Emancipation & Liberation

Patricia Campbell reviews a crucial event in Irish history which occurred 40 years ago. This article first appeared in Fourthwrite (Summer 2009)

August 1969 was the year that transformed the face of the North forever. The civil rights marches of the previous year had launched a movement for change that the Stormont regime found impossible to cope with through normal democratic process.

Used for decades to having its every order obeyed, or at least having those who objected compelled to fall in line, the Unionist Party and its machinery of power decided to resort to the old tactic of subjugation through force. People demanding that antidemocratic practices end would be driven off the streets and battered into acquiescence – or pay a heavy price for challenging the authority of the regime. This method had worked in the past. In fact the very state had come into being through the bloody intimidation of that section of the population that had objected to its formation in the first place.

British governments in 1920/21/22 had allowed James Craig and his colleagues in the Unionist Party to use widespread sectarian violence in order to establish a 6-County state. Between July 1920 and July 1922, 453 people had been killed in Belfast, 37 members of the Crown forces and 417 civilians; 257 Catholics and 157 Protestants and two of no known religion. Of the city’s 93,000 Catholic inhabitants, 11,000 had been forced from their jobs and 23,000 driven from their homes. This was the environment in which the northern state was created.

During the early months of 1969, supporters of the unionist state had viciously attacked a series of peaceful demonstrations. A march by students in January was ambushed outside Derry and clearly identified among the attackers were numerous members of the police reserve, the ‘B’ Special. In incident after incident for the following few months, thus the level of violence increased. The RUC riot squad was responsible for a number of deaths when members of the force used their batons on civilians in Derry City, Dungiven, Co. Derry and Coalisland, Co. Tyrone.

When the Derry Citizens Defence Association (DCDA) was formed in July of 1969, it decided to organise a defence of the Bogside in order to prevent further lethal attack by the RUCC and ‘B’ Specials. The Stormont regime was unwilling to curb the activities of any of its supporters and made no attempt to prevent the Apprentice Boys parade taking place in Derry on 12 August. There was little doubt that rioting was going to break out when thousands of unionists began strutting along the city walls, reminding the inhabitants of their second class status in Northern Ireland. As the Apprentice Boys march was coming to an end the expected happened and fighting between the RUC and local residents intensified.

Unlike previous occasions, the RUC met with stiff resistance from the people of the Bogside and found it impossible to gain control of the area as the DCDA organisation proved effective. Key to the success of the defenders was their decision to occupy the high flats in the centre of the district and use is as a strong point to hurl stones and Molotov cocktails down on the advancing police below.

The struggle lasted throughout the night and into the next day and still the RUC was unable to penetrate the Bogside. Tension grew throughout the North as all sides watched the conflict develop. Nationalists and republicans were anxious to see what could be done to help the defenders while Unionism was becoming increasingly hysterical as it watched its absolute authority being challenged on the streets.

Grassroots unionism was demanding that live ammunition be used against the Bogsiders but Stormont’s cabinet knew that with the world watching so closely, it would be a gross mistake. With the situation under scrutiny, the Unionist regime understood that Britain would exact a very high price from the Belfast parliament if its police force were to be seen to carry out a Sharpville style massacre in Derry with the world’s press watching.

Under increasing siege

With the Bogsider defenders under increasing siege, word was circulated in all nationalist and republican areas that it would be necessary to organise demonstrations to take pressure off the people in Derry. Demonstrations were organised in nationalist towns across the North and RUC and ‘B’ Specials were dispatched to contain the events. In town after town these events grew increasingly violent. Police and ‘B’ Specials began to use the live ammunition that their supporters had been demanding and gunshot casualties were inflicted on nationalist civilians in several towns. In Armagh city ‘B’ specials shot and killed a Catholic civilian making his way home from a local bar.

The greatest violence, however, broke out on the night of the 14th August in Belfast. A protest march had taken place on the 13 and in its aftermath the IRA exchanged gunfire with the RUC, wounding one constable. On the night of the 14th crowds of unionists gathered in the Shankill area and other unionist districts. As daylight began to fade, shooting broke out. Desultory at first and growing in intensity as time went by. As darkness fell, the RUC sent armoured cars equipped with heavy machine guns into the lower Falls and Ardoyne firing into houses and killing several of the occupants.

As the armoured cars raced through the narrow streets they had little difficulty winning control of these districts. Once in charge, the RUC started to systematically shoot out street lighting. With the streets in darkness and the inhabitants terrified, crowds of unionist arsonists supported by off duty ‘B’ Specials started to pour into the lower Falls and Ardoyne and other nationalist areas in Belfast. IRA units in Belfast were seriously under resourced in August 1969. The republican army’s head quarters staff had taken a decision to reduce its arsenal in Belfast in order to ensure that local unit commanders would not precipitate a sectarian blood bath by undisciplined operations. The decision was well meant and had a certain logic in light of the progress of the civil rights movement but in the context of Northern Irish reality it was a mistaken and naive judgement.

Badly outnumbered they put up a spirited resistance to the counter revolutionary assault and joined by veteran members of the organisation prevented a much greater amount of damage being inflicted on the nationalist community.

It was nevertheless, beyond doubt that the nationalist communities in the Falls and Ardoyne areas had suffered greatly with a huge number of homes burned out and many families driven from their property. The trauma was enormous and evoked memories of the worst days of the 1920s. Within days efforts were being made to find arms and to organise military defence of these districts. The IRAwas to split over the issue and in practice this period signalled the end of peaceful, non-insurrectionary protest.

The British government sent troops into Derry and Belfast but refused to curb the powers of the Stormont regime. In time it became obvious that London had little interest in radically reforming Northern Ireland and the Home Secretary of the time, Jim Callaghan, told nationalist politicians that theycould have ‘reform’ but it had to happen within the parameters of a Stormont regime. This dictate of ‘any colour you like so long as it’s orange’ was to ensure that the very existence of the state had to be challenged if change was to occur and that is exactly what was to happen. Nothing was the same after August 1969. The Orange state was in free-fall.

JM Thorn, Socialist Democracy (Ireland) analyses the defeat of the Irish Left in the second Lisbon Treaty referendum.

The Lisbon Treaty was passed on October 2nd, overturning its rejection by the Irish people in June 2008.

The margin of victory was emphatic – the ‘Yes’ vote winning by a majority of 67 percent of voters to 33 percent. Turnout was 58 percent, up from last year’s 53.1 per cent. A total of 1,214,268 people, or 38.8 per cent of the total electorate, voted Yes, while 594,606, or 19 per cent, of the electorate voted No. There was a yes vote in 41 out of 43 constituencies. Large ‘Yes’ majorities, over 80 percent, were recorded in Dublin and nearby Dun Laoghaire, while only rural Donegal voted ‘No’. There was a swing in favour of the treaty from last year, when it was rejected by 53 to 46 percent, of around 20 per cent. In all, there were almost half-a-million extra ‘Yes’ votes in this poll – a clear indication that the endorsement for the treaty was down to a change of opinion rather than a change in turnout.

So why was there such a dramatic turnaround in public opinion? One explanation lies in the efforts of the ‘Yes’ campaign this time round, when a whole array of organisations and individuals were mobilised to support the treaty. This coalition ranged from the European Commission, political parties, the media, business groups and individual companies, trade union officials, the hierarchies of the churches and various celebrities. It represented social partnership at its broadest and the determined effort of what could be described as “the establishment” to ensure a ‘Yes’ vote this time round. They simply came back with a better organised campaign and spent more money in pursuit of the result they want.

Reasons for defeat

Some in the ‘No’ camp have blamed the imbalance in the resources available to each side as the main reason for their defeat. But this is not really convincing. It has always been the case that pro-EU forces in Ireland have had these advantages. Indeed, it was the case in last year’s referendum in which the Treaty was rejected. What made the critical difference this time was not the better organisation or greater resources of the ‘Yes’ campaign but the changed circumstances in which the vote took place. Since the last referendum in June 2008 Ireland has suffered an unprecedented economic collapse. The economy has contracted by almost ten per cent, the banking system has failed, unemployment has doubled and public finances have deteriorated rapidly. What this crisis has done is to expose Ireland’s economic vulnerability and also its dependency on external forces, whether that is foreign capital or the EU.

There was therefore a ‘fear factor’ at work that the ‘Yes’ campaign played upon to win support for the Treaty. The argument was that Ireland needed the EU in order to revive its economy and shield it from the worst of the recession. This was the main thrust of the ‘Yes’ campaign, with slogans such as “Yes for Jobs” and “Yes for Recovery”. The fear, or the threat, behind such claims was that rejection of the Treaty would leave Ireland isolated, ruined and on the margins of Europe.

This argument is a false one. Indeed, it could be argued that the policies of the EU, particularly on the euro and low interests rates, were in part responsible for Ireland’s economic crash. It could also be argued that the EU is in part driving the cuts agenda with its budget deficit rules for euro members. The EU is also playing a key role in the bail out of the banks. These are counters to the idea that the Irish people are being saved by the EU. But they weren’t made by the ‘No’ campaign.

The clear message of the ‘Yes’ campaign contrasted to the disparate and conflicting messages coming from the ‘No’ side. This in part is a result of the hodgepodge of political groups that made up the ‘No’ campaign. These ranged from the Catholic right, in the form of Cóir, to the left in the form of the Socialist Party and SWP. A much weaker element of the ‘No’ side this time was the neo-liberal strand represented the Declan Ganley’s Libertas. It had been weakened by the general retreat of neo-liberalism in the face of the economic crisis and the adoption of interventionist policies by Governments across the EU. Indeed, its involvement this time helped the ‘Yes’ side play up the supposedly progressive side of the EU – contrasting the harshness of the extreme liberal position with the more statist approach of the EU.

Given the weakness of Libertas this time round, the strongest element on the ‘No’ side was the left. There was a good opportunity to run a ‘No’ campaign that was explicitly socialist and orientated towards the working class. Unfortunately that opportunity was spurned. The SWP and Socialist Party ran campaigns which opposed various pro-market aspects of Lisbon, as well as steps towards greater militarism, but articulated no fundamental opposition to the EU as a capitalist institution and offered no political alternative other than to echo aspects of the rhetoric of the nationalist right.

