PSNI sources as saying that there was no “paramilitary” involvement in Friday night's rioting in Belfast's Castlereagh Street and Albertbridge Road, but it’s clear also that events a couple of weeks ago in the Short Strand have contributed to what looks like an explosive situation moving into the marching season, no matter whether the loyalists were there or not. If the PSNI are accurate in their assessment of the situation that there was no UVF involvement in this incident and after all, “even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” it’s likely that the tensions in East Belfast are going to escalate further.

Marxists are not economic determinists; we don’t believe that there is a direct link between an economic crisis and escalating tensions and conflict within society. It’s certainly not the case that there is an automatic linkage between a slump and increase sectarian conflict. The reality is much more complex.

The state of the economy in the North gives the public sector a decisive importance. The impact of Tory spending cuts, passed on via the Assembly will be felt most in the poorest areas, among the old, the young and the sick. It will be felt by public sector workers also; which means that the cuts will have a more or less £ for £ impact on the market in the North.

But before the cuts and the slump really bite, and the crisis in the North has lagged somewhat behind the crisis in the Republic precisely because of the strength of the public sector; the political tensions in the North have been accentuated.

There is a deep impasse in the North, it’s more than an economic impasse, it’s a profound political and social impasse. Thirteen years since the Good Friday agreement there are more “peace walls” than ever, but less evidence of any real progress. Unemployment in the North is reported as falling over the last 3 months, although Civil Service unions in Britain have pointed out that the government have recently set targets for the number of people who are taken off benefit – rather than getting work, so any figures claiming that unemployment has fallen would need to be taken with a large bag of salt.

^{“Following the Guardian investigation, a group of trade unions representing jobcentre staff have written to management seeking "urgent clarification" on the issue of targets for referrals and sanctions.The DWP has backtracked and released a statement confirming the practice had been going on in some offices due to a misunderstanding between the department and some jobcentre managers. It insisted this was no longer the case.” The Guardian 8/4/2011}

But the impasse in the North "the Carnival of reaction" that James Connolly wrote about is affecting all layers of society. The recent Assembly elections reinforced the drift towards the DUP and SF over the last few years, the idea that the agreement would allow for the flourishing of some sort of transparent bourgeois democracy has proven to be utterly wrong. The Ulster Unionists and to a lesser extent the SDLP have been pushed aside. Within the narrow confines of the six counties there is no solution to the problems of neither the Catholic workers nor the Protestant workers. The problem for the British, Irish and US ruling class for that matter is that their direct representatives hold very little sway. The biggest prop holding up capitalism in the North is the subvention from the British Treasury. But even that is under threat.

With 48,000 jobs under threat as a result of the cuts, with the loyalists and the so called “dissident” republicans working to undermine the SF/DUP at Stormont it is likely to be a hot summer. But, ultimately, in the final analysis, the economic situation is going to be decisive. The class struggle is on the order of the day in the North. Throughout Europe and the USA public sector workers are locked into a pressure cooker of slash and burn economics. The events in Greece and Spain and the ongoing crisis South of the border are not isolated incidents they are part of a generalised process of austerity across the whole of the “West”.

As we’ve explained before, the North is not immune to these processes. But it is likely that without a mass working class political alternative to the cul de sac of sectarianism, the workers organisations will be fighting with one hand tied tightly behind their backs. Connolly and Larkin fought for an independent voice for working people in Ireland. Their fight is as vital today as it was 100 years ago. The next period will see an escalation of the class struggle in the North.

But youth unemployment, sectarianism, poverty and hopelessness sap the fighting power of working people. They make it far easier for the bigots and professional sectarians to divide and rule the working class. Just now there is an opportunity to weld the working class together to defend themselves from the Con Dems and the Assembly government attacks. That will demand a clear socialist programme and a Marxist perspective.