those wishing to exploit the long suffering of the Irish people for their own selfish interests in defending and promoting European empire.

Each and every one of these distractions contribute to preventing a progressive British government playing a full role in removing all obstacles which the British state has placed in the way of Irish unity, and they fundamentally undermine the right of the people of Ireland to national self-determination.

Indeed, some of them are designed to do just that. The right to national self-determination is enshrined in Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, and allows a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development.

The methods of those engaged in misdirection in the Parliament of Westminster and at conferences such as this are nothing new. Indeed, at a Connolly Association conference in 1985 Desmond Greaves said that: “Within the labour movement there are sections that decry the national independence struggle as a diversion from the task of getting socialism.

“They really mean talking about socialism… It is time that the labour movement declared national sovereignty to be one of the fundamental elements of democracy. The British people have a fight for sovereignty on their hands.

“Sovereignty for the Welsh and the Scots (if they want it, and it is up to them) stands in no sort of opposition to this. And as for the Irish, they will go on fighting for it, until the majority of the Irish people rule the whole of their country.”

It is for the labour movement and its allies to advance democratic rights, including the right to national self-determination, as a fundamental basis for both internationalism and societal transformation.

The real questions facing the Labour Party in relation to Ireland, in the context of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and subsequent agreements, are: how can it work to ensure that those agreements are not only respected but implemented in full, and how best can a Labour government act as an active persuader for Irish unity and independence?

The first question is one which should of course be met simply with a firm commitment.

The only meaningful answer to the second question is for the Labour Party to set out how its future Secretary of State would exercise their discretion in calling for a poll on Irish unity coupled with a cessation of any activities which may undermine the right of the Irish people to determine their own destiny.

The GFA states that the Secretary of State shall exercise the power to direct the holding of a poll “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.”

The current political crisis within the north of Ireland, compounded by the ongoing crisis in delivering on the people of Britain’s instruction to leave the European Union, has given the Labour Party the opportunity to set out a clear framework within which this discretion would be exercised.

According to recent polls it would have the support of a large majority of the British people.

The inclusion of that discretion in the GFA has kept the ball in Britain’s court, and Labour can no longer claim it wants to play a different sport. Without a defined framework, the potential for the current situation in Ireland to spiral out of control remains real.

The failure of past Labour governments to address the Irish question has hindered the economic development of the island of Ireland as a whole, and weakened the ability of the Irish nation to resist attacks on its independence and neutrality.

It has fostered divisions among Irish citizens by favouring some and discriminating against others, given many years of continued violence and the destruction of life, health and property, given comfort to all reactionary forces and weakened those of democracy, and maintained misunderstanding and antagonism between the British and Irish peoples.

Labour now has the opportunity to right a historic wrong and the peoples of both Britain and Ireland would clearly support it in doing so.

This does not require condescending moralising over how the Irish might use independence when it is won, or high-handed denunciations of social or economic decisions already taken under the existing limited powers of the Irish state.

It requires having confidence in the Irish people to determine their own future themselves, and ultimately confidence in the ability of the British working class to help free them to do that.

The Connolly Association works to strengthen the British labour and trade union movement, and build maximum possible unity among the working class — especially between British and Irish workers — because we recognise the importance of the roles which all of us in Britain have to play.

And that is why we need your support.

Founded in 1938, the Connolly Association is oldest and largest political organisation of the Irish in Britain, and enjoys the support of over one million affiliated trade unionists.