Emancipation & Liberation

The challenge to the UK state and British Empire from 1879-95

Contents of forthcoming book

1. Introduction
2. The growing conflict between liberal and conservative unionism in the period of New Imperialism
3. Michael Davitt and the launching of the Irish Revolution in 1879
4. Davitt adopts an ‘internationalism from below’ strategy to spread the revolution
5. The struggle against coercion and for land triggers off a new movement in England and Scotland
6. Parnell’s ‘counter-revolution within the revolution’
7. Shifting the main focus of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance to Scotland
8. The ending of the liberal consensus in the face of the rise of the New Imperialism
9. Davitt widens his ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, and brings in Wales
10. ‘Internationalism from below’ and the weaknesses of Irish nationalism and British Left radicalism
11. From land and labour struggles to the beginning of independent labour political organisation in Scotland
12. From land nationalisation to the eight hour day
13. Broadening the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance around the political demand for Home Rule
14. 1889-92 – the new industrial and political offensive
15. The rise and wider effects of New Unionism in Ireland
16. The limits of Davitt’s politics reached as the Irish Home Rule Movement splits
17. The thwarted hopes of New Unionism and the Home Rule Movement after the 1892 General Election
18. The employers’ offensive and the retreat of New Unionism
19. The final break-up of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance
20. 1895 – High Imperialism triumphant and the emergence of Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party

1. Introduction

Why should we spend time examining a period of history from over a hundred years ago? Perhaps the best reason is that, between 1879 and 1895, there are striking parallels to the situation we find ourselves in today. This was also a period of increasing inter-imperialist competition, as the previously dominant world power began to lose its leading position. In the late nineteenth century it was the UK that found itself in this new position in the world; today it is the USA, with the UK continuing to fall well down the global pecking order.

Furthermore, when we compare the situation in the UK, over the two periods, we can see the continuing significance of national democratic challenges to the unionist state. The Irish Revolution(1), which began in 1879, led to a questioning of the very existence of the UK, and to profound divisions amongst the British ruling class over how best to maintain its rule over these islands and their wider empire. The demands for national self-determination in Ireland, Scotland and Wales were linked to major social and economic struggles. Clearly, there are significant echoes of this situation today.

From 1875, under the impact of the New Imperialism(2), Disraeli’s Conservative government had begun to pursue increasingly aggressive colonial policies. These reflected the concerns of a British ruling class, now facing global competition from a larger number of European states. From 1879, however, a challenge developed to this recharged British imperialism. The new opposition drew its politics largely from the social republican tradition found in Ireland, and the radical tradition found in England, Scotland and Wales. It formed largely as result of the failure of traditional Gladstonian Liberals to uphold their earlier support for civil rights and opposition to colonial expansion.

Michael Davitt, migrant, former textile worker, Fenian and Irish Land League organiser, was the central figure involved. He attempted to unite land and labour struggles, across the four nations constituting the United Kingdom, and beyond into the British colonies and the USA. Davitt developed an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance to win wider support for the Irish National Land League (INLL), one of the biggest ‘lower orders’ movements in the nineteenth century UK. However, he deepened this alliance in England, Scotland and Wales, by contributing to the development of independent land and labour organisations in each of these nations.

The leader of the INLL, Charles Parnell, though, had other ideas. In 1882, he closed down the INLL in order to form a purely constitutional nationalist party, the National League, with the aim of winning Irish Home Rule. However, the first Irish Home Rule Bill, adopted by Gladstone’s Liberal government, was defeated in 1886, and a new government, led by the Conservative Lord Salisbury, took office.

Davitt now had to confront the thoroughly jingoist, racist and sectarian Unionist alliance. It would countenance no concession over Irish Home Rule, and revelled enthusiastically over every latest imperial exploit. This was the conservative unionist approach to maintaining British ruling class domination at home and abroad. It vehemently opposed the liberal unionist approach(3) with its support for home rule (devolution) for the constituent nations of the UK.

As New Imperialism increased its stranglehold on British politics, the Liberal Party, including many on its Radical wing, were drawn into its slipstream. A section of advanced Radicals, however, reacted against this and made the first tentative steps towards Socialism. Robert Cunningham-Graham and Keir Hardie were just two examples. However, many former Radicals (and Liberal Party members), who became Socialists, retained much of their earlier politics.

Furthermore, the Conservative Party, hitherto seen as a major impediment to any democratic advance, began to develop a Tory Democrat wing. Its supporters made appeals to the newly enfranchised workers. They were offered limited economic reforms in return for giving their support to British ruling class attempts to expand the Empire. Disraeli was one of the first to see the possibilities of harnessing the link between reform and Empire; but it was Randolph Churchill, who attempted to develop this further, by appealing directly to the working class. He also strongly linked expansion of the British Empire with the defence of the existing British Union. He looked to the local dignitary-led, Orange Order in Ulster, for inspiration in forming his pro-imperial, cross class alliance.

Many workers were drawn into Conservative Unionist and further Right populist organisations. They did hope to gain economically from the Empire, or to draw some psychological comfort by celebrating their racial or religious ‘superiority’. The growing number of wars directed against the peoples of the colonies took only a small number of British lives. The real cost was to come later, when the inevitable consequence of growing inter-imperialist competition led to the mass slaughter of the First World War. The leaders of the Conservative Unionists though, were then able to look with smug satisfaction as their Liberal, Irish constitutional nationalist, and some Labour and Socialist ‘opponents’, threw themselves into the promotion of the carnage.

However, back in the 1880’s, a few Tory Democrats, such as Henry Hyndman and Henry Champion, broke with the Conservative Party and became leading figures in the new Socialist movement. Like the former Radical Liberals, these individuals also retained aspects of their old politics, especially their lingering support for English/Anglo-Saxon/British supremacy and racism. Some of the clashes, which took place in the early Socialist movement, reflected this earlier division between Radical Liberals and Tory Democrats.

The infant Social Democratic Federation (SDF), formed in 1885, showed many of the characteristics which have plagued later attempts at Socialist agitation – whether to concentrate on direct action and socialist propaganda or to seek political office; and whether to seek constitutional change or economic reform. Failure to develop a coherent programme and an integrated strategy contributed to many of the setbacks and consequent splits amongst Socialists at the time, just as they continue to do today.

One of these breakaway organisations was the small but quite influential Socialist League (SL). It soon became divided between those who wanted to make propaganda for Socialism, and those, mainly in its affiliated Scottish Land and Labour League (SLLL), who wanted to orientate upon trade union, crofter and cottar struggles.

However, it was the launching of the Irish Land War, in 1879, and the formation of the INLL, which had largely inspired the formation of the SDF, as former advanced Radicals turned to Socialism. They joined the wider struggle against those forces, both Conservative and Liberal, either aggressively advancing the Empire and defending the Union, or meekly bowing before this new onslaught.

The social struggle was closely linked to the political battle for greater Irish self-determination. Furthermore, as new Land Leagues were formed in Scotland and Wales, the demand for Home Rule was taken up in these nations too. The majority of the independent Crofter candidates of 1885, and the new Scottish Labour Party, formed in 1888, supported both Irish and Scottish Home Rule.

Many key individuals, from the land and labour struggles of the 1880’s, contributed to the massive wave of ‘New (Trade) Unionism’, which burst out in 1889. They faced a similar situation to that faced by socialists and trade unionists today. Only then, socialists were up against the politics of Lib-Labism. Trade union leaders were still tied to an earlier Radical Liberal vision of a Free Trade Empire and a ‘fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.

Today we are up against the politics of New Labour, with trade union leaders locked into ‘Social Partnership’. Sometimes these misleaders may still hanker back to the disappearing vision of the post-war, Welfare State Empire, when workers in the UK were looked after ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

Furthermore, prior to 1889, the vast majority of unskilled and casual workers lay outside the Old Unions. Today, union membership has shrunk back to a minority, mostly concentrated in the public sector. This has left vast numbers of private sector workers, particularly women, migrant and part-time workers unorganised.

Today, the majority of the British Left is tied to a Broad Left strategy of recapturing the ‘old’ unions by replacing their existing leaders with new Left leaders (many of whom are earlier Broad Left leaders!) In contrast, any contemporary ‘New Unionism’ would aim to thoroughly democratise existing unions and bring them under rank and file workers’ control; or, where necessary, build completely new unions to organise those workers now completely unorganised.

Nor is the Left nationalist notion of breakaway unions much use against the global corporations, which workers confront today. Yes, national (and sectoral) union sections need more autonomy, but unions should be as extensive as possible. The key issue is not the existence of union HQ flying a national flag (e.g. the tricolour or saltire), but the necessity for union sovereignty to reside with workers at the workplace level, not in the union HQs. The independent Scottish teachers’ union, the EIS, is one of the most fervent upholders of the embrace of government and employers, not so much in social partnership, more a morganatic marriage(4).

Today, some may take comfort from the fact that the majority of the British ruling class has opted for the liberal, and not the conservative unionist option, in order to maintain its rule over the UK, and its continued, albeit now indirect, influence over Ireland. New Labour promotes ‘Devolution-all-round’ (i.e. for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and the ‘Peace Process’ in Ireland, backed by the social partnerships of compliant trade union and demanding governments and employers.

Yet, the aims of today’s liberal unionists are the same as those of the conservative unionists of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They both want to create the best political environment for their principal class backers. Today this means allowing corporate capitalists to lower wages, attack working conditions and undermine pensions, through deregulation and privatisation. It means fawning before the requirements of finance capital.

The British ruling class may indeed have learned some political lessons from their one-time support for intransigent conservative unionism. When Conservative and Liberal Unionists tried to face down the rising demand for Irish Home Rule, in the 1880’s, ‘90s and first two decades of the twentieth century, this eventually proved to be a disastrous strategy for them. By 1922, direct rule over ‘the Twenty Six Counties’ had been ended, and the UK state had begun to break-up.

However, the post-1922 UK-Irish ‘settlement’, imposed after the threat of a renewed war on the Irish people, seemed so permanent, that this lesson appeared to be forgotten by the late 1960’s. This was when new national democratic movements confronted the British ruling class. Initially this ruling class did flirt with both liberal centralist(5) and devolution(6) measures to deal with these challenges, which coincided with major working class struggles. However, once the ruling class had reasserted its control, under the two post-1974 Labour governments, it returned to the old failed conservative unionist strategy of defence of the constitutional status quo, backed by threats and coercion. Meanwhile, anti-trade union laws soon tamed most union leaderships. The TUC and the Labour Party leaders left the miners isolated, when they defied these new laws. The NUM faced the full panoply of state power between 1984-5. The Labour/TUC’s acceptance of ‘New Realism’ was but the beginnings of the road back to the Lib-Lab ‘Old Unionism’ of the nineteenth century, and its complete acceptance of capitalist rule.

