PSNI sources as saying that
there was no “paramilitary” involvement in Friday night’s rioting in
Belfast’s Castlereagh Street and Albertbridge Road, but it’s
clear also that events a couple of weeks ago in the Short Strand have
contributed to what looks like an explosive situation moving into the
marching season, no matter whether the loyalists were there or not.
PSNI sources as saying that
there was no “paramilitary” involvement in Friday night’s rioting in
Belfast’s Castlereagh Street and Albertbridge Road, but it’s
clear also that events a couple of weeks ago in the Short Strand have
contributed to what looks like an explosive situation moving into the
marching season, no matter whether the loyalists were there or not. If
the PSNI are accurate in their assessment of the situation that there
was no UVF involvement in this incident and after all, “even a stopped
clock is right twice a day,” it’s likely that the tensions in East
Belfast are going to escalate further.
Marxists are not
economic determinists; we don’t believe that there is a direct link
between an economic crisis and escalating tensions and conflict within
society. It’s certainly not the case that there is an automatic linkage
between a slump and increase sectarian conflict. The reality is much
more complex.
The state of the
economy in the North gives the public sector a decisive importance. The
impact of Tory spending cuts, passed on via the Assembly will be felt
most in the poorest areas, among the old, the young and the sick. It
will be felt by public sector workers also; which means that the cuts
will have a more or less £ for £ impact on the market in the North.
But before the
cuts and the slump really bite, and the crisis in the North has lagged
somewhat behind the crisis in the Republic precisely because of the
strength of the public sector; the political tensions in the North have
been accentuated.
There is a deep
impasse in the North, it’s more than an economic impasse, it’s a
profound political and social impasse. Thirteen years since the Good
Friday agreement there are more “peace walls” than ever, but less
evidence of any real progress. Unemployment in the North is reported as
falling over the last 3 months, although Civil Service unions in Britain
have pointed out that the government have recently set targets for the
number of people who are taken off benefit – rather than getting work,
so any figures claiming that unemployment has fallen would need to be
taken with a large bag of salt.
“Following the Guardian
investigation, a group of trade unions representing jobcentre staff have
written to management seeking "urgent clarification" on the issue of
targets for referrals and sanctions.The DWP has backtracked and released
a statement confirming the practice had been going on in some offices
due to a misunderstanding between the department and some jobcentre
managers. It insisted this was no longer the case.” The Guardian
8/4/2011
But the impasse in the North "the Carnival of
reaction" that James Connolly wrote about is affecting all layers of
society. The recent Assembly elections reinforced the drift towards the
DUP and SF over the last few years, the idea that the agreement would
allow for the flourishing of some sort of transparent bourgeois
democracy has proven to be utterly wrong. The Ulster Unionists and to a
lesser extent the SDLP have been pushed aside. Within the narrow
confines of the six counties there is no solution to the problems of
neither the Catholic workers nor the Protestant workers. The problem for
the British, Irish and US ruling class for that matter is that their
direct representatives hold very little sway. The biggest prop holding
up capitalism in the North is the subvention from the British Treasury.
But even that is under threat.
With 48,000 jobs under threat as a result of the
cuts, with the loyalists and the so called “dissident” republicans
working to undermine the SF/DUP at Stormont it is likely to be a hot
summer. But, ultimately, in the final analysis, the economic situation
is going to be decisive. The class struggle is on the order of the day
in the North. Throughout Europe and the USA public sector workers are
locked into a pressure cooker of slash and burn economics. The events in
Greece and Spain and the ongoing crisis South of the border are not
isolated incidents they are part of a generalised process of austerity
across the whole of the “West”.
As we’ve explained before, the North is not immune
to these processes. But it is likely that without a mass working class
political alternative to the cul de sac of sectarianism, the workers
organisations will be fighting with one hand tied tightly behind their
backs. Connolly and Larkin fought for an independent voice for working
people in Ireland. Their fight is as vital today as it was 100 years
ago. The next period will see an escalation of the class struggle in the North.
But youth unemployment, sectarianism, poverty and
hopelessness sap the fighting power of working people. They make it far
easier for the bigots and professional sectarians to divide and rule the
working class. Just now there is an opportunity to weld the working
class together to defend themselves from the Con Dems and the Assembly
government attacks. That will demand a clear socialist programme and a
Marxist perspective.
