The Red Planet in 1973

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Following the recent success of the BBC's “Life on Mars” it would be nice to think that a sequel could be made where by a leading member of today’s SWP is sent back to 1973.

Of course, due to the curious structure of the SWP, and its self perpetuating leadership, most of them were members of the International Socialists (IS) in 1973, or very shortly afterwards, so she may have the shock of meeting her younger self.

She would be able to explain to the IS, that the role of Rank and File papers is to develop a cosy relationship with members of the national executive of the union, and fudge clear positions of principle if that relationship is in danger. So last year (2006 not 1972!) Post Worker (PDF) took no position on the vital vote over “Shaping the Future”, which was an attack on working conditions and staffing levels as a prelude to privatisation. Instead of a clear recommendation for a NO vote, Post Worker published a “debate”, with NEC members Norman Candy and John Farnan in favour of acceptance. Our time traveller can explain to the IS that when faced with a make or break vote on a Union NEC, it is not mandatory for your delegate to actually turn up and vote. (SWP member Jane Loftus was absent from the crucial UCW NEC debate and vote on “Shaping the Future” – for reasons not explained.)

Some relationships may be a little strained of course. The time traveller would meet among the IS’s leadership, Roger Rosewell, who later scabbed by informing BL management of the identities of 13 IMG members in Cowley plant, and became a far right adviser to Dame Shirley Porter. Of course all left groups can suffer from former members moving to the right, but Rosewell's flakiness was commented upon at the time, but his factional loyalty to Cliff protected him.

She would also meet the genuine working class hero, Harry Wicks, who had been a founder member of the CPGB, and she would know that within two years the IS would expel Wicks, along with most of the group’s industrial militants.

She would of course have to keep to herself their future knowledge that Provisional Sinn Fein would grovel on their knees to join a coalition government with Ian Paisley, and be prepared to abandon all their political principles for the honour. Saying that in 1973 would probably have been enough to see her certified, but even more bizarre would be the idea that in the very Stormont election where Sinn Fein capitulated over every issue, that Eamonn McCann would write (PDF) that the story of the election was an SWP comrade getting a 2% vote: “Sean’s success in finishing ahead of long established parties like Alliance and the Workers’ Party was widely regarded as the performance of the election.”. Surely no-one in 1973 would believe that Socialist Worker would intervene in a Stormont election without mentioning the role of British imperialism in Ireland.

There may be some embarrassment for our time travelling comrade when she hears IS members criticising the IMG for looking for agencies of revolutionary change other than the working class. She will of course argue that the IS are wrong, and explain that Muslims are an inherently anti-imperialist force. Indeed in 1973 she could even start a platform within the IS to argue this.

(There is by the way no sub-text or inuendo behind the picture., except the Sweeney are so 1970s)

“Wind that Shakes the Barley”,

Last night I finally caught up with the “Wind that Shakes the Barley”, and I have to say I was disappointed and I consider the film to have been wildly over-praised. Perhaps because any film showing a British army of occupation will be well received during the context of the Iraq war.

Stylistically, I have a problem with the way Loach rather clumsily seeks to educate the audience, with dialogue and indeed whole scenes inserted just to inform. For example when the character played by Cillian Murphy rather incongruously explains Sinn Fein’s election victory to a British officer. Loach could have achieved much stronger artistic effect by simply filming the story about two brothers who ended up on different sides in a civil war, without breaking off every few minutes for a history lesson.

But as loach has consciously set out to make a political film, then he must be judged on both the politics and the artistic content. The interaction between the two starts with loach’s choice to make the film about a rural IRA unit, away from the centre of action, and the major players. Of course great insight can be achieved by looking at the effect of major historical events on ordinary people, but Loach’s choice causes him some problems. Firstly, there is no sense in the film of the enormous, almost feverish ferment in Ireland during this period, a good introduction to which can be found, for example, in C Desmond Greaves’s book “Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution”.

And shifting the centre of action to a rural location also means that the key turning point happens off stage: the attack on anti-Treaty forces in Dublin’s Four Courts by the Free State army with British help in 1922, and the subsequent execution of IRA leaders, Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett. In the film, the first act of civil war we see is anti-Treaty IRA men shooting Free state soldiers – a reversal of history. We get a clear idea in Loach’s film of what was driving the pro-Treaty camp, but the strategy of the anti-treaty forces remains opaque. (they had sought to provoke a British reoccupation that would reunite the republicans, and restart the war of independence, without the stranglehold of the Treaty) This is despite the fact that Loach clearly feels more sympathy with the anti-treaty forces.

