Emancipation & Liberation

John McAnulty of  Socialist Democracy (Ireland) provides an example, from the Stormont administration of education, to show  how the reformed set-up  helps to still maintains sectarianism  in Northern Ireland .

 

The journey from republicanism to administration of the Northern state rested on two main planks. One was the thesis first advanced by Michael Collins in relation to partition – that it was a transitional arrangement – a stepping stone to a united Ireland.

That plank was abandoned during the last election, when Sinn Fein came out of the closet as a populist Catholic party. What was left was a belief in the second plank – a belief that the Northern state can be gradually reformed – made more democratic and with greater rights for workers. It is a very popular and widely held view.

A key plank of this perspective was advanced by Sinn Fein when they took the education portfolio and announced that they would abolish the 11+. Alas, the reform fell on its face.

The Shinners were suckered out of millions for school building by the Catholic hierarchy, who first indicated that they would end selection and then expressed amazement at a “revolt” by Catholic grammars. The revolt was so acute that a member of the reform commission was simultaneously a governor of a “revolting” grammar.

Unofficial transfer tests were instituted. This being the North, the claim of a dying sectarianism was refuted when we ended up with two tests – one Catholic and the other Protestant.

At the beginning of May Sinn Fein education minister John O’Dowd attempted to breathe life into the reform by announcing that “action would be taken” against primary schools preparing pupils for the unofficial tests. The statement was purest bluster. The action proposed was writing a stern letter. The purpose of the statement was to remind Sinn Fein supporters of the party’s claims of radicalism.

Unfortunately for Sinn Fein, First Minister Peter Robinson also has obligations to the DUP. These are to assure them that Sinn Fein’s position is entirely subordinate and that the system of sectarian and class privilege that the DUP defend in education will be preserved. Within days he announced that there was no prospect of agreement on transfer and that he would take steps to introduce a single official transfer test.

So absolutely no sign of reform in an area where a large section of the population would support it. Even where reform is agreed, as with the creation of a single Education Authority, the process is hollowed out by building the old sectarian interests inside the new body. Even then fine tuning of the different class and sectarian interests means the agreement may never be implemented.

If reform isn’t working there are plenty of things that are working. The Sinn Fein programme of austerity and of privatization of school building and of nursery provision means thousands of teacher redundancies and many school closures, with the minister reduced to rare press announcements where limited spending is counted twice or three times to announce recycled  initiatives. The massive cuts agenda rolls on. In the absence of reform of the 11+ grammars will be protected and the cuts will fall on secondary schools and on working-class areas.

The mechanism that keeps the whole show on the road is the system of sectarian privilege sponsored by the British. Sinn Fein no longer blather about taking the first ministers position – such a development would be likely to collapse the agreement. Indeed recent amendments bar them forever from the justice ministry and they no longer bid for major financial ministries. The party has become a sinecure in education because of the endless opportunities for patronage. In outside society the community relations council report progress while recording the rise of sectarian peace walls from 22 to 88 and the increasing racism in civil society.

Claims of reform and of progress are now the new ideology.  Even suggestions by members of the administration of the humdrum banality of sectarianism and class war in golf clubs led to roars of disapproval and hasty retractions. All is well is the best of all possible worlds while sectarianism festers and austerity bites.

 16 May 2012

 

This article, written by John McAnulty , first appeared in the March/April issue of Socialist Democracy (Ireland)

 

 

The 2011 elections in the North of Ireland marked a substantial victory for capitalism. It marked the first point where one Stormont administration morphed into another via

election, without the  collapse of the government.

 

That modest success quickly became a much more substantial victory. The election was preceded by the killing of a Catholic police constable by republicans and the election

was settled in advance in a wave of hysteria where, church, state, political parties, sporting and cultural bodies, and trade unions all united to indicate rabid support for the

new dispensation and to assert, yet again, that the only alternative to the sectarian and colonial settlement was bloody war.  The election result saw the consolidation of Sinn

Fein and the DUP in power and the continuing decay of the other capitalist parties. The small socialist movement no longer opposes the settlement and the candidates looked

to be Left representatives in the assembly rather than a focus of opposition to it. The republican organization, Eirigi, staged a political opposition in some limited areas but has

yet to consolidate that  base.

 

The election victory was all the more substantial when one considers that the DUP and Sinn Fein went into the election promising an austerity programme of £400 million.

The new administration faced a major public sector strike and mass demonstrations in November, but the union leaderships, with a long history of partnership, quickly

returned to negotiating the implementation of the cuts.

 

So, on neither the grounds of the national question and democracy, nor on grounds of austerity and class oppression, does the Northern administration face any serious

opposition.  This however is not enough to guarantee the final victory of imperialism. To assess the stability of the settlement we need to look at the underlying mechanisms.

 

One element of instability is the increasing sectarian polarisation of Northern society. In a political system organized around sectarian rights, support gravitates towards the

most effective exponents of these rights. As a result the SDLP and Ulster Unionist parties are in terminal decline, with the most recent leader of the Unionists resigning after 18

months in office.

 

Politics has simplified itself to two large confessional blocks of the DUP and Sinn Fein. The Alliance Party, which claimed to stand outside sectarianism, has been plugged in

as permanent “neutral” holders of the justice ministry. In fact they act as proxies for the DUP.

 

The sectarian structure is usually in a state of paralysis. Only reactionary legislation which is in the class interest of both groups gets through ­ relaxation of planning laws,

reduced rates for small business, a plan to subsidize corporation tax and, of course, a £400 million austerity programme. A promised “peace dividend” boom

turned out to be a property bubble that has now imploded.

 

The original claim of Sinn Fein, that the settlement was a stepping stone to a united Ireland, has been discredited. Owen Paterson, British Secretary of State, announced that

there were no plans of any sort to hold a referendum on the ending of Partition, much to the displeasure of Sinn Fein. The news caused hardly a ripple. In the aftermath of

the election, Sinn Fein came out of the closet as a fully formed bourgeois Catholic party. The evolution is exactly in line with the new middle class, who accept British rule and

that Unionists will get the majority of any share­out, but are perfectly content as long as their share of patronage is guaranteed.

 

The general view is that the northern statelet will gradually evolve through slow reforms towards a less sectarian society.  The evidence is against this also. A programme of

cohesion, meant to be top of the agenda, has been stalled for years and initial drafts heavily criticized for their sectarian content and indifference to human rights. Provocative

Orange marches lead to annual crises. The jewel in Sinn Fein’s crown – a non-­selective education system – has proved impossible to deliver.

 

In fact the stabilizing mechanism in the current set­up is the willingness of Sinn Fein, and nationalists generally, to recognize unionism as top dog.  A British commission

suggested that there be a reform of the prison officers, almost entirely Protestant, mired in brutality and sectarianism. That reform would be purely symbolic. It was

immediately ruled out by first minister, Peter Robinson, who indicated that traditional imperialist symbols would remain.

 

The prison reform was supposed to mirror the Patton reforms of the police, but just how spurious that reform was, was revealed when it was disclosed that 500 officers, at

the heart of an organisation seen to be involved in sectarian killing and removed by the payment of what was described as the world’s most lavish redundancy package, had

immediately been rehired as civilian advisors in the same posts. A report by the Joseph Rowntree foundation in February has indicated that the composition of the police

force is in any case falling from the high point of 33% Catholic recruitment, with Catholic police more likely to leave the force.

 

The freedom for the DUP to set the agenda is not reflected in similar freedom for Sinn Fein.

