Through Irish Eyes - You must do more
Through Irish Eyes
You must do more
John North
As Loyalist sectarianism and violence spiral out of control Blair warns Adams: "You must do more".
The mass sectarian intimidation of school children at Holy Cross school in Ardoyne, Belfast last year has been followed by a growing campaign of sectarian war by the UDA and UVF, focused mainly in North and East Belfast but extending across all of the North of Ireland.
The situation has become so serious that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has had to issue a formal warning to the republican movement.
This has led to furious complaints from Irish nationalists and republicans, protesting Blair’s lack of logic.
Yet given what Socialist Democracy has consistently argued in relation to the strategy behind the Good Friday agreement, Blair’s statement is entirely logical.
The Good Friday agreement was not meant to end sectarianism but to formalise and stabilise a new sectarian state. In order for this to happen, the agreement and the structures that come out of it had to move further to the right and become even more sectarian. The republicans had to retreat much further than the initial capitulation involved in accepting partition and the new sectarian statelet.
So the process of the Good Friday agreement has been a process of growing sectarianism kept stable by a steady stream of retreats and capitulation by the republicans.
Now the stream has become a torrent. The republicans must do more and they must be attacked and punished as they retreat until they have completely disbanded, kow-towed to unionism, given full support to the RUC and accepted the daily discrimination and petty apartheid that make up every day life in the north of Ireland.
The republican response has been to see themselves as part of a broad coalition of pro-agreement forces – the ‘nationalist family’ including the SDLP and Dublin government and a broader pro-agreement coalition including Unionists, London and Washington. The alliance must manoeuvre to prevent loyalists bringing down the agreement. This is wrong on a whole series of levels.
The loyalist actions, though vicious, fall well short of an overall offensive. The main demand is that the agreement be modified to preserve sectarian apartheid and prevent Catholic families living where they wish.
The main political expression of the loyalist programme is through the Loyalist commission – and the leading members of that are close advisors to David Trimble. There is much rivalry between the loyalist factions, but no real division on the demand that the Good Friday agreement be made more sectarian.
Following the Holy Cross attacks, British Secretary of State Reid made a speech proclaiming the "Northern Ireland had become a cold house for Protestants". This was a green light for the loyalists, which was further reinforced by recent meetings between Reid and the Death squads.
Finally the British rebuke to the republicans was countersigned by Dublin and Washington – they all want stability in the North of Ireland and if that means a sectarian hell-hole then so be it.
Alternatives are thin on the ground. Dissident republicans have grown and no longer seem wide open to British intelligence, but their killing of a Protestant worker with a booby-trap bomb shows that they offer no alternative.
There has been a lot of working class anger at the loyalist offensive, especially when it has involved the killing of workers in their workplace or ambushes of Fire and ambulance services. They are however full aware from recent demonstrations that the trade union leadership are afraid even to speak the name of the Loyalist gangs, let alone oppose them. This leadership has in fact attached itself to the growing industry advising the Loyalists how to express their sectarian demands more clearly.
In the short term the danger is that loyalism will prove so rabid and uncontrollable that the agreement will collapse to the right despite the republican retreats. In the longer run the reality is that nationalists workers will wake up to find themselves trapped in a sectarian state with all the promises of democracy and equality evaporated into the thin air of which they are composed.