Concession towards nationalism

The tilt towards nationalism was expressed most clearly by the Communist Party with its declaration that a ‘No’ vote was the work of “true patriots”. The concession towards nationalism was also reflected by the inclusion of Sinn Fein in the broad left campaign despite that party’s ambiguous position on the EU. In the second referendum Sinn Fein merely called for a “better deal” for Ireland. Ironically, it was left to Cóir to raise any issues that related to the working class. One of the most effective posters in the campaign was the one they produced on the minimum wage.

The only organization to offer any left political message was the Socialist Party, and that fell far short of what was promised. On election to the European parliament Joe Higgins had promised to build a socialist campaign. In reality he followed the sectarian history of his organization, joining the distinctly unsocialist broad campaign and presenting his own organization as the socialist campaign.

Any hopes that the left would learn anything from the debacle were dispelled when Kieran Allen of the Socialist Workers Party appeared on a special edition of the Vincent Browne show on RTE (Irish state television channel). The vote had been lost because the corporate establishment had united. There was establishment press bias, undemocratic intervention by Ryanair and IBEC who provoked a scare about jobs and brought in the issue of Europe in general instead of sticking to the details of the treaty. The main issue to arise from the campaign was the need for a party to represent the 30% who had voted ‘No’.

So we lost because the bosses united against us. In that case socialism is doomed – when will the conditions arise when they don’t unite against us? The bosses made a political case around jobs and the economy – a killer blow when our strategy was to avoid politics!

Allen’s final comment gives the game away -that we need a party to represent the 30% who said ‘No’. There is no doubt that we desperately need a working class party in Ireland. There is no doubt but that the nucleus of that party is to be found in the people who said ‘No’. The task of Socialists is to separate out those who voted for their class from the ex-republicans and Catholic right-wingers also in that vote. As long as Kieran Allen and other leftists pursue the apolitical opportunist and electoralist numbers game they will be an obstacle to a new party of the working class rather than facilitators of it.

The ‘Yes’ vote on Lisbon will give a boost to the government as it presses ahead with another cost cutting budget and the establishment of the National Assets Management Agency. The same arguments that were made so effectively for Lisbon can be made for these. However, that will be more difficult, as unlike Lisbon there are disputes between the political parties and within the capitalist class on how to proceed. These divisions at the top of society provide an opportunity for a working class opposition to emerge. Indeed, despite the disappointment of the Lisbon vote, it did reveal the existence of a solid core of the populace, who despite threats and coercion rejected the will of the political establishment by voting ‘No’. It is also the case that this ‘No’ vote was largely concentrated in the working class and the most marginalised sections of society. The ‘No’ vote was a class vote; the problem was that it was not a class-conscious vote.

This summarises the problem faced by the Irish working class – that it doesn’t have its own independent programme. It isn’t helped by groups proclaiming themselves socialist failing to advance one, but instead adapting to reactionary ideas. This was the story of the Lisbon campaign. While putting forward an explicitly socialist programme would not have produced a bigger ‘No’ vote, it would have been a better vote and would have better prepared a section of the working class for the struggles that are to come.

On February 14th a Convention of the Left was held in Derry City.The main sponsors of this meeting were the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party of Ireland and the Green Party. Under the banner of the Socialist and Environmental Alliance they had contested the election to the Northern Ireland Assembly (see article by John McAnulty) in Derry City and East Londonderry County. This is a critique of this Convention, which first appeared in The Plough no. 27, the bulletin of the IRSP.

A non-party socialist described the course of the meeting as follows:

• 1. IRSP delegates, who had turned up in good faith, amounted to over 20% of those present.
• 2. The SEA platform displayed a willingness to allow speakers to discourse at great length, unless they happened to be republican, and more specifically, IRSP.
• 3. Discussion of the necessity of an anti-imperialist, anti-partition basis to any class struggle, or indeed campaign, in the North, was effectively precluded, despite the feeling of the meeting that it should be dealt with.
• 4.When it appeared that Republican Socialists were swaying the meeting, a member of the platform pronounced that they would object on principle to being a part of a grouping, which included the IRSP. The outcome of the meeting was, should we have needed it, a lesson in the primacy of principled politics. Those who criticize the IRSP for being part of the problem might be better advised to examine the bankruptcy of their own solutions:
  • a) While these pure Marxists might find the writings of Connolly, Larkin and Costello too parochial to deserve study; they can hardly disown the writings of Marx (or indeed Lenin).
  • b) For Marx, Ireland was a classic example of a colony. The unity of the working class in such circumstances was almost impossible, as a large proportion of them were wedded to the imperialist ideal. The descendants of the colonists saw themselves in the main as a class apart, because of the privileges, which the British state had provided for them in return for their support. This contradiction between these two, artificially created, sections of the Irish working class could, according to Marx, only be overcome by the removal of the problem: The British colonial presence in Ireland.
  • c) Despite the (relative) independence achieved by the 26 counties, the problem, and solution, has not changed in any meaningful way. Northern Ireland remains a colony, maintained for no other purpose than to perpetuate the divisions within the working class outlined by Marx over 150 years ago.
  • d) These are the facts, and no attempt to avoid them will make them any less true. However, avoidance has a long history, most famously, and disastrously, following the Second World War. Both the CPNI, the small Trotskyite groups, and eventually the NILP sought to build class politics in the North as part of an internal solution. These efforts were of course made in good faith, but they were based on the flawed assumption that if the border issue was skirted around it would simply go away.
  • e) It would be pointless to comment on this analysis, other than to ask where these groups are now, except that this is the same solution as is now being put forward as a programme by the putative Convention of the Left. That this exercise has developed into a debacle will come as a surprise to few. However, like all experiences it has had its uses, in that it has clearly drawn the line between the radical left and the reformists. This line is National Liberation.

The mainstream left (as they would wish to be perceived) in the North, believe that they can convince loyalist workers to abandon generations of prejudice by not broaching the subject, which most concerns them. One has to wonder at the arrogance of those who think that the working class are stupid, but who seek to lead them in any case!

Loyalist/unionist workers are part of our class. They also happen to be wrong. There is no quick fix to this contradiction within our class. However, honesty about our goals, and specifically our republicanism, are necessary prerequisites for our interaction with them. We have nothing to hide.

Finally, there is no such thing as normal politics. There is only politics that serves the working class, and politics which do not. Clearly, and unfortunately, the current Convention of the Left falls into the latter category.

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

John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast) examines the end of the Good Friday Agreement and its effect on the political forces in Ireland

The April cancellation of elections to the local Stormont assembly in the North of Ireland marks a significant new stage in the decay of British plans to bring about a settlement of the Irish question on their terms. The indefinite suspension followed an earlier temporary suspension of elections and the dramatic closure, in October last year, of the local Stormont assembly itself and the dissolution of the executive amid a mass police raid on the parliamentary offices of Sinn Fein. The Good Friday Agreement, signed five years ago, was presented as Britain withdrawing gracefully from the direct rule of its colony in the North of Ireland and handing over to a process of co-operation between local politicians and between the colonial structure in the North and the formally independent Southern state. In practice the British kept appearing from behind the comicopera façade of the Stormont assembly to make further demands on the Republican leadership, further concessions to their local supporters in the Unionist Party, to redefine the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and shift them to the right. They moved to suspend and collapse the local structures, making it crystal clear that all the claims of a new democratic dispensation in Ireland are false and that the old colonial structures, supported by religious sectarianism, remain in place. Just how comic-opera the Good Friday structures are is indicated by the fact that over 100 elected representatives and a full cabinet representing all the major local parties were needed to rule just under 1.5 million people – and were replaced in an instant by three British Labour Party backbenchers!

But the April events do not represent the collapse of the Good Friday Agreement. That collapsed finally with the collapse of the executive. They represent something much more significant – the stillborn death of Good Friday mark two. This collapsed before it was launched, despite the personal involvement of George Bush and Tony Blair and despite repeated, and ever more desperate, attempts by the Republican leadership to indicate its total support for the new state institutions and willingness to disband the
IRA. The fact of this collapse led Lord Kilcooney, aka John Taylor, notorious weathervane of the Unionist leadership, to predict that it would be a generation before a new Stormont assembly would reconvene.

Sectarian privilege

It was the same Lord Kilcooney who pointed out the fatal flaw in the original deal, signed 5 years ago. This agreement, drawn up by the British and the Dublin government, saw the Irish bourgeoisie follow an earlier de facto recognition of the Northern colony with a de jure recognition. A few cosmetic all-Ireland committees were draped around this legal shift and the nationalists were promised places in a powersharing coalition in a new local parliament. British rule in Ireland was to continue, sectarianism was to continue. The major shift was that nationalists, completely excluded from political power in the old Stormont regime preceding the troubles, were to have their share of sectarian privilege. The Republicans, militarily at a dead end and moving towards a more rightwing and nationalist orientation decided to climb on the bandwagon and claim victory.

Kilcooney remarked dryly that the Unionists were willing to share power in a revamped Northern colony, of course, he went on, it could not be equal amounts of power. The point was unanswerable. There really is no point to sectarianism if it is to be an equality of sectarian privilege.

The British pinned their hopes on moderate middle class unionism led rather unconvincingly by the arch-bigot David Trimble. The problem here was that the Trimble wing never had a programme of reaching an accommodation with nationalism. Their argument was that it was through the structures of the GFA that they would best be able to defend their sectarian privileges, either totally crushing and humiliating the Republicans and/or forcing them from the government. The Republicans were well aware of Trimble’s position, but believed that the British would punish the Unionists if they broke the structures of the agreement. In any case they believed that the nationalist family of the Irish capitalist parties and of Irish America would hold the British to their word.

