that the Stormont executive will collapse, and that the collapse will predicted, due to a rising tide of. he as Socialist Democracy always right wing sectarian reaction. However the main feature of the crisis will be how little immediate will remain in charge ments of the agreement they put into cold storage and which they continue to operate.
They have just pur under their belt one of the most significant of the last 30 years in reSals establishing RUC unchallenged state police. For the first time ever, it is formally sup ported by the local Cathone middle class and the Dublin government.
For all of that, the crisis is significant. It may not be the beginning of the end of the present imperialist offensive, but it is almost certainly th end of the beginning.
the previous attempt by resolve the Irish question in Britain's the Sunningdale C agreement, also fell to tho right. It was argued then a that the unionists had been willing to accept a sharing government but had opposed all-Ireland dimension.
On the ground it was quite cicar that raw sectarian reaction to the Sunningdale agreement .An bigotry drove the identical bigotry drives reaction today.
Then the unionists were able to rely on British compliance to scrap the accord but were unable to impose their own agenda.
Today the vast majority of unionists are perfectly happy with the gains the Good Friday agreement has brought them.
They refuse absolutely to pay the price of rubbing shoulders with Sinn Fein in the gorernment -many of them share power with any Catholics - but they are not bind totteres of and They know that present structures offer.
patronage continue after the fall of the execu- their gains will be preserved and their tive. result of the crisis is a The immediate dawning reality check amongst workers. This is as good as the Good Friday Bur "as good as it gets" is no solution for the In the absence of a stable executive British.
the North of Ireland will continue as direct colony, with political convulsion always on the horizon.
However for the instability to be working require a political opposition •and, given the collapse to the The grim reality of the 'new" society is Everyone concerned appears to accept the democratic or working class logics have been sectarian logic of the situation. remored from the agenda. a form of harassment that would cause outcry anywhere in Europe with any other ethnic group is dismissed as a mundane CrOSS-COmmunity' dispute. they allow the children to go to school while simultancously guaranteeing the right of the bigots to intimidate them The British define their role as "bringing the two communities together' and preside • A column from Socialist Democracy, Irish section of the Fourth international Preparing for his next ulrimarum: doyulist Leader Trimble over 'negotiations' - made difficult by the lack of any loyalist demands other than the prevention entering school through the front door. The trade unions, once so vociferous in are unwilling to opposition to republicanism, are determined that nothing will draw them from their well know that of silence.
of the forces nationalist the 'compromise that the pupils walk actoss fields to the back door. At the height of the disturbances the SDIP and the Dublin government endorsed the RUC - the force who actually guarantee the sectarian intimidation. In truth the Ardoyne dispute is but part of a harassment and ethnic cleansing focused in wider mini-war of intimidation, North Belfast North of Ireland. The role of all the players has remained the same - simply writ large.
class would were bribed into supporting the Good Friday grants and manipulation of the clectoral Agreement with a. structure to help them enter politics. The RUC turned a blind eye to racketeering, protection and drug empires in loyalist areas. However the loyalists were bound to fail at politics, lacking any programme but that of their unionist able to do was a kind of populist class envy of masters expressed within the work of loyalism and imperialism and devel oped by the Alternative voice of the UVF death squads. The result is that sented the thugs as the authentic voice of the Protestant working class. drugs and territory.
the grip of the thugs. of the Catholic children from They are able did the RUC arrest six point silently to the sectarian legislation against extending across the which is never enforced. UDA are not breaking. The loyalist groups agreement. combination of peace unchanged frameProgressive Unionist party - can allies. he fact that they were able to even present this tawdry mish-mash as any sort of policy owes a great deal to the media, and shamefully, to large sections of the left, who prefrom their base. Then there was an eroding civil liberties. unity that would keep Protestant workers in do this with almost total impunity. Only after a month of intimidation before they sign up.
of the ringleaders. only to release them on bail after preferring conditions regular routine has seen the Chief weeks Constable meet with the British Secretary of State to determine if the UDA were still on ceasefire, only to decide that they were. Reid gave a 'final warning' to the loyalist groups only to have the LVE murder reporter Martin O'Hagan and the UDA launch a fresh pipe-bomb offensive in North Bellast.
