Yet, in spite of its official role as an integral part of overall United Kingdom governance, the British establishment cares little about the political apparatus in Belfast.
Underlining this reality was the spectacle of Ian Paisley Junior ruefully telling an almost empty House of Commons that Boris Johnson had not uttered a single word about the collapse of the Executive, which had occurred days earlier. Reinforcing this view was the fact that not one major British newspaper featured the Executive’s collapse on its front page.
With so little obvious commitment from London to the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is reasonable to ask what is happening. In many ways the real question should no longer be whether the Executive and associated institutions can be restored but how long the Six Counties can survive as a distinct political entity.
The latest brouhaha in Stormont is surely a symptom of the underlying malaise.
Significantly, the staunchest supporters of maintaining Northern Ireland as a going concern are no longer capable of offering a coherent administrative package. Worse, from their point of view, they are now actively, albeit unwittingly, contributing to its downfall.
Amidst a long list of damaging political blunders, the DUP’s mishandling of Brexit takes some beating. Presented by Theresa May with a golden opportunity to influence policy to their advantage, the DUP shot their foot off. Within two years they had contrived to endorse a process leading to a protocol that created a regulatory barrier in the Irish Sea. Incredibly, the North’s largest unionist party failed entirely to understand the political dynamic in Westminster. This blind spot has caused the party to suffer division-creating recriminations from within its own constituency.
Little illustrated this more starkly than the hostile reception received recently by the leading DUP politician Sammy Wilson while campaigning in the staunchly unionist village of Markethill in Co. Armagh. Long seen as one of the more hard-line members of his party, Wilson was subjected to constant heckling and abuse as he attempted to address an anti-protocol rally. Some of his critics went so far as to castigate him with the ultimate unionist insult, that of being a Lundy.
Undoubtedly many outside the unionist heartlands will be amused at the spectacle of an acerbic DUP politician being subjected to treatment that was once the forte of his own party and its founder. While it’s difficult to resist smiling at the irony, we cannot overlook what this means for the North’s body politic in general and for the largest unionist party in particular.
Because, in spite of its often high-handed behaviour, the DUP has over the last decade grown used to the perks and privileges of administering the North from the comfort of Stormont. No longer is it a protest organisation on the periphery but it is now the lead party in office. It has, therefore, a self-serving, vested interest in maintaining the Six County political institutions. That is, of course, for so long as it is possible for it to do so.
Now, however, as a result of its inept mishandling of Brexit and turbulence resulting from the protocol, the DUP has found itself forced to withdraw from the North’s Executive—an action that puts the very future of devolved administration in the Six Counties in doubt, a real possibility already identified by the Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie, among others.
The Markethill demonstration, with its ominous reminder of the fate of previous unionist parties attempting compromise, has set out a marker for Jeffrey Donaldson. Provided that his leadership survives an accusation that he recently contemplated deserting the DUP in favour of the Ulster Unionist Party, he will face two equally desperate scenarios.
On the one hand, he must force the European Union to back down and abandon the protocol. The likelihood of the EU capitulating was always slim. With Boris Johnson now under pressure to maintain NATO unity in relation to Ukraine, the chances of Brussels rolling over are next to nil.
If, as seems likely, he fails to remove the protocol, Donaldson will be forced to continue boycotting the institutions. Otherwise he risks conceding ground to the neo-Paisleyites and is therefore caught in the classic dilemma of damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. The result is political deadlock, in the short term at least. Even should some contrivance facilitate the formation of a new Executive, its durability will always be in doubt.
In the light of the above, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, identified on many occasions in the pages of this publication, that the North is a failed political entity and one beyond permanent repair. At the root of the problem is the fact that it cannot achieve the type of constitutional and governmental consensus that allows other political entities to function when under stress. With a large and ever-increasing percentage of the Six-County electorate rejecting the very legitimacy of the state, normal politics cannot happen.
Consequently, even mundane issues frequently acquire a distorted significance. Take, for example, the matter of retaining free access to lateral-flow tests. Notwithstanding being supported by most parties, including a unionist minister of health, the aforementioned Sammy Wilson has argued for following the lead set by England and charging for the service. His thinking is not so much neoliberal-influenced as a desire to be seen to stay in step with the English.
Under such conditions, the Six-County entity will continue to stumble between administrative inertia and administrative fiasco until eventually and inevitably it arrives at a critical meltdown point. This final stage will come as a result of changing demographics and the fundamental, insuperable obstacles posed by irreconcilable constitutional objectives. This is not speculation: it is a hard-headed analysis based on readily available evidence.
How socialist republicanism responds to this situation is important. While nothing is ever inevitable, it is irresponsible to ignore concrete realities. Nor should there be room for wishful thinking. The North is a failed and dysfunctional political entity, offering no realistic prospect of an internal solution that can overcome its flawed creation.
The best contribution we can make at this point is to insist that this reality is publicly highlighted and expounded upon and to ensure that the implications are not ignored. In the course of this discourse we must seize the opportunity to promote the only permanent solution to the issue: an end to partition and the building of a workers’ republic throughout the whole of Ireland.
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Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament. Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney |
This is one of the most insightful analyses of the current malaise in Northern politics that I have read.