Shortly after the police row the Sinn Fein mayor of Belfast, Niall Ó Donnghaile, was forced to make an abject apology when, while awarding Duke of Edinburgh medals, he

arranged for someone else to present an award to a British army cadet. In case the apology did not stick, Martin McGuinness repeated it in Stormont.

 

The top dog mechanism does not stop in the Assembly.  It extends to the streets. In June last year the UVF staged a mass attack on the nationalist enclave of Short Strand.

The organizers were rushed to meetings with the First and Deputy First Ministers and offered major concessions.  UVF trials involving almost the entire leadership

collapsed  when the judge interpreted the evidence on the narrowest of grounds, allowing them to continue as the “representatives of the protestant working class”  and to

set up to head  civic society and receive grants in loyalist areas. Recently a feud has broken out in the UVF, with attempted assassinations and bomb attacks ignored by

the authorities. A  shocking event, where a film crew were attacked by a mob because some extras were Catholics and one young man almost beaten to death, was quickly

covered up. One Unionist MLA dismissed it as a storm in a teacup.

 

Similar tolerance is not extended to republicans. Protestors against Orange demonstrations face punitive sentences. Marian Price is interned in solitary confinement for

holding a piece of paper.

 

The picture painted above is one of corruption but not of collapse. There are many mechanisms supporting the settlement. Much of the complacency in the face of corruption is

based on widespread bribery and the distribution of peace funds.

 

The system has the frantic support of the Irish bourgeoisie, as evidenced by their hysteric adulation of the British Queen and by the campaign to support the Shinners by joining

Ireland’s foremost cultural event, the Fleadh Cheoil, to the British ‘City of Culture’ in Derry.

 

The nationalist population, who used to have an anti­imperialist and democratic tradition, has largely internalised the confessional understanding on which the political

institutions are based.  Many believe in a benign sectarianism where resources can be shared out while avoiding violence and conflict. Capitulation is presented as cultural

reconciliation.

 

The Irish trade union movement is highly bureaucratised and linked to the state. It gives unconditional support to the new institutions and is rabidly hostile to any challenge.

 

There are elements that indicate that the life­span of the new statelet is not indefinite. The prestige of the Irish bourgeoisie is in decline. At the time of the peace process they

rode the ‘Celtic Tiger’. Now they lead a merciless offensive on Irish workers. The price paid by Sinn Fein has been the decay of their northern working class base. This has

expressed itself as apathy, but there are signs of a minor resurgence in republicanism that may eat away at the Shinners. They hope to continue their advanceby becoming the

new Fianna Fail party in the South, but even in the remote event they are successful, they will quickly be forced to give up their attempts to base themselves in working ­class

areas.  The dominant factor is the crisis of the working­ class organisations. The traditional organisations have been unable to adapt to the crisis of capitalism.  A new

movement is on its way that will head a massive confrontation between labour and capital on a world scale. This renewal, expressed in Ireland, will pose a major challenge

to the imperialist settlement.

 

In any case Marxists have the duty we have tried to express in this article, to strip away the mask of hypocrisy and pretence that obscures the Irish peace process and unveil

the savage mechanisms of sectarianism, colonialism and class interest that lie beneath.

(see http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/Bulletins.html#SD%20Bulletin%20March%202012)

 

 

A REPUBLICAN RE-ALIGNMENT

John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy – Ireland)

Shortly before Elizabeth Windsor’s visit to Dublin, the death of police officer Ronan Kerr led to a moral panic across Ireland, with demonstrations in support of the status quo and with the great and the good claiming all Irish society was under threat. In the Assembly elections which followed a new republican layer, opposed to Sinn Fein, marked up an unexpected vote. In the aftermath of the elections there has been a ramping up of state action, with statements of support for republican militarists seen as criminal acts in themselves, leading to a series of arrests.

Yet the background of the republican resistance has been one of
weakness. The republican groups have been slow to split from the
Provos, as they have split in successive waves they have fragmented,
riddled with informers and suspicious of each other. The aim has been
to resume the failed military struggle of the Provos on a smaller
scale, their explanation of the Provo collapse limited to calls of
treachery and British agents within the movement. Much of their
activity has been aimed at Sinn Fein supporters, calling on them to
return to the military struggle.

The standard claim is that these groups lack any support, yet they
have steadily grown. Old leaders have moved on, young people have been
recruited, the level of state intelligence has declined, the number of
bombs and hoaxes steadily risen. A steady pool of recruits has come
from ex-prisoners unable to adapt to the system of patronage run by
the Provos and from ghetto youth who found the bigotry and
discrimination of the new Northern Ireland little different from the
old. Control of areas in Belfast, Derry and Lurgan slipped from the
hands of the Provos. It was the emergence of this youth layer that led
to last year’s savage confrontations around Orange parades. A semi-secret dance is taking place. The republicans see increasing state repression as drawing in the mass of working class nationalists.

The state, aware of this danger, depend on the Provos, the church and Irish capital to isolate the republicans and allow focused
intelligence. So far this strategy has been successful, but the price
is a growing alienation of sections of nationalist youth, an
alienation strengthened by the asymmetric response by the state to
violence. The fact that the UVF have not disarmed, their role in
sectarian violence and the willingness of unionist politicians to
justify the sectarians all pass with only a muted response.

A more general problem is that the “peace dividend” – the economic
boom that was supposed to follow in the wake of the peace process,
never materialized. A property and credit bubble has come and gone,
unemployment is steadily rising and the Assembly is about to unleash
savage cuts in public services endorsed by Sinn Fein and the DUP. To
add insult to injury both parties endorse an enormous subsidy to
private businesses from the public purse to fund a reduction in
corporation tax. The economic vice is closing especially on young
people and a growing alienation is to be expected.

What has reduced the impact of the republicans has been the apolitical
and militarist nature of their campaign. No-one wants to return to a
blood bath, and that is all they seem to offer. What they count as
success – the killing of police and British troops – is used by their
opponents to strengthen the northern state, with Sinn Fein, the media
and all the forces of capitalist society, hammering home the message
that the only alternative to the sectarian and colonial settlement now
in place is a return to war.

All the evidence indicates that the May assembly elections were fought
and won in the furore around Constable Kerr’s killing. Sinn Fein were
able to further clarify their support for the state. The trade union
leaderships and sections of the left, by joining in the hysteria,
dismissed the possibility of a socialist alternative. Nationalist
organizations vied with each other in calling for new recruits for the
police. The republican groups largely remained silent. Eirigi issued a
statement indicating that they did not advocate a military campaign
and were attacked by Sinn Fein supporters for not going on to advocate
the use of informers and state repression of the republican
militarists.

When the elections came they were largely an afterthought and Sinn
Fein and the DUP romped home with large majorities. In the aftermath
of the elections the state has stepped up levels of repression.
Veteran republican Marian Price, a prisoner released as part of the
Good Friday agreement, has had her license revoked and been returned
to prison because she held a written speech transcript at a militarist
demonstration. A student was jailed for being in a van used by a
republican colour party.

However there was one exception. A substantial and unexpected vote was
recorded for the republican group Eirigi in the west Belfast council
elections – a political shift that was partly reflected in a large
vote for the People before Profit candidate in the Assembly elections
held alongside. The West Belfast result was accompanied by substantial
votes in Fermanagh, mid-ulster and Newry with a number of councillors
supporting the Eirigi program being elected.

Eirigi differs from the other republican groups in that it was formed
in a political split with class issues behind them, being formed in
inner city Dublin in opposition to a policy of coalition in a right-
wing Fianna Fail government. It fought the council elections by
explicitly ruling out a military campaign, by opposing the local
Stormont assembly and calling for opposition to the Sinn Fein/DUP
program of cuts.