Thatcher’s British Unionist ‘No, No, No’ intransigence first began under Labour, in the late 70’s in Northern Ireland. The attempt by Labour Irish Secretary, Roy Mason, to criminalise any effective opposition had its parallels in Forster, Gladstone’s Liberal Irish Secretary, and his introduction of coercion to Ireland in 1881, long before Lord Salisbury’s Conservative Irish Secretary, ‘Bloody Balfour’ was given free rein in 1887.

The failure of the UK state to meet the constitutional and economic reform demands raised by the Civil Rights Movement in ‘the Six Counties’, produced another period of constitutional instability, lasting over a quarter of a century. An overt and determined republican challenge emerged within the UK’s frontiers. Thatcher’s later attempt to deny any political self-determination, for either Scotland or Wales, made the ‘National Question’ an even wider and more volatile political issue.

This is one reason why the majority of the British ruling class unceremoniously dumped Thatcher in 1990 and, under John Major’s government adopted The Downing Street Agreement. The Conservatives were now committed to a liberal unionist strategy to defend the Union. When this proved too limited to contain the wider challenge, the ruling class turned instead to New Labour’s policy of ‘Devolution-all-round’. This is, in effect, a return to the old nineteenth century Liberal Home Rule strategy.

However, as with the nineteenth century division between Conservatives and Liberals, there is little difference today in the real aims of the Tories and New Labour. Both are committed to maintaining a British imperial presence in the wider world. Both accept that the British ruling class can now only achieve this as a junior partner to US imperialism. This leads to continuous wars, attacks on civil rights, austerity welfare provision, and the scape-goating of migrant workers. There is now a tension between New Labour and the Tories’ liberal unionism and their increasingly conservative militaristic imperialism. And, under today’s prevailing political conditions it is the liberal unionism which is more likely to give.

New Labour soon falls back on the nastier traits, usually associated with conservative unionism and imperialism. Indeed, as international competition becomes more pronounced, in the wake of the current Credit Crunch and the deepening worldwide recession, New Labour is preparing the ground for even more jingoistic, racist and sectarian forces.

The Immigration Minister, Philip Woolas, has shown that it is not only conservatives, who will stoop to the gutter, when it comes to racist attacks to divert attention from the real causes of the economic crisis. Meanwhile, the rise of the BNP, and the continued presence of malevolent loyalist forces in ‘the Six Counties’, show that even more sinister forces are lurking not far below the surface in the UK. Events in Berlusconi’s Italy demonstrate that it is but a short step to government encouraged racist assaults and murders of migrants and ethnic minorities.

As we try to build a new socialist movement, an appreciation of the Left’s politics, between 1879 and 1895, provides us with useful insights. The Radicals were then the dominant force on the Left, from whom the infant socialist and labour movements inherited much of their politics. The Radicals wanted to return to the mid-century ‘glory days’ of free trade and international peace.

Today’s Left includes those ‘Marxist’ Radicals – the entrants and outriders of the British Labour Party – who hope to re-establish the welfare state and to prolong the long period since 1945 without a world war. This is often tied to their Broad Left strategy for reclaiming the trade unions for ‘real Labour’. However, just as the rise New Imperialism, at the end of the nineteenth century, spelled the end of the old international ‘free trade’ capitalist order, so the development of corporate capitalist imperialism today means that the post-1945 social democratic world has changed irrevocably. New answers and approaches are required.

‘Marxist’ Radicals in the SWP and Socialist Party(7), often defend the formation and continued existence of the UK as a ‘progressive’ achievement. They claim this historical gain needs to be defended against the attacks of the nationalists in Scotland and Wales, completely failing to see the wider democratic issues at stake. They take some consolation in the ‘Peace Process’ in ‘the Six Counties’, which appears, for the time being, to have reopened the road for ‘bread and butter’ issues, i.e. traditional labourist politics.

When ‘Marxist’ Radicals are forced to address the major democratic and constitutional issues, they tend to follow their nineteenth century Radical predecessors. They either see the ‘National Question’ as a diversion form the ‘real struggle’, or give support to liberal unionist options to defend the UK.

Some ‘Marxist’ Radicals go further, but still only end up tailing the more thoughtful sections of the British ruling class, when they call for more powers for the existing devolved assemblies. A few would go so far as to advocate a new federal arrangement between the constituent parts of the UK. This last ditch liberal option has a long pedigree, whenever the British union state is under threat from national democratic movements. Others, however, hide behind the formulation of support for the ‘right of national self-determination’. The political effect of this is to leave it to the various nationalist parties to take the lead formulating the politics of the national democratic movements.

By examining past history, we can see that the politics of those advocating various ‘British roads to socialism’ are but continuations of an older British Radical tradition, which dominated the Left in the UK, in the late nineteenth century. Radicals tended to leave the political initiative to the Liberal Party and their Irish nationalist allies. Today’s ‘Marxist’ Radicals also take their political lead over the UK constitution from the liberal wing of the British ruling class, or sometimes, if unwittingly, from the nationalist parties – Sinn Fein, SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Yet, between 1888 and 1894, an alternative tradition developed, which recognised some of the weaknesses of the ‘Marxist’ Radicals. The Scottish Socialist Federation (SSF) was formed, which brought together SDF and SL/SLLL members, as well as other socialists, to try and go beyond the politics of Radicalism and the subservience of Lib-Labism. In some respects the SSF anticipated the Scottish Socialist Alliance, (SSA) formed in 1996, in the aftermath of the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle, along with the continued failure of the Labour Party to meet workers’ needs.

In the end, just as Davitt’s social republicanism collapsed into populist nationalism in Ireland, so the SSF, along with the Scottish Labour Party, it had backed, collapsed into the hybrid Radical/Tory Democrat tradition of ‘the British road to socialism’ found in the Independent Labour Party or the SDF. Today, after a major internal crisis, the SSA’s successor organisation, the Scottish Socialist Party, faces powerful pulls, in the form of Left nationalism and Left unionism.

By 1895, the limitations of Davitt’s politics had become quite apparent, as the British ruling class regained the political initiative and derailed the Home Rule challenge. Furthermore, Socialists, at the time, were unable to take the vigorous post-1889 New (Trade) Unionism challenge forward. It also went into retreat, taking on some of the characteristics of ‘Old Unionism’ once more. A new politics was needed to unite the political and economic wings of a wider working class movement.

However, it was within the SSF milieu that a real alternative began to emerge, in the figure of James Connolly. Like Davitt, he was a member of an Irish migrant family. Connolly’s family had settled in Edinburgh. He received his initial political training within the Scottish Socialist Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. He was to make a quantum leap in his political approach, though, when he moved to Dublin and founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896.

Connolly developed the socialist republican politics needed to take Davitt’s social republican and radical ‘internationalism from below’ alliance on to a higher level, during the heyday of High Imperialism from 1895. Connolly’s consistent anti-unionism and anti-imperialism offered a clear strategy, which opposed both the Irish constitutional nationalism and the ‘British road to socialism’, which was supported by most of the British Left of his day. Instead, Connolly promoted a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire road to socialism’.

In today’s world, imperialism still calls the shots. The continued existence of the UK provides the British ruling class with a powerful bastion of support. This unionist and monarchist state is fundamentally undemocratic. It gives the British ruling class a whole host of draconian Crown Powers to maintain its rule. Even the formally independent Irish Republic has to bow to British ruling class needs. This was highlighted by Irish leaders’ recent reluctant acceptance of the liabilities of UK-owned banks in Ireland. Nor did the Irish government get many thanks for their pioneering bank rescue plan to save domestic capitalism, much of which Brown and Darling so quickly copied and took credit for.

However, the current financial crisis has also highlighted the close links between leading Scottish nationalists and the British banks. In panic, they have quietly rushed into the arms of the UK government to develop a common approach to address shared capitalist concerns. Meanwhile, in public, the SNP and New Labour continue their political squabbles, jockeying for position to gain relative advantages for their particular capitalist backers.

British politicians, whether they are Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, continue to argue with SNP politicians over the extent of power to be awarded to the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. However, they all agree that the monarchy and the ruling class’s Crown Powers have to remain in place, that the Bank of England will control the economy through the continued use of sterling, and that suitable arrangements have to be made to accommodate NATO and to protect US imperial interests. All these parties are wedded to neo-liberalism and are in hock to corporate capital.

The nationalist parties represented in the various devolved assemblies, in Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont, make no attempt to mount a joint challenge to continued British rule, or to the all pervading corporate capitalist power over these islands. Whilst Plaid Cymru leaders may be envious of the powers already devolved to the Scottish Parliament, it is pretty clear that, if parity were to be achieved, this would merely signal their intention to compete more effectively for inward corporate investment. When Donald Trump threatened to abandon his golfing complex project in Aberdeenshire, in stepped the then DUP Minister, Ian Paisley Junior, to offer an alternative site on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland.

Just as Davitt and Connolly realised, in their day, that they faced the combined forces of British imperialism (whether it be Conservative or Liberal) and Irish nationalism (whether it be Parnell or his successors), so socialists face a similar combined opposition of Labour, Conservative and Lib-Dem unionists and nationalists today. By studying our class’s history, we gain the advantages of hindsight. This is why we need to look once more to rebuild an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance of republican socialists in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.