ReplyDeleteThe DUP's pitiful attempts to get a hard-border back, and reconfigure the six counties into a Brexity annex of an imagined, never-existed, Little England dream could not have gone worse.
People should listen to what others tell them, like Dominic Cummings, when he said "I don’t care if Northern Ireland falls into the fucking sea."
https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1170979456611233792?lang=en-GB
I predict, in desperation, the sabre-rattling will grow exponentially, with incompetents such as Sammy Wilson getting close to calling on loyalist paramilitaries to attack Dublin, and/or nationalists/republicans in the six counties. I hope not, but we shall see.
The British establishment never really have cared less for the six counties. Certainly since the deindustrialisation process, rendering ship building all but redundant, their interest has waned even further. Cummings is a little shit but even little shits sometimes tell the truth and his rant about Northern Ireland falling "into the fuckibg sea" perhaps sums up a general attitude towards the north by the British establishment. The only remaining interest they have maybe a military one. While the British Army maintain a presence, albeit reduced, then NATO have a foothold in Ireland. The deep water ports hold a strategic position for the alliance.
ReplyDeleteFrom an Irish perspective, fuck NATO and the British establishment, the workers republic, as was the aim of James Connolly, is the only credible answer of any meaningful benefit for the working-class.
Caoimhin O'Muraile
How to make the workers' republic a strategy rather than a slogan is one of the big challenges facing Marxists. Tommy has maintained fidelity to the concept and to that extent has helped keep the brand alive. But if the brand is to flourish and become a big name again, it needs a radical overhaul. It has to attract substantial swathes of society and thus far seems not to have made much progress. And Marxists for good reason tend not to share the Sartrean view - the worse the better.
DeleteThe subject I will try to address in a few weeks time. One sure avenue which will not work is, in its present form, the parliamentary road. Look around the globe, examples as to why, and where it has failed! And thereby hangs the ten million dollar question, how to achieve it????
ReplyDeleteCaoimhin O'Muraile
the people who are saying it has failed are in a minority and there is no great desire or effort to change it. The Marxists used to say that a revolution occurs when the ruled can no longer live the way they do and the rulers can no longer rule the way they did. That doesn't augur good for the revolutionaries and the orientation is to the right rather than the left. Nobody is discussing the rise of the far left. It is all far right.
DeleteThats very true, Anthony, and the formula of the "ruled can no longerlive the way they do" is still applicable. For this reason the rulers know just how far to push any given situation to keep a militant minority divided from the moderate majority. The job of Marxists is the thankless task of convincing people they are exploited, legally robbed on a daily basis at work, despised by the employers and are good cannon fodder in war time. These arguments people, today more than ever, do not want to hear. The right-wing nonesense of immigration = unemployment is easier for them to digest, wrong as it is.
ReplyDeleteThe right-wing are holding fire at the moment over the influx of refugees from Ukraine we can expect. It is right we take refugees from any country they are fleeing from, no question there, but the 26 county government have not made provisions for them. For example, issuing medical cards without increasing staffing levels in the health service, such as it is, and capping profits the energy companies are making to keep prices down. As Ireland, along with the rest, will be paying double for fuel supplies from the USA, suppossed friends, my arse they are, prices will soar because the gas and electric companies will not take a hit on profits. People are very fickle and todays sympathy for the plight of these unfortunate refugees will be tomorrows hostility. I have seen it all over England, from Tower Hamlets in East London to areas of Manchester, Newcastle etc all because, in the case of centre-right British governments provisions and econimic planning did not precede or at least accompany the newcomers arrivals. Cultural differences were not taken into consideration, as indiginous people saw their own traditions undermined by governments panic to accomodate the new. Then, the far-right made their move as the BNP gained electoral ground. Fortunately this was short lived, but the establishment either by design or otherwise had learnt nothing from the disgraceful racist scenes on the back of Powells "rivers if blood" speech in 68. The 26 county government must take refugees and, at the same time, make provisions for them. The left and all anti-fascists must prepare to be in a position to repell the far-right both ideologically and physically on the streets. The new generation of anti-fascists must prepare, if experience in England is anything to go by.
Sorry I'm deviating Anthony, have a havit of that.
Caoimhin O'Muraile
I think you are on the money with the anticipated Ukrainian refugee influx. It seems there is an attitude developing that reminds me of the pre-Christmas desire for pets - they end up being abandoned after the novelty wears off.
DeleteThe Left will stick at it and be there to the end but I don't see the stamina in wider society for it. Often people are labelled anti-Immigration for asking the obvious question about infrastructure. I don't think the infrastructure exists in this society to take in a large number of Irish citizens living in New York. If such an influx were to happen the same question would need to be asked - yeah, you have Irish citizenship but can the current infrastructure support you all?
Yet, this is a crisis and as citizens we should make the effort to help out in every way possible. The wider humanitarian effort is better than a more narrow military one that sends young people abroad to die so that we can sit back and watch it all on TV.
That is my point Anthony, infrastructure, or lack of. The analysis about pets at Christmas is a good one, and every effort should be made, as with people from any country under attack, to do what we can to help them.
ReplyDeleteMeasures to accomodate these people should be in place. For example, those good enough to open their doors for refugees will have extra mouths to feed. With what will they feed them?
Caoimhin O'Muraile