There is obviously room for a republican movement to expand further,
but it must be borne in mind that any political movement will have to
withstand the assaults that will constantly try to link them to
military adventures, the tendencies within republicanism that tend
towards militarism and that the modest electoral gains in the North
have to be set against the enormous triumph registered by British and
Irish capitalism in the Assembly elections.

It should also be added that the current program of the republicans is
not far removed from that of left members of the Provos in the past. That program is obviously insufficient. The Sinn Fein and the DUP cuts
will lead to mass discontent that will seek an alternative, but a new
movement will have to face the class struggle around the bankruptcy of
the 26 county state and will have to seek common ground with the
socialist movement and confront the unionism and acceptance of
partition that defines sections of that movement. In the north the
frantic support of the revamped colony shown by the Catholic middle
classes gives the lie to any idea that revolutionary nationalism will
prove a mechanism for dealing with the vicious class struggle involved
in any struggle against partition.

Two telling local reports give a flavour of the current struggle. One
indicated that a majority of Catholics would vote for the continuation
of the British presence. The other indicated that the Belfast West
constituency, after 30 years of Provo electoral advance, remained one
of the most deprived areas in the north.

The potential for revolt is there. The appearance of a political
resistance from within republicanism creates a pressure for a
political representation of marginalised working class nationalists
and a discussion of class politics. A new republican movement will
force the socialist movement to acknowledge that Ireland remains a
country dominated by imperialism and it is in this context that a
working class program must be advanced.

22 June 2011 -

This article was originally written for ‘Permanent Revolution’ and was reprinted in the online version of ‘Fourthwrite’

John McAnulty of Socialist Democracy (Ireland) assesses the political impact of the return of physical force republicanism, after the killings in Antrim and Craigavon

There has been a united response by all the Irish and British political parties to the killing of British soldiers in Antrim and the later killing of a policeman in Craigavon. They all say that:

1. Republican militarists have nothing to offer.
2. The militarists have no support
3. The political process in the North of Ireland is secure.
4. Only one of these assertions is true.

It is true that the militarists offer absolutely no way forward for Irish workers. It is not true to assert that they have no support, nor that the political process is secure. In fact, it is precisely because the political settlement is failing that the militarists are gaining in support.

It is highly unlikely that any outside the most frantic of Sinn Fein supporters believed that that the end result of the peace process would be a united Ireland. What they all believed was that that the Northern statelet could be reformed to become a more equal society. Right from the beginning that proved too much. Democratic rights were mutated by the Good Friday Agreement into supposedly equal sectarian and communal rights. It was a settlement that didn’t give enough to Britain’s Unionist base and it was tweaked towards Unionist majority rule in the St. Andrews Agreement.

During St. Andrews the DUP agreed to devolve policing and justice and Sinn Fein were promised sops around a centre recording the hunger strike, a unified sports stadium and an Irish language act. It proved impossible to get the DUP administration to honour these promises and a Sinn Fein work-to-rule blocking the functioning of the Executive failed. The British gave substantial backhanders to compensate them. More recently, alongside the decision to block any full investigation of state terror came an offer of £12,000 to the relatives of those killed. Unionist outcry led to the withdrawal of the offer. Even the backhanders have dried up. On the economic front the shootings led the Sinn Fein and DUP leaders to cancel an investment tour of the USA – one of many such trips, all failures, serving to underline the absence of any real economic strategy for the North of Ireland.

This has not led to a mass nationalist rejection of the Northern settlement. The Irish capitalists will support any imperialist plan. The power of the Catholic Church has greatly increased under the sectarian setup. The middle class wallow in sectarian privilege marked by ‘equality’ positions in public service, earmarked for one confessional group or the other. Sinn Fein itself has a backbone of ‘community workers’ paid by the state.

A minority of republicans have rejected Sinn Fein and the partitionist settlement, aiming to revive a military campaign against British rule. They have been completely ineffective because of the demoralisation caused by decades of militarism and state repression,because of their fragmented and divided movement, and because of the absence of support. Above all, the total absence of any political program has fatally handicapped them.

Aroma of corruption

They are still not large, but they have now seen the exodus of the last of the militarists holding on in the Provos. More generally there is a growing revulsion at the aroma of corruption around Sinn Fein. A growing number of working class youth are unable to see the new world that the Shinners promised. The result of that growth is that state intelligence has degraded. They still know the old hands, but have only partial penetration of the new cells. There is also the growth of a new infrastructure of supporters willing to provide money, intelligence, safe houses and weapons dumps.

For all that, their opponents are right when they say that republican militarism offers no way forward. In the tradition of pure physical force republicanism, the Real IRA boast that they have no political organisation. Without a thought they include pizza delivery men as targets, apparently unaware of the extent to which the policy of the ‘soft target’ demoralised their own supporters and besmirched the name of republicanism in the past. They have no explanation, other than betrayal, for the abysmal failure of decades of military struggle and the relatively easy absorption of their compatriots into the structure of colonial rule. Above all they seemcompletely unaware that the southern capitalists are the most frantic supporters of the settlement and the chief mechanism through which the political dissolution of the Provos was obtained.

Yet within the narrow grounds of the physical force tradition, the republicans have a clear strategy. Their military capacity represents nothing in relation to British military might, but they believe that even a low level of activity will be enough to bring down the new Stormont regime. A major target is Sinn Fein. The dissident republicans calculate that the pressures of their campaign will collapse the organisation and win supporters to the RIRA. They also calculate that it will act as a recruiting sergeant, bringing disaffected nationalist youth into their ranks.

Speeding up a drive to the right

Politically their belief that armed action can bring down the northern statelet makes little sense. It is true that the Good Friday Agreement has been decaying since its inception, but it has been decaying to the right, into a more naked and reactionary expression of imperialist interest, driven by increasing unionist reaction and republican capitulation. Militarism can only play the traditional role of accelerating the political process – in this case speeding up a drive to the right.

A sign of that drive came quickly, with what one reporter called ‘Martin McGuinness’s ‘Michael Collins moment’. (Collins was a leading figure in the Irish War of Independence, who then led the Free State repression of the republicans). McGuinness called the dissident republicans “traitors to the island of Ireland”. He called on his supporters to inform on them and to support state repression. He claimed that the new dispensation guaranteed political progress, despite being unable to show any such progress other than the presence of themselves and their supporters within the state apparatus. Such was the determination of Sinn Fein to prove their worth that they did not stop with assurances to the British and DUP. A special meeting with representatives of the loyalist paramilitaries brought them in on the act. Apparently the fact that the loyalists retain a full arsenal of weapons aimed at Catholic workers is no longer a cause for censure.

Sinn Fein have little choice. They themselves are targets of the dissident republicans. Any suggestion that the Good Friday process failed would lead to the collapse of their organisation. They must support instant state repression in the hope that it quickly defeats the militarists. In any case, any hesitation on their part might well lead to their expulsion fromthe administration. British Tory leader, David Cameron, has already indicated that he wants to replace the current forced coalition of Sinn Fein and DUP with a ‘voluntary coalition’ – in other words, unionist majority rule. So already we have a step-change to the right. The Irish peace process has left behind any pretence that jaw-jaw will be enough to sustain it. There is to be war-war in the form of state repression. This new dispensation will be spearheaded by Sinn Fein and will enjoy widespread public support.