The British saw things differently. If the North was to remain a colony to ensure capitalist stability in Ireland, it would need to continue to base itself on sectarian privilege and on a mass unionist base. Their job was to placate unionism – by bending the agreement to the right and even to the extent of turning a blind eye to open campaigns of sectarian intimidation by Loyalist paramilitaries. The Unionists demanded, and got, the destruction of IRA weapons by the Republican leadership. All this did was to embolden the even more reactionary forces to the right of Trimble. It became clear that only the public and unconditional surrender of the IRA and its immediate disbandment would save the agreement. In the absence of this the agreement collapsed.

The British role

However the nature of the collapse indicated that the Republican analysis and Republican strategy had collapsed also.

Good Friday Mark 1 failed because of Unionist protest at allegations of continued
IRA activity – mostly intelligence gathering activity. In fact this activity did not break the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, based on an IRA ceasefire. These ceasefire activities kept the IRA ticking over and helped prevent discontent, but had absolutely no political significance. Given the level of penetration by British intelligence and, more importantly, the abandonment of the republican programme by the leadership, there was absolutely no prospect of that activity leading to a new conflict.

The Unionist protests were in factsimply cynical ploys to add a new element to the agreement – the demand for disbandment. They lacked any moral dimension. At the same time that they demanded IRA disbandment the Trimble group were part of an organisation called the Loyalist Commission. Its task was to provide political cover for armed sectarian attacks by the Loyalist groups – most notably attacks on Catholic primary school girls at Holy Cross school in Ardoyne.

The big shock to Republican strategy was the British response. The police raid on Sinn Fein’s parliamentary offices kicked away the illusions of a parliamentary democracy with the same efficiency as a few careless kicks demolish a sandcastle. It served dramatic notice that the British would not negate their history in Ireland and suddenly play a progressive role, that the British supported Unionist demands, that Sinn Fein would have to do a great deal more if they wanted to preserve the pretence of power and that the demand for IRA disbandment would be the starting point for future negotiations to establish a new agreement. In a visit to Belfast Tony Blair spelt it all out. The promises of the Good Friday Agreement, supposedly set in stone, were now conditional on the unconditional surrender of the Republicans. The final blow came when Sinn Fein’s friends in the nationalist parties North and South and their friends in Washington all lined up to lash out and demand capitulation.

GFA Mark 2 fails

Sinn Fein offered no resistance. The period from October to March was spent in carefully crafting these conditions. The collapse of the negotiations at least allows the Irish working class to see the nature of the deal. At their centre was to be an IRA declaration that they would surrender arms, run down background activities and were moving towards disbandment and that Sinn Fein would unambiguously support the structures of the new state by joining the police boards. In case this was not enough Dublin and London would establish a commission that would oversee the winding down of the IRA and punish Sinn Fein if the military wing showed any sign of activity.

The reward, spelt out in a joint declaration by London and Dublin, would be a reduction in military levels. Some border watchtowers would be demolished, and the British army would be reduced to only 5000 soldiers and 14 bases – subject of course to their being absolutely no resistance. The sectarian colonial structures at Stormont would be re-established, repressive legislation would be redrafted – not to meet human rights demands but to allow nationalist influence on various boards and quangos. There would be some further pretence at cosmetic reform of the police and a small number of On the Runs – Republicans still wanted by the British – would be allowed to return home under extraordinarily humiliating circumstances. They would be tried by a commission on the allegations put forward at the time they left, a sentence would be imposed and they would then be released on licence – subject to imprisonment at the whim of the ritish administration.

There were however some worrying signs. A first attempt to make the deal at a summit led by Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Aherne ended in disarray when the Unionist parties walked out. The final deal was crafted, only to be torn away from the fingernails of the Sinn Fein leadership as they made lunge after desperate lunge to meet British terms.

The Republicans were told that the IRA statement, carefully worded so that it would read surrender to the British and yet be sold to the republican base, was insufficient and unclear. Desperately Gerry Adams stepped forward to provide that clarity – that is to define the terms of surrender in words provided by the British. The British responded by declaring that this was real progress – if only Gerry had used the word will instead of would. Adams provided the missing word, but this was not enough. It was now necessary to list in detail all the activities that the Republicans would now abjure. What part of absolutely no activity do you not understand?, asked Adams. But by now it was clear that no words would be enough.

The reality that had now dawned was that the Unionist opposition to sharing power with Sinn Fein was absolute. There were no conditions to meet because there were no conditions under which the Trimble wing of Unionism could enter elections and propose a coalition government with Sinn Fein that would not lead to its defeat and a large majority for anti – agreement forces in his own party and for the rejectionist, and even more bigoted, Paisleyite Democratic Unionist Party. Even bearing Gerry Adam’s head on a spike, Trimble was bound to be defeated. The Unionists would not share power with Sinn Fein and even hints that they would share power with nationalists if Sinn Fein were excluded seemed distinctly shaky. Under these conditions the British role became what it was in the fall of GFA 1 – to pull the plug, defend Unionism and condemn the Republicans for not giving enough.

Back to the drawing board

However this is not a re-run of the October collapse. This is not yet another suspension of the cardboard executive or postponement of the elections and no amended GFA 3 waits in the wings. The indefinite postponement of the elections in the North is in fact their cancellation. With the elections goes much of the structure and political content of the Good Friday Agreement. There will be no Autumn election because the agreement itself contains provision for a review that must take place then. After 5 years, surrounded by the ruins of GFA 1 and GFA 2, the review will inevitably become negotiation for a completely new settlement.

The outline of that settlement should be clear. Good Friday has fallen twice to the right under the weight of Unionist bigotry. On both occasions the British have provided cover and blamed Republicanism. Irish nationalism and US imperialism stand foursquare with Britain. Britain will chair the new negotiations and set the agenda. Only one conclusion is possible. The weakness of the Good Friday Agreement was that it was too radical! It gave nothing to Irish democracy, but that nothing was too much! Any new arrangement must shift away from coalition structures to even weaker structures. There must be a greater shift of power towards direct British patronage and appointed committees, where the Unionists are better able to ensure that they maintain the lion’s share of sectarian privilege. The republicans will be made an offer they can’t refuse – a more humiliating surrender and less reward for it. To some extent that shift has already begun. The British are going ahead with a promise to dismantle a few watchtowers in South Armagh that they no longer need. There are behind the scenes talks about the legislation involving On the Runs. The British will press the Republicans to give full support to the new police and join the policing boards.

The most immediate sufferers will be the Republicans. The British can continue to reward them but they cannot give them the rewards they really need. Only parliamentary seats and ministerial positions in the North can hide the absolute collapse of their strategy of reform and give momentum to the only tactic they have left – to use their Northern electoral success to propel themselves to greater electoral success in the formally independent 26 counties. In any case the Stakeknife story of a high-level informer in the IRA leadership shows that conditions are now much more hostile for the Republicans. They are confronted by stories of brutality that they cannot now justify from their current political perspective while at the same time the cotton wool protection that was afforded by the media and state intelligence services has clearly been removed.

However the outlook in the longer term is ominous for the British. Negotiating a new agreement and making it work will depend on a capitulation to Unionist sectarianism by the nationaliststhat will be difficult to sell to their base. A settlement, if it is established at all, will depend for its operation on the absence of any largescale resistance. No amount of bribery seems sufficient to keep the thugs in the various loyalist groups at bay.

The Irish working class has been very firmly asleep. By and large it has accepted claims that the Celtic Tiger will deliver prosperity and, on the back of this acceptance, it has further accepted that the Good Friday Agreement is some sort of halfway house to a democratic solution. The credibility of Irish capital is much more shaky on the economic front, with announcements of widespread cuts and privatisation drives and regretful shrugs to indicate that the workers have unfortunately missed the prosperity boat. Their political credibility on the national question is also due a fall when it becomes clear that the Good Friday Agreement has gone. Britain has had a situation in which they had absolute support for their strategy from the vast majority of the Irish working class. They weren’t able to translate that support and their massive economic, political and military power into a stable, let alone democratic solution.

The Marxist analysis suggests that imperialism will never be able to do so.

Now for the real drive to preserve partition and sectarianism in the North of Ireland

John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast) details the reasons for the latest crisis of the Good Friday Agreement

The history books will undoubtedly list the collapse of the current version of the Good Friday Agreement as stemming from the British raid on Sinn Fein’s Stormont offices on 4th October. The history books will be wrong. The collapse occurred on September 16th with the decision of the Ulster Unionist Party to pull the plug on a number of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement and force Sinn Fein out of office. The raid brings much worse news for Sinn Fein. The pipe dream that the British would reward them and punish Unionism for the crisis is just as false as their other illusion that the forces of Irish capital would stand shoulder to shoulder with them in their hour of need. To add insult to injury big brother, in the shape of George Bush, immediately endorsed the call by the British for the IRA to disarm.

The Stormont raid has however a significance all of its own. The police raid had all the symbolism of jackboot rule. It was a travesty of democracy, indicating the harsh reality of British rule behind all the pretences of the Stormont assembly. It’s only purpose was to pull the plug on the Assembly, while making it clear that the Republicans will have to concede even more to earn a return of their ministerial seats. Howls about background IRA activity are neither here or there. The disbandment of the IRA was not a condition of the Good Friday Agreement – now for the Unionists, British, and Sinn Fein’s erstwhile friends in Dublin – it is.

This time it’s for real. After a whole string of crises which have in fact been a permanent feature of the unstable settlement in Ireland the reactionary offensive by the Unionists has guaranteed that the Good Friday Agreement, in its present form, will not survive into 2003. In a pattern repeated over and over again during the many attempts by imperialism to settle the Irish question, the trickle of Unionist opposition has become a flood, the flood has become a torrent and now the Unionist leadership has effectively changed. Following the victory of dissident Geoffrey Donaldson at the Unionist Council meeting of the 21st September, supporters of the Unionist leader, David Trimble, are being deselected at constituency meetings and it was quite clear that the Unionists would pull the plug on major structural elements of the Good Friday Agreement in January. At the September meeting the party agreed to withdraw from the Stormont Executive if the
IRA had not effectively disbanded by January. This may not be enough to save the Unionist leadership. Polls indicate that Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party are likely to overtake the Ulster Unionists in 2003 and become the major Unionist party.