This is a weakness of Loach’s decision to film the story from the point of view of the rank and file, had he instead made a biography of, for example, Liam Mellows or IRA chief Liam Lynch, the politics would have been much clearer, and without the need for clunky explanatory inserts.

Loach also imposes some of his own politics onto the historical account. For example, watching the Wind that Shakes the Barley gives the impression that the division between pro and anti treaty forces was also influenced by those who were in favour or opposed to a socialist workers’ republic. In fact many of the anti-Treaty forces – after all backed by Éamon (“Labour must wait”) de Valera, were simply nationalist patriots.

Loach also reruns, almost word for word, the debate from “Land and Freedom”, showing a court case where an Irish republican court rules punitively against a small landlord, in favour of a tenant. This starts an argument about whether social justice must wait on military victory. However, this makes the mistake of identifying the small scale farmer or shop keeper, with the big capitalists. In fact, as we see today in Palestine, national oppression forces a common interest between employers and workers, simultaneous to their differing class interests.

Another missed opportunity,in the current context, is that the republican movement seems to have only two strategies - militarism and capitulation. It is not hard to draw contemporary relevance, and as Loach was determined to introduce political debate between his characters, then some discussion of alternative strategies of resistance apart from militarism might have been interesting

The “Wind that Shakes the Barley” is worth seeing, but it is not as good as it has been built up.

Labour gives £1 million to death squad

Today the government announced a grant of £1.2 million to the Loyalist murder squad, the “Ulster Defence Association” or UDA. This is on top of £135000 given to them by the government six months ago.

As the BBC says: “The thorny issue of weapons was not mentioned in the government's announcement. … Loyalist sources say decommissioning is not yet on the agenda”

Let us remind ourselves of the sort of activities the UDA have been involved with. According to the University of Ulster’s CAIN project, the UDA carried out 112 sectarian murders under their own name, and a further 147 using the name Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). Just to quote one period, the university says: “During the Stevens inquiry it became apparent that the UDA had access to a large number of security files on Republicans and suspected members of Republican paramilitary groups. During the 1990s the UFF stepped up its attacks on Catholics and Republicans. It also attacked SDLP politicians and councillors. There were a number of multiple killings including: five Catholics on 5 February 1992 in Belfast; three Catholics on 14 November 1992; six Catholics during 48 hours in March 1993; and six Catholics and one Protestant on 30 October 1993.”

Get that – the UDA had “security files” – how did they get them? The answer is they got them directly from the British state. In 1989 the UDA assassinated Sinn Féin Councillor John Davey on behalf of the British state, having only two days earlier murdered the respected human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane.

The UDA are literally a terror organisation designed to intimidate the six counties’ Catholic minority into submission.

Let us look at another example. In 1993 three UDA members walked into the Rising Star bar in Greysteel where a totally innocent Halloween party was in progress, they produced machine pistols and simply indiscriminately opened fire, one of them shouting “trick or treat” – eight people were killed. The UDA announced that the murders were for no other reason than because Greysteel had a “nationalist electorate"!

Last week Ian Paisley, a man who can pretty fairly be described as a fascist, became leader of the largest party in Stormont, and will be First Minister, and his party will be exercising a bigoted veto on all the activities of ministers, from whichever party.

The police service is so confident in its sectarianism, that senior officers can refuse to cooperate with a government inquiry into police collusion in murder without any disciplinary action. And waiting in the wings are the loyalist death squads, that have not been disbanded, not been "stood down", not been disarmed. But have been given £1 million of New Labour’s money.

Could the colonial nature of the six counties be made any clearer?

Why has the Brit-left forgotten about Ireland?

The silence from the British left about the recent elections in Northern Ireland has been somewhat deafening. It is as if the Brit left has a play list like Radio one, and only the top ten issues can be discussed. Both the Socialist Party, and the SWP reported the results only in terms of the votes that their own candidates achieved, and neither provided any substantive analysis in the lead up to the poll, or indeed afterwards.

What do we learn from them? According to the Socialist Party: “What was most clearly shown by this election was the need for a new political force to challenge the right-wing sectarian parties and represent the united interests of working-class communities on both sides of the divide. While there is very little in the Assembly vote that points to the potential for a new party of this character to emerge, the results do not tell the full story. ... the votes, although still small - 248 votes in South Belfast and 225 in East Belfast - were up on the last Assembly election. The party got a very warm response in working-class areas during the election and now has a good platform to build for mass non-payment of water charges in these communities.”

