tarianism of pre 1968 Stormont was politically unacceptable. The bourgeois nationalist SDLP had to be persuaded that becoming junior coalition partner in a reformed Six County government was worthwhile.
Sop to nationalists Dublin involvement was thus seen as a sop to nationalist aspirations and a brake on any Unionist misuse of their position. The power-sharing executive was brought down by loyalist resistance, culminating in a general strike. Their main objection was not so much to power-sharing with Catholics, as to any hint of southern involvement in decision making.
In 1985, the Dublin and London governments signed the Hillsborough Accord which sought to address the same ob iectives. Paper recognition was iven to the aspirations of Jorthern nationalists and regular consultation between London and Dublin initiated. But support for partition was copper-fastened.
The Accord was little more than an attempt to realign all the main bourgeois parties against JUST SIX helicopters were available to the Bangladeshi government. With this they had o deal with the devastation left in the wake of the cyclone which killed up to 200,000 and left 4 million without clean water or food - a pathetic contrast to the mighty array of technology used to blast Iraq.
Bangladesh itself felt obliged to contribute 2,000 troops to this imperialist war against another third world country. Yet it has probably suffered more than any other country outside the Gulf, losing $500 million in exports, Kuwaiti aid and remittances from Bangladeshis working in the Gulf. And many of the latter have 'disappeared, to the total disinterest of Bangladesh's 'allies'. dated by water, either through the flooding of it's two great rivers or by sea storms driving across it. The whole country is low-lying and highly populated, with an average of 1,700 people per square mile.
It is therefore little wonder that so many people are attracted to live in even the most low-lying sand spits. but few shelters have been built by the government against these inevitable typhoons for the last ten years.
Thanks to the TV cameras jolting living-room consciences in the West, more shelters may now bebuilt. But charity of this sort is no long-term answerto the basic problem of dependency.
The horrifically violent partition of India in 1947 led to an artificial boundary between Bangladesh and Calcutta, where jute, still the main export, was processed. Pakistan and only achieved independence twenty years ago - after a war in which a million people died. Sixteen of those twenty years have seen the country ruled by military dictatorships. It is a history of suffer. in Todav's disastrous floodina Today's disastrous flooding comes only two months after the election of a civilian prime minister, Mrs. Khaleda Zia. American state department officials were drooling with euphoria over the election results.
Mrs. Zia, widow of the first military dictator, was just the sort of leader they wanted. To help to prop her up, they wrote off $292 million in debts.
This, said a spokesperson of the State Department, 'will encourage Bangladesh to stay the course of economic reform outlined in it's IMF-enhanced structural adjusthand and take with the other!
An overwhelmingly agricultural country, Bangladesh Is also very much at the mercy of India, its big sister, which surrounds it. Unsurprisingly, neither the Indian bourgeoisie, nor the IMF have shown any interest in the construc tion of concrete coastal shelters, any more than in the construction of industry.
Mass student and youth demonstrations at the end of last year led the military to give a final push to Ershad, the dictator, and usher in elections.
But for Bangladeshis to have a government that will act in their interests will take morè popular mobilisations. The revolutionary left movement was crushed and forced underground in the 1970s. Its reemergence in the next few years will be a matter of life and death. No. 2 May 18, 1991
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