The standard model

There is a standard explanation for this pattern within Unionist politics. That is that unionism is split into reactionaries and progressives. Fear spread by the reactionaries or provocation from nationalists tilts the issue under discussion towards the reactionaries. All the other forces in society, from the British Government to Sinn Fein, must join together to support the progressives.

Sinn Fein holds a left version of this theory. They demand that the Unionists find a leader – a De Klerk – who will represent their true interests and fully support the Good Friday deal. They accuse securocrats in the state forces and civil service of blocking the real interests of Britain – to bring peace to Ireland. The nationalist family and US imperialism must ensure that there is no backsliding by the Unionists and British.

The truth is rather more complex. There has never been a moderate wing to Unionism in this process. The so-called moderates were led by David Trimble, formerly a leader of the semi-fascist Vanguard organisation, hero of Drumcree, after leading a triumphal march through the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Potadown a few years ago. More recently he was strutting his stuff in East Belfast, standing in front of a besieged Short Strand and accusing the nationalists within of responsibility for the sectarian attacks launched upon them. Trimble’s favourite tactic when under attack from the right is to immediately throw himself in front of the reactionaries, adopt their demands and lead them forward.

This tactic has led the Trimble wing, already composed of sectarians and reactionaries, to move steadily to the right and become more strident and absolutist in their demands for an unconditional Republican surrender. However at the same time the opposition has moderated its demands. Trimble’s arch-rival, Donaldson, has never demanded the scrapping of the Good Friday Agreement and has on occasions stressed his support for it. The DUP, once committed to the smashing of the deal, now want it amended to exclude Sinn Fein.

Goodbye to Sinn Fein

This can all be predicted from the deal. What the Good Friday Agreement offers in effect is a sectarian structure in which each group is given equal sectarian rights. Following its publication, an academic think tank, that advises the British government, pointed out that it could not possibly work. There would be no point in equality of sectarian rights. One group would have to be dominant to ensure stability. The unionists agree and have mounted a vicious and violent campaign, on and off the streets, to ensure that the Agreement is modified to recognise their dominant sectarian privilege.

Holy Cross

Perhaps the key event in that offensive was the raw intimidation of Catholic schoolchildren by loyalist paramilitaries at the Holy Cross primary school in Ardoyne. Rather than meeting with the condemnation of moderate unionism the Unionist political organizations were quick to justify the attacks and advance the sectarian demands for apartheid – with Catholic families to be locked in ghettoes and refused homes in Protestant areas. A Loyalist Commission was set up involving the sectarian gangsters and leading advisors to the Unionist leader, Trimble. Although the loyalist campaign involved a constant barrage of armed attacks and a number of brutal sectarian killings the politicians felt no need to keep their distance. One of its more striking statements from the Commission was a no first strike statement – this meant that the random sectarian killing of Catholics could be justified as long as the killers could point to some imagined provocation that preceded it.

In fact the Unionist politicians now openly bid to outdo each other in their support for raw sectarianism. David Trimble issued a statement in September accusing the nationalist victims of the loyalist violence of responsibility for the violence. He was quickly outdone by Peter Robinson, a government minister representing the Paisleyite DUP Robinson was interviewed by police after stopping traffic on the main road into East Belfast while the loyalist sectarians gathered for a street party to celebrate the imprisoning of the nationalist population behind a series of peace walls. Needless to say, the walls were built by the British.

Progressive unionism

The sectarian unionist offensive knocks away one major element of the peace process – the assumption that there was within unionism a progressive wing anxious to build a new society in the North of Ireland. In reality the unionists have behaved as any sober analysis would have suggested – pocketing the massive gains for them built into the Good Friday Agreement and pushing constantly to move it to the right and make it more sectarian. The difference between Trimble and his critics has been that he has been anxious to retain all the structures of the Agreement while forcing the British to amend it, while his opponents are happy to collapse the Executive in the expectation that what will emerge will be more to their liking.

It is Trimble’s opponents who had it right. Again it was the Holy Cross attacks that clarified British policy. Initial horror at the loyalist bombing of school children was instantly replaced by a definition of the situation as community conflict. The role of the reformed RUC/PSNI was to force the parents and children to run a gauntlet of sectarian hate and demand that the parents negotiate with their tormentors. The eventual outcome of this policy of managing community conflict is that the unionist demands for apartheid were met and Holy Cross school faces closure, under siege and without any genuine protection from state forces.

Appeasement

The desire to appease loyalism was far from local. In a major speech following Holy Cross, British Secretary of State, John Reid, announced that the Good Friday Agreement had made the North of Ireland a cold house for Protestants. The intent was clear. The Agreement had to be bent further to the right and the Republicans had to make further concessions. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, issued a statement blaming Sinn Fein for the violence.

Reid’s speech was followed by a wave of sectarian attack and killings from the loyalist gangs. Wave after wave of sectarians openly attacked Catholic areas while the RUC/PSNI looked on. The new Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, announced blandly that the police were unable to act without the full support of the community – in other words, if Sinn Fein wanted protection they would have to sign up to the new Police Boards. Days later the Chief Constable announced that the level of violence was such that he would have to retain the almost exclusively Protestant RUC Reserve that was slated for disbandment under the Patten proposals on the police. At the same time the British intensified a long-standing policy of encouraging moderates within the loyalist sectarian gangs. Unfortunately the gangs had moved so far to the right that the moderates were now Mad Dog Johnny Adair and his henchmen! Not only did they keep up sectarian killings while talking to the British, they followed up with a full-scale loyalist feud.

Torrent of reaction

By this stage the wave of reaction had become a torrent. Attempts were made by the Sinn Fein leadership to sign up to the new Police Boards, with a statement from leading figure, Mitchell McLoughlin, that the British had accepted many of their demands for reform but, given the level of police involvement in the sectarian attacks, this was leading to fist-fights at local Sinn Fein meetings. The leadership split the difference yet again – announcing that the main problem with the Policing Boards was that many of their members were unable to join because of convictions they had gained during their period of struggle against the British. It was far too late. Trimble’s policy of squeezing them until they bled inside the Agreement was replaced at the September meeting of the Unionist Council with a decision to collapse elements of the Good Friday structure and force them out.

Analysis

Sinn Fein’s analysis of the October 4th raid at Stormont is quite accurate. The arrival of an army of RUC members at their Stormont offices and the arrest of chief administrator, Denis Donaldson, was not an investigation into allegations that they spied on the British administration – something that the unionists have done routinely throughout the troubles – it was a stunt to establish that it was they, Sinn Fein, who are to blame for the impending British suspension of elements of the Assembly and it is they who will have to make further concessions in the next round of discussions.

The problem for Sinn Fein is that it is not possible to blame this on low-level servants of the British state acting against the British interest. This is the state itself declaring its interest in the preservation of the sectarian unionist organisations as the basis for its rule in Ireland. The nationalist family, in Sinn Fein’s eyes the bulwark against any backsliding by the British, stood alongside the British and the US in effectively demanding the disbandment of the IRA and the local representatives of Irish capital, the SDLP, supported the proposals to abandon the Patten reforms of the RUC The fact that Dublin widely publicised the charge that a group, arrested in Bray and claimed to be planning a robbery were IRA members is a strong indication of the pressure the Republicans are under and the total failure of their analysis.

The next period will be grim. The British and the Unionists are now able to bank all the gains that they have made from the Good Friday Agreement. Some of the sectarian structures set up will be preserved. The current hysteria by Dublin and the SDLP is an acknowledgement that only the immediate disbandment of the IRA would be enough to prevent the collapse of the existing Agreement. This is an impossible demand for the Sinn Fein leadership to meet, at least on any short time-scale. The upshot is – negotiation of the Agreement around the core demands of unionism. These have nothing to do with the IRA. The main demand is for superior sectarian rights – a demand that can be achieved either by the exclusion of Sinn Fein and the retention of an SDLP rump within the existing structures or by changing the structures to retain an inner core of government for Unionism alone. In either case the RUC must remain their private army and any pretence that at some time in the future it will be made up of equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants must be brought quickly to an end.

The response of the Sinn Fein leadership has been pathetic. They can describe what is happening easily enough – they are simply unable to acknowledge who is doing it. They call upon the Unionists to be the Unionists of their imagination rather than the Unionists of reality. They call on the British to protect the Agreement as the British tear it up in front of their eyes. Mitchell McLoughlin announces that the way forward is nationalist unity – as nationalist Ireland turns as one to demand the disbandment of the IRA, RUC chief, Hugh Orde and Secretary of State, John Reid, explain that the nature of the Stormont raid was a terrible mistake – and Gerry Adams thanks them for their gracious response! He responds to demands for IRA disbandment by saying that he supports the call! In statement after statement the Republican leadership made it clear that nothing will break them from the Good Friday Agreement – plan B is to do plan A all over again!

The Republican response indicates the extent to which the British remain in command of the situation. However in the long run this is a major setback. The Good Friday Agreement involved the complete capitulation of the Republican resistance. The British and their allies had massive popular support. They failed to capitalise on this and an attempt to put together a more reactionary settlement will have a weaker base and be even less stable. Even now there is a sharp taste of dissatisfaction in the Republicans’ working-class base in the North of Ireland. It will take some time for the working class supporters of Sinn Fein to walk away. It will take longer for them to leave behind the Republican opposition who simply want to roll back the film to the situation that led to Republican defeat. However long it takes there is nowhere else to go. There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement- Mark I or Mark II – for the working class but imprisonment in a sectarian hell. However unpalatable the vision that faces the workers, it is at least a vision of the real world – not a Republican pipe dream where Irish capitalism and British and US imperialism combine to bring justice and peace to Ireland!