According to the SWP: “Socialists Eamonn McCann in Derry and Sean Mitchell in Belfast stood to provide an alternative to communal division and neoliberalism. Eamonn McCann received a substantial vote in the Foyle constituency, getting 5 percent of first preferences with 2,045 votes, while 19 year old student Sean Mitchell got 2.3 percent with 774 votes. Sean said, “It is a reflection of the support that we had on the doorsteps. When you are talking about water charges, poor housing and poverty, there are no lines on the map that cannot be crossed. ”

The British reader would therefore conclude that these were elections where the water charges were the most significant issue. And the only structural obstacle to achieving class unity between catholic and Loyalist workers is that no one has ever thought of it before. (Indeed the sigificantly higher vote for Mccann than any of the other left candidates proves the opposite, as he also stood on a platform made of the thin gruel of water charges and Iraq, but got a big personal vote because of his past assossiation with anti-imperialism)

But hang on. Weren’t these elections about the restoration of self rule through Stormont, informed by the surrender of Provisional Sinn Féin over the issue of policing? Didn’t the left groups notice this?

Just two months ago the Police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, issued a report following a £2 million pound investigation, concluding that the RUC had colluded with loyalist death squads, protecting them while they carried out 10 murders and 72 other serious crimes, including 10 attempted murders, 10 punishment shootings, 13 punishment attacks, a bombing in Monaghan, in the Irish republic, and 17 instances of drug dealing, as well as criminal damage, extortion and intimidation. Bear in mind that the Northern Irish Police Service (NIPS) is supposed to have been “reformed” since then, but the truth is revealed by the fact that “up to six officers at the level of assistant chief constable or detective chief superintendent in the Special Branch refused to cooperate [with the inquiry]. They either did not reply to requests for interviews or their lawyers sent letters on their behalf refusing to take part.”

It is in this context that the acceptance of the NIPS by Sinn Féin can only be interpreted as capitulation, but what have they gained for it? A step towards a 32 county republic? No – the restoration of Stormont with Ian Paisley as First Minister, and as the indispensable Splintered Sunrise blog explains: “The other significant concession … was that the actions of ministers would be subject to the approval of the Assembly, as opposed to the virtual autonomy ministers had under the Good Friday Agreement. Taken together with the provision for weighted voting, this means the DUP – with 36 of the 108 seats, but the majority of unionist MLAs – can not only veto legislation, but also non-legislative actions of ministers. It doesn’t take a genius to foresee that the DUP would vote against any proposal of a Provo minister, even one they agree with, just out of badness. In other words, we will have the content if not the form of majority rule.”

There is no mention at all of these issues in the Brit-left press. What is more, there is a clear shift from the SWP. It has been the traditional position of the Socialist Party (Millies) to argue that if they ignore the question of imperialism hard enough then oppressed Catholics in Northern could achieve workers unity with the bigoted prods who hate them. Historically the SWP had opposed this class reductionism, for example in 2002 Socialist Worker reported: “The problem stems from the top of society. The reason sectarianism is flourishing is because we still live in a sectarian state where the British have divided people and Catholics are oppressed.” Quite right - but now, Sean Mitchell is parroting the Millies’ line: “When you are talking about water charges, poor housing and poverty, there are no lines on the map that cannot be crossed. “There are no ‘no go’ areas for these issues.”” Again, Socialist Worker argues: “when workers fight back together – as they did a year ago when Protestant and Catholic post workers united against their bosses – there is a possibility for real change”

We socialists have to have a dream, so I can see that the prospect of saving £50 on your water rates will easily overcome the legacy of 900 years of oppression and occupation, and as a procession of Orange bigots marches through your area with bowler hats, sashes, pipes and drums, raging with hatred against you, you can look at them and say – “hey they aren’t paying their water rates either”.

Actually there are a lot on interesting things that could be said about the Northern Ireland election, that are relevant to Britain, and the British left.

In the lead up to the election some 500 former republican prisoners signed a letter published in the Irish news expressing distaste for the recognition of the PSNI and urging support for independent Republican candidates. Given 30 years of sacrifice by these brave men and women this is not suprising, they didn't fight a war just to get crumbs. In fact the vote for rebel republicans was smaller than might have been expected, but two factors may explain this: i) the rebel republicans are not offering anything new, and no one wants to go back to the war; ii) the election was a pro-ordained coronation for Paisley and Adams, as a precondition for the continuation of Northern Ireland’s mini-economic boom subsidised at the expense of the British tax payer.