Reid then appeared on the British Labour Party conference platform to announce that there would be new legislation against sectar ianism, ignoring the fact that there is existing incitement to hatred The message could not be clearer. The the Good Friday They are defining it. The agree ment does not oppose sectarian intimidation. It includes it as a feature of the new society.
In the carlier argument between Paisley' DUP and Trimble's UUP, the UDA provided muscle for the DUP attempts to preserve an privilege while the UP/UVF backed Trimble's argument that the agreement could be "improved" and the Nationalists broken away from their republi Trimble proved 100% right and has now achieved a police board with overwhelming unionist representation supported SDLP and Dublin government. However this is not enough to assuage the reaction.
It became clear at the Weston Park meeting in the summer that Sinn Fein were ready to agree the disposal of arms and what was in general) out of government. Trimble applied his usual technique of Sectarian logic applies here too. The resolution come jointly from the Unionists and the PUP voice of the death squads, making clear that it is republican guns that are the issue ahe no those held by the sectarian thugs of Sunk without trace in the current situation is the central element of Sinn Fein strategy: The nationalist family, stretching from irish Dublin. SDLP and the Catholic church to Sinn Fein itself, was to face down the unionists and force the British In all the major issues this coalition has unsurprisingly, become the imperialist family, allied against Sinn HOTCHES Fein. Catholic church, they signed up to support the RUC George Bush's delegate Haas, queuing to take Sinn Fein by the insist destruction Nothing illustrates the desperation of the Dublin government to obtain some form of more than killing reporter Martin O'Hagan by the LVE When a Dublin crime reporter was killed by criminals some years ago it led to one of the biggest campaigns in the history of the state and a major shift in legislation, substantially O'Hagan's death has been met by silence, by a desperate need to placate loyalism. keep silent about the sectarian hellhole they are helping to reconstruct in the North and by the need for a capitalist stability.
But the nationalist family has not gone. The illusion that the forces that made it up would support progress was simply a mechanism which allowed Sinn Fein to transform into a capitalist party with policies little different from the otber partners.
So in the current call for support for the RUC Sinn Fein are not the opposition, but are simply demanding further improvement similarly it is blindingly obvious that they do not oppose the current calls for the dis.
posal of arms, but simply plead for the right without Corn met had moved from withdrawing offers on weapons to promising a full engagement with the decommissioning bodies.
The attack on the structures of the agrecThe clock is also ticking towards an election in the Southern state where, in order to achieve their dream of a place in a capitalist decisive factor bere is likely to be a private US ultimatum telling them that the time for equivocation has gone.
That is changing significantly is the attitude of many worksupporters of the 1ng Class Provisonal movement. They voted for the Good Friday agreement secing it as a reform and as a way forward with no alternative.
Many still see no alternative but the agreement has lost its shine and the sectarian logic that underpins it is becoming more apparent.
This will become even clearer when the British announce that guns by themselves will not be enough - - the agreement has to be Sinn Fein Ieadership that supports It. which they Sinn rein recently arguca tadi lost the a court case in Good Friday They complained bitterly - but there is no suggestion that they intend to withdraw from the ministries. The symbolism will not be lost on a growing band of opponents.
Outlook It is important that the Stop the War Coalition has got off the ground as strongly as it has -and it is all credit to those who have been involved. But the process by which it did so - an appeal by the Socialist Workers Party for an anti-war rally (which it organised) followed by an organising meeting to set up a campaign (chaired by Lindsey German) -effectively bypassed the Socialist Alliance and holds some lessons for its function and its future. ALAN THORNETT reports.
T he way this hapOpened was bility of the SWP however. None of the (including the ISG) or the independents took the initia- tive in the immediate after- spect. the events and the Alliance's But it is a problem.
