Working class unity
From a socialist point of view it is better that the peace process continues than that we face the only alternative on offer - sectarian war. Continuation, at the very least, gives the working class more time to build a real peace process which can come up with answers to the all of the problems faced by people in the working class communities.
It was the working class who brought about the peace process in the first place. Mass demonstrations of tens of thousands of workers, organised through the trade unions, made clear to both republican and loyalist paramilitaries that ordinary people had had enough of the Troubles. During the long talks process political intransigence more than once threatened to wreck it - as for example at the time of the breakdown of the first IRA cease-fire. Then it was the working class, through mass demonstrations, who put a break on those who wanted a return to violence and set the talks process back on track. In general anything which has been positive in the peace process has come from below, from the workplaces and working class communities. The role of the sectarian politicians has been generally obstructive and negative.
The key now is to build a real peace process based, not the unity of sectarian politicians, but on bringing people in the working class communities together. Through the Troubles there have always been some on the left who have dismissed any prospect of class unity, and have tended to write off the Protestant working class.
In fact working class unity is a daily reality. Workers are united in the workplaces, most of which are mixed. Trade union membership cuts across the sectarian divide. It is true that trade unions do not exist in a vacuum and at times the heightened sectarian tensions within the community have been felt in workplaces and in trade union structures. But when workers have moved into struggle on pay, conditions, or in the movements against sectarianism, Catholics and Protestants have stood shoulder to shoulder.
Community campaigns have also cut across the sectarian divide. In the last year there have been two huge demonstrations, one in Dungannon, one in Downpatrick, against threats to axe acute services at local hospitals. Around 20,000 people turned out for each, a huge percentage of the local population. At the Dungannon rally there were banners from GAA clubs, soccer clubs, Protestant schools, catholic schools and from all the main workplaces.
More recently in Omagh a campaign to save the local hospital has been set up with members of the Socialist Party playing a leading role. An initial meeting attracted 400 people. Its anyone's guess how many of the audience were from Catholic and how many from Protestant backgrounds. A new action committee linking hospital campaigns in rural areas has been set up on the initiative of Socialist Party members in Mid Ulster. People from predominately Protestant and from predominately Catholic towns are taking part.
Poverty, exploitation, low wages - these do not discriminate between Protestant and Catholic. The idea current at one time among some of the left in Britain of a pampered privileged Protestant working class always was a nonsense and is more so today. In the days of the old Stormont regime Unionist discrimination did put Protestants further up the queue for the few jobs which were going.
Stormont was abolished in 1972 and anti-Catholic discrimination has not been an active policy of the tops of the State since then. The British government saw that it was in their best interests to undo this policy in order to achieve some measure of stability. The higher Catholic unemployment which exists today is down to a residue of a past policy and to the inability of capitalism to make up for the past neglect of areas like West Belfast and the more remote rural areas by providing jobs.
Thirty per cent of households across the north have combined weekly incomes of under £150 per week. This poverty grips Protestant and Catholic working class areas alike. An "End Low Pay" Campaign currently being run by the Socialist Party to "Name and Shame" low wage employers and force them to pay a decent wage has met with a massive response. Over one hundred employers paying less than £3.60 have been exposed. Among the areas where we have found low pay most endemic is the Protestant Shankill Road in Belfast.
A real peace process means tackling these problems. There will be no lasting stability unless people are given jobs, reasonable conditions and some hope for the future. One of the underlying disappointments with the existing process is the fact that the promises of a peace dividend, of jobs and dollars from the US, of investment from Europe, have not materialised.
Jobs have been created in the community sector, but this has only produced a layer of professionals paid for by grants from various sources, and who are more of a hindrance than an encouragement to genuine community activism. But for every job gained there have been losses through the crisis in the textile and other industrial sectors and through privatisation and cuts in areas of public services.
Big Business parties
The major parties, orange and green, have no answers. All support the market. All have trod the now well-worn political trail to Washington to court and be courted by US big business and the US establishment. All look to foreign investment, lured by grants and incentives, as the only way to provide employment.
There is no party that upholds the united interests of working people. The building of such a party is the key to finding a real road to peace. From this point of view it is better that the Assembly is established. Since 1972 no local party has exercised power over anything more than the "baths, bins and bogs" functions of the 26 District Councils. When it has come to social and economic questions all the parties have pointed an accusing finger at Westminster and then got back to the "real business" of sectarian politics.
The setting up of the new Executive means that the UUP, SDLP, Sinn Fein, and the DUP should they accept the ministerial seats on offer, will no longer enjoy the luxury of permanent opposition. It is worth recalling that the last time there was a substantial working class party was in the days of the old Stormont when disillusionment with the Unionist government allowed the Northern Ireland Labour Party at its height to win more than 25% of the vote.
This time there would not just the be Unionists to blame - the major nationalist parties also would be in power. Sinn Fein currently enjoy overwhelming electoral support in Catholic working class areas. In the past they have posed as a radical party but in recent years much of this veneer has been lost, as they have moved to the right. Much of the finance that has made them, in terms of income relative to voting strength, the richest political party in Ireland, has come from donations from businessmen.