Given the utter failure of the left in England and Wales to build even a half way credible alternative to Tony Blair, despite ten years of neo-liberalism from New Labour, we know that just because something is objectively necessary does not mean it will happen. Traditional republicanism cannot provide the answer unless it relates to the changes in Irish society and the economy – across the whole 32 counties. Appeals to the spirit of 1916 simply won’t cut it. Of course the left are a step ahead, they appeal to the spirit of 1917 instead! But there is utterly no prospect of the left advancing in Northern Ireland unless is does so on the basis of anti-imperialism - not in Iraq but in the six counties. This may be a long haul, but at least it could connect them with an actually existing progressive base. Unfortunately there seems no prospect of this, as the Irish left are infected with the same weaknesses as we have in Britain, either the mind numbing dullness of the Socialist Party, or the get-rich-quick pyramid-selling schemes that the SWP is addicted to.

But a very interesting aspect of this situation is the willingness of the British government to bankroll the whole deal with a mini boom paid for by London. Given this “peace dividend” it would simply have been impolite for Irish voters to turn out for parties opposed to the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements, and much of the dispute between the NI parties was about how this largesse should be spent. According to Splintered Sunrise even the SWP got in on the act, arguing that more youth clubs would be the answer to policing (I am not convinced about that, if I was burgled I would rather have a police force I trusted than a scout hut where 15 year olds were playing ping pong)

Only this week the Department of Trade in Northern Ireland announced that the colony has “the highest number of jobs on record, while the unemployment rate remains below the UK average. Seasonally adjusted figures from the Quarterly Employment Survey estimated that there were 708,880 employee jobs filled in December 2006, representing a net increase of 2,810 over the quarter and an increase of 10,810 over the year. The overall increase over the quarter was driven by rises in Service Sector jobs (+2,440) and Construction jobs (+300), while manufacturing jobs remained static.”

So a familiar picture of the growth of the state sector and a property boom, with a stagnant manufacturing sector. Don’t you love Gordon Brown – the illusion of prosperity based upon huge personal debt, while no-one actually makes anything.

Which feeds into another very interesting aspect of the Irish situation, which is the economic boom in the 26 counties. During the 1980s, Irish SWP supremo Kieran Allen floated the idea that the 26 counties was no longer subordinated to the British economy and British political interests, a somewhat premature judgement I thought at the time. But since joining the Euro the economy in the 26 counties has significantly out performed the British (certainly so if we look at the real economy rather than finance capital), and most significantly this has included manufacturing growth and development of export markets independent of the UK. In 2005, Ireland supplied 46 per cent of its exports to the EU, 19 per cent to the US, 17 per cent to the UK and 18 per cent to the rest of the world. As Cambridge economist, Donald Adamson observed: “In the debate on whether Ireland should join the euro, an editorial in the Irish Times in March 1998 argued that failure to join would be tantamount to, “Ireland reclassifying itself, effectively, as a UK dependency.””

The logic of this is very interesting, as even Ian Paisley’s DUP is now arguing for Corporation tax harmonisation with the republic, cutting tax on business from 30% to 12.5% . So the unionists want to see an all Ireland tax rate, in recognition that economic integration of the 32 counties is more beneficial than linking the six counties economy to London! Nor are they the only unionists to think this, Scotland’s First Minister, “Union Jack” McConnell, wants to join the gang.

The response from the UK treasury underlines the colonial status of Northern Ireland, according to the Scotsman newspaper: “Last night, one government source in London insisted that there had never been any question of a tax cut for Northern Ireland, and said that Mr Brown would oppose such move because of the risk of encouraging calls for fiscal autonomy for Scotland.” So Northern Ireland’s economy is subservient to the interests of Britain’s, and its real material interest of greater economic integration with the 26 counties is vetoed for reasons totally extraneous to Ireland.

All this has some interesting implications for British relations with Ireland.

Firstly, the bowler hated bigotry of the Official Unionists was overlooked by the British media, and they were presented as misunderstood Tories, whereas Paisley has always been presented in Britain as a bulging eyed mad paddy. Given that it is around fifteen years or more since the last bomb went off on the mainland, perhaps the British tax payer’s subsidy of a Northern Ireland jointly run by Ian Paisley and Provisional Sinn Fein might become a political issue here. In England there is very little interest in maintaining the union with Northern Ireland – sorry Ian, your love is unrequited.

