Created on Friday, 05 February 2010 23:07 Written by Eoin Gilligan
So what’s new? Most people have lost count of the number of ‘major breakthroughs’ since the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. 12 years on, despite the fact that the majority of workers wanted it to work very little seems to have changed. In spite of the catalogue of disagreements, deals and disappointments and the yo-yo effect that the suspensions of Stormont has generated, the reality is that the administration is dealing with little more than a glorified County Council. In the mean time the capitalist system has entered into an international crisis and unemployment has risen to over 50 000 whilst the “peace walls” have grown higher and higher.We think this deal will change very little in the day to day lives of workers and youth in the north. It seems unlikely that the sectarian divide will dissipate or that crime will be ground to a halt because the RUC has gone one step beyond changing its name to the PSNI and is now formally at least being run from Stormont. All this move can serve to achieve in the long run is to further the political crisis in the north. Martin McGuiness has claimed that “This might just be the day when the political process in the north came of age.” However, the reality of the situation is that from now on every time the PSNI arrest republicans and socialists on politically motivated grounds Sinn Fein will be held directly responsible.
The cracks on the unionist side are even clearer. Although the DUP has signed this deal 14 of its own MLA’s voted against the same deal on Monday. Beyond that the Ulster Unionists were not even informed of the proposals before they were made public. The deal will also most likely result in the ‘neutral’ Alliance being offered the position of Justice Minister, yet the UUP have said that they will oppose this on the grounds that it breaks the D’Hondt mechanism which is meant to guarantee proportional representation in the executive which should see the SDLP given the position. Evidently this great day that will see a new age of understanding is based upon twisting all those new ages that have gone before it!
However, perhaps more seriously is the fact that the party which looks most likely to gain from the outcome of this is Traditional Unionist Voice who have come out against the deal and argued it represents the DUP betraying the country and melting like snowmen in the face of pressure. Similarly to Sinn Fein in nationalist areas, the DUP won its position as the dominant unionist force by posing as a ‘harder’ sectarian option to the UUP, yet now it is letting power of policing slip into the hands of the old republican enemy who it used to brand terrorists and a threat to national security that had to be eradicated. Nothing concentrates a politician's mind more than the prospect of losing their grip on the greasy pole and failure to have stood their ground would have opened up a big can of worms for the DUP, and they are in enough trouble already.
At the same time as this episode was unfolding more jobs came under threat as American companies Avaya and Baker Hughes announced that they were reviewing their operations in the north, which could result in the sacking of up to 400 workers. Writing in the Irish Times Frances McDonnell has lambasted the leaders of the DUP and Sinn Fein arguing “Will the right to march down a road or a new approach to the Irish language in the North save a job or pay a mortgage? Will a deal over policing and justice stop US companies pulling out and relocating jobs and investment back to the United States?” (Irish Times 2/2/10)She went onto highlight the fact that the Minister for Trade and Enterprise welcomed Avaya’s decision to take over former Nortel enterprise solutions division in Monkstown and was seemingly too busy with negotiations to even make themselves aware that the town could now lose 140 jobs, 40% of its entire workforce. This comes along side £370m in budget cuts.
Whilst journalists at the Irish Times can bemoan the domination of sectarian issues in politics in the north they point to no way forward, this is not simply an intellectual question it boils down to the class the organ represents. Ireland was partitioned by British imperialism in order to avert a socialist revolution in Ireland, with the loyal compliance of the bosses in the south. To this day the set up in the north is maintained through sectarianism, this is embodied nowhere better than Stormont which effectively institutionalises sectarianism through a system that sees each MLA register as ‘catholic’ or ‘protestant’.
Unite the Union has raised its concern that the minister responsible for the economy was not even aware of the prospect of 400 job losses. Concern is not enough; this will not save jobs or defend the living standards of workers in the north. Only militant action along the lines that we saw at the occupation of Visteon last year and the shows of strength from public sector workers in the south can do this. Yet even this in itself is not adequate, despite the heroic effort of the Visteon workers their jobs were still lost, all be it with a far better redundancy package. A political solution is necessary. There is a distinct lack of working class political representation in the north, the unions could potentially lay the basis for a workers’ party which would not only fight every job loss and cut but also stand for an end to poverty and unemployment through a job for all, complete with full union rights and an eight pounds an hour minimum wage. It’s clear that capitalism cannot even guarantee this bare minimum, such a party would need to be founded on a socialist programme dedicated to seeing the banks and major parts of industry nationalised and run by the workers themselves in the interest of society as a whole.