In the short term the militarists have strengthened the imperialist settlement. In the long run there are still many contradictions. Sinn Fein will be isolated from significant sections of the nationalist working class and will continue to decay. The state will want to target the repression so that the dissident republicans are isolated, but this will be difficult to do given the intelligence deficit. The DUP leadership has welcomed the Provos role in spearheading the reaction, but that does not mean they will reward them by supporting any reform. At the grass-roots the reaction of many members of the DUP to the attacks will be to look for Sinn Fein’s expulsion from the administration.

The Irish peace process will continue its march to the right. A military campaign offers no solution, but then neither does the position of their opponents, which offers frantic support to the British and denounces any political criticism of the settlement as a form of terrorism.

Trade union demonstrations on the days following the deaths illustrated this perfectly. They went well beyond protests about the shooting of the two workers, or more general protests about militarism, to hysterical calls by TU leader, Peter Bunting, for unconditional support for the sectarian status quo. In an even more extreme development, Patricia McKeown of UNISON claimed that the trade unions would act as ‘civic society’ in coordination with the state to make the repression successful.

The widespread hysteria from all sides is not aimed at the relative handful of militarists. The disquiet about the corrupt society that has been brought into existence is much wider. A consistent theme of the supporters of the current settlement has been to demonise the opposition and attempt toconvince workers that the only alternative to supporting the status quo is a sectarian bloodbath. It is this unconditional support for an imperialist settlement, rather than a criticism of militarism that makes this Sinn Fein’s ‘Michael Collins moment’ and makes the organisation an obstacle to the resolution of the Irish question.

The settlement in the North of Ireland is not a democratic settlement. It hardly pretends any longer to be one, depending on popular rejection of a failed militarism and on unconditional support for the state from the formerly anti-imperialist opposition. That’s not enough to prevent its eventual collapse. The former radicals bay their hatred of the militarists, but by blocking any political critique they are telling the disaffected and marginalised that only physical force remains as a response. It is for socialists and democrats to prove the former radicals wrong and build a political opposition.

On Sunday, February 21st, 120,000 workers answered the call of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and took to the streets of Dublin. John McAnulty, of Socialist Democracy (Ireland), makes his assessment of both the potential and the political limitations of this massive demonstration.

It has become unfashionable to speak of working class power. Asserting the power and potential of the working class provokes laughter or leads to the speaker being derided as a mindless doctrinaire.

Yet on Sunday 21st, on the streets of Dublin, we saw working class power – 120,000 working people marching in their own defence. Nor were these people a mindless mob. Working class power stood alongside working class organisation. The marchers stood together in occupations, in union branch and factory groups, as town and country groups. Given that they represent the sentiment of the majority of organised workers in the country, it would have been the work of an afternoon to displace the current government of capitalist crooks and take control of the state.

All that was needed was the will. That will was absent. It is that task – the task of convincing workers of the need to take state power – that is at the centre of socialist politics. It is that task that is so difficult.

It was clear from the demonstration that the majority were firmly behind the policy of the bureaucracy – accepting the need for cuts but looking for a fairer settlement. This was reflected in banners, placards and even T-shirts: ‘Can do our bit – can’t take the whole hit’, ‘Fair deal, not raw deal’, ‘Levy too heavy’ and ‘A better, fairer way’ (to cut wages and services). There was also a conviction that lobbying the government would lead to them changing direction – many marchers did not wait for speeches, but turned and walked away. Many were disinterested in the left publications

For their part, the bureaucracy were absolutely open about their aims. Their spokesperson announced that the purpose of the march was to get back around the table with government. ICTU had published its ten-point plan – a fairer way for the workers to support the bankers. At the rally, ICTU General Secretary, David Begg, announced that the bureaucracy’s plan was the best way to achieve the government aims. ‘It’s the best offer you’ll get,’ he said. There seems little doubt about that.

Yet things are not well, and the bureaucracy’s fear of self-organisation of the working class probably exceeds that of the government. What we saw in Dublin was the last gasp of the Irish Ferries strategy – mass demonstrations as bargaining chips to gain a place at the bosses’ table, followed by a sell-out.

The workers support a fair outcome, but what they mean by this is very different from the bureaucracy’s perspective. They expect that the cutting edge of the crisis will be blunted – that their jobs and pensions will be protected and public services protected. They believe that the capitalists can be forced into paying a large proportion of the bank bail out.

These expectations must fall. The workers are the source of wealth and across the world the strategy is to make them pay. The only way that capitalists can be made to pay is through a process of sequestration and expropriation – the first steps towards a socialist society.

In the coming period union leaders will either strike a deal and lead the offensive against the workers or they will be refused a place at the table and gradually defuse mass opposition. In any case it is the duty of socialists and class-conscious workers to build an independent movement around an alternative working class program.

Far too many of the current left organisations are simply acting as left supporters of the bureaucracy.

www.SocialistDemocracy.org

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.

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.

John McAnulty analyses what Sinn Fein and the IRA are signing up for

Tony Blair managed to avoid saying that the hand of history was on his shoulder, but even without that there was enough overblown bombast from London, Washington and Dublin to reward the Provisional republican leadership for their 28th July announcement effectively disbanding the IRA. No-one managed to outdo Alex Reid, the Catholic priest who lubricated the Provisionals’ transition from revolutionary nationalism to co-operation with imperialism. He claimed that the statement marked the end of the centuries of Irish resistance to colonial rule!

The Provisional leadership did their bit to add to the bombast, with simultaneous announcements from the four corners of the earth and a special website where cheesy smiles from their collection of TDs, MLAs, MPs and Euro MPs subliminally suggested that the three decades of death and pain could be justified by the electoral gains of their political current. Concessions from the British tried to keep the party mood going – wanted republicans (on the run) would be allowed to return to their homes. Repressive legislation specific to the North will be disbanded – much has now been incorporated into the general framework of law in Britain itself. Prominent British military installations were dismantled. More troops will be withdrawn, leaving a still adequate garrison. The British promise to disband the Royal Irish Regiment, descendent of the infamous B Specials, if the security situation permits and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has promised legislation to allow northern representatives to speak in the Dail on matters directly concerning them. On the streets however the mood among nationalist workers was one of indifference. The road to republican surrender involved the demobilisation and depoliticisation of the mass of their members, retreats by the organisation are telegraphed months in advance and are the subject of secret mass counselling meetings to drain out all the negative feelings of the membership.

No political rewards

However there are no real political rewards for their surrender. All the structures and trappings, the comic-opera Stormont assembly and ministerial positions lie in ruins. The Provos surrender because they must, because Tony Blair, following the May elections and the Paisleyite victory, had torn up the Good Friday Agreement and announced to the Westminster Parliament that he was considering a new strategy that would exclude Sinn Fein from power. London, Washington and Dublin now insisted on surrender and had started to apply the whip to force a response. Rita O’Hare, who travelled to Washington to announce the glad tidings, had recently been barred as a warning that the US welcome was beginning to wear thin.

Dublin minister Michael McDowell had led a sustained attack on behalf of the Irish government, outing Adams and others as members of the army council and indicating that IRA activity would permanently bar Sinn Fein from a junior role in coalition with Irish capital. Sean Kelly was imprisoned to remind the IRA that most of their members were prisoners out on licence and that they could all be imprisoned at the whim of the British. Kelly was released when the British were informed that that the surrender statement was on its way. In a similar way the fate of three republicans arrested in Colombia and charged with training FARC guerrillas has ebbed and flowed with Sinn Fein’s approval rating in Washington. The surrender statement was quickly followed by their appearance, free in Ireland.

The political reward for surrender, to use the word reward loosely, is that Sinn Fein can rejoin the capitalist alliance that designed the Good Friday Agreement – London, Dublin and Washington, and work with them on plan B – persuading Unionism and Loyalism to install Ian Paisley as Prime Minister and agree to include Sinn Fein in the coalition government.