After few days Mike Marqusce drafted a tions. ment on the war for the Alliance, which was quickly called for an emergency EC initiative ( where the issue was eventuSWP had already called the after rally and invited a platform speakers. speaker was agreed in retroThis did not stop the Stop the War Coalition getting ou ground immediacy of the situation that was the most important does this thing. But it did make the water? process more fractious and Alliance is for between clec- geared Surely this is an example of a time when the Alliance itself should have taken the convene the anarally and launch the call for tive coalition. It is Alliance is not able to take all the organisation such initiatives then its role which contains the bulk of between elections is one simpry of supporons ana moon® SWP in alliance with inde- ising the campaigos which pendent socialists. John Roes argued at the EC that such an issues initiative needs to be taken Resistance and the ANL.. ised party like the SWP - but argument hold True the Alliance would to do such things, and need to be more politically that is important today and organised ( given the decline of the CP and probably with its own and the Labour Left. publication) than it is at the there is a danger moment to play such a role, but why shouldn't it be if we tront acaring with aspecis or clectoral interventions. But the Allance is not a "united front" in the way the ANL and the GR seck to be. a is a portical organisation with an extensive ( gramme and an elected lead. Obviously it should supimportant has a global political view of the world and that means that there will be times when it takes initiatives, which are пої сісспол, in its right.
be that all this Telecis aconte whether the SA an allance in the Blairism? If the Conter term, or wacther it should become a new party of the lelt, In scotland, for example, it was the Scottish Socialist Party which made various ment, rather than an individual component of the SSP If that is the case it needs to be discussed, because t is true that the SWP has the resources and for the Alliance uniess it establishes itself as a political well as during them - and that means intervening and But that the right when it is apropriate 0U0 S0 of several united Unfortunately, places, there was a expression of this problem as well. Some local Alliances (my own in Southwark for example) were faced with anti-war meetings fully organised in advance by the pro- SWP and were given no more than the opportunity to f course, many of initiatives were cesstul meetings Southwark one). But the issue is not the short (important as that is): it is OWI of the Socialist Alliance as a united political alternative to should The emergence of the Stop The War Coalition as a broad campaign embracing a wide variety of political currents HUW an opportunity to anti-war campaigos nationally and locally in a But this experience should serve to remind us of the parit is development both of the Socialist Alliance and of the SWP and the wider British left: the importance of heins able to build al united front against the war on other central issues of politics, on a correct political some democratic way. local
H resolved in the interests of the
right of Sinn Fein and of the vast majority of its republican base, this opposition will take some time to build.
being spelt out on the streets - nowhere more so than on the streets of Ardoyne. Here blind bigotry has led to the grotesque sectarian abuse of primary schoolchildren and their Digests and a very substantial victory for the
This can happen because of the support of the state institutions, the police and the British government for a sectarian logic. The RUC consider themselves above reproach if
Catholic bourgeoisie in justification for their tion, following the summer holidays, the board of gorernors of Holy Cross suggested
A On day one of the renewed intimida.
As their political popularity waned the loy- alists groups returned to what they did best. First they fought each other in a war over
urgent need to intimidate Catholics who felt they were free to more out of the ghettoes and an equal need to reassert a sectarian
W And loyalist death squads don't operate in isolation - they are part of a wider political
being discussed was how to deflect criticism This fed the reaction, with Unionists and loyalists indicating privately that they did not want disarmament - rather their real aim was to force the Republicans (and Catholics
ment from unionism creates a very real diffi- culty. The Provisional leadership are unwill. ing to dispose of arms only to find that the structures they claim as victory have shut
colition, they have to convincingly he sent themselves as an unarmed body.
further "improved" to placate unionism fur- ther and to make it clear that they will have the lion's share of sectarian privilege. For a minority it is becoming more and more obvious that there will be no alternative to fighting the agreemeni and defeating a
Agreement did not require them to fly the Union Jack from their Stormont ministries.
e enemy R GLOBAL EACE AND USTICE
War is not the solution Islam is not.