Secondly, the current constitutional settlement between Hollyrood and Westminster is unstable and inevitably at some time Scotland will become independent. There will likely then be a dispute between Dublin, London and Edinburgh about what happens to the six counties – unless they get their act together it doesn’t seem likely the left or republicans will play any part in deciding the outcome of that.

(On the claim that the SWP has offered no analysis: SWP blogger, Snowball, has pointed to the following article in Socialist Worker , but actually this doesn’t contradict my thesis, because although there is mention that Catholics are oppressed it puts the emphasis on there being two sectarian camps, as if the problem derives from Ireland, rather than British imperialism being the engine of sectarianism. As Liam Mac Uaid says in the comments below: "It's a peculiar sort of "analysis" of the north of Ireland that makes no reference to the imperialist victory or even the role of imperialism in Irish society. A lot of Alliance Party members would find those two pieces uncontentious and they are liberal pro-imperialists.")

New Independent Left Alliance leak

Comrades

I wish to apologise for publishing what I believed to be a press release from the Independent Irish left, whereas it was in fact a draft document in circulation that had not been agreed by all the parties involved.

This document had been sent to me in good faith by an Irish trade unionist who also believed it was a press release. I understand that he has made his identity known to the Independent Irish Left, however in the journalistic tradition of protecting my sources I cannot comment further on that aspect of this issue.

I understand that the statement I published included details of some individuals who may not yet have formally agreed to sign up to the Independent Irish left, and therefore the premature publication may cause some embarassment and even comromise the project. That was certainly never my intenion, which had been quite the opposite to publicise what I regard as good practice on the left of working together.

Regretably, my action in taking the statement down may be too late, because it has now been reproduced on Indymedia Ireland. However I hope that not too much mischief will be made.

Finally thank you to the Irish comrades who promptly brought the error to my attention, and I am pleased that they have started from the correct assumption that I was acting in good faith.

I wish the Independent Left Alliance, and all socialists in Ireland the greatest success.

The Irish war and the British left

One of the highlights of the socialist blogging world is reading the splintered sunrise, from Belfast.

This recently caused me to reflect that as the IRA ceasefire was some 13 years ago, many British socialists have spent most or all of their political life in the period since the Irish war finished. As you get older there is a bizarre foreshortening of memory, and it only seems 5 minutes ago to me! Yet the war had a huge impact on the psychology of the British left – and that has now changed.
I remember as a young lad, when I was working as a hospital porter, reading Dan Breen’s “My Fight for Irish Freedom” in the Porters’ mess-room, which had a lurid paperback cover showing a volunteer shooting a British soldier. It caused an absolute shit storm at work, with threats of physical violence, and it forced some of the other lefts to defend me, and come off the fence over Ireland. It was actually quite tough, especially in manual workplaces, to come out as a supporter of the IRA. (If you want a measure of the declining influence of the left, back in 1978 to 1980 when I worked at the Royal United in Bath, in that one workforce there were about 6 to 8 CP members, myself as a young SWPer, my mate Simon Newell who was close to the Militant (he is now a far from militant Unison regional officer), and a nurse in the Militant. This isn’t even counting the Labour lefts!)

Back in 1988 I was paper organiser for the SWP’s Bristol district, the IRA carried out a couple of very successful actions, killing some six British soldiers at Lisburn in June and eight more at Ballygawley in August. One of these – and I cannot remember which – had killed some lads from Bristol, and there had been a local news angle on the TV and in the Bristol Evening Post. The front page of Socialist Worker ran on Troops Out, and I think all of us were nervous about going on the streets with it. This local angle made it even harder than for the Enniskillin bombing the previous year, where the SW had a very good headline “The bitter fruits of British imperialism”

In those days we ran a Friday evening sale and three shifts of Saturday paper sale in Bristol, across three or four different locations and we would expect some 30 or 40 comrades to be selling. The first thing I remember is that the RCP, who had a sale near our main pitch, didn’t turn out that Saturday, presumably because their paper had a “Victory to the IRA!” headline, or similar, and they didn’t have the bottle to sell it.

Anyway, before each shift started I organised a brief caucus, and explained that we were selling on the slogan Troops Out, and that we were arguing that the blame for the deaths lay with the British occupation, and that if people wanted to see an end to the war then the British should quit Ireland. And it went well, I think we did encounter some hostility, but we also did engage with an audience who agreed with us, and we even sold some papers to serving soldiers in the Gloucesters, who were shortly off to the six counties. Although I wouldn’t exaggerate our impact, it was important that in England there was a public presence on the streets that would argue that the war-aims of the IRA were justified, and the manner in which they conducted their struggle was up to them.

