Over the last month the announcement that the Provisional IRA had
decommissioned all its weapons was drowned out by the blasts of the loyalist
paramilitaries using theirs. The worst scenes of violence witnessed in years
only made the lead item on British TV news until England secured their
victory over Australia in the Ashes.
The media here continue to claim the peace process is succeeding,
remaining silent about the increase in sectarianism and the failure of the Good
Friday Agreement (GFA), so that when scenes like those witnessed a few weeks
ago are reported they come as a shock. Yet these events were not some one-off
moment of madness that can quickly be forgotten. They were the climax of an
ugly and violent mood that has been building up all summer, including a bitter
and bloody feud between rival loyalist gangs.
There has been a dramatic increase in extreme sectarian violence
against Catholics in the Ballymena area (represented in parliament by the DUP
leader Ian Paisley), for example, but this goes unreported. Nothing must
tarnish the image of “peace” in their propaganda.
The success of that “peace process” was supposed to be celebrated with
a live link to the Last Night of the Proms from a stage in front of the City
Hall. But the Union Jacks waving in Belfast weren’t swaying
to the strains of Land of Hope and Glory. While
the orchestra fiddled, the streets of Belfast burned and
reverberated to the sound of gunfire, bomb blasts and water canon.
Bricks and bullets flew and burning barricades were erected across the
city; petrol and blast bombs were thrown at the police and Army. Automatic
gunfire was heard amid the wreckage of the debris-strewn Shankill area. Scenes
more reminiscent of Iraq than
"peace-time" Belfast were repeated at
flashpoints all over the north and west of the city.
The spark that lit this blaze was the rerouting of one relatively small
Orange march at Whiterock in north Belfast, by less than 100 metres, away from
Catholic homes and the gate in the peace wall – that solid evidence of the
failure of the Good Friday Agreement ‑ between the two communities being welded
shut so it could not be forced.
This was the spark, but the combustible material was provided by years
of sectarian propaganda that the GFA was a step towards a united Ireland where the
Protestants would be an oppressed minority, swapping places with the Catholic
population of the six counties. It was provided by the appalling social and
economic conditions facing young working class Protestants, and it was provided
by the criminal feuds of the loyalist gangsters and their battles over
territory.
The Orange Order and unionist politicians whipped up the fears of
Protestant working class people about the erosion of their “cultural
traditions” (i.e. the “right to march” through Catholic areas). There has been
much written about this “right to march”, but there is a clear difference
between the right to demonstrate, to protest, or even to celebrate some
historical event and parading your superiority in the faces of residents in
their own homes. There can be no such “right”.
The loyalist murder gangs of the UDA, the UVF and the LVF temporarily
put aside their differences (the turf war between the UVF and the LVF had
already claimed the lives of four Protestants this summer) and came onto the
streets in a show of force attacking the police and trying to provoke a
reaction from local residents in a wide number of areas.
In an attempt to retrospectively justify the violence, politicians from
all the Unionist parties suddenly discovered the marginalised and neglected
position of the Protestant working class. These are the same politicians who
for years only waved the Union Jack to distract those same people from their
real social and economic conditions.
Of course, what this is all about is the battle for control of the
Protestant masses by the various elements of unionism using the sectarian card.
It is about maintaining the unnatural division upon which the sectarian
politicians feed, and upon which the continuation of the capitalist system
rests.
It is striking that the main complaint made by the loyalist rioters was
that the authorities are doing too many favours for the “other side” ‑ that is,
for republicans and nationalists. There is high unemployment and widespread
social decay among working-class Protestant communities in West Belfast and elsewhere;
this undoubtedly played its part in swelling the ranks of the riots. At the
same time they were being stirred up by loyalist claims that their community is
being ignored while republicans, in their eyes, are being feted.
According to The Guardian website one rioter complained that the
government is “ignoring us” while “always listening to the republicans and
Catholics”. Another pointed to the Catholic ghetto of New Lodge and said, “They
are getting everything that’s going. We are getting nothing. They’ve got new
doors and new floors.”
David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party that grew out of
the Ulster Volunteer Force in the mid-1990s, said the riots were caused by a
“sense that the Unionist community has been set aside while the [British]
government plays footsie with the republicans.”
A similar line was being put forward by the Democratic Unionist leader,
Ian Paisley, as he denied whipping up the trouble. He claimed Protestants were
being deprived their fair share of government money. But while unionist
politicians argue that their working class areas suffer "the worst social
and economic deprivation in Europe", a
government report found "Catholics are more likely to live in areas that
are less organised and less able to attract funding". Official government
figures suggest that Protestants continue to have better job prospects than
Catholics, as we reported last month.
In truth both are right. The fact is that the working class of all
backgrounds endure appalling social and economic decay. The blame lies not with
one or other section of working class people but with the capitalist system
which so ruthlessly divides workers in order to keep them in their place.