The fact that this crazy project is taken seriously, despite being denounced by Paisley at every turn, is a sign of imperialism’s desperation to cobble together a settlement and of the collapse of political understanding in Ireland. The project contains a number of implicit assumptions that, once stated, stretch the bounds of credulity.

A rational Unionism

The first assumption is that the aim of Unionism is to reach a stable political accommodation with nationalism and that it is a rational organisation able to agree and operate such an accommodation.
This is false. Unionism does not operate as a political philosophy but as a conspiracy to enforce sectarian division and political and economic power. The old Stormont regime applied across-the-board discrimination against Catholics and used pogroms and all-out state repression to prevent revolt. When that revolt eventually arrived it began to debate a strategy of making concessions to retain power. In over three decades, starting with Terence O’Neill, every leader who suggested concession was overthrown from the right. The British built the Good Friday Agreement around the concept of a moderate unionism willing to do a deal with Irish capitalism and thus ensure the indefinite survival of their sectarian statelet. They got the unlikely figure of Trimble and then his slow fall under pressure from forces to the right of him and now they have the full-blown bigotry of Ian Paisley with Empey, the assassin of Trimble, in supporting role.

Now the British have built the present plan around the ghost of moderate unionism. There may not be any moderates about, but there is a widespread recognition that the sheer size of the nationalist minority requires a modification of sectarian rule and some accommodation with Irish capital. Reg Empey made a point of recognising this in his acceptance speech. Behind the scenes Nigel Dodds and Peter Robinson have made similar noises. The idea is that if unionism is placated they will eventually produce some compromise that the republicans can sign up to.

However the last 30 years carries eloquent evidence of the inability of unionism to advance any compromise, no matter how clearly this would defend their long-term interests. The present leadership of both the DUP and UUP are the outcome of generations of selection where the road to power lay in toppling the leader who showed the slightest ambiguity in their defence of sectarianism.

‘No selfish, strategic or economic interest’

Behind the false assumption of unionist accommodation is another false assumption – the keystone of the present process – the statement by Britain that it has no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Ireland. It follows that its intention in the present process is to withdraw from Ireland, that it will not tolerate Unionist obstruction and that, if Unionists refuse an accommodation, the British will punish them.

This again is false.

The British fought a 30-year war which cost billions and have now spent another decade of intense political activity trying to get their ramshackle deal to work. It is worth this amount of effort because the northern economy is essentially part of the British economy and, however much it costs the state, levels of profit at the level of individual firms are very healthy, because the British retain a very significant stake in the core elements of the Southern economy, because a stable capitalist Ireland is a central concern of the British state and because Britain, as the former colonial power, is looked to by the other powers to guarantee order in this part of the world.

The mechanism by which Britain meets its political objectives is the occupation of part of the Island and that in turn depends on the active support on a mass unionist base that legitimises the occupation. This in turn means that, in every situation where a unionist leader suggests any level of accommodation with nationalism, the British conciliate the right wing. They tried to save Trimble by bending the Good Friday agreement to the right. Each concession merely emboldened the ultra-bigots and left Paisley and Empey as the leadership of the DUP and OUP respectively. Are we to ask which one of these is the moderate?

This has very direct implications for the coming political negotiations in September and January. They are not in any sense a matter of laying down the law to Unionism, of forcing them to accept reform or of punishing them. What is planned is that the British will create an environment where the Unionists will feel able to agree to some form of coalition government. This in turn will involve moving further from the Good Friday model and towards the preferred unionist models of either an assembly without government, where the sectarian groups lobby the British, or a giant county council with a majority unionist leadership and nationalists in committee chairs.

Provo duplicity

This British strategy is based around a further assumption, one that they don’t believe themselves. That is that it is duplicity and intransigence by the Provos that have caused the difficulty in the implementation of the Good Friday agreement. This again is false. For example, the British routinely talk of the £26 million Northern bank heist as having brought down the last attempt to form a local government. In fact the heist occurred after Ian Paisley had exploded the agreement. The same mechanism has occurred at each of the numerous crises that finally demolished the Good Friday Agreement. The unionists refused to implement the deal and the British, using the ‘Independent Monitoring Committee’ set up by themselves, provided cover by seizing on some, often quite routine, elements of IRA activity as post facto justification for unionist intransigence. However this British assertion is key in understanding how the mechanism of normalisation will proceed.

Political negotiations will be held to construct a local assembly in the North of Ireland with the aim of placing the arch-bigot Paisley, or his nominee, in the post of first minister. The foundation of these talks will be the surrender of the IRA. However the British have already indicated that the words of the declaration will be meaningless on their own. The future of the negotiations will depend on the actions of the IRA in disarming, winding up military structures and activities and ceasing money-laundering activities. The final word on these issues will lie with the British, through the mechanism of the IMC. Given that the IRA will depend on British cover on a number of issues – the armed section retained to provide protection for the leadership, the army structures needed to ensure the loyalty of volunteers and the financial activities that will need time to be legitimised – it should be self-evident that the British will be in total control of the negotiations and their outcome.

Their immediate aim, already expressed, is to explore what is meant by ‘democratic means’. The IRA are too deeply penetrated to represent a significant military threat. The importance of the surrender statement is its unconditional recognition of the democratic credentials of the British colony. At the moment this is a passive recognition. The next step is active support of the state forces, membership of the police and of the policing boards. Police chief Hugh Orde issued this call immediately after the IRA statement, somewhat indiscreetly confirming that Sinn Fein are already secretly in contact and co-operating with the police at every level.

Republican police

The fact is the republicans have already begun to fulfil a number of policing roles. No sooner were the elections over than both unionist parties indicated that the ‘right’ to sectarian provocation with Orange marches was a precondition to further talks. Immediately local committees in Derry reached an ‘historic agreement’ accepting an Orange march in the town. The republicans policed the violent reaction of nationalist youth, as they now routinely do in Ardoyne.

There are difficulties for a republican police. A feud amongst loyalist groups over control of drugs in which three people have died throws into sharp relief the unremitting sectarianism of the northern state and the continuing sectarian privilege of the loyalist groups.

The rationale for official indifference is that there is no question of these groups being in government, but this ignores the fact that the British pump millions of pounds into their coffers to buy them off and provide a whole network of ‘community’ structures to give them political influence.
In the ongoing feud a group of loyalists were able to take over a Belfast estate and force families out while the police looked on. The fact that the Garnerville estate is beside the police headquarters underlines the immunity the state extends to loyalism.

The call from police, unionists and the British is for conciliation – that is that criminal gangs should divide up drug zones by negotiation while the state stands aside.

A permanent atmosphere of sectarian intimidation permeates the North. Political unionism bedecks the local councils with Union Jacks. The loyalist groups repeat the exercise on the streets and follow it up with low-level ethnic cleansing.

Just how little northern society has changed was shown by the proposal to hold a republican march in Ballymena, a key Paisleyite base. The proposal was followed by a series of bomb attacks on local Catholic businesses and sectarian graffiti at local churches. The British, through the Parades Commission, having supported thousands of coat-trailing Orange marches, directed that the march stay within the confines of the only nationalist estate.

Sinn Fein’s willingness to conciliate unionism in the interests of the bigger picture and the embryonic police structures they have set up in nationalist areas indicates that they will increasingly find themselves in conflict with their own working class base.

Reform?

