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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 181 Contents


Judith Orr

Year of peace?
Historic compromises

Ireland

 

From Socialist Review, No. 181, December 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Some of the most lasting images of 1994 will be of Gerry Adams being feted by the Irish government and being wined and dined by the rich and powerful of the United States. The man who was interned without trial by the British is now happy to sit at the negotiating table with representatives of Britain. The compromise that will result will most certainly fall a long way short of the united Ireland that has been the goal of the IRA and Sinn Fein since partition.

Adams claims that the IRA ceasefire is a sign of the strength of their side, saying the struggle for civil rights had started with marches from Coalisland to Dungannon but now it was going to the gates of the White House in Washington.

Sinn Fein’s shift is about more than dressing up in the now familiar expensive suits. It is a direct result of the realisation that the military struggle on which Sinn Fein has based its strategy over 20 years, was going nowhere.

It is also significant that the past year has seen 7,000 people at a rally for peace called by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Belfast and, amongst other strikes, the walkout by 4,000 mostly Protestant shipyard workers in protest at the sectarian killing of a Catholic workmate. The prospect of still more years of the military struggle has clearly been increasingly rejected by the mass of ordinary people.

When the IRA ceasefire was announced, the celebrations showed that for many working class Catholics also, the relief that their sacrifices seemed at an end overcame anxieties about how little if anything they’d won.

Now – after the initial euphoria – there is more questioning of what Sinn Fein has actually gained. The answer is simple – not a lot.

There are still 30,000 armed men walking the streets and though they have swopped their hard hats for berets and left their flak jackets at home, there can hardly be much comfort in that.

There is no amnesty for prisoners jailed for political offences and no sign of one in the near future. Attempts by the Irish government to release Republican prisoners were met with a barrage of Loyalist criticism and have been abandoned. The massive fortresses which loom over the Catholic ghettoes in the North are still manned, with cameras spying into people’s homes. Talk of a ‘peace dividend’, money saved on security going instead to creating much needed jobs, has not gone beyond vague assurances that both the US and Britain will help with investment.

The right of each community to police themselves is central to talks and is also claimed as a victory. Sinn Fein has proved its credentials in towns such as Derry where they have been happily working alongside the middle class SDLP for some time. Any attempt to uphold a radical face has long since been ditched in favour of being seen as being fit to share power. Those looking forward to getting the hated RUC out of their areas should note that the IRA’s punishments of drug takers and joy riders and the smashing up of raves shows that they have no qualms about being tough on their own community.

There is now no pretence from the Republicans that Protestant workers have any common cause with Catholics, as the idea of two separate communities with their own culture and different interests becomes common currency. But if Sinn Fein are happy to see ordinary Protestants being represented by a bunch of middle class reactionary bigots, not all Protestants are. When a community worker from the Shankill recently phoned a radio programme on Radio Ulster about the need for a Loyalist working class party, more people phoned in response than ever in the programme’s history.

The new Unionist parties that now claim to talk for Protestant workers can offer nothing but a crude rehash of the sectarian policies that the main Unionist parties have been spouting for years. Major’s plans to now talk to Loyalist gunmen as well as Sinn Fein only reinforces the idea of two tribes with different agendas.

Loyalism can offer nothing to workers. It is the politics of uniting across class – everyone from a shipyard fitter to his boss through even to the queen.

The crisis which blew up in the South last month also demonstrates how fed up Southern workers are with the corrupt Fianna Fail government and its friends in the Catholic church. The pan-nationalist politics of Gerry Adams have got nothing to say to these workers. In fact Adams rallied to support Albert Reynolds, the now departed Irish prime minister who was a main architect of the peace deal.

The calling of the ceasefires means that socialists have a unique opportunity in future months to point to an alternative tradition in the Irish working class. It is a tradition with a long history that is ignored by both Republican and Loyalist leaders. They appear content to accept sectarian divisions just at the time when it is possible to challenge them.


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Last updated: 12 November 2017