Footnotes

• (1) ‘The Irish Revolution’ is the term given by Theodore Moody to describe the major period of social and political upheaval between 1879-82, initiated by the Irish National Land League and the ‘Land War’.
• (2) New Imperialism developed in Europe, the USA (and later Japan) in the 1870’s. This followed the defeats of the Paris Commune in 1871, and the overthrow of the Radical Reconstruction (the concerted state-backed attempt to bring about black emancipation in the USA, after the Civil War) by 1877.
• (3) Here, liberal unionism refers to one of the two overall approaches taken by the British ruling class to defend the Union. It is not to be confused with the Liberal Unionists, who were adherents of a conservative unionist strategy.
• (4) A morganatic marriage was an arrangement by which a king had a queen who was entitled to none of his property and whose children had no inheritance rights. In other words she only had the right to be screwed!
• (5) It was one of the ironies of history that Northern Ireland, ended up, in 1922, with the sole devolved parliament in the UK, in the form of Stormont, despite the Ulster Unionists’ earlier vehement opposition to Home Rule. This ‘Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People’, far from being liberal in inspiration, more resembled the old reactionary, pre-1801, Irish Parliament, in its attempt to exclude Catholics (or Irish nationalists) from any share of power. Thus, the Conservatives’ closure of Stormont in 1972 and resort to Direct Rule was initially a very weak liberal centralising political measure. However, responsibility for much of this ‘direct rule’ was undertaken by the British armed and security forces, negating any liberal intentions.
• (6) The proposals for Scottish and Welsh devolution enjoyed wider support, both from liberal unionists and constitutional nationalists. However, political support for a liberalised and reformed Stormont was much more narrowly based, and found primarily amongst constitutionalist nationalists.
• (7) Whilst the tradition of the Tory Democrats has virtually no remaining political purchase upon Socialists today in the UK today, it still perhaps enjoys a kind of afterlife in the Labour Unionism still found in the Socialist Party in ‘the Six Counties’. Here the SP has been known to flirt with plebian loyalism, particularly the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force.

The Scottish Socialist Party site is carrying a report on the conference here.

As well as an overview of events there are some comments and feedback from attendees. These are reproduced below, visit the report on the conference for more details.

Brian Garvey, Fourthwrite, Independent Workers Union:

The space given to democratic discussion, the planning and facilitation of the event was impressive and I’m fairly confident that it was because people felt valued theat the exchanges were so constructive.

The honesty and will to learn from recent experience and experiences of others is a great example to us. So to is the acknowledgement that it requires our working alongside many other individuals and organisations to create a new society and on the bus home we talked of the inegrity and earnest of our Scottish friends and look forward to welcoming you to Ireland as we get things moving.

go raibh maith agat

Dan Finn, Irish Socialist Network:

Last Saturday’s conference in Edinburgh was an excellent day, well done to the SSP for organising it.

I learned a lot from the discussions as I’m sure everyone there did.

It was very encouraging to see left activists from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England who are all working towards similar goals and facing similar challenges come together to see where our work over-laps, what we can learn from eachother and how we can support each other’s efforts.

I hope this is just the beginning.

An article on the Socialist Democracy website by US socialist, Matt Siegfried

After 45 Years as Northern Ireland’s leading demagogue the 82 year old sectarian preacher, Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley, has exited the political stage. He has resigned, as of May, his position as Stormont’s First Minister as well as Leader of his Democratic Unionist Party.

He is Reverend of the Free Presbyterian Church, which can only be described as a shrill caricature of fundamentalist hokum and evangelical brimstone. He will hold on to his honorary Doctorate in Divinity bestowed upon him by the racist Bob Jones University.

Since his rival, David Trimble, and the Ulster Unionists, along with the Good Friday Agreement fell, in large part, to his opposition, Paisley reconstructed the GFA with the pliant agreement of Sinn Fein into an even more sectarian and unionist agreement. Through the provisions of the October, 2006 Saint Andrew’s Agreement Ian Paisley became First Minister in a devolved Stormont regime. The structures of this regime are premised on a sectarian division. To create positions to fill it has more ministers, more members and more expenses than any other political entity its size. This large bureaucracy is perfect for handing out positions and sweetening pots. The Welsh and Scottish Assemblies have much more self rule than the one that sits in Ireland. Northern Ireland’s union with Britain is guaranteed by the Agreement and the Assembly itself carries a dual Unionist/British veto. It’s always potentially only a phone call away from collapsing if the Fenians ever get out of line.

Knee slap with George Bush

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has taken the job of Ian Paisley’s Deputy. Together they have become known as the Chuckle Brothers as they knee slap with George Bush and cut the opening ribbon to tacky shopping developments in Belfast. McGuinness’s lack of dignity not withstanding, the former IRA Commander sits as a Minister of the British Crown. This erstwhile revolutionary who once was at war with the very idea of a Stormont administers its rule. Sinn Fein still have the shamelessness to claim to be socialists as they partner with Ian Paisley, who believes the world is four thousand years old, the pope is the anti-Christ and who once led a Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign. The DUP is the most right-wing party in power in Western Europe and Sinn Fein chuckle as they administer the rule of a thoroughly capitalist British state with them.

Ireland of today, North and South, is vastly different than it was even ten years ago. The war the IRA waged against British rule is clearly over. Southern Ireland’s integration into the European Union has seen it grow economically. This once economic basket case now has one of the highest standards of living in Europe. Immigration trends have reversed, and instead of Ireland being a point of departure for the New World or Australia, it has become a place of arrival for hundreds of thousands of workers from the newly EU countries of the east like Poland and Lithuania.

Rebalancing sectarian privilege

But Ireland remains partitioned and Northern Ireland remains firmly British. Northern Ireland cannot help but be based on sectarianism because partition, British rule, requires it. What has been achieved in the North is a rebalancing of sectarian privilege not its destruction. Sinn Fein has readily accepted this formula, which necessitated their abandonment of all but the title of Irish Republicanism. But the problem with basing solutions on sectarian privilege is that it requires consensus and in the Stormont context that means a reactionary neo-liberal policy with no opposition.

It is also the nature of sectarian division to be unequal, otherwise there is no justification for the division. The unionist will always have the veto and the British state to back them up on whatever question should arise. The use of that veto to scuttle the attempt at an Irish Language Act late last year proves the point. If even the Irish language isn’t to be recognized how can Irish speakers? Sectarian benefits are doled out with precision. EU funds in particular are apportioned out to any number of projects defined by community or intercommunity, which can amount to the same thing since it is also premised on sectarian division. More than a few former guerillas now man these well funded community centres. Foreign investment and economic growth have not led to a single integrated school in Ireland or a single one of the Peace Walls to come down.

As I watched BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight on Tuesday as the substance of Paisley resignation began to seep in I was struck at the tone of the Unionists about Paisley’s legacy. Nigel Dodds of Paisley’s DUP and potential successor as party leader made it perfectly clear that from his perspective what was to celebrate about Paisley’s life was Paisley’s commitment to the Union and Unionist dominance within that Union. Far from a surrender to Sinn Fein, Dodds said, Paisley and the DUP had got them to not only drop their opposition to British rule but to be junior partners in its administration thus tying them politically to the fate of the union. Ironically, this is the same critique that many Republicans who disagree with the strategy Adams and McGuinness would invoke. His tone was one of bigoted triumphalism over the defeated nationalists. They would never see a united Ireland he said, and their leaders had even agreed to it.

Worst kind of divisions

There is nothing to celebrate in the life or politics of Ian Paisley. He has represented the worst kinds of divisions wrought by imperialism on Ireland. And no attempt to stand on the St. Andrews Agreement as history’s vindication will work. The agreement institutionalized a state that is a labyrinth of sectarianism and meaningless dispensations. It closes hospitals, cuts funding to education and pursues all of the devastating policies of neo-liberalism. Paisley’s gift to Ireland was almost 50 years of fighting for Protestant supremacy and Unionist rejection. That he became First Minister in his old age of a state with his former enemies that enshrined supremacy and rejection is no sign of change.

Though the war is over and I can’t imagine the circumstances that could reignite it, the state in the North is unstable. The pressures from within one side or the other could break down the consensus required to the balancing act. Due in large part to Sinn Fein’s malleability the balancing act may continue to work for a time. No balancing act lasts forever.

Unlike another Ian in another British colony Paisley wouldn’t go down like Rhodesia’s Ian Smith. Whatever clouds he may leave under and whatever may befall his party and their government one thing is clear after thirty-five years of strife; Ian Paisley won the war.

There is a Section on the SSP website on the Republican Socialist Convention.

The agenda is still to be confirmed so watch that page for details. The page also contains links to the motion which led to the convention taking place and an article on it.

John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast) looks at the changing face of British rule in Ireland

In their usual astounding display of chutzpah Sinn Fein have produced a T-shirt depicting the IRA expelling a Brit soldier, claiming that the ending of ‘Operation Banner’ (the deployment of troops and the armed suppression of the civil population during the years of the troubles) amounts to British defeat and republican victory.

Republicans have not been slow to put them right, pointing out that Operation Banner has been replaced by Operation Helvetica, involving a permanent garrison of 5000 troops, that MI5 have built a massive base to monitor opposition to the new state, that new laws far exceed the emergency legislation of the past, that a large paramilitary police force remains armed and in place, with many of the structures and individuals who ran the death squads still in senior positions, and that loyalist groups are armed and sponsored by the state.

The republicans are perfectly correct in the substance of their attacks on Sinn Fein. But this is not the whole story. The fact is that the 5000 strong British garrison is significant mainly in that it defines the colonial nature of the state. If the current settlement is to succeed then the troops will remain in barracks. The police and special laws will be successful only if aimed at a small minority in an otherwise ordered society. The struggle for the British is not about unleashing loyalist violence, but about containing it while incorporating the loyalist groups into civil society.

There are three important questions that need to be studied:

• How did the Old Stormont regime maintain stability?
• How will the new society envisaged in Operation Helvetica remain stable?
• What are the internal contradictions that will lead to its collapse?

Perpetual seige

The physical base of stability in the pre 1968 Orange state was the Protestant militia. The A, B and C special constables all had scraps of uniform and weapons and very little control over their actions or accountability (the British had no record of how many guns had been given out). The sweeping Special Powers Act ensured that almost all forms of political activity that the government disapproved of were illegal, while at the same time providing effective immunity for crown forces for example the ability to ban inquests. Blatant and sweeping discrimination in employment marginalised Catholic workers, while a whole network of loyal orders around the workplace both kept bigotry alive and policed the Protestant workers for disloyal ‘Lundys’. Although Catholics were excluded from political power, a nationalist middle class and the Catholic Church had relative privileges and helped police the nationalist workers. This atmosphere of perpetual siege was effective against the small militarist republican groups, but broke apart when faced with mass mobilisation.

Today the official Orange militia of old have gone, to be replaced by a much more sophisticated network of repression. Intelligence has been taken from local hands and will remain forever in the central organs of the British state, represented by MI5. The change from RUC to PSNI has been accompanied by the preservation of major structures such as the special branch and the place of the militia taken by carefully cosseted paramilitary groups, fully armed and closely linked to the state forces. A curtain of silence is now being thrown around those structures and investigation of collusion is increasingly being ruled impermissible.