The fourth assumption within the normalisation process, the one the republican leadership believe themselves, is that it is a process of reform. They understand that they have agreed to support the sectarian colony in the North but believe that it is to be a reformed colony, where a share of sectarian rights for nationalists will, over time, translate into a united Ireland. If this were the case then the promise to disband the Royal Irish Regiment would be of great significance. The removal of what is essentially a Protestant militia within the British army would significantly weaken the Northern state. But this is not the experience provided by the Good Friday Agreement. The promise that the police will in the far future be 50% Catholic still stands but has been eroded around the edges, with the pledge to disband the RUC reserve abandoned and the civilian workers within the police excluded from the deal.

More significantly the police still fulfil their traditional role, with the standard sectarian reflex to Orange marches and loyalist intimidation. Hugh Orde recently announced that Orangemen have the right to walk and nationalists the right to ineffective protest – word for word the policy of the Orange Order. Police policy is that intimidation involving loyalist flags fixed at the victim’s doorway is not a policing matter but ‘community relations’. Moreover, if you remove the flag you are committing theft and must return the flags to the sectarian aggressors!

With this background it is likely that the disbandment announcement is a ploy by the British – in one stroke convincing republicans that real gains are on offer and on the other hand sending a wakeup call to Paisley that loyalism needs to be represented at the September talks.

You only surrender once. Only for one day do your former enemies clap you on the back and congratulate you on your statesmanship and far-sightedness. Within a few days it is business as usual. The future looks grim for the Provisional leadership. The British have them by the throat in the negotiations, able, through the IMC, to indicate at any time the status of the IRA ceasefire and to reward or punish Sinn Fein accordingly. Irish justice minister Michael McDowell has already indicated that there will be no letup in the massive financial investigation into IRA affairs in the 26 counties. Most significantly of all Taoiseach Bertie Ahern issued a statement reiterating his view that their would be no united Ireland in his lifetime. Ahern is not making a prediction or stating an opinion. He is enunciating the policy of southern capital, now determined to remove a united Ireland from the agenda and to underline for Sinn Fein exactly what they are signing up for in their subservient relationship to Dublin, London and Washington.

John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast) analyses the election campaigns run by political parties for the Northern Ireland Assembly and what the results mean for the Good Friday Agreement.

The results

The outcome of the elections in the North of Ireland, in factual terms, is simple enough.

• 1. Among nationalists Sinn Fein triumphed over the traditional leadership of the SDLP
• 2. The DUP scored a significant victory over its rivals in the UUP and emerged as the largest party.
• 3. There was a collapse in the vote of the smaller parties.
• 4. There is now a significant two-thirds majority among unionists against the Good Friday Agreement and the progress towards a final British settlement in Ireland has now ground to a halt.

There is however one overwhelming fact that dominates even the significant changes registered by the election. After the seemingly pointless election to a structure that would not exist lies the bare bones of British colonial rule led by Secretary of State, Paul Murphy. He will certainly maintain the suspension of the Assembly, in effect collapsing for a fifth time the discredited structures of an Agreement that supposedly resolved for all time the question of Irish self-determination. This close down will mark the final and formal switch-off of the life support for an Agreement that has been dead for some time. It will not re-emerge, even in the battered and distorted form that the British had twisted it into, as they constantly squeezed it to the right in an attempt to placate unionism. The idea that there is some formula that will lead Ian Paisley to form a government with Sinn Fein is sheerest fantasy. Just as fantastic is the idea that the British will break with their unionist base to save the Agreement or that Dublin will do anything about the continuation of British rule.

The statement by the governments after the result, directed more to the DUP, but equally applicable to Sinn Fein, in effect said, ‘So What? What are you going to do about it?’ Behind the cant about respecting parties’ mandates was the sober call for them to live up to their responsibility, i.e. Follow the British agenda or face a long period of exclusion from office. Despite being the largest party the DUP cannot lead a return to unlimited sectarian rule and, despite the undisputed mantle of leader of Northern Nationalism, Sinn Fein face the same demands for humiliating surrender they couldn’t quite meet in the farcical deal that kicked off the election.

DUP Victory

The DUP victory over the UUP is part of a familiar pattern going back at least to the start of the Troubles and the premiership of Terrence O’Neill. A ‘moderniser’, backed by Britain in a desperate attempt to stabilise imperialist rule, falls to bigots on the right and a new right wing leader is then eventually persuaded to support a new British deal. But this too proves too much for the bigots who now lead a new attack. The spiral has continued until the ‘reform’ on offer is an Agreement hat enshrines sectarianism, colonial rule and rules out Irish self determination more or less indefinitely and this time the reformer is the arch-bigot Trimble! The rule within unionism is that the biggest bigot will eventually rule the roost. Trimble, a former organiser for the semi-fascist Vanguard movement of the early and mid-seventies, was elected UUP leader on the strength of sectarian posturing at Drumcree. He was believed to have enough sectarian capital to keep the majority of unionists on board. In the event Trimble himself didn’t believe this. At the slightest sign that he was being outflanked on the right he would break from the Agreement and demand major modifications that were always accepted by the British.

Trimble has fought in vain and is now a minority figure in unionism, easily outweighed by the DUP and the critics in his own party who are openly calling for his head. The idea that the DUP, whose name is synonymous with sectarian hatred, who have come to the position of being the major party on the basis of expressing that bigotry, will now share power with Sinn Fein is too ludicrous to consider for even an instant. A DUP First Minister and Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister?

The ‘winning team’

‘The winning team’ – the Sinn Fein election slogan – is clearly justified in terms of votes cast and seats won. It’s quite laughable when applied to their overall strategy. The Good Friday Agreement has involved them in constant retreat. At their last outing the republicans decommissioned a large element of the IRA arsenal and indicated that they would give unconditional support to the British statelet. The pay-off was supposed to be a series of concessions involving the return of former activists who were on the run, the demolition of some army bases no longer required and moves by Unionism to allow the restoration of the Stormont Assembly and Executive. Instead they got a virtual election to a phantom assembly.

The party fought the election promising an ‘Ireland of Equals.’ In fact everything afterwards will show that it is utterly incapable of delivering for its voters, as opposed to its functionaries. They now demand no more than equality within partition and reassurance in the illusion that a united Ireland is in some sense inevitable. The unionist veto on the very operation of the Agreement, never mind the decisions taken within its structures, is a hard lesson that its supporters are not keen to appreciate and its leaders even less keen to openly acknowledge. Already pundits speculate that the party’s strategy involves wiping out the SDLP in the next European and Westminster elections, but hypothesising about the next elections only illuminates the hollowness of the successes of the ones’ past. The question becomes too readily asked – ‘What for?’ Or as the British have said – ‘So what?’

To understand the outcome of the vote we have to contrast the votes within unionism and nationalism. The vote shift within unionism is much less dramatic, but it reflects a genuine strategic debate – not pro and anti reform, but rather, is sectarian privilege best defended from within or without the Good Friday Agreement. In contrast there is only one strategy within Irish nationalism – that is support for the Agreement. The battle between Sinn Fein and the SDLP was about whom was best placed to advance the strategy of meeting the demands of the Irish establishment for stability and accommodation of the interests of British imperialism. The DUP defeated Trimble – Sinn Fein became the SDLP. To be more accurate Sinn Fein has now become a Northern Fianna Fail. As with Fianna Fail in the Twenties they have made the transition from militarism to right wing capitalist politics. The lies and corruption necessarily involved in that transition make them a particularly dangerous political force, combining the ruthlessness of the militarist with the endemic dishonesty of the Irish elite.