Reprinted from Class Struggle Jul/Aug 2002 (bi-monthly – Workers’ Fight – Britain)

In Mid-May, almost exactly one year after the Catholic Holy Cross girls’ school in North Belfast’s Ardoyne was singled out as a target by UDA-UFF gangs, the mostly Catholic Short Strand area, in East Belfast, came under attack from the UVF. This time, the loyalists’ objective was crystal clear. It had nothing to do with protecting sectarian boundaries from alleged threats (the pretext used by the UDA last year in North Belfast). In this case, the UVF wanted to demonstrate its determination to drive the 3,000 or so inhabitants of this Catholic enclave out of the predominantly Protestant East Belfast. It began with pipe bomb attacks against houses. Residents were pelted with stones, tiles and all sorts of other objects. Neighbouring shops, GP surgeries, pharmacies, post offices, etc.. were declared no-go areas for Catholics and loyalists thugs used threats and physical force to enforce the ban. Then, at the beginning of June, the queen’s jubilee provided the UVF with a pretext for escalation. They staged a provocation by erecting flags outside the local Catholic church, leading to violent confrontations in the neighbouring streets. A large loyalist contingent invaded the area and went on the rampage, attempting to burn down houses. Several Catholic households were left with no choice other than to move out of the Short Strand. Many more people, on both sides, were treated for injuries, including some from gun shots. Later on, an unprecedented attack took place against a campus of the mixed Belfast Institute of Higher Education, in which masked loyalist thugs went to search for students living in the Short Strand – although, fortunately, they had to rush out before managing to find one.

The authorities’ response was predictable enough. The PSNI (the rebranded RUC) was sent in together with British soldiers. They did very little to stop the attackers. But as soon as gun shots were heard in the area and unionist politicians started making hysterical noises about the IRA having broken the cease-fire, the residents were immediately subjected to house-to-house searches for weapons – as if being attacked by the UVF was not enough already. Of course, this did not stop the loyalist gangs from coming back again and again during the next days! Ultimately the Executive came up with the same old conflictresolution device invented long ago by the British army – more peace lines. By now, the Short Stand area has been almost totally walled off from the neighbouring Protestant shopping streets, which means misery for its residents. Has it stopped thugs from coming back into the area, as security minister Jane Kennedy claimed it would? No, of course not, and why should it have? With the Short Strand sealed off from the rest of East Belfast, the UVF has won a victory and it can only be expected to try to push its advantage even further.

A return to the loyalists’ turf war

One might wonder why, all of a sudden, the UVF has chosen to single out this Catholic enclave which has been there for so many decades. In fact, this is not the first time at all. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the Short Strand has been the target of systematic attacks by loyalists, like most working class Catholic areas in Belfast, but even more often than most.

Since the beginning of the negotiation process, however, there has been a relative lull, with occasional surges of sectarian attacks, but nothing comparable to the recent events. The UVF, which is the strongest loyalist paramilitary group in the area, was busy consolidating its hold in the new context created by the peace process and the prospect of a political settlement. Its political front, the PUP, was striving to establish itself against the two main unionist parties. PUP figureheads like Billy Hutchinson – a former trade-union official at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, before doing time in jail for paramilitary activities – were using a social democratic language designed to appeal to the working class electorate of the pro-Establishment unionist parties. In a bid to capture votes among the liberal electorate, the PUP even made token antisectarian gestures (like its condemnation of Castlereagh borough council for flying the Orange flag, on the grounds that it was an affront to Roman Catholics and nationalists in the area) and posed as a champion of women’s rights against the reluctance or outright opposition of all other parties (Sinn Fein included) to advocate the extension of the British Abortion Act to Northern Ireland.

To some extent these tactics worked, at least initially. The PUP managed to build a small but not insignificant electorate, winning seven seats in the 1997 local election. Even after Blair tightened the rules for the 1998 Assembly election, by eliminating the top up system which had allowed the ten lists with the highest scores to gain additional seats, the PUP still managed to win two seats in the new Assembly. By contrast, the UDP, the other loyalist party linked to the UDA-UFF paramilitaries, which had stuck strictly to its tradition by promoting itself as the voice of loyalism, was squeezed out altogether, after losing half of its votes between the Forum election, in 1996, and the Assembly election, in 1998. Clearly there was no space for a voice of loyalism as long as Paisley’s DUP was there to whip up anti-Catholic prejudices for its own electoral benefit.

The institutional set-up that came out of the Belfast agreement had never been intended for the small players. And the two main unionist parties made sure that their lesser rivals were left high and dry on the doorsteps of the various bodies and quangos controlled by the Executive. With time the loyalists groups came to realise that they would never gain a share of the peace process cake through the ballot box only. This realisation was probably one of the main factors behind the faction fight which broke out within the UDA, resulting in fierce battles in its Shankill stronghold. But the final blow to the UDA‘s institutional expectations came when it only managed to get two councillors elected in last year’s local elections. After that, the UDA‘s physical force faction took the upper hand and the UDP was formally disbanded.

As to the PUP/UVF, it did not suffer quite as badly as its rival in the local elections. But out of the 7 seats it had won in 1997, the PUP only retained the four seats it held in the Belfast area.

Predictably what came next, was a return to the turf war between the two groups for their traditional bases, the poorest Protestant working class ghettos in Belfast. The
UDA‘s offensive in Ardoyne, from June last year onwards, was an attempt to challenge the PUP/UVF in Billy Hutchinson’s own stronghold (he is a councillor in the area and a representative in the Assembly). And the odds are that the UVF‘s present attacks against the Short Strand enclave are aimed at pre-empting a similar challenge by the UDA in an area which is the territory of the PUP president, David Ervine.

The peace process can live with it

If so, one can only expect the territorial fight between the two loyalist groups to escalate in Belfast in the coming period. This means a very real threat for all workers in Belfast. It is a threat for those in the Catholic ghettos, in the first place, because they are bound to be targeted whenever one of the rival loyalist gangs decides to make a show of strength, as in the Short Strand today. It should be remembered that, in the 1970s in particular, it was the overbidding between loyalist groups, and their on-going internal factional fights, which resulted in some of the worst atrocities against Catholics. After all, the so-called Shankill Butchers were not a bunch of psychopaths out of a mad house, but a disgruntled faction of the UDA.

But the territorial fight between loyalists is also a threat for those in the Protestant ghettos, because it is for their estates that the loyalists are fighting, and they do not usually confine themselves to using propaganda with the locals. Their main weapon is and has always been terror, including in Protestant areas. How many people have paid dearly, sometimes with their lives, for their public opposition to the loyalist gangs in these areas? It is no coincidence if the UDA has killed roughly as many Protestants as Catholics since the Belfast agreement. As far as these thugs are concerned, for instance, mixed facilities like sports clubs, students’ residences and workplaces, or even mixed households for that matter, are targets which are just as legitimate as republican homes. Many commentators have speculated lately about the possibility of the peace process surviving in the context of this turf war among loyalists. However such speculation amounts to a hypocritical denial of the real nature of Blair’s peace process. The peace process was never designed to protect the population of Northern Ireland’s poor ghettos against sectarian thuggery, let alone to bridge the sectarian gap created by Britain’s occupation over the centuries. It was designed first and foremost to relieve the British state of the political and economic cost of a civil war which was a burden on its budget and deprived British capital and its partners in Northern Ireland of the profits that could have been made out of this ready-made market and labour pool.

For a long time the attempts made by British governments in this direction failed, partly due to the bigoted determination of the Unionist establishment not to share power with anyone, but mainly due to London’s determination to avoid any accusation of conceding to the IRA. This was a catch-22 situation, because after the explosion of the late 1960s, the British army was impotent against the resistance of the Catholic ghettos and only the Republicans had enough influence over these ghettos to impose on them a settlement on Britain’s terms. In the end, it was the Republican leadership who made enough concessions to be admitted to the negotiations.

Only then did the British state decide to twist the unionist parties’ arm, and even then very gently. Right from the start, the assumption on which the negotiations rested was this was a partnership between two sectarian blocks, with Britain as the game leader, in which the Republicans, with the assistance of the SDLP and the Catholic church, would police the future agreement in the Catholic ghettos while the unionist parties, including the loyalists, would do the same in Protestant areas. By implication the population of Northern Ireland was sliced into two sectarian entities and this split was enshrined in the institutions which came out of the Belfast agreement. So for instance, if a member of the Assembly refused to register as either unionist or nationalist, his or her vote would not count for most important decisions.

And how were the protagonists in the Belfast agreement meant to police the agreement among their respective self-proclaimed constituencies? With the same old methods with which they had controlled their territories in the past, of course! Despite all the noises made by British ministers and unionist politicians, the IRA‘s punishment beatings were just as much an implicit part of the settlement as the terror methods of the loyalists. Regardless of their political rivalry with the mainstream unionist parties, the loyalists were expected to serve, as they had always in the past, as convenient auxiliaries for these parties. And this is what they have done so far, by feeding the fears and siege mentality which are so indispensable for the unionist parties to retain their monopoly over the Protestant ghettos. So why would the thuggery of the loyalist gangs endanger the peace process, since it is in fact part of it? Only one thing could put the peace process into question – a decision by the Republicans to pull the plug. But why would they, as long as no serious rival is in a position to overbid them in the Catholic ghettos? Indeed what better perspective is there for Sinn Fein, now that it has succeeded in pushing the SDLP into second place via the ballot box and is enjoying the perks of constitutional politics, with two ministers in the Executive, 108 local council seats and a number of top positions in local government, including the highly-symbolic mayor’s job in Belfast?

Capitalist profit on the rampage

Not only does the peace progress provide a political framework which perpetuates the sectarian divide, it also generates the social ferment on which sectarian hatred feeds. The loyalist gangs would be unable to find recruits, especially among the working class youth, if it was not for the degradation of social conditions in working class estates, which the peace process has done nothing to stop, quite the contrary.

In the run-up to the Belfast Agreement, in 1998, one of the British government’s main arguments to win support for the peace process in Northern Ireland was the promise of a bright and affluent future thanks to what was described as the peace dividend. Of course what was really meant by this was very different depending on the audience which was being addressed. But when Blair addressed a business conference called Investing in peace, in Belfast that year, his view of Northern Ireland’s future was that of some sort of European Singapore – i.e. a low-wage, lowcost, subcontracting economy for Western multinationals. Four years on, despite the economic success story boasted of both by Northern Irish and British ministers, the promised flood of foreign investment has still to materialise. On the other hand, what has already materialised is the low-wage economy that Blair had promised his business audience. As to the peace dividend, it has reached the pockets of a thin layer of rich shareholders and local capitalists. But for most of Northern Ireland’s workers, the only dividend so far is a negative one. According to the Economic Development Forum, a quango which brings together bosses, government officials and union bureaucrats to work out schemes to attract foreign investment, between 1996 and 2001 the province’s manufacturing output increased by 25% in value while its manufacturing exports increased by 109% – and this during a period when a large part of Northern Ireland’s traditional textile and food-processing industries was closing down. In fact, almost all the rise in output and exports is due to just two sectors – cable and aircraft manufacturing – with a very large chunk that is attributable to just one plant, the Canadian-owned Shorts factory in Belfast.