The armed police force will be much larger than the old RUC, will have the enormous surveillance apparatus of MI5, and will have the new powers of the strong state, effectively unrestricted powers of seizure, internment and detention as well as a host of new laws that will make many acts of political opposition crimes of subversion, incitement or conspiracy. These are now the norms of everyday civil law in the British state. If not enough, extra emergency powers lurk in the background.

In the new society Catholics have their own share of sectarian privilege and sectional political rights, This much increased privilege, shared by Sinn Fein, the Catholic middle class and the Catholic church, carries with it a much greater responsibility to defend the state and police Catholic workers, with state funded organisations that will extend into every street in working-class districts.

The lynch pin of the new state is sectarian division. The loyalists are to be used as assassins only in the last resort. Their primary role is to be inserted into civic society so that policing, health and education will be a patchwork of sectarian rivalries and the working class atomised and fragmented.

There are three weak points to the new dispensation:

• 1. The sectarian division is not equal.
• 2. The DUP have been given a limited primacy that they urgently want to expand and they need to constantly demonstrate that they are the top dog by attacking Sinn Fein and nationalist rights in general.
• 3. Sinn Fein maintain stability by constantly giving way, but this is not a process that can continue forever.

The settlement involves a far right economic policy. The mild form, advanced by the British, calls for a lowering of the basic wage, mass sackings, cutbacks in public service and wholesale privatisation and deregulation. Sinn Fein, the DUP in fact all the capitalist parties, backed by the intervention of the Catholic church, cry salt tears about some aspects of this while also advocating a stronger far right policy turning capitalist heaven into paradise with the lowering of corporation tax and massively switching the tax burden further in the direction of the working class.

Silence of the grave

The settlement depends on the silence of the grave falling over the North while a corresponding 26 county nationalism runs rampant in the South. This is possible only as long as there is no mass working class opposition on either side of the border.

Operation Helvetica is not Operation Banner. One depended on the troops actively fighting to preserve the Northern colony. The other depends on the troops remaining in barracks. Under Helvetica the main policing mechanism for ensuring stability will be an unholy triumvirate of Sinn Fein, Fianna Fail and the Catholic Church assuring us that the partitionist, colonial and sectarian settlement is a suitable end point for Irish history and a suitable vehicle for the emancipation of the Irish working class.

by John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast)

The Irish election of 24th May astounded all the political observers commenting on it. The election was called unexpectedly at a rushed early morning press conference in a transparent attempt to head off a judicial enquiry into suspect financial dealings by the Taoiseach , Bertie Ahern. The enquiry was immediately postponed. On the campaign trail Ahern was struck dumb when questioned about his finances. When he did make a statement a poll showed that over half the electorate did not believe him. In the background behind the corruption allegations was a major strike by nurses, a crisis in the health service, the repression of women’s reproductive rights, major incidents of pollution and a mass privatisation campaign.

The confident prediction was that Fianna Fail would be forced out of office and replaced with a ‘rainbow coalition’ of the right-wing Fine Gael party with the Irish Labour party as junior partners. The Green party and Sinn Fein were expected to substantially increase their share of the vote and the smaller socialist and local independent candidates expected to do well.

The actual result was that the Fianna Fail vote fell slightly, but they were returned as the major party, ready to form a new coalition government. The opposition was concentrated in a major swing to the right-wing Fine Gael vote, but Labour performed poorly and were not in a position to form a coalition. The Green vote was below expectation, but their six seats may put them in coalition government. For Sinn Fein and the small socialist organisations the vote was a disaster. Ironically the Fianna Fail partners in the last election, the far right Progressive Democrats, who always claimed to be watchdog over the probity of their coalition partners, were wiped out in the election. The best news of the election was the defeat of minister for justice, the Progressive Democrat leader, Michael McDowell, well hated for his ultra-right views, lost his seat and has said he will resign from politics

In the 30th Irish Dáil the final state of the parties
is:

• Fianna Fáil 78,
• Fine Gael 51,
• Labour 20,
• Progressive Democrats 2,
• Green Party 6,
• Sinn Féin 4,
• Independents 5.

In the 29th Dail Fianna Fail had 81 seats, Fine Gael had 31, Labour 21, PDs 8, Greens 6, Sinn Fein 5, Socialist Party 1 and independents 13

Life in a ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy

There were many issues in the election that spoke volumes about the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. A major strike by nurses was defeated at the hands of the Irish trade union bureaucracy, locked in partnership with the bosses to prevent strikes like the nurses succeeding. The partnership deal is now leading to workers working harder for what is effectively a pay cut. The major issue of the collapse of the existing health service loomed in the background. In housing, the majority of workers cannot afford homes and there is no real programme of social housing. Parents pay over 30% of the direct running costs of schools. Water privatisation is on the agenda, while at the same time uncontrolled pollution is making water undrinkable. Housing costs that force workers to satellite towns and lack of public transport mean hours added to the working day. In the ‘D’ Case attempts were made to force a young woman to carry a nonviable foetus to term. Shannon airport continues to play a major role in the Iraq war despite Ireland’s status as a neutral country. Shell to Sea documents a campaign where the state is crushing the rights of its citizens in the interests of a major oil company. A new partitionist settlement pushed Irish unity further away than ever.

These were issues, but they were not election issues because there was no-one to present them. Sinn Fein’s populist pretence of social democracy evaporated within days of the election being launched. The small socialist movement lost its electoral voice in this election. It had lost its political voice long ago.

The political retreat of the working class had become a rout following the Irish Ferries struggle of 2005. A mass mobilisation of workers followed deregulation, casualisation and outsourcing of jobs – a ‘race to the bottom’ that saw mass redundancies and the employment of migrant workers on starvation wages. The mobilisation was firmly under the control of the trade union bureaucracy who used it, not to oppose this process, but to draft a new 10-year agreement with the bosses called ‘towards 2016’.

This offered flexibility and wage restraint in return for promises that the government and employers would manage the offensive on employment rights by, for example halting wage cuts when they reached the legal minimum. The outcome of this policy was that the trade union leadership and sections of the working class began to actively support the privatisation process. The privatisation of the national airline Aer Lingus, was accompanied by the issue of shares to the workforce at the urging of the union.

The privatisation was immediately followed by a predatory bid by Ryanair and the ludicrous situation of workers and unions collaborating in speedups and jobs cuts – tearing up their rights as workers in order to defend their rights as shareholders!

The downturn in class struggle was apparent in the national action by nurses during the election. There were a number of statements of support by left groups, but no solidarity action. The government’s counter-attack – that social partnership with the unions prevented them meeting the nurses demands – went unremarked, as did the active participation of the union bureaucracy, through the partnership ‘National Implementation Body’ in forcing the defeat of the Nurses. Their demands will now be addressed through the partnership ‘benchmarking’ process, that exchanges concessions on wages and hours for speed-up and redundancies that will see the workers pay for the so-called concessions.

The outcome in electoral terms was that the small socialist movement fought small local and community-based campaigns that adapted to the retreat of workers. A good example was the demand for ‘affordable housing’. This reflected the widespread view that public housing or any general right to be housed is utopian. In the absence of thispossibility many workers want their own chance to get on the ‘property ladder’ and join in the speculative bubble based on housing stock which made homes for workers unavailable in the first place!

Corruption

With no challenge from the left the election became a battle between right and ultra-right. (The Irish Labour party can be included among the ultra right. One of its key complaints was that the middle class were being taxed too heavily). The main ground – the corruption of the government – could not be fought too closely. Only the incurably naïve would imagine that corruption was restricted to one section of the Irish capitalist class. As a result the campaign became a presidential one, with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern himself becoming the main issue.

Bertie was far from defenceless. In the campaign he was able to balance the negative reports of his financial irregularity against pictures of himself posing with the bigot Paisley as the man who had finally resolved the Irish question and images of Bertie as world statesman addressing the British House of Commons. The hidden sub-text of corruption played in his favour also. The right critique of corruption in Ireland is similar to American critiques of corruption in Africa, a mechanism for promoting further privatisation and deregulation. The right believe that the flip side of corruption – the patronage and populist clientelism that define Fianna Fail – is too inefficient and concedes too much to the working class. Social partnership, which grew out of Fianna Fail patronage of the trade union bureaucracy, is seen as an unnecessary concession. In fact during the election the Irish small business federation launched a bitter attack on social partnership from the right, complaining that the basic conditions in public service forced them to provide a basic wage in the private sector.

In fact the Irish expect corruption from their politicians. Bertie Ahern got over 30% of the votes cast – a figure reduced from over 50% by his parties voting advice in a multi-seat constituency. One figure in the top ten of voter preferences who may well support the new government as an independent is Michael Lowry, forced to resign as a government minister for breathtaking public corruption. Another figure is Beverly Cooper-Flynn. Elected on a high turnout and willing to support the new government, she may well lose her seat by being declared bankrupt. The bankruptcy would arise from legal attempts to contest media reports of corruption – attempts which failed. The Dublin working class vote for Fianna Fail indicates that, after two decades of partnership and following the collapse of republicanism as any kind of radical force, they are now looking to the populist wing of capitalism to defend them from the worst of the coming offensive.

An important footnote in the campaign was the weakness of Sinn Fein. Expecting to double their seats and have a good chance of positions in a coalition government, their vote and number of seats fell. There were a number of reasons for this. Their expectation of reward for delivering the imperialist settlement in the North was misplaced. Irish capital is grateful – but not that grateful. The 26-county state already has a Fianna Fail and has no need for Fianna Fail Óg. The party, having carefully crafted a mild social democratic taxation policy, abandoned it at the start of the election campaign to adopt the economic policy of the right. Finally, the party has not developed the skills of ‘normal’ bourgeois parties.

Adams, put face to face with other politicians found that his grasp of political and economic issues was not sufficient. Years of cosseting by politicians and media urging on the republican surrender disguised the fact that the organisation is still run on regimented and military lines and its pool of political ability is very small.

Sinn Fein’s difficulty will not end there. In the North they will hold on desperately to the parliamentary positions that they already have and will be easy prey for further demands from the Paisleyites. In the South they will be very welcome to hold up the Fianna Fail minority government without reward, giving them all the disadvantages of openly supporting the capitalist offensive without any of the advantages of office.