It is also evident that Protestant communities are being corroded from
within by paramilitarism. The Ulster Volunteer Force is furious with the police
for attempting to thwart the murderous feud in which it hopes to obliterate its
rival, the drug-financed Loyalist Volunteer Force. Riots had already erupted
over recent weeks when police tried to make searches linked to the feud.
This tension was further stoked when Paisley threatened that
the Whiterock parade could prove "the spark which kindles a fire there
could be no putting out". Paisley had been due to
address the parade before the rally was abandoned when loyalist paramilitaries
opened fire on the police and army and the first gun battle broke out.
The march clearly provided an excuse for the two major outlawed
Protestant paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster
Volunteer Force, to launch a pre-planned rebellion against police authority. To
the extent that they have any political aim it is to overturn the Good Friday
Agreement and maintain sectarian division. Much of their activities are linked
to criminal battles over territory, drug dealing and money laundering.
Some of those on the streets were there because of the appalling
conditions they face, and the sectarian politicians are whipping them up into a
frenzy by blaming the Catholic population for supposedly “getting their share.”
Here one sees a glimpse of what would happen were there any real attempt to
unite Ireland on a capitalist
basis.
It is clear from all that they have said and done over the past year,
that the leadership of Unionism is not even prepared to countenance a power
sharing government with nationalists. Sinn Féin’s main Protestant opponents,
the Democratic Ulster Unionist party, have refused to discuss restoring the
assembly until the IRA proves it has given up arms for good. Meanwhile, the
loyalist paramilitaries continue not only to hold weapons but to use them.
Sinn Fein has donned the worn out, second-hand clothes of the SDLP but
this will not get them into power. Destroying most of the weapons of the
Provisional IRA will not either. Their policy is now based upon sharing office
north and south of the border. They are unlikely to achieve either goal. Even
if they did gain such seats this would solve nothing for the working class. It
would not create one job or build one house. All that working class people can
look forward to in the coming years is more of the same, more sectarian
violence, more loyalist attacks and feuds, more unemployment. The social and
economic conditions of working class Protestants and Catholics will not improve
under this system. They will not be improved while they remain divided by fear
and sectarianism.
There is no peace. There is no move towards unification. There is no
basis for creating jobs, building better housing or improving healthcare and
education. Even if Stormont were to meet they would be able to do nothing about
the problems facing working people. They would simply implement the British
government’s policy of privatisation, the DUP, the UUP, Sinn Fein and the SDLP
alike.
The Good Friday Agreement has provided not one step towards Ireland’s unity. On the
contrary it has legitimised and constitutionalised partition. It has not
brought even limited devolution and democracy to the six counties. The
democracy of Stormont is turned on and off like a tap at Westminster. If and when it
does meet it is a temporary balancing act between sectarian parties. Assembly
members make decisions not by “a simple majority” as in other parliaments, but
on the basis of what is called “sufficiency of consensus” ‑ basically meaning
that “any agreement that was to be put to the people of Northern Ireland in a
referendum would have the broad agreement of the representatives of both parts
of the community.” This presents Catholics and Protestants as utterly irreconcilable
communities, with sectarianism used constitutionally to mask the shared
interests of the working class.
The GFA has not created peace, but endless peace walls, the segregation
of workplaces and communities, the creation of a form of apartheid – with this
difference, the Protestant working class do not enjoy a pampered existence,
only the fear of worsening their already appalling conditions.
It has not removed troops from the streets. Hain and co have promised
to cut troop numbers (currently there are more British soldiers in the six
counties than in Iraq). Nevertheless
more than 5000 are to remain.
The real achievements of the Good Friday Agreement are: segregation,
increased sectarianism, and the reinforcement of the crime of partition. The peace
process has been from the very beginning a sham, and a lie, and a trap. It is
presented by Sinn Fein as a step towards unity and a spurious equality to
bolster their electoral support, and simultaneously it is presented by the UUP
as a step towards unity and inferiority to whip up fear amongst the Protestant
population.
Protestant working class people will never accept minority status in an
Ireland of poverty and
deprivation, the only Ireland capitalism can
ever offer. Catholic workers will never get jobs, houses, or schools from the
profit system. Sinn Fein’s waffle about “equality” and “esteem” echo Blair’s
words about “equality of opportunity.” Capitalism can offer no such equality,
only a redistribution of poverty, solving none of the problems of workers from
any background but adding fuel to the fires of sectarianism.
It is not equality of poverty under capitalism that is required but
working class unity in a struggle against capitalist poverty, exploitation and
oppression. The events of the recent weeks demonstrate that achieving such
working class unity is more difficult than ever. For all that, the only way to
defeat British imperialism and capitalist exploitation is, as James Connolly
explained nearly a century ago, through the united working class struggle for
socialism. Every other method has ended in abject failure.