However these rosy figures actually conceal a very different story for the manufacturing workforce. Northern Ireland’s traditional industries, which have now virtually closed down, were mostly labour intensive. But the socalled new growth industries are not. What is more, despite a full order book for executive jets and soaring production, Shorts has been cutting nearly 2,000 jobs over the past six months.

Officially the unemployment count has dropped dramatically since the introduction of the Jobseekers’ Allowance, for much the same reasons as in Britain – people have been shifted onto other benefits, coerced into taking casual low-paid jobs or taken off the dole count for working just a few hours a week. The shift from full-time to part-time employment has rocketed as superstore chains like Tesco and Dunnes were becoming the largest employers. The construction boom generated by soaring housing prices and European funding for business is alleged to have created many jobs. But in fact, it merely provided an opportunity for a whole section of the black economy to surface into legality – and the new jobs offered by these cowboy contractors are neither new nor even real jobs, as many of them carry a self-employed status.

The real content of Northern Ireland’s alleged success story is best summarised by a few facts provided by official statistics. Firstly, Northern Ireland’s ranking in terms of GDP/head among all European Union’s regions has not changed since the beginning of the peace process – it is still in the bottom third of the list, barely better off than the poor Italian island of Sardinia. Second, compared with Britain, earnings per head in Northern Ireland are not going up but down: in 1996, average earnings per head in Northern Ireland were 89.5% that of Britain, but last year they had gone down to 84.5%. But this only reflects the situation for average earnings.

The gap between the top and the bottom of the income ladder has been increasing very fast over the past few years, so that the Northern Ireland working class is a lot worse off, relative to its British counterpart, than is shown by these figures.

A recent academic report commissioned by Trimble’s office gives an idea of the extent of the damage caused by this situation. It shows that a third of the population of Northern Ireland lives in deep poverty – that is in a household whose income is equal to or below 30% of the average income in the province. And out of the population of working age which lives in deep poverty, 26% actually have a full-time job while another 12% work part-time. Of course, the section of the population living in deep poverty is concentrated in the areas of highest unemployment – which are still the old working class ghettos of Belfast and Derry.

What is taking place in Northern Ireland is indeed the entrenchment of a low-wage economy for the benefit of capital in general and British capital in particular. According to some estimates labour costs can be as much as 40% lower in Northern Ireland than in Britain: this is the peace dividend for capital. But for many workers in the province, the peace dividend has turned out to be a drop in living standards if not outright poverty.

Enough of Blair’s cynical hypocrisy!

Like in Britain, time and again Blair has declared war on poverty in Northern Ireland and there are countless schemes with flowery names officially aimed at addressing the problems faced by the poorest section of the population.

The most comprehensive of these schemes was recently denounced in a scathing report by the NICVA, a body which brings together the voluntary organisations operating in the province. This scheme is called Targeting Social Needs, or TSN, and it is a typical example of the cynical hypocrisy displayed by British governments when it comes to dealing with social dereliction in Northern Ireland.

In fact this TSN goes back a long way. It was launched in 1991 by the then Tory Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Brooke. Its beauty as a government scheme was that it was a non spending programme. It was made up of guidelines which were to be followed by all departments with the view of channelling existing resources towards areas in which urgent needs had been identified. Above all it involved a comprehensive system of monitoring so that hands could occasionally be slapped for failing to target social needs. But of course, as no additional funding was provided (not even for the mountains of paperwork required for the monitoring itself) and budgets were usually too tight, the scheme was bound to be pretty useless. It was a perfect exercise in bureaucratic tokenism.

Nothing changed with Labour’s return to power in 1997. The following year, the Belfast agreement included a commitment to a new more focused social needs targeting initiative. So Blair did what he has done in so many areas: rather than changing the scheme, he relaunched it under a new name – New TSN, of course! The only addition to the scheme was some more monitoring to assess how wellbalanced its implementation was across the sectarian divide. As usual the Labour government embarked on a lengthy consultation exercise, involving a series of conferences, allegedly in order to improve the guidelines. Finally, in 1999, New TSN was relaunched once again, this time with a 268-page document entitled Making it work to back it up. This document included a long series of so-called action plans designed to implement the guidelines. Except that as the NICVA pointed out, this was hot air and rehashed old stuff: although presented as new initiatives, most of these action plans had been started long ago and many had even been completed!

One action plan quoted by the NICVA report gives a measure of the hypocrisy of the whole exercise. It involved taking 5% out of the budget of every school to be redistributed among the poorest. In other words the already inadequate budgets on which all schools are supposed to survive were to be cut without even bothering to assess the actual needs of the poorest schools, nor whether this bureaucratic redistribution did really help them. This sort of tokenistic bureaucracy, purporting to “bridge the gap between communities” at no cost, by taking from hard-up Peter in order to help even poorer Paul, is always useless. But when it is used allegedly to create a level-playing field between Catholic and Protestant areas, it becomes deadly and ends up feeding resentment on both sides. The least badly-off feel that they are being deprived of what little they have by the others, while the worst off get nothing that can help to sort out their problems and blame the former for it. This is how these so-called community policies (which Labour and the new Northern Ireland Executive are so fond of, precisely because they can claim to be doing something at no cost) become a powerful mechanism feeding sectarian hatred in the working class ghettos, especially in the context of public services being increasingly run down everywhere. It is the same kind of tokenistic bureaucracy – that is, plans drafted by the Northern Ireland Executive to provide lodgings, at minimum cost, in neighbouring areas for families on the waiting list in Ardoyne – which was used by the UDA to mobilise support for its attack on the Holy Cross school last year.

But the real cause of the worsening housing problem in Belfast has nothing to do with attempts by Catholics to take over Protestant areas or vice-versa. It is due primarily to Blair’s housing policy, which involves on the one hand pushing housing prices up in order to boost artificially the purchasing power of the home-owning middle class, while, on the other hand, freezing all new construction of social housing and most urgent repairs programmes, in order to save on social expenditure. And, of course, the Executive is party to this attack on the living conditions of the Belfast working class.

Of course, there is still a degree of inequality and discrimination between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The report on poverty quoted above finds for instance that 35% of the Catholic population is in deep poverty, as opposed to 21% among Protestants. And unemployment is still higher in the poorest Catholic areas. But these differences have long been marginal compared to the huge gap between the poor working class ghettos, Catholic and Protestant, and the increasingly affluent leafy suburbs of Belfast where the local establishment lives. The real enemy is the capitalist class and its politicians who are driving the working class of Northern Ireland, as a whole, into a poverty trap and covering up their policy with the rhetoric of the peace process and the cynical hypocrisy of community policies. And they are not just hypocrites who have nothing but contempt for working people, they are criminals who will stop at nothing to turn the screw of capitalist exploitation – even if it results in two sections of the working class being at each other’s throats.

Fortunately the situation in Northern Ireland has not reached this stage, not yet in any case. But the present developments, with the loyalists’ turf war, must be seen as a serious warning. Many workers, both Catholic and Protestant, are sick and tired of having to live behind the so-called peace lines and being subjected to the bigoted hate-mongering of the paramilitaries, just as they are sick and tired of the bosses’ and politicians’ attacks against their living conditions and of Blair’s cynical ploys. The tragedy, today, is that they have nothing and no-one to turn to.

What is desperately needed is a political voice that expresses the common class interests of all working people and jobless in Northern Ireland, regardless of where they live and without making any excuses based on past antagonisms. The working class represents the future for society because it has the potential to end capitalist exploitation and the profit system. It needs a party that looks towards the future and is determined to defeat all attempts at using the old sectarian divide to split, imprison and paralyse its ranks.

Matt Siegfried, a socialist and trade unionist activist from Detroit, looks at the implications for the US government’s Plan Colombia

This article first appeared in Fourthwrite No. 10, Summer 2002.

The ruling class of the United States has long viewed everything south of the Rio Grande as its exclusive domain. The United States became a capitalist power based on the genocidal clearing of North America of its native inhabitants coupled with chattel slavery and culling of the huge natural resources existing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It became an imperialist power on the backs of Latin American workers and peasants as well as the wholesale theft of everything from the fruit that hung from the trees to the oil and metals that lay below them. Generations before the US became the global power it is today US marines were enforcing the rule of US corporations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The justifications have changed, but the relationship has remained the same.

Several recent events have brought the social crises now enveloping many parts of Latin America and the US’s role in them to the attention of the world. The orchestration of the, thankfully failed, coup in Venezuela to the US backed institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, impoverishing dictates to Argentina are examples of what living under the power of the Good Neighbour to the north means to the people of South America. Nowhere is that power more destructive in this hemisphere than currently in Colombia. The US government’s Plan Colombia provides for a massive infusion of money, weapons and training to a regime that presides over one of the most murderous places on earth.

Pax Americana

The target of this Plan is not simply the guerrillas of the ELN or the FARC. Its aim is nothing less than to pacify a continent reeling from global capitalism’s neo-liberal assault begun with the NAFTA and extended south through the machinations of the, as yet unfinished, FTAA. The reasoning for this intervention was first presented in the context of the US government’s War on Drugs begun in the 80’s. Never mind the fact that drug production in the Andean countries of South America is based on the unending appetite of the North American consumer. Never mind that US institutions like the CIA created drug markets, especially of crack cocaine, in impoverished American cities to fund right-wing paramilitaries and dictatorial juntas deemed essential to the Cold War struggle against popular movements in Latin America, bypassing restrictions implemented by Congress. From the Opium Wars of a hundred years ago to the Contra war against Nicaragua and the Prison Industrial Complex of the last decades, imperialism has always viewed the drug trade as a potential tool in its arsenal of subjugation whether as its purveyor or it opponent.