Localism and electoralism

Despite the loss of the one seat held by Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party, the small socialist movement’s vote was not insignificant in numerical terms (one candidate, Richard Boyd Barrett of the Socialist Workers Party, did come close to election, but not around any socialist demands). What did render it insignificant was the politics of the candidates. Localism and electoralism meant that what we got was a left gloss on the dominant capitalist programme. A few thousand votes for the workers republic would have meant incomparably more in terms of organising the fightback against the offensive that will follow this election.

The one distinct gain from the election was the defeat of the Progressive Democrats and the obliteration of their leader, the ultra-right former minister of justice, Michael McDowell. The fate of the PDs was both defeat and victory. It was victory in the sense that they party was formed to force on Fianna Fail the need for a Thatcherite deconstruction of Irish society. In this they were supremely successful. However, when Fianna Fail did adopt their programme their reason for existence changed. They declared they were in government to act as watchdog on government corruption!

In fact the PD’s played a unique role in coalition – as heatshield for Fianna Fail. The PD demise indicates how unpopular their programme is, but Fianna Fail have been able to escape blame for implementing it by regretfully explaining that the rules of coalition tied their hands. Bertie Ahern understands how useful this role has been and is now trying to construct an informal alliance of the PD rump and independents which would again deflect blame for the government.

This is unlikely to work. The populist and clientelist cover over a full-scale offensive on Irish workers is unlikely to last for long. Fianna Fail will face choppy water long before the 30th Dail runs its course. Just how difficult its task will be will depend to the extent that the working class can begin to build independent structures for its own defence.

Below, we reprint the editorial from the Belfast Newsletter, 27 March 2007. As a DUP-supporting newspaper, it gives a clear indication of why Paisley went into coalition with Sinn Fein.

No matter what happened yesterday, Peter Hain had planned to be the winner. If the Assembly had met and a First and Deputy First Minister had been appointed, he would have graced the world’s media as politics’ true Houdini.

The deputy leadership of the Labour Party and, as a result, the country would have been in reach and all would hail his momentous or even historic feat as the final solution to an age-old problem. Only his ‘natural’ tan could have masked the glow of success.

If, on the other hand, his master plan had crashed and burned, he would have displayed his mettle as the man who means business by proceeding to implement his dissolution consequences like a vindictive dictator.

Water bills would have been delivered, the abolition of academic selection would be confirmed and the Irish Language Act would have progressed through parliament.

Thankfully, none of that has happened or indeed will happen. Stormont has not closed; further Dublin involvement will not occur and water bills won’t arrive.

But more importantly, the arbitrary deadline set by the Government has not been enforced. The leadership of the Democratic Unionist Party secured what many others said was politically and realistically impossible.

They have found a third way. They have defied illogical deadlines and ensured that when full devolution does occur in May, it happens because it is right for unionists and it happens, for the first time, on unionist terms. And while what occurred yesterday may have been a surprise, it is important to remember just what progress has been made.

Sinn Fein has locked itself into the Assembly and, in doing so, helped to imbed Northern Ireland as an integral part of the UK.

They have agreed to participate in an Executive within a British institution and, as a result of legislative changes, are required to endorse our Royal Courts of Justice and support the forces of the Crown within their own communities. But it doesn’t just stop there.

While progress has been made on an economic package that will ensure an Executive has the best chance of survival, commitments have been made to increase efforts to broaden that package and get the best deal for this Province.

On the transformation of Sinn Fein, great strides have also been made.

The decommissioning of weapons may not have happened in the most transparent way, but it did happen and the ending of paramilitary and criminal activity as outlined by the IMC is borne out by the media, security analysts and others.

That is something that we have to accept, but there is nothing stopping us taking action if the situation changes. Confidence, however, can be found in procedures that will ensure that, if Sinn Fein was to resort to old tricks, they would be the only party to suffer.

Only a fool would think the DUP and Sinn Fein could work together on the basis of trust but, as Ian Paisley said yesterday,

we must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future.

Following the setback of May’s Scottish Parliament election results, June’s issue of Frontline magazine carries two contrasting articles on What next for Scottish socialism? – one from SSP National Secretary, Pam Currie, the other from Gregor Gall. Mary McGregor responds.

We all knew the Scottish parliamentary results in May would be bad for the SSP. You could not go through the damaging Sheridan trial, the split in the party, the fall out from both these events and not expect an electoral disaster. But none of us really took in how bad it would be. Both Gregor Gall and Pam Currie cover this well in their articles and one would hope that it would provide a wake up call for socialists to realise once and for all, that here is no room for two socialist parties, fighting on virtually the same policies in Scotland today.

As I stood at the North East of Scotland count in Aberdeen, watching BNP supporters smile, the Solidarity supporters groan and our own supporters become more demoralised, the urge to get back home to Dundee and leave the night behind, became overwhelming.

Obvious target

Driving back down the A90 in the small hours, we were overcome with the need to blame someone. Disgust and horror at the unfavourable comparisons between our vote and Solidarity’s vote made Tommy Sheridan an easy and obvious target. There is no doubt in my mind that the political crime committed by Sheridan, the SWP and CWI of splitting the left in Scotland is a set back which will be regretted by generations to come. Even if we had no MSPs but still had the party intact, we would have been disappointed but we would have had a strong and dynamic force with which to rebuild and to focus on extra parliamentary activity. The SSP is now much weaker, much worse off financially and has substantially fewer activists than before the split.

The SSP is fragile and fractured but it does have a core of cadre and a democratic structure. Solidarity consists of two parties who hate each other (SWP and CWI), a number of individuals and a cult figure as leader. The credibility of the left in Scotland has been decimated and the only winner in the Sheridan libel trial was the British state, which has consequently had quite unprecedented access to both parties as it has carried out its investigations first into the libel case and subsequently into the perjury accusations.

Grotesque caricature

Gregor and others are right to point out that the objective political conditions were different in 2007 from our zenith electorally in 2003. But we did, as he says, Take a hit for allegedly ‘doing Tommy in. The Tommy Sheridan brand turned out to be much more powerful than the SSP brand. In today’s celebrity-obsessed media, this is hardly surprising given Sheridan’s profile. With his name on every ballot paper, it also appeared as if Tommy himself was standing in every council and list seat the length and breadth of Scotland; quite a grotesque caricature of I’m Spartacus!

Frighteningly, the prospect of the perjury trial and or News of the World (NotW) appeal may in fact enhance Tommy’s image of everybody’s favourite socialist that ‘they’ are all out to get.

The courts are seldom places for socialists to fight their battles. Everyone in Solidarity’s leadership knows that Tommy was wrong to take the NotW to court. The leadership of the CWI tried to talk him out of it. This has been no victory for the working class of Scotland. The repercussions go way beyond appeasing one man’s ego. It is indeed in question whether either Solidarity or the SSP can ever regain credibility as a political force across Scotland and our position of being the most successful socialist party in the British Isles has gone.

Having no MSPs means that our access to the media is limited. We no longer get the headlines when we attack the hypocrisy of the SNP from a republican perspective or the imperialism of New Labour. At the moment, the only time Solidarity gets any press is when Tommy has notorious underworld figures like Paul Ferris on his Fringe talk show or the Sunday Herald speculates on the perjury trial. The SSP is getting very little coverage at all. This is all a far cry from front pages on Free School Meals bill or Faslane protests!

What happens next?

The most important question as Gregor suggests is what happens next? It is not clear how, or indeed whether, the SSP or Solidarity will survive the perjury trial but honest, hard-working committed socialists in both organisations will. How will we organise and take the fight for socialism forward when so many comrades feel profound disappointment and in some cases despair?

It must be so much worse for those comrades who thought, or still think that the SSP is the ultimate organisational form and will take us to socialism. In the RCN we have always believed that the SSP is the best organisational form so far, but we have always been conscious that as objective conditions change, then the form of socialist organisation may also need to change. We have been loyal SSP members but we have not been blind to its shortcomings or limitations.

The split has made the fight for socialist ideas more difficult in the coming period yet reunification in some form – ultimately the only way forward – is not on the cards in the short-term future. We cannot dismiss the profoundly painful and damaging experiences of some comrades over the last few years and demand they just have to get over it and reunite for the good of the class. This is naive in the extreme. For one thing, it’s not over yet! There may be even worse to come if the perjury trial takes place.

On the other hand, those at the centre of the case cannot demand that those who have been less damaged do not consider how to move us collectively forward. There seems to be near hysteria in some quarters at the suggestion that SSP comrades even speak to others in Solidarity. But the experience of comrades across the country pre and post split has not been uniform. There are SSP members who are friends with others in Solidarity and those friendships have survived. There are others who have already found themselves in meetings with Solidarity members where the same hatred and bitterness which exists between the two leaderships has not prevailed.

The Solidarity candidate in the North East of Scotland publicly commended the SSP candidate and other SSP representatives as good socialists with whom he had no quarrel. I believe that disagreement with the isolationist approach of some leading SSP members should not be conflated with disloyalty.

Consequently, Gregor’s call for a new left unity party should not be dismissed out of hand but should be considered premature. The process by which this could happen is at a very early embryonic stage. Sadly both the SSP and Solidarity have to play out the perjury case and appeal. More people will be damaged and some people may go to jail – something no socialist should relish the thought of. The fall out from this next phase then has to be dealt with and only after all of that will we be able to work towards genuine growth and the prospect of principled work with former comrades can become a reality.

If both parties survive, I imagine all of us having to go through a pre alliance phase working in a principled united front basis with perhaps electoral accommodation being the next step. Surely everyone bar the most sectarian can see the folly of us standing against one another. Only after that long process will the prospect of a new party be on the cards. We have a long way to go.

Parochialism

Even though there are very hard times ahead, this does not mean that the SSP and especially those of us who have not been at the heart of the Sheridan case, should be paralysed. Gregor is right when he says we need to focus on getting involved in our communities and in the need for robust party education but I fear what he is arguing is a form of parochialism which will do nothing to give comrades the much needed credibility we agree is required.

So while I agree with him that comrades must be grounded, I do not see this in opposition to espousing the high ideals of socialism. The real skill of respected, socialist politicians is the ability to do both. We have to build our cadre in order to dig those deep roots that Gregor talks of and I do not see that happening without articulating a socialist vision. The starting point for this needs to be real political education and discussion within the party on what our vision of socialism should be in the 21st century.