The smaller parties in the Assembly

The 108 seats in the Stormont assembly, based on a population of 1.5 million, were designed to bribe everyone. The initial elected convention to negotiate the Agreement was structured, at least partly, so that the thugs in the loyalist death squads would win seats and this was further promoted by the PR system in the Stormont Assembly. Fortunately the thugs of the UDA lacked the political skills to retain seats. The UVF front organisation, the Progressive Unionist Party, managed to win seats and one MLA, Billy Hutchinson. He was touted by the Socialist Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and a number of other groups on the British left as a socialist! Left enthusiasm declined somewhat when Billy emerged as the spokesman of Loyalist mobs attacking primary school children at Holy Cross school, but his departure is welcomed to the same extent that his sidekick, David Irvine’s survival is mourned.

Less dangerous and more vacuous was the Women’s Coalition, a ‘post-modernist’ collection supported by the Communist Party. Despite their name they generally stood back from supporting any issues of women’s rights and saw the latter in terms of women playing a more prominent role in the existing reactionary and sectarian political system. Their only policy was to support imperialism and the Good Friday Agreement – at one stage defining themselves as unionist to do so!

The only minor group with any material base was the Alliance Party based on the vain hope of non-sectarian unionism. They were the only party to survive – just.

What next?

First there are the demands of unionism. The DUP called for ‘A fair deal’. This is the call of ‘white trash’ for the maintenance of their sectarian privilege. A majority of unionists now call for that privilege to be protected by the dismantling of the Good Friday Agreement. Nationalists in contrast voted overwhelmingly for the Agreement.

However it is the British State that will decide the next steps and their concern will be with their unionist base. When Trimble backed out of the last attempt to cement a deal what happened immediately was that British government’s commitments to the republicans were abandoned – a clear demonstration of British willingness to support unionism. It is unionist demands that will have effect despite ridiculous nationalist illusions that the default position is strengthened by Irish government involvement in the North.

The British will express their position through a review of the Good Friday Agreement in which the nationalists will come under intense pressure to accept its renegotiation. These attempts to put Humpty-Dumpty together will fail because, no matter what they say, there are in reality no circumstance in which the DUP would form a government with Sinn Fein.

British analysis suggests that the DUP may fail to retain their vote if they are unable to produce a formula for government or, alternatively, that the party may split into hard-liners and pragmatists. What is noticeable about this is that it is a long-term strategy and is based on a long period of suspension of the Agreement. During this period the business of politics for those who support the Agreement will be lobbying the British colonial administration.

There are fewer difficulties in this for the unionists. They have found the past 30 years of direct rule adequate in protecting their sectarian rights and holding the nationalists at bay. Where some concessions have been made – for example in employment – they at least have the comfort of having made no concessions themselves. In the meantime there are a whole series of committees and quangos through which they can carry on political life. It is perfectly correct that the early mass phase of the civil rights struggle brought down Stormont, but this was hastened by the unionists, even against British pleading, refusing to accept reform.

On the other hand there are difficulties for the Republicans. There is plenty of business to do with the British in terms of troop reductions that the British want to make anyway, and ‘on-the-runs,’ those still formally wanted by the British State. What the Republicans crave most however, Governmental seats, are not on offer in the immediate future. At the same time there will be increased pressure from Dublin. Fianna Fail and Irish capitalism in general are already quite clear about what went wrong – the Provos were too tardy in their surrender to imperialism. They didn’t give enough and they will reckon that a new dramatic capitulation that is clearly total may yet win unionism over. Sinn Fein’s election propaganda was support for the Agreement, the boast that they were best placed to get further peace grants from Britain and the EU and finally a law and order ticket. The have already set up unofficial policing in some areas but can only fully operate their new programme if they sign up to the real police and give unconditional and full support to the state.

While the nationalist working class voted in support of the Agreement yet again, this time they selected the Republicans to lead the demands for implementation. These Republicans promised equality and the perception is that they will be harder and more militant in confronting the British. Support is now tinged with a certain impatience to see the democratic society that they believe is hidden somewhere inside the deal. There are two illusions here. One is that the Agreement contains reform. The other is that Sinn Fein will be able to produce that reform. The opposite is the case.

The ghost of Good Friday has only survived on the back of constant retreat and concession by the Provos. This process will continue into the future. In past blockages to implementation of the Agreement the Republicans allowed things to move forward by conceding to unionist demands. Signing up to the Northern State without the GFA structures would please many of their new middle class voters. But it would alienate many traditional supporters and the capitulation demanded currently by the DUP would, at the moment, be several steps too far even for them. Gerry Adams has optimistically stated that the DUP are where the Ulster Unionists were six years ago. That is, the DUP will come round to dealing with and sharing office with Sinn Fein.

What this prompts is a reminder of where the Republicans were six years ago – promising significant steps to a united Ireland, disbanding of the RUC, support for Articles Two and Three of the southern constitution, ‘not a bullet, not an ounce’ and some lingering claim to be an opposition party. Holding on to all their support, while shifting their programme by as much again, even if it were possible, cannot but create severe strains in the movement. This does not herald a future for the republican ‘dissidents’ since their policy of repeating the past holds even less attraction.

The overall turnout for this election was relatively low by local standards and in part this reflects a section of the working class who have already turned away from the charade, although as yet to nothing very positive. In West Tyrone Dr. Kieran Deeny polled more than 6,000 votes to win a seat, standing as an independent solely on the fight to keep acute services at Omagh Hospital. This does not represent a conscious political break from the GFA process but it is a significant slap in the teeth to Sinn Fein.

While in office they were responsible for implementing the health cuts. It would be a gross mistake however to believe Dr. Deeny represents any sort of political alternative or that his election is an effervescence of class consciousness. It represents the fact that people no longer feel bound to support the GFA above all else. This represents both an acceptance of the Agreement and rejection of its necessary outcomes.

In the months to come the pro-Agreement analysts will come to accept that there will be no deal with Paisley. What they will not accept is that there was no deal with Trimble either. The fact is that the slow decline of Unionism continues while the British stand frustrated, unable to see any other base for their presence in Ireland. The main resistance party, Sinn Fein, have surrendered. They surrendered first to Fianna Fail and Irish capital before being led by them to surrender to the British. Now, even in this instant of capitulation, the British are unable to underpin victory with stable institutions. This instability provides proof that the contradictions of imperialist rule will continue to provide anti-imperialist politics, socialist politics, with an objective basis.

Accepting or challenging British imperialism?

All the parties in the Northern elections agreed on one thing – that British imperialism was the mechanism that could guarantee the future of the Irish people. The rivalry between them was about what programme they should lobby the British to adopt. No-one challenged the British right to rule and only Sinn Fein made symbolic protest when the British indicated that they would once again switch off the lights in the comic-opera assembly

However the suspension of the assembly – effectively for the fifth time if we include the odd glitch when abortive attempts were made to re-establish the Good Friday structures, means that there is a crisis of British rule and that, despite its overwhelming support, it is unable to offer a stable solution for the North or a democratic solution for the Irish population as a whole.

In this situation the socialist movement, as a potential leadership in waiting, able to offer an alternative to imperialist rule, have an importance out of proportion to the tiny vote they attract.

However the election campaign in the North shows that the organisations of the Marxist left are unable to mount even the bare bones of a political challenge to imperialism and are in fact locked in a strategic crisis where the interests of their individual organisations blind them utterly to the interests of the working class as a whole. The left disgraced themselves with their intervention, but as they had no influence to begin with that is an issue for the future of working class self organisation rather than a real factor in the election today.

The Left?