Now, with a new name, the unending war by the United States against the people of Latin America is heating up in Colombia. The FARC especially, but also the ELN, operate in large swathes of the Colombian countryside effectively putting those areas outside of the control of North America and the Colombian government. Whatever one can say about the politics of the FARC and the conduct of its war, they act as an obstacle to the regime of Pax Americana in Latin America, and indeed, the world. The United States will simply not allow a situation to continue where it’s rule is in question, all resistance must be confronted so as to make any resistance seem futile.

Let us briefly present what the US wishes to defend in Colombia through its $1.5 billion support to the Colombian government this year alone. [Sources on all statistics from the CIA Sourcebook and the Canada Colombia Solidarity Campaign] Unemployment was 20.5 percent officially in 2000 and has undoubtedly grown with the world wide economic recession. UNICEF reports that over 1 million abandoned children live rough on the streets of Colombian cities and that, as of 2000, 12 children are murdered every 24 hours by gangs contracted by local merchants who view these children as nothing but pests. The per capita income according to Colombian government statistics was just under US$2,000 a year in 2001. By 1999 22.7 million of Colombia’s 36 million people were living in dire poverty. 50% of all Colombian exports come to the United States and 35% of all imports into Colombia come from the United States for a trade of about US$28 billion annually. This combined with a debt of, in 2000, US$34 billion owed mainly to American banks and financial institutions as well as the private US investment of nearly US$6 billion in 2001 speaks volumes about American interests in Colombia.

Protecting huge profits

To protect the huge profits the US extracts from Colombia a reign of terror has been unleashed on the Colombian people. Nearly half of all trade unionists killed every year in the world are Colombian, 112 in 2000 alone. 2.1 million people are internally displaced, only Afghanistan and Palestine have larger refugee populations. The death squads of the AUC are responsible for the deaths of 76% of all those civilians killed in the last 3 years, amounting to over 14,000 noncombatants killed (10 times the number of combatants killed). Rape as a tool of repression by both the AUC and the Colombian military has been widely reported, and though no reliable statistics can be found it is estimated that the AUC has grown by 70% since 1999, the year US military support to the Colombian government began in earnest. The Colombian military and the AUC, far from being opponents, have an organic relationship – they both serve the same master. The Colombian ranchers and capitalists and the American ruling class need both the legal military and the extra-legal death squads. Any talk of separating the two is a shell game and the responsibility for the atrocities committed by the AUC lie squarely at the feet of the US and Colombian governments. Of course the FARC and ELN have committed, not just mistakes, but serious crimes and should be held accountable by the Colombian people for their actions, but to make a moral equivalent of the violence of the oppressed with that of the oppressor makes a mockery of justice. As the statistics above should make clear joining the guerrillas in many parts of Colombia is, regardless of the specific actions of the FARC and the ELN, seen by many as a decision based on the legitimate need of self defence.

Last summer three men were arrested in Colombia by the government and accused of being members of the IRA training the FARC in the use of mortars and explosives. The 3 men have been held for nearly a year in a prison where violence is notorious and in urgent need of protection from the AUC, which has stated its desireto kill the three, as well as any internationals coming to Colombia in order to show solidarity with those in struggle with the regime or those who suffer as a result of the war. This includes human rights delegations, trade unionists, environmental activists and aid agencies. No evidence has been presented that would pass muster in any legitimate court in America or Europe to prove the guilt of the three, but evidence is not needed to use them as a political tool. The Colombian government has paraded them before cameras to prove that the intentions of the FARC are warlike and opposed to negotiation. The Unionists (Peter King of the DUP was elicited by the Colombian government as an expert advisor) and some British officials are using the three’s capture to show that the IRA have broken their cease-fire, are still involved in terrorism, should be barred from Stormont and the Good Friday Agreement renegotiated without any but the most pliant nationalists. The Southern Irish ruling class has used their arrest in an attempt to stymie the electoral rise of Sinn Fein in the South. With howls about democracy prohibiting political parties from being connected to armed groups. Pretty rich when you consider the history of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to say nothing of those same parties current connection to the Irish Army and the Gardai (as far as I know both of those groups are still armed) as well as the Irish government as a whole’s new relationship with NATO (another rather well armed group) with the Partnership for Peace.

Expanding the War on Terrorism

So what then was the agenda of the US Congress when they opened highly public hearings into the relationship between the IRA and the FARC? It is hard to imagine the reasoning of the US Congress in the context of the Peace Process in Ireland. Why, after the long road of bringing Sinn Fein into bourgeois legitimacy through a process where Sinn Fein and the Provisionals shed nearly every principle which put them in conflict with imperialism that the US government would want now to make them illegitimate? Sinn Fein’s acceptance of British rule and the Unionist veto in Ireland are the lynch pin upon which the Good Friday Agreement is predicated.

Since September 11th and the beginnings of the War on Terrorism the United States has been seeking to expand the targets of that war beyond that of Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. The US has long been looking down the barrel of the gun at the FARC and insurgency in general in Colombia and Latin America. They have known that, on its own, the Colombian government is incapable of re-conquering the country and that public opinion in the US has long been opposed to sending troops to Latin America. In the aftermath of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dirty Wars in Brazil, Argentina and Chile even the notoriously ill informed US public has turned against many of the most brutal policies employed by the US government south of the Rio Grande. It is in this context that the US seeks to make Colombia another front in its War on Terrorism, but clearly there is no tie organizationally or politically between Al Qaeda and the FARC. The United States is attempting to portray Colombia (at least where the FARC operate) as Afghanistan and the FARC as the Taliban to legitimize the continued and intensifying war on the Colombian people.

The three unlucky Irishmen are a convenient tool in this endeavour. Colombia is now as dangerous to world peace as Afghanistan and if you want proof we will concoct enough evidence to prove that not only the IRA, but ETA, Cuba, even Iranian and Zimbabwean terrorists are training there. From their bases in Colombia these internationals terrorists, who on the surface seem to have nothing in common, will return to their countries to fly planes into building just for the sake of it. Truly a Terrorist International to be frightened of! If the consequences of US threats weren’t so deadly real it would be laughable. The fact that the War on Terrorism is so consuming for some policy makers in the US that they would consciously undermine other foreign policy efforts (and in their terms successes like the Irish peace process) is an indicator where politics is currently at in the United States. After Afghanistan, Iraq. After Iraq, Colombia. After Colombia, another and another.

While this writer would find it difficult to call the IRA criminal, if they were in Colombia to assist in the fighting capacity of the FARC against the thugs of the AUC and Colombian military, we cannot assume that is what they were there for. What we do know is that fundamentally the War against Terrorism is not about terrorism at all. Colombians and the rest of Latin Americans have suffered through the early, and God ordained, Manifest Destiny of the North Americans. They have been cruelly exploited during the Good Neighbour Policy of Franklin Roosevelt that smiled as it stole. Acts of genocide were committed as the barbarous hand of the United States smashed the popular aspirations of the Latin American workers and farmers in the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. The War on Drugs reinforced and deepened US control over the continent as use by American consumers, and consequently production in the Andes, continued to prove that even in the heart of rich and democratic America millions sought escape from their own misery through drug use. And now the US is telling the people of the world, and of Colombia, that they are either with the US government or against it, with the ashes of Afghanistan as an example to fear.

The War against Terrorism is a continuation of a never ending war by the wealthy nations against those that have made them wealthy through their exploitation. What horror it will bring to Colombia, and the effect it will have on places like Ireland we are just beginning to see. Whatever they chose to call it, the Latin American masses call it by its right name – Yankee imperialism and they are against it.

This is a statement issued by Belfast International Socialists and Socialist Democracy

We, the undersigned, wish to declare our absolute opposition to the growing bigotry and sectarianism within society in the North of Ireland as shown by events at Holy Cross, the Short Strand and countless other incidents.

Far from being the dying gasp of an old order, all the signs are that a new and even more virulent sectarianism is emerging as a direct consequence of the structures and way of thinking built into the Good Friday Agreement. The new institutional sectarianism is not confined to a few bigots. It involves most of the political and institutional structures of our society displaying a willingness to define incidents in terms favourable to bigots, and to collude with and make concessions to bigotry with the end result that sectarian arrangements are built into every level of society.

Thus the self-evident fact that the loyalist organisations are carrying on an organised programme of intimidation, which the main unionist parties are quite happy to excuse while conducting their own campaign, goes without comment. The British administration and the media immediately redefine the situation as community conflict. All the main political parties go along with this and the trade unions offer to act as honest brokers. The inevitable outcome is a settlement that further entrenches religious apartheid and institutionalises sectarianism.

We reject the contention of the British government, sectarian politicians and media commentators that sectarianism is the result of community division that can only be addressed through accommodating or compromising with the demands of sectarian intimidation. Sectarianism is not ingrained in working class communities but fostered by the politics of bigotry and intimidation. Sectarianism can not be combated by appealing to those carrying out the intimidation or acceding to any of their demands.

We reject the logic of sectarian apartheid which states that housing can be allocated by religion and that working people are not free to live in whatever location they desire. We reject proposals for provision and use of facilities on a sectarian basis. We also reject ‘solutions’ that see walls built higher around communities under attack, creating jail like structures in which it is the victims who are imprisoned.

The trade union movement’s lofty condemnation of all sectarianism is cover for its failure to identify the source of bigotry and assign responsibility for the real sectarianism that exists. Its attempts to advise loyalists on how their sectarian politics can be advanced in a more articulate fashion is accommodation with bigotry and not opposition. The trade union role is particularly shameful in that it denies the possibility of an alternative identity, as members of the Irish working class. It stands opposed to the desire of many workers who want to stand with us in defending the right of working people to live and work where they wish, who oppose the programme of loyalist intimidation and who oppose official promotion of sectarian logic involving collusion with, and appeasement of, the bigots.