This does not mean just taking the lead from current political thinkers within the party but by doing what I know is an anathema to some comrades and reading the texts of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, MacLean, Connolly and others. We need to study new progressive movements like the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Bolivarists in Venezuela, and to develop our Marxism to take account of the events of the last 150 years.

Neither can the SSP be content with putting all its effort into community and trade union work, vital though these are. In Scotland, this would leave ‘high politics’ to the SNP. The SNP’s current diet of populist and consensual politics can not last. Wider events, such as the political fall-out from US and British imperialism’s wars, access to North Sea oil in the context of the rising oil prices, and the forthcoming Westminster imposed budget cuts, will form part of the ‘national conversation’, whether Alex Salmond likes it or not. When choices have to be made, the rightwards moving SNP will come down on the side of its business backers. It will also avoid any head on collisions with either the UK state or NATO.

When it comes to the constitutional issues there are strong pressures, within both the SSP and amongst the ‘Tommy can do no wrong’ supporters in Solidarity, to tail-end the SNPs political project of seeking an ‘Independence Referendum’. This isn’t likely to happen soon; nor is it likely to achieve what it seeks.

Real opposition needed

The SSP lost the political initiative when it abandoned the movement to build upon the Calton Hill Declaration. Instead the leadership opted to fall in first, behind the SNP leadership-policed Scottish Constitutional Convention and then, Independence First, run mainly by the political groups on the Scottish nationalist fringe. Neither of these bodies can lead the fight against either the British state’s Crown Powers, or Scotland’s continued involvement in NATO. Real opposition to both is needed, if moves to greater political independence are to open up better prospects for the Left and the working class.

Therefore, it is also vital that the SSP articulates a clear Scottish internationalist vision, based on sound democratic, secular and republican principles. Fortunately there is more chance of this happening within a democratic SSP, than in the political
‘marriage of convenience’ of left unionists and nationalists which constitutes Solidarity.

Nevertheless, we cannot live in a vacuum where Solidarity does not exist. Where we engage with them – and we must or we cut ourselves off from the anti war movement, the Palestine struggle, and any industrial dispute which occurs – we must act and be seen to act in a principled, non sectarian manner. If sectarianism occurs then it must not come from us. If Sheridan refuses to share a campaigning platform with us, then we must question his motives and whether he puts his personal animosity above the cause. We must not indulge in tit for tat retaliation.

I think Gregor is wrong in suggesting that we do not recruit to the party via united front work. We should not go on raiding missions but we should be open and honest about who we are, what we stand for and encourage people to join us. We can do that without resorting to sectarian lies or abuse. This will enhance credibility and put us on stronger ground for any future negotiations with former comrades.

Gregor is right when he says that the business as usual approach is wrong but so is the politics of retreat. Weekly stalls are a façade if that is the only party work which is going on but they are a way for hundreds of people weekly to get the message that the SSP and socialist ideas are still here.

Democratic bedrock

Most worrying about Gregor’s contribution was his dismissal of party branches. I see the branches as the democratic bedrock of the SSP. I know hat since the split, some individual members are isolated but the way to respond to that is not to turn us into a party of isolated individual members but to link vibrant branches with those who need support. I know that in some areas even where there are members, branches have not been functioning and a priority should be to engage those members who have had the courage and strength to stay with the SSP in a functioning and enjoyable party branch.

Many people out with the Central Belt fear that the party has long been dominated by Glasgow and Edinburgh in an insensitive way. Those in the other regions have felt, not without some justification, that we are second class party members in terms of the service we have received from party centre. I hope the Commission into Party structures will take account of this in its recommendations and will ensure that the party branch remains the basis of party building and democracy.

I am fearful of what would replace the branch. Would it be a party of self selecting Networks? How would representation be ensured at all levels? Yes we would get rid of the cult of the leader – all in favour of that – but we could be replacing it with the cult of the clique or a non elected leadership – not in favour of that one. I am sure that the commission will look to preserve and enhance what is best in ourdemocratic structures and I see the branch as fundamental to that.

Defensive

But Gregor is to be commended for opening up the ‘Where next?’ debate. Pam’s response reflects, Ithink, a defensive and at times unrealistic position.

Pam is doing a brilliant job as party secretary and is part of a group of dedicated comrades who are holding things together in the eye of a hurricane. She correctly raises the issue of sexism within the SSP and its role in Tommygate. Issues around gender ran right through the court case and the subsequent split. Tommy’s public attitude to family life promoted a bourgeois stereotype with his wife Gail as the loyal partner whose main interests are fashion and the wean. However, Pam’s experiences over the Tommygate period colour her vision of the present and the future. Pam extols the virtues of the United Left organisation which I am sure was a terrific support to Pam and others at a very difficult time but she needs to see the negative effects of such a defensive grouping.

The UL assumed all pro party forces would join the UL – this was far from true. The UL assumed that their experiences and conclusions reflected those of party members across the country. This was also untrue. If the UL was to be seen as more than a support group for those being attacked by Tommy and Co, or more than a group of Tommy haters, then they should have become a bona fide platform within the SSP. Many outwith the eye of the storm were left saying, What was the point of that? rather than, What a brilliant model for future democracy within the party.

The future is unpredictable and precarious for socialists in Scotland. We all individually do make a difference but the need to work as part of a collective is essential for anyone who understands what socialism means. We need to build the SSP and look beyond our current boundaries. We need to prioritise socialist education and party democracy. We must seek to build a culture where the cult of the individual is recognised as anti socialist. Most importantly we must see that sectarianism is futile and unproductive. Let’s hope the lessons of these last few tumultuous years have been learnt – we have a responsibility to ensure a socialist party, with credibility exists to articulate the aspirations of all those who suffer under capitalism.

Joe Craig (Socialist Democracy – Belfast) analyses the recent developments in Ireland’s republican movement

The vote at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis to support the police force and judicial system of the Northern State is dramatic evidence of the collapse of republican consciousness. Publication the week beforehand of the ombudsman’s report into police collusion with UVF paramilitaries in the murder of Catholic and Protestant workers, and the evidence that this was covered up by senior officers who refused to co-operate with the enquiry, shone an embarrassing spotlight on what was at issue. That, after all this, and the acknowledgement that no one would be held accountable, the Ard Fheis voted by around 95% to support the re-branded RUC and the judicial system that protects it, is proof, if further proof were needed, that Sinn Fein has no progressive role to play in Irish politics.

This is a damning judgement that is both inescapable and yet many who think of themselves as an alternative seem oblivious to the facts. During the series of meetings preceding the Ard Fheis Gerry Adams felt able to say to his critics that ‘he was not the enemy.’ In doing so he called the bluff of many critics, confident he would not be contradicted, or if he was, confident that any affirmative answer would be widely seen as taking opposition too far. In effect his critics were disarmed. Those few inside the hall voting against the leadership motion were keen to assert their loyalty and avowed that they would rally round the leadership after the vote was taken, even if it meant the motion was passed. In effect they were declaring continuing support for a leadership that was declaring support for the PSNI. Their support for the latter is therefore one step removed but nonetheless real for all that.

Among the socialist organisations there are many who have sought a united ‘left’ that includes Sinn Fein. Will this those involved now support the PSNI or will the question simply be ignored? The extent of confusion among those opposed to Sinn Fein’s latest capitulation to imperialism was evident in rumours that republican opponents wanted Eamonn McCann of the SWP to stand as an anti-PSNI candidate. These people are either ignorant of the SWP’s call for unity with Sinn Fein in the South or just don’t get it.

McCann has however made it clear that opposing the PSNI is not something he will emphasise – as open an admission of political bankruptcy as one can imagine. For this sort of left having to pay a couple of hundred pounds in water charges (the issue of privatisation has always been secondary to those demanding non-payment) is more important an issue, more fundamental a political question, than the murder of workers by agents of the State.

These harsh judgements are only a reflection of the harsher reality exposed by the latest report into State collusion with sectarian murder. The objective role of those who seek to minimise its importance is unwittingly to conspire in the cover up.

Before the Ard Fheis

There are four aspects to the collapse of republicanism evident in the ‘debate’ on policing. For many republican supporters the question has been posed in terms of the ability to report petty, and not so petty, crime to the police. In the Inside Politics TV show on the day of the debate Martin McGuinness said he didn’t want to see republicans dancing on the head of a pin explaining why people couldn’t report crimes such as rape to the police.

In fact it has been Sinn Fein who has insisted that political opposition had to entail complete non-cooperation over such matters, an echo of their quasi-religious non-recognition of the State from years ago when they refused to file for permission to march, refused to stand in elections and refused to recognise courts when arrested and charged.

Of course political support for the police is not about reporting ‘ordinary’ crime. Socialists oppose the system of exploitation built around the wages system but this no more stops us accepting wages than opposition to finance capital stops us taking out a mortgage to buy a house. Similarly non-support for the police is not about failing to report burglaries in order to claim insurance (very few people actually believe the PSNI will catch thieves) or seeking to prevent the arrest of rapists. It is about failing to provide political support for the inevitable political role that the police perform as defenders and servants of the State.

This is what Sinn Fein has signed up to. In letters to The Irish News before the Ard Fheis correspondents wrote that Sinn Fein will ‘critically engage’ with the police. What rubbish! The demand from the British, US and Irish governments and the DUP was not for ‘critical engagement’, it was for support for the PSNI. This is what the Ard Fheis motion proposed and this is what the party has promised to deliver. This includes, but is not limited to, participation in the local District Policing Partnerships and the Policing Board. Their role in this will be to legitimise and provide cover for the actions of the PSNI, which will remain under the control of the British.

Supporting the police will mean collaborating in all the activities that the police have always got up to, including repressing dissent and opposition. Day to day actions will be under the ‘operational control of the Chief Constable’ and overall the British government will control strategy. For Martin McGuinness to claim that Sinn Fein will ‘boss’ policing or for Adams to claim that they will put ‘manners’ on them is simply laughable. Even if the Policing Board had any real power to enforce change how would Sinn Fein achieve it with two or three members out of nineteen? The police ombudsman can expose what is already more or less known but the fact that little or nothing happens afterwards only demonstrates that things continue very much as before.