While they pay lip service to workers rights in the small print of their programme, in practice they support grants to attract low wage anti -union companies to Catholic areas. Gerry Adams has been vocal in calling for FG Wilson, formerly an anti union business which discriminated against Catholics, now a subsidiary of the union busting Caterpillar Corporation, to come to West Belfast.
If Sinn Fein gain the Agriculture and Education posts they have declared for, it will not be long before there is open disillusionment at the lack of change and improvement in the Catholic working class areas. The basis for genuine class politics could begin to emerge.
The PUP has been a growing force within the Protestant working class, at least in the Greater Belfast area. They will not qualify for Executive seats and so could find themselves in opposition in the Assembly. Depending on how they react this could benefit them in the short term. The best of the PUP leadership now put a much more radical and more overtly socialist position than Sinn Fein. However they too have been on the Washington trail and look to inward private investment to develop the economy. They are for class politics - but argue that the time is not yet ripe. "First" there must be a settlement to the Troubles.
In reality the only lasting solution to the Troubles is through unity between the working class communities. Class unity, the prerequisite of a real end to the Troubles, can never be achieved on the basis of sectarian politics, only on the basis of class politics.
This unity does not mean taking up bread and butter issues and ignoring the more contentious questions like parades, justice, policing or the National Question. These issues are only sectarian because they are taken up sectarians who do so in a one sided and often very provocative manner. If they are approached from a working class standpoint, with the common interests of working class people kept in mind, it is possible to find a way through them.
Parades
Take the most immediately and dangerously contentious question of parades. Some on the left, who in reality have a left republican not a socialist position, have simply joined the chorus demanding the stopping, blocking, re-routing of all disputed Orange marches. Yes the Orange Order is a reactionary, sectarian institution. But to say that it is the equivalent of the National Front in Britain is to go too far.
To deny the Orange Order the right to march is a sure way of driving the mass of the Protestant working class, many of whom would have nothing to do with Orange Parades, behind it. When this issue first flared up the Socialist Party stood against the mood in Catholic areas which was to bar parades from contentious routes and from "catholic" town or village centres.
We argued that two rights were involved: the right of Orangemen to march and the right of residents to object. We also said there was a third overarching right ñ that of the working class as a whole not to be dragged into a Bosnia over this issue. We argued for negotiation between residents and marchers over the regularity and conduct of parades. We said the policing of parades should also be discussed, as the conduct of the RUC has been as much a point of contention as the parades themselves. On the basis of agreement there could be stewarding by both sides and no RUC presence.
The need for negotiation is now accepted by all except the most intransigent sectarians. Those on the left who still argue for the halting of all disputed parades should pause to reflect on the fact that what they are promoting is not class struggle, but naked sectarian conflict.
After parades policing is the next issue which threatens to paralyse the peace process. A repackaged RUC will still not be an acceptable force. Neither is paramilitary "policing", with punishment beatings and knee-capping, any answer. Instead of the RUC there should be community policing services, run democratically though elected police committees and fully accountable.
Two minorities
To solve the national problem it is first of all necessary to define what it is. The notion that it is a problem of a sectarian Orange State with an oppressed catholic minority is one sided and somewhat out of date. It was never a problem of one sectarian state, but of two, one in the north and one in the south, one particularly unacceptable to Catholics, the other particularly unacceptable to Protestants.
Today many of the sectarian features of both states have been removed. The problem is of two capitalist states, each with endemic poverty and inequality. Increasingly the problem is one of two minorities, not one. The Catholic minority in the north suffers from the residue of discrimination and is at the receiving end of the injustice meeted out by the RUC and other sections of the State. Catholics legitimately are not prepared to accept the status quo.
Now that the all Ireland and international dimension of politics is growing Protestants have an increasing consciousness of themselves as a vulnerable minority. No answer to the National Question will be found by upholding the rights of only one of the two communities. Just as Catholics have the right to say no to the present Northern State, so the right of Protestants not to be coerced into a united Ireland against their will must be guaranteed.
The Socialist Party advocates a socialist Ireland, that is a single socialist state, with the maximum responsibilities devolved downwards to local level. Such an arrangement could only be arrived at voluntarily with the support of the Protestant working class. The guarantee of no coercion means that Protestants would have the right to opt out of a unitary state and that an alternative administrative arrangement could be put in place for a period. We do not advocate this; rather by putting it forward we keep open the path to a single socialist state.
As internationalists we have a responsibility to point beyond nationalism and to defend the links between the working class which already exist. Concretely this means the links with the working class in England, Wales and Scotland, especially the common trade union and other organisational ties. We do not put forward the idea of a socialist Ireland without at the same time advancing the slogan of a voluntary and equal socialist Federation of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as part of a wider federation or Confederation of European socialist states.
The peace process in the hands of Trimble, Mallon, and Adams has failed to deliver. Even if it survives the storms that are looming this summer it will never provide even the basis for a solution to the underlying problem. It is time that the working class took this process out of the hands of these politicians and began to shape its own future.