We the undersigned call for a real campaign against sectarianism within the Protestant and Catholic working class. Many working class people despair of the violence and can see no clear way out of it. Such despair is precisely the object of sectarian attacks. We are confident in the belief that a large current of Irish society seeks a means to declare its opposition to the sectarian solutions on offer and wishes to hear a new voice articulate its hopes.

We the undersigned affirm that only the united organisation of workers across the island and beyond can promise defeat for bigotry and that a first step in this is a united socialist voice declaring No to Sectarianism!

Belfast International Socialists Socialist Democracy

This article appeared in The Starry Plough (Dec. 2001/Jan. 2002) the paper of the Irish Republican Socialist Party

It was a momentous day for Republicanism in Ireland. Tuesday the 23rd of September 2001- the day the Provisional IRA decommissioned weapons in order to save not only the Good Friday Agreement but also the Stormont Assembly. The shock waves are rumbling through the Republican heartlands ever since.

A number of phrases are heard – At least ‘the stickies’ didn’t decommission, an act of unparalleled treachery, we told you so and so on.

When the issue was first raised in the early days of the peace process the IRSP was sceptical about the whole process but did not believe that decommissioning was an issue or that any republican group would voluntarily decommission its weapons.

Representatives of the Republican Socialist Movement met with representatives of the Provisional Movement on a number of occasions over the last five years and were assured that decommissioning of weapons would not happen. We had no reason to disbelieve the sincerity of those we spoke with. It was a matter for them; it is still a matter for them.

But for all that there is no doubt that shock, disillusionment, feelings of betrayal, and a shaken trust in the leadership, and a reluctant but necessary step all summon up what strong supporters of the Provisional Movement feel.

Betrayal & disillusionment

Emotions run high and talk of what about Bombay Street? etc echoes through the streets of Belfast. The image of the burning streets of Ardoyne in 1969 runs through the mind as the northern nationalist working class tries to come to terms with this event.

It is always a good thing to become disillusioned. That is the throwing away of false illusions and the start of seeing things as they really are. The IRSP feel for those whose have feelings of betrayal and disillusionment. Within our own history we have suffered our own disillusionments. So we understand why many out there are feeling bruised and sensitive to criticism.

But now is the time to see things as they really are, not as we wish them to be. When the Civil Rights Movement started not only republicans of all shades but socialists of all shades didn’t know how to react.

Those who later went on to form the Provisionals were reluctant to become involved in what was a reformist movement. Those who later went on to take the Official IRA down a dead end street of arrogant political self seeking saw the Civil Rights Movement as the only way forward and tried to suppress both the emergence of a more militant brand of republicanism and any manifestation of class struggle.

Those of us who consistently and persistently raised social and economic issues within the mass struggle that the Civil Rights Movement became, were derided as ultra left-ists, wreckers, trots and looney lefties. Socialists veered between a full acceptance of the nationalist agenda or swallowing whole a form of British Imperialist socialism under the guise of an exotic form of communism.

Out of all this confusion the Provisionals emerged from the ashes of 69 and the failure of the Official leadership to re-arm the North in a time of increasing political tension. The Provos rejected a reformist agenda and launched an armed campaign on the single issue of Brits Out. Later in 1973/74 the Official Republican Movement split again and eventually the IRSP/INLA emerged to re-establish the Republican Socialist tradition that they felt had been betrayed by the Officials. The programme the IRSP then set out has still not yet been met. We have not yet attained a Broad Front, removed the Brits, or established the Socialist Republic.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since the seventies and there have been many changes. The Provisionals have accepted, albeit 30 years later, the reformist strategy first put forward by the Officials. The reason for armed struggle has gone and their goals can be achieved by political means and the growth of the catholic population. The Good Friday Agreement saw the Provisionals ditch one of the pillars of Republicanism, non-sectarianism when they accepted the sectarian headcount that gave them seats in the Stormont Cabinet.

This can all be very confusing for those who trust in leaderships and go for the personalities in politics. A trust in a Gerry, a Martin or even a Ruaridh will eventually lead to disillusionment. All of us as individuals are influenced not only by our parents and neighbourhood but also by the interaction between our core beliefs and our actions. We are formed in specific historical and economic conditions. We all are, in a sense, prisoners of history and also of the organisations we are members of.

The Provisionals were an all-class alliance merging militarists, disaffected urban nationalist youths and traditional nationalists from rural areas. During the seventies this alliance while capable of launching ferocious military attacks made no political progress. Sinn Fein in the 70‘s was a right wing pro catholic and anticommunist mouth piece for the IRA with the occasional radical articles to appeal to more left wing elements.

When the Hunger Strikes occurred the urban based northern seized the leadership, swung the movement towards the left to soak up the militant radicalised working class youth, the growing republican minded women’s groups and the radical intellectuals politicised by the mass actions around the hunger strikes.

During all this time regular contact was kept up with the British Intelligence services through various contacts. This was because the Provo leadership recognised that eventually they would have to do a deal with their enemy. They knew from the mid eighties that the continuation of the armed struggle was a road to nowhere.

Armalite & Ballot Box

The Armalite and Ballot Box strategy saw the Provisionals make many political gains. They were able to exercise a strangle-hold over most nationalist working class areas in the north and through the exercise of social and economic control, which they had wrestled from the SDLP/Catholic Church, were able to create a middle bureaucracy of supporters who formed the intellectual backbone for their control in the ghettoes. All opposition whether militarily or politically was ruthlessly crushed within their areas of control.

Throughout all this they were able to retain the loyal support of their base because of their militancy and also their astute political leadership. This leadership was trusted. The development of their peace strategy was an advance from the Armalite etc strategy. It was strongly driven by their support base in the USA. The swing to the left of the early eighties was slowed, a distancing began with anti-imperialist movements worldwide, the suits came in and the advisers multiplied. Now they were appealing to the emergent nationalist middle classes within the north and they began to occupy the ground that the SDLP had once walked on.

That is because they represent bourgeois Ireland. That is why they can occupy seats in a capitalist Government and introduce privatisation schemes into the educational system. Of course they will oppose corrupt practices and use radical phrases but their whole function now as a political organisation is to make Ireland a more effective and efficient place for international capital to invest in. That is the importance of the USA connections.

Obviously the creation of one Republican Governmental system on the isle of Ireland will reduce bureaucracy make easier access for multinationals to Government and speed the integration of Ireland into the whole NATO defence scheme. This will be in spite of the desire of individual Republicans to keep Ireland neutral. Their subjective wishes will come up against the brutal logic of Imperialism and objective reality will always over-come subjective wishes.

He who pays the piper…

Witness the response to the Colombian Three, the Turkish Hunger Strike and the September 11th massacres. There is no way that their principal leaderships will be identified with any radical movements from now on. No matter how much that leadership may support the cause of the Turkish Hunger strikers they can not be seen to do so. Some of the middle tier leaderships will be allowed to associate and participate with safe leftist tinged causes but not the leadership. He who pays the piper calls the tune and be under no illusions the tune is now called from Washington.

That is not to say that the IRSP have all the answers. We don’t. It is always easier to criticise than to put forward solutions. Since the return of the Republican Socialist Movement to its political roots following a bitter political and military struggle in the mid nineties we have been measured in our criticisms of other Republicans. While critical of the Good Friday Agreement and the political basis of the peace process we accepted the verdict of the people of Ireland as expressed in referenda and persuaded the leadership of the INLA to call an unconditional ceasefire. We are for peace. We are for politics. We are for the democratic road. We are against militarism.

But we are not for republicans, or socialists for that matter, taking their seats in a capitalist Government. We are not for decommissioning and we are for the defence of working class areas from sectarian attacks.

I owe my allegiance to the working class

Does that lead to political impotence? We don’t believe so. Our politics have always been based on a class analysis and can be best summed up in the words of Seamus Costello, I owe my allegiance to the working class. The working class of all countries are our friends and allies. The capitalists of all countries are our enemies. Capitalism is ruthless in its logic as it breaks down national barriers and creates a global economy. There can be no Socialist Republic built in Ireland in isolation. The idea of a socialist paradise isle surrounded by capitalist states is a fantasy. That is why republicans have always been internationalists from Tone to Connolly from O’Donnell to Costello. Republicanism itself was an import to Ireland from France. What is going on today in Afghanistan, in Columbia, in Sierra Leone and Iraq, impinges on the day to day life of people in Ireland. In its relentless pursuit of profit modern day capitalism is no respecter of states or governments. Hence the creation of super states like the European Union.

It is in this context that we in the IRSP are internationalist. The international capital market profoundly affects the Irish working class. Many of the 1200 workers who have only recently been told that they are facing redundancies are instinctively aware of the internationalist nature of capitalism. It is the task of socialists and republicans to bring together the best elements of both republicanism and socialism and create an alliance of the dispossessed within this isle that can successfully challenge the cosy capitalist consensus that accepts the permanency of the capitalist system. The provisional movement has clearly shown by the actions of its leadership that it accepts that consensus. We do not.

An all class alliance of nationalist Ireland while it may weaken the unionist case also weakens the working class. It is a case of labour must wait as De Valera said during the war of Independence. But now it is the current leaders of Sinn Fein who are saying labour must wait.

We disagree. Labour, that is the needs and aspirations of the Irish working class, can not wait, must not wait. They are the only class capable of building a just and equitable society on this isle. That is why we repeat the call we made a number of years ago for the creation of a Republican Forum with which to rally the disorganised and demoralized forces of the left. There is a way forward for the republican and socialist left and we intend to play our full part in rallying the Irish working class. If you are radical, republican and working class play your part. Join us in the struggle.

On to the Republic.

Belfast Socialist Forum

A non-sectarian socialist discussion group has been set up in Belfast. Initiated by Socialist Democracy and supported by left activists and the International Socialists (former members of the Socialist Workers Movement who have resigned in protest at the SWM’s lack of democracy), it is open to all socialists interested in debate and education in socialist ideas.

Decisions on discussions, activities and speakers are taken by open meetings of Belfast Socialist Forum, which is open to all socialist activists.

For further details contact Socialist Democracy PO Box 40, Belfast or ring 028 9060 1555)