Sinn Fein has claimed that MI5 has now been excluded from ‘civic policing’, thanks to them, but as one wag pointed out, MI5 was never going to be involved in ‘civic policing.’ The idea that MI5 will not continue to run informers and will not also have agents in the PSNI to protect them is too naive to be taken seriously. Sinn Fein even failed to get rid of plastic bullets and despite a ceasefire, decommissioning and virtual disbandment of the IRA is still ‘negotiating’ on ‘on the runs’ – republicans facing charges from the days of armed conflict who are still unable to return home. What was glaringly evident at the Ard Fheis was how little Sinn Fein could claim in order to justify the switch to supporting the PSNI.

The erection of a large building in Co. Down to house MI5 is a much more important indicator of the role MI5 will play than the meaningless separation of policing from MI5 that Sinn Fein has claimed.

Sinn Fein got nothing for its promise to support the PSNI.

Even its deal to receive a DUP promise to enter power sharing with them was withdrawn. Their decision to go ahead regardless was humiliating.

None of this was enough to generate an opposition inside Sinn Fein. The vote against the motion did not even have to be counted.

The journalist covering the Ard Fheis for The Irish Times recorded that it had all the signs of a rubber stamping exercise. Another contrasted it with the 1986 decision to abandon abstentionism, noting that there was never any doubt about the result.

Commentators such as these tend to put this down to a combination of the military style discipline of the Sinn Fein organisation and the political skills of the leadership and its party machine. These are undoubtedly factors of some importance but they cannot be the whole explanation.

There exists a wide layer of republican supporters opposed to or unhappy with the decision. These include people who have risked their lives and could not be accused of lacking physical courage. Unfortunately what they have lacked is a political foundation to their opposition, a positive framework to articulate a principled position that does not rely on wrapping the green flag round oneself and declaring fidelity to the patriot dead. Appealing to the dead generations who did not fight and die to support a rebranded enemy police force is all very well, but it fails one decisive test. If the dead generations would have opposed the current leadership why do the majority of survivors, who could so easily have also been among the dead, now support the Sinn Fein leadership?

Republican martyrs might not have fought for support for the police force of the Northern State but then neither, until relatively recently, did the current leadership. The debate, such as it was, between the Sinn Fein leadership and its opponents was not won by Adams and co. because of their superior political skills. Even a cursory examination of Gerry Adams’ Ard Fheis speech reveals a miserable and sorry platform that only a demoralised organisation could endorse.

Speech

His speech was an admission of failure. He gave a significant section of it over to the revelations published by the police ombudsman and then to how he had given Tony Blair a file on collusion ten years ago. So what happened then Gerry? Did Tony stop the collusion?

He rhetorically asked the question – who authorised the killings? – but absolved Blair of all responsibility. In fact he declared that it was Blair’s responsibility to sort things out! Who’s more powerful than the British prime minister he asked, as if Tony just had to show some interest for the terrorising of Irish workers to stop. This and the continual reference to collusion in the past tense amounted to Sinn Fein joining in the cover-up, which has as its main theme that all this collusion is in the past and is now over.

It is absolutely necessary for Adams to claim this because Sinn Fein is now a supporter of the system that has been exposed. It has now hitched its reputation to that of the PSNI and must now claim that it will ensure such things will not happen again. The main responsibility for preventing it however, according to Gerry, apparently lies with the same people – the British State – responsible for it in the first place – I also told Mr Blair that British policy in Ireland has to change.

Oh really? So the centuries old Irish question is to be solved by asking the Brits politely to behave!? Only slightly less fanciful is the idea that the Irish government will also help clean up the mess by acting as ‘equals’ when meeting the British.

Apparently it is Sinn Fein which will help them do this despite Sinn Fein complaining only weeks before the Ard Fheis that Bertie Ahern was hardly speaking to them.

How a tiny State that has already surrendered part of its territory to imperialism is expected to reverse policy and stand up for itself is left unanswered. Adams in his speech criticised previous Irish governments for ignoring murderous attacks by British agents within the State’s jurisdiction, but now expects them to stand up for Irish citizens outside their jurisdiction.

Adams performed the rhetorical trick much used by loyalist spokesmen (who get away with it because of a compliant media) of using the arguments of the opposition but then drawing the contrary conclusion. Only complete confidence in being unchallenged could allow one to use the ombudsman’s report on collusion as material in a speech in support of the PSNI.

It was reported that while Adams appealed to the head (!) Martin McGuinness appealed to the heart of his audience, which must explain his incredible statement that the IRA ‘had fought the British army to a standstill’, which invites the question why the British Army didn’t call a ceasefire, decommission and disband.

To this pathetic performance the opposition could only declare how awful the decision would be – ‘against the ideals and principles of Sinn Fein’ – but then contradict their own claims by saying that they would still support the party regardless! If opposition speakers were in the least bit serious about their arguments then no reconciliation with the Adams leadership or continued membership of the Sinn Fein party would be possible. That they did not say so and did not walk out, as the majority of delegates must have known, meant that no one in the hall could have been convinced of the seriousness of what they had to say. Adams, for them, had to be right to claim that the decision to support the police was only yet another question of tactics.

If support for the PSNI was a betrayal of republican principles then opposition to it must have meant a declaration of opposition to the leadership. Unfortunately the ‘opposition’ fell back on a bedrock principle that ironically lies behind many of those who supported the motion – trust in the leadership. This in itself is a reflection of the fact that the republican movement is a defeated movement and cannot be saved or reclaimed. A vibrant, confident and critical movement would fight for its principles, not surrender them on the demand of its enemies.

Opposition

All this goes some way to explaining the failure of republicans to build an opposition to the policy of the leadership of Sinn Fein. Many have so far failed or refused to accept that opposition to the policy of the leadership means opposition to the leadership itself, and opposition to the Sinn Fein party. Just as those inside the hall performed the role of loyal opposition, many outside have played the role of a loyal public opposition. Even those declaring an intention to stand against Sinn Fein in the elections are doing so, they say, in order to get Sinn Fein to ‘see sense’ and to win them back. In effect their standing is only a form of lobbying which fails to educate Sinn Fein supporters on the enormity of the party’s betrayal and fails to put on the agenda the necessary tasks of creating an alternative.

The confusion of the opposition can be seen by the fact that such opposition includes some who still support the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement despite support for the police being written into this agreement and despite all the subsequent retreats that inevitably flowrd from this capitulation. Indeed the qualitative degeneration of the republican movement from an anti-imperialist one (with all the limitations to it that socialists have argued) to a pro-imperialist one can be dated to the original Ard Fheis decision in to support the Good Friday Agreement. This included acceptance of the unionist veto; the legitimacy of the Northern State and imperialist intervention; deletion of articles two and three of the Southern State’s constitution and pursuit of office inside a Stormont regime. Those for whom supporting the police is a bridge too far have to explain why all this was not.

They need to do this because opposition to the police and opposition to imperialism can only be grounded on opposition to the Good Friday Agreement, and its successor in the St Andrews Agreement. Such opposition requires elaborating a democratic alternative and a means of organising support for it. It means a review of the failure of the republican struggle and a determination not to suffer defeat again, not as a result of any act of will, but because of political lessons learned.

Unfortunately the republican opposition shares many of the basic assumptions that inform Sinn Fein. Ultimately the failure of Sinn Fein is a failure of nationalism and their opposition to seeing politics in class terms. A Marxist analysis tells us that the class interest of the various parties is primary and explains the interests of the British; why its involvement is accurately called imperialist, and why the various parties of the Irish capitalist class have supported it against all democratic opposition. Because class interests are primary the struggle for Irish democracy is primarily a class struggle involving all the issues facing the Irish working class. The old refrain of ‘labour must wait’ has time and time again proved self-defeating for republicans for this very reason. To address this glaring weakness the republican programme would thus have to be much more than simply a republican one, it would have to be socialist. But all the past formulations of socialist republicanism or republican socialism have tried to gloss over this fundamental choice. Left republican have always been just that – republicans with left wing opinions but a republican programme devoid of class content which uses left phrases to promote nationalist priorities.

Sinn Fein has quietly justified each surrender with the perspective of gaining political power in government North and South.

Opponents can argue that they will always be a minority in the North and doubt their ability to ever be a majority in the South, and point out that while pursuing these pipe dreams they meanwhile drop everything that makes them republican, until now there is nothing left. These objections are true but are not fundamental. The fundamental truth about Sinn Fein’s strategy is that the class interests of British imperialism means it doesn’t give a damn about the democratic rights of the Irish people and will no more feel compelled to recognise now an Irish majority in favour of its leaving than it did ninety odd years ago. The Irish capitalist class seeks no more than political stability under the tutelage of the EU and US multinationals and is also opposed to the democratic aspirations and activity of the Irish people. Its State exists to defend their class interests and cannot be used as a weapon against imperialism. Rather it exists to defend the imperialist settlement reached in 1921 and crush its opponents, something it has been doing regularly for a long time.

The truth is that the democratic aspirations once embodied by republicanism have had the context in which they could be achieved transformed by partition, the development of the capitalist economy in Ireland and the international subordination of the whole island to multinational capital. Whoever thinks national liberation means anything outside of socialist revolution at an international level is refusing to acknowledge the profound transformation Irish society has undergone. The confusion and degeneration of republican consciousness displayed in the proceedings of the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis is a result of failure to do what Gerry Adams says republicans must do – think big. Adams has no idea how big that think has to be or the transformation in republican politics that is required.

This is true for the opposition.

Traditional republicanism must change even more fundamentally than that evidenced in the Ard Fheis, but its transformation must be towards socialism, otherwise the failures of republicanism that led to this sorry conference will arise again and again as it has so often in the history of Irish republicanism.

What impresses many sincere, and not so sincere, supporters of Sinn Fein is the growth in their party.

The opposition, they remind themselves, is small and divided.

The alternative however is being prepared and is being prepared by the actions of Sinn Fein themselves. The reason why so many have opposed support for the PSNI is not primarily because these are republicans who oppose the police on principle, but because the PSNI and its actions have created republicans. The PSNI will continue to produce opponents but now with the more and more open support of Sinn Fein. In this way Sinn Fein will demonstrate to more and more nationalist workers that their hopes are not served but obstructed by this party and that if they want to advance they will be compelled to seek an alternative.

The second part of building an alternative will require the intervention of socialists over what sort of alternative this will be. A socialist movement that abstains and treats the question of imperialist domination as a republican one will fail these workers and fail itself.