Nowadays, over the issue of the war in Iraq, or opposition to hospital closures or whatever, the British left almost entirely occupies a world where they are swimming with the stream. But the Irish war was a defining issue that we couldn’t duck (unless you were in the Militant), and where we had to stand up and argue a usually very unpopular position.

It is worth digressing here to discuss the British SWP’s ambivalence about Ireland. The party always tolerated quite a wide range of opinion over the issue. (Recently over at “Richard Lenin’s Tomb” he wrote that the SWP had always supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and quoted an ISJ article by Jonathan Neale from 1981 to prove it, but this misses the point that the SWP didn’t have “a line” on issues like Afghanistan. Generally although there was a lot of debate during the 1980s, the Cliff regime only came down firmly on an issue if it became a factional football, or related directly to the core differentiators of the SWP like State Cap – there were SWP members (such as myself) were more ambivelent over the Russian intervention). Over the issue of Ireland there were some – and the current national secretary Martin Smith was one – who very firmly supported the armed struggle. Other comrades were much more ambivalent about the violence, and would argue instead that we should be emphasising that the SWM in Ireland were providing a political alternative to militarism. I always tended towards the chuckie side of the argument, and I remember a public meeting in Bristol about the Birmingham Six making a contribution so fulsome in praise of the IRA that the speakers assumed I was in Sinn Fein. (Although I didn’t go as far as one Bristol comrade who always wore a safety pin on his lapel: a coded message about the split between the officials and the provos for the cogniscenti).

The armed struggle was important. As long as the IRA were at war, then every day the partition of Ireland was at the forefront of British politics, because at any time there could be a bombing or an armed action against the British Army. What is more, the message from the provisional IRA and Sinn Fein was that they rejected the existing state, and did not accept that a political solution had to be found with the existing political framework, that was a truly revolutionary position.

For the British left, support for the IRA was a sobering reality check about the political gap between ourselves and the mass of the working class. In the absence of the constant need to defend the Irish struggle, much of the British left has become quite flabby over the issue of violence, and this has contributed to a bizarre capitulation by some to the fiction of liberal democracy, as if the “democracy” we enjoy in Britain was unconnected to the oppressive violence that the British state is prepared to use around the world to promote the interests of capital.

(It is worth commenting upon the equally bizarre contortions of Sean Matgamna and the AWL, who during their entry period in the IS (later to become the SWP) they criticised the rest of the left for being too soft and not supporting thr IRA enough, and now have exacty the opposite position. indeed they used to support the Islamists fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, but now weep tears about oppression by Islamists in Iraq)

The cease fire was a recognition by the IRA that revolutionary violence was never going to force the Brits out of Ireland, however the tragedy is that they have never recognised that militarism is not the only way that the status quo can be challenged, and the acceptance of the Good Friday agreement is capitulation to the partition.

(BTW - The PIRA poster above from the 1980s is roughly translated as ""No Freedom, Until Freedom Of Women".")

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Reuters "Ken Loach's new film on the 1920 struggle for independence from Britain in rural Ireland teaches lessons on conflicts like today's war in Iraq, the director said as he showed the film in Cannes on Thursday. Loach, who has sparked controversy with his political films before, was greeted with much applause as he showed his historic tale "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" during the competition for the main Palme d'Or prize.

Loach said his story of two brothers fighting against British rule some 90 years ago shed light on a conflict that was not much talked about today, but which could help explain the current situation in Northern Ireland and conflicts elsewhere. "I think a story of a struggle for independence is a story that recurs and recurs and recurs ... There are all these armies of occupation somewhere in the world, being resisted by the people they are occupying," Loach told reporters.

"I don't need to tell anyone where the British now unfortunately and illegally have an army occupation. And the damage and the casualties and the brutalities that are emerging from that," the British director said in reference to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. "My view is that this was an illegal war ... It's an appalling scar on our government's record and clearly on the American's."

Loach said his film was not anti-British but showed people had more in common with those in the same social position in other countries than with those at the top of their own. "

I'm really looking forward to this. Whilst I thought 'Michael Collins' was excellent the fact that Loach's film will deal with the extraordinary ordinary people rather than the celebrated figures is a really welcome change - and one that was used to brilliant effect in Roddy Doyle's "Star named Henry" allowing the story to explore themes without the distraction of the personal foibles of the great men.

I'm also hoping it's going to spark some real debate about what's happening in Ireland today as most of the left seems to either be stuck in the dogmatic phrases of the past or completely ignor the situation as it stands now.