Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 138, August/September 1997
As we go to press, the IRA has announced a new ceasefire beginning at noon, Sunday 20 July. This followed a statement by Gerry Adams, who said that the commitments which allowed the original ceasefire to be called, and which the previous Tory government had reneged on, now appeared to be back in place. Most significant were comments allegedly made by Northern Ireland Secretary of State Mo Mowlam that a London-Dublin paper on decommissioning would not be amended to guarantee paramilitary arms would be handed over during talks.
Following the original ceasefire in August 1994, we argued that:
‘The struggle is not over. The economic, political and social problems which keep forcing the national struggle onto the political agenda still remain. The Six Counties is a sectarian statelet. British imperialism has not left Ireland. The political prisoners are still in gaol. The nationalist working class faces massive economic deprivation and discrimination with unemployment levels more than twice that of the loyalist working class. Should the Sinn Fein leadership be drawn into any proposed “New Ireland” Administration, in the Six Counties or 26 Counties and have conferred on it the status of privileged bourgeois parliamentarians, it will find itself in conflict with the nationalist working class – those people of no property who have always been a bedrock of the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland.’ (FRFI 121, October/November 1994)
Has anything changed in the intervening period? The answer is no, as the events surrounding the Drumcree march on Garvaghy Road on 6 July confirmed. They show that all British governments, Labour or Tory, are not to be trusted. These events form the background to the new ceasefire.
Mowlam had been engaged in a series of talks with representatives of the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Association over the Orange march. These were later exposed as a sham when a leaked document from the Northern Ireland Office showed that Mowlam and the RUC had agreed over two weeks before the march that it would go down the Garvaghy Road. Mowlam attempted to justify the actions of the Labour government in forcing the Orange march down the Garvaghy Road by blaming the ‘intransigence of both sides’. This facade of hand-wringing impotence cannot hide the fact that the Labour government will do all in its power to defend the interests of British imperialism in the north of Ireland, and back Unionist interests, when necessary, with force.
In the week that followed Drumcree over 2,500 plastic bullets were fired at nationalist protesters as all over the north people came out to voice their anger and opposition to the Orange marches. One 14-year-old, Gary Lawlor, was left fighting for his life in a coma after being hit in the head by a plastic bullet. In the afternoon and evening of 6 July 15,000 people demonstrated in west Belfast, 10,000 in Derry and 4,000 in Newry. Martin McGuinness called for people to take to the streets: ‘the message is clear, the only place to be when demanding justice and equality is on the streets, confronting your opponent’. Large numbers of young people engaged in actions to defend their areas against the RUC and army. As one woman quoted in Republican News said, ‘they [the youth] are a credit to our communities for taking on the might of the British army and RUC and forcing them out of our districts, just like they did in the early 1970s’. Armed actions by the IRA increased in the days after Drumcree. As 12 July approached, with the threat of Orange marches down the Lower Ormeau Road in Belfast and through other nationalist districts, mass opposition increased. Shops and businesses on the Lower Ormeau Road were going to shut down on 12 July and similarly in Derry. It was this growing tide of opposition to the Orange marches and growing instability within the north of Ireland which led RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan to say he could not guarantee the safety of Orange marchers and forced the Orange Order to reroute four marches away from nationalist areas.
The Orange Order backdown created confusion and division within loyalist ranks. This opened up political space in which the British government, in alliance with the newly-elected Fianna Fail government backed by powerful US interests, could make a concession to the Sinn Fein leadership over the issue of decommissioning, despite vociferous loyalist opposition. It was this concession that made the new ceasefire possible.
However, on the ground nothing has really changed. The Six Counties remains a sectarian statelet. There can be no internal settlement that guarantees the rights of the nationalist working class. Blair has made it clear there will not be a united Ireland in his lifetime, while Adams states that ‘Sinn Fein will be guided by our aim of a united Ireland’. The aim of Labour is to neutralise the revolutionary traditions of republicanism through the talks process. Adams argues that through the talks they can fulfil them.
Whatever takes place during the talks process, the nationalist working class will judge the process by what is happening on the streets and estates, on the treatment of Republican prisoners, on progress to end deprivation and discrimination, and on the conduct of the forces of occupation – the British Army and the RUC. In short, on whether the sectarian statelet is being dismantled.
As socialists in Britain, we stand fully behind the struggles of the nationalist working class in the north of Ireland and demand:
Britain out of Ireland! Prisoners out of gaol! Troops out now!