The future opportunities created by this decision of Sinn Fein will only help move the cause of Irish workers forward if socialists can contribute to combating the collapse of republican consciousness and clarify the fight for an alternative. This involves drawing a clear line between our politics and those of Sinn Fein, and arguing for a democratic, socialist political alternative to this party and opposition to those who either want to remain dissidents, yet remain members of the republican family or seek to repeat the mistakes of the past with the pursuit of yet another disastrous military agenda.

The coming elections North and South present an opportunity to put this alternative. Unfortunately there is no evidence that the left intends to point out that only revolutionary change could possibly prevent future State sponsorship of sectarian murder.

There is no evidence it will present a revolutionary and anti-imperialist platform that addresses all this confusion. Socialist Democracy exists to put forward this political programme and will continue to argue against false and failed reformist conceptions whether peddled by Sinn Fein or their ‘left’ suitors.

by John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast)

‘Independent’ Monitoring Commission blasts Provos – Paisley lays out agenda for ‘new’ Ireland

Commentators on the various ‘historic turning points’ meant to restore life to the corpse of the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland often use the word ‘choreography’. Translated the term means that the agreement, and all its patches and fixes, are the product of secret diplomacy.

The deals are to be kept secret from the working class and the results gradually unveiled in a series of closely linked announcements and actions rather like a series of dance steps – hence the term choreography. The February report of the Independent Monitoring Commission was flagged up as a classic example of this process, meant to be the penultimate step in restoring a parliamentary body to head the Irish colony.

Instead the report led yet again to the pratfall – the chaotic collapse of a whole series of deals guaranteed to be rock solid, followed by the sheepish admission of failure and the next attempt at a solution kicked into the long grass.

This has been the case on each occasion that choreography has been attempted. There is always an unfortunate stumble at the end. The Provos always get the blame, even when the supposed cause, such as the Northern Bank raid, comes after Unionists have demolished the deal. The British explain regretfully that, because it is the Provo’s fault that the pact collapsed, they must make further concessions, move the agreement further to the right to meet the demands of Unionism and imperialism and begin the ‘choreography’ process all over again.

But all processes come to a conclusion. There comes a time when the Provos have been disarmed and only have the final counters of offering unconditional support for the police and state. Under these circumstances they have to ensure that each step of the final dance is set in concrete. There was a sharp sequencing to the endgame:

• Provo surrender and destruction of weapons, to be followed further on by Provo support for the police.
• Further concessions to the Provos – ‘On the run’ legislation (since collapsed) to allow fugitives to return, new ‘supercouncils’ with built-in nationalist majorities covering the Western areas giving the Provos a sort of ‘Stormont lite’ where they could hold political office, special arrangements to ensure that restorative justice organizations in nationalist areas are not too closely bolted to the RUC to avoid Provo embarrassment and the announcement that suspended parliamentary allowances are to be paid and backdated.
• Concessions to Paisley involved conciliation of the viciously sectarian ‘Love Ulster’ campaign, throwing money at bigots and paramilitaries and moves to resolve the issue of Orange parades in the interests of the sectarians. Not only are the Orange to be conciliated, but a new ‘Cultural Commission’ is to be created to oversee nationalist events such as St. Patrick’s day despite the fact that these are not in themselves sectarian. A major concession to Paisley was the October 2005 appointment of DUP nominee Bertha McDougall as chair of a new victims agency. This was a direct appointment by the British, avoiding all the normal procedures supposed to guarantee fairness in appointment.

Political concessions to Unionism

The starting point of the political concessions to Unionism go back to the Leeds Castle agreement of September 2004. In this secret agreement it was indicated that if the DUP would go into government there would be no need to support the coalition they were joining by voting for it. This deal fell through when the DUP walked away in December, but in the way of such things much greater concessions are needed now. A new settlement would have to strip out much of the tinsel and decoration offered to nationalism and leave a much more unvarnished form of the Orange state that was the status quo ante.

The concessions were to be linked to pressure on Paisley The British have threatened to disband the RIR – the local protestant militia within the British army. They threaten to hand almost half of local government over to the Provos, to impose massive cuts, price hikes and privatisation in public service and to stop the pay of Stormont MPs. US Special Envoy Mitchell Reiss was to bring the authority of President Bush to bear.

The pressure would be linked to two Independent Monitoring Commission reports. These reports, produced by the safe hands of the chair, former Alliance leader and Stomont speaker John Alderdice, would first give the Provos a progress report, designed to force the DUP into talks, followed by a second report giving them a completely clean bill of health and the go-ahead for the establishment of a new Stormont parliament.

It didn’t work out like that. The concessions to Paisley were real enough. The pressure wasn’t. A deal on the RIR is being worked out in bilateral talks with the British, with no need to agree to talks with the Provos. The DUP don’t like republicans getting office through local government reform, but it will be in the poorer areas and bolster the sectarian divisions that they depend on. The DUP waged a long campaign to disband the previous parliament and it gave them the majority position in unionism – threats of pay cuts will have no effect. The DUP have posed far more convincingly than the Provos, the unions or the left as opponents of water charges and service cuts – a dishonest populism only possible as long as they stay out of office. The British will be doing them a favour if they do all the dirty work themselves. Finally the US envoy spent his visit pressuring the Provos to support the police.

Facing reality?

The fact is that the Paisleyites want a parliament – they just don’t want one that involves sharing power with Catholics. Just before the launch of the IMC report, their own policy, Facing Reality was released. Their proposals would see the final scrapping of the Good Friday proposals in favour of a local assembly without a government – the British would continue to rule with advice from the assembly. By launching the document they were ruling out in advance any discussion of a power-sharing body or implementation of the GFA. The Paisleyite bombshell was followed by dramatic leaks from the Belfast policing board. On 13th December security minister Shaun Woodward had claimed that the IRA were no longer involved in illegal activity. He was contradicted by the deputy chief constable of the RUC/PSNI, Sam Kinkaid and involved in a row with the DUP. The result was that any positive outcome from the first IMC report was effectively negated and the possibility of direct talks with the Provos disappeared from the agenda.

Then came the IMC report itself.

On 1ST February It reported that the IRA:

• Were involved in intelligence gathering and continued to raise and manage money accumulated illegally
• That they were unofficially involved in community policing

This was followed by an endorsement:

We are of the firm view that the present PIRA leadership has taken the strategic decision to end the armed campaign and pursue the political course which it has publicly articulated. We do not think that PIRA believes that terrorism has a part in this political strategy.

Blown out the water

But any possibility that this might in the longer term be Sinn Fein’s ticket to talks with the DUP were blown out of the water by one phrase:

We have since received reports that not all PIRA’s weapons and ammunition were handed over for decommissioning in September.

What this does is blow out of the water any possibility that the second report, no matter how positive, can be the Provo’s ticket into government. In fact they are now in the invidious and impossible position of having to prove that they have no weapons! Not only that, but their last coin, support for the police and joining the policing boards, is being taken from them. At the DUP conference (in reality a victory rally) Paisley announced that the DUP would not accept Provo membership and would boycott the police committees if the Provos joined!

None of this is in any way related to a Provo threat or to the military capacity of the organisation. All agree that any remaining military capacity is minute, that fund-raising activities are being wound up and money moved into mainstream areas such as property. If the Provos are spying so what? The DUP publish daily statements based on information from police informants. The central allegation, around which the Provos back is being broken, is that there is a report that they retained weapons!

What is happening is essentially political. The IMC are unable to investigate anything and essentially put a political gloss on police and intelligence reports. What is being said is that unionism is refusing to accept the republican surrender.

The DUP are repudiating any suggestion that the decommissioning of the IRA will lead to a coalition government in some way loosely related to the Good Friday Agreement. They are not saying that no agreement is possible, but that it will be based around their proposals to have a local assembly without a government. They refuse to accept the Provos surrender until they accept that reality.

But it is not the Paisleyites who rule. What does Britain say? When challenged by the policing board they mutter reassuringly.

Their political representative ruling the police, Hugh Orde, supports the board. Faced with the IMC report they roll out General John de Chastelain and the international report to reassure everyone that the report of an arms hold-out – essentially statements of political opposition from with the RUC – have been investigated and ruled out. What we must remember is that both commissions are attempts to conciliate unionism about an issue that should require only a simple government statement, followed by acceptance by the ‘loyal’ unionists.

Benign view of Loyalist intransigence

The fact that the British spend so much time conciliating their allies and make such muted protests when their conciliation is rejected means that they have granted a veto to unionism in this area as in so many others. Their benign view of loyalist intransigence was confirmed by Secretary of State Hain’s view, immediately following the DUP conference, that he does not expect DUP leader Ian Paisley to gallop into government with Sinn Fein. He went on to say that:

What I do expect of all the parties – the DUP included – is to find a way forward where we can get the assembly up and running and thereafter power-sharing established and restored with ministerial functions being exercised by elected politicians in Northern Ireland.

Careful reading of the convoluted wording of this statement indicates that the British do not expect a fast race, nor do they expect to end at the finish line of the Good Friday agreement, but rather closer to the proposals put forward by the sectarians.

This helps to explain the outing of Denis Donaldson. At the time it was suggested that this was to protect a ‘Mr Big’. The British promptly outed six other leading republicans. Clearly the British are not outing half the republican leadership to protect the other half. The technique in use is common in interrogation.

The interrogator befriends you, only to unexpectedly deal a crippling blow. The blow is He doesn’t want a parliament that involves sharing power with Catholics intended to confuse and disorient you while at the same time telling you that you have not done enough to meet the needs of the interrogator. The republicans have not done enough. They need to do more.

What then of Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein’s ally in the nationalist family. Will they not protest the tearing up of a formal international agreement? The answer came from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern when the travelled to a meeting of Loyalists last year to assure them that, in the view of Fianna Fail, the Irish national question had been resolved. A series of Gardra raids in advance of the IMC report, targeted at republicans and said to be aimed at disrupting their financial operations was a strong hint about what Irish capital expects from Sinn Fein.

The IMC report and the events around it indicate that the promised land of a sectarian state with an equal share of sectarian privilege that the republicans signed up to is no longer on the table. The DUP are now writing the agenda and will not agree anything that does not guarantee the continuation of the sectarian supremacy and discrimination that are their stock in trade. The Stormont of old may not be achievable; a nasty little sectarian hell-hole with many of the characteristics of the past regime is now what is on offer.