Worth mentioning briefly is the wolf in sheep’s clothing – Billy Hutchinson of the PUP – not that Billy was of the left. The Progressive Unionist Party, a front organisation for the Ulster Volunteer Force, is an organisation of the far right, representing sectarian death squads. Billy only enters on the list because of the attempts by the Communist Party, Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party, in the face of all the evidence and direct critiques from ourselves, to present Billy as a socialist, They only finally fell silent when Billy surfaced at the head of howling mobs attacking Catholic primary school children at Holy Cross. Billy’s electoral demise was entirely predictable, given his actual role, not as spokesman for Protestant workers, but as muscle for the Official Unionists of the UUP.

Also presented as the ‘left’ especially by the Communist Party, was the much loved Women’s Coalition. It was especially loved by local capitalist politicians and by the British press precisely because it was innocent of any left policies. Despite its name the Women’s coalition failed to prioritise the fight for progressive polices on women’s issues in an area where there is ferocious opposition to women’s rights. It had only two policies: women should be active in politics, even if the politics were those of utter reaction. Secondly Irish women should support imperialism and the Good Friday Agreement. The coalition was a good example of the old Stalinist theory of ‘stages’ pushed to absurdity.

The CP opposed fighting on socialist demands on the grounds that there was a preliminary stage of Irish independence to go through. Then they argued that democracy in the North was a necessary preliminary to this. Now the Women’s Coalition indicates that a preliminary stage of imperialist rule and sectarian division should also be supported. Unfortunately the voters who agreed with this view preferred to vote for the sectarians themselves rather than the Women’s Coalition. The electoral campaign of the Northern Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions deserves mention, even if they did not stand or formally endorse candidates. NICTU (or NIC, as they prefer to be called to avoid hurting unionist sensibilities) and some affiliate unions such as ATGWU and UNISON campaigned around a ‘bread and butter’ campaign that patronised workers. Workers shouldn’t bother their head with politics but restrict themselves to prices and wages. The fact that this line is always rejected by workers, who always vote on political grounds, is never an issue as the main role of the campaign is to avoid the necessity of the trade union movement taking up any progressive policies. The unions however did have one political position that they were determined to put.

Workers must vote to save the Agreement and bring back the Stormont assembly. The movement founded by Connolly and Larkin now had only one policy they were enthusiastic about – the return of an Assembly that cements British rule and that splits the working class between North and South and then splits it again in the North on sectarian lines. What makes the present position of the unions so utterly shameless is that they spent thirty years banning politics from the trade union movement on the grounds that they were divisive – even then, of course, it was only socialist and democratic politics that were banned.

Socialist Party

There was one organisation which tried to put the trade union line into practice. The Socialist Party stood Tom Black in East Belfast and Jim Barbour of the Fire Brigades Union in South Belfast (even though Barbour apparently isn’t a member of the Socialist Party). The SP candidates received utterly derisory votes. One commentator pointed out that Barbour’s vote of 167 was half that of the Natural Law Party in the last election – a group of cranks who believed in yogic flying! Black did little better on 176 votes.

This represents a serious crisis for the Socialist Party strategy in the North. Briefly summed up it can seen as a sort of pink unionism that links frantic support for a Stormont Assembly with the ‘gas and water’ municipal reformism dismissed by James Connolly over a century ago. This strategy has failed four times now. It failed when they tried to set up a ‘mass labour party’ with loyalist paramilitaries. It failed when they set up a ‘Labour Party’ for the pre-Stormont convention. Not only did the party collapse, it turned out to have nothing to say! It failed in the last election when they stood themselves and now it has failed utterly when they thought they could capitalise on Barbour’s prominence in the Fire Brigades Union.

The Barbour campaign represented another right-wing element of Socialist Party policy. For some years now they have operated as a handmaiden of the bureaucracy rather than their left opponents. Barbour’s candidacy represented this perfectly. Rather than a representative of rank and file fire workers sold out by the FBU bureaucracy, Barbour was the local representative of a bureaucracy that surrendered to the bosses and then rammed the sell-out through the branches. Even from a trade union perspective it is hardly surprising that Barbour got such a derisory vote on the day that his members got a 3.5% wage increase tied to productivity after the FBU promised them 40%!

One last element of the Socialist Party perspective deserves mention. There has for several years been a rather confused unity debate on the left. The SP has always demonstrated an absolute and politically sectarian refusal to participate or consider any unity proposals. Its case has been that the left is irrelevant but that the SP stands in a unique position in real unity with a section of the working class. The election shows how hollow these claims are in the North.

Socialist Workers Party

The narrow sectarianism of the Socialist Party is counterbalanced by the blatant opportunism of the Socialist Workers Party. Politically there was little to distinguish between the two campaigns. Yet again the workers were advised to ignore real politics and vote ‘bread and butter’ politics. Where the SP supported a Stormont executive the SWP ignored it. An election is held to a capitalist, colonial, sectarian structure that is in permanent crisis and whose survival is the main item on the agenda and the left tell workers to ignore the issue! Instead the SWP try to build an opportunist alliance with the Communist Party and Workers Party, with whom they should have nothing in common and who their own supposed programme sees as pro-capitalist parties! A hilarious meeting is held in Belfast where the WP say they are not interested in unity, the CP say that unity must be in support of the Women’s Coalition and the Good Friday Agreement. Other groups argue for opposition to the GFA and the SWP say the issue isn’t important!

The initiative falls apart under its own contradictions but the SWP go ahead with a mini alliance with the CP in Derry. Even the SWP hesitate to call the 2,257 vote of Eamonn McCann a victory. Contrasted with the 137 vote for running mate Marian Baur of the CP, McCann’s is clearly a personal vote, a fact underlined by the transfers to the SDLP and Sinn Fein (the votes splits 50-50 between the two parties, with a handful for the unionists). This indicates that building working class consciousness, the lynchpin of any Marxist intervention in elections, is clearly absent here.

Republicans?

Last, but very definitely least, we should mention the intervention of the republican opposition. A group of six republicans led by Tony McIntyre of ‘the Blanket’ website endorsed the McCann campaign. Nothing illustrates more clearly the bankruptcy of republicanism in modern Ireland. The majority of the signatories have spent their whole lives fighting for self-determination and a number have spent long periods in prison. They refuse to go along with republican capitulation but they not only fail to build a republican alternative but end up endorsing a candidate who says that the National Question doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be an issue!

The truth is that the strategic crisis of the left is not confined to the North. All the tricks of political sectarianism and blind opportunism can be found as readily in South and North Dublin as in South Belfast. Dirty deals behind the scenes, putting their parties before the class, forming alliances with the union bureaucracy against the class. These are all familiar themes.

The tragedy is that a working class resistance is possible. In the North a layer of traditional working-class republican vote has disappeared with no-one to vote for. In Dublin the one sizeable trade union demonstration against the bin charge sees rank and file members of SIPTU throw their union cards at SIPTU secretary Jack O’Connor. The Socialist Party stay well back while the SWP members merely looked confused.

There is only one alternative to imperialist rule in Ireland. That alternative is socialism. The Northern elections show that the left are throwing away a chance to lead the new wave of struggle and are in fact, helping to smother it.

John McAnulty

Northern Ireland Assembly Election Results

Party	Seats	Increase/Decrease	Votes	% Vote	% Increase/Decrease
DUP	30	10	177944	25.71	7.49
SF	24	6	162758	23.52	5.89
UUP	27	-1	156931	22.67	1.43
SDLP	18	-6	117547	16.98	-4.98
Alliance	6	0	25372	3.68	-2.82
Independent	1	1	19256	2.79	2.22
PUP/ UVF	1	-1	8032	1.16	-1.39
UK Unionist	1	-4	5700	0.82	-3.69