Off The Table

Shaun Harkin ➤ Burnham is rightly being challenged for his hypocritical "off the table" comment regarding a referendum on ending partition.

He's no democrat or ally of working-class people on the island of Ireland or Britain.

He says he's opposed to anything that's divisive and wants to focus on addressing issues that matter to people.

The Labour government has been nothing but divisive and incapable of addressing the needs of working-class households, here or in Britain.
Axing the Winter Fuel Payment, imposing paltry public sector workers pay increases, expelling socialists, supporting Israel's Gaza genocide, criminalising Palestine solidarity, punching down on trans people and tailing Reform on immigration have all been tremendously divisive.

Supporting a massive spending increase for the arms industry, as Burnham has done, is divisive and prioritises war profiteers over investing in schools, hospitals, housing and renewable energy.
Labour and Westminster's failure to challenge inequality and transform people's lives here, combined with the toxicity of the DUP and much of political unionism, is the very reason a border poll has become an urgent matter.

By dismissing the demand for a border poll and the aspiration of many for Irish unity, he couldn't be more divisive.

The way Burnham commented was a reminder of Starmer's comments giving Israel the greenlight to slaughter Palestinians.

Burnham supports devolution but not democracy.

Labour backed devolution as a means of getting devolved areas to take responsibility for implementing austerity.

Labour in government has done nothing to undo decades of austerity imposed by Westminster on the North of Ireland.

If Burnham was a democrat he would agree people in Ireland should have the opportunity, as people in Scotland had and should have again, to vote on its constitutional future.

Burnham has made it clear he will stand in the way of democracy.

He isn't a progressive. He's a willing manager of the British state, its present interests and its colonial legacy.

Burnham's accusation that a poll to undo partition is divisive is utter hypocrisy. The British Empire imposed division across the world. It imposed division and partition here.

Partition was imposed to divide the Irish working-class and to strengthen the power of elites North and South and in Britain.

The British ruling class opposes the fragmentation of the UK today because it will weaken its economic and military power. In an increasingly uncertain world, the British state has become more determined to block independence for Scotland and Irish unity.

The demand for a border poll is a legitimate democratic demand. It shouldn't be in the gift of a British prime minister or secretary of state to determine if, when or how that will ever happen.

The opportunity to redistribute wealth and power across Ireland is linked to ending partition. Burnham has no right to shut that door.

There is no guarantee that ending partition would dramatically improve working-class people's lives across the island. It depends how it is ended.

There are political, corporate and military forces at work to ensure in the event of a border poll that a New Ireland would pose no threat to the existing status quo.

When the nationalist political establishment North and South talks about the need to plan what a New Ireland will look like following a border poll, it doesn’t include a Socialist Ireland.

Connolly's Workers Republic envisioned the simultaneous end of British rule and capitalism. This alternative is only possible if the working-class asserts itself independently:

No Irish revolutionist worth his salt would refuse to lend a hand to the Social Democracy of England in the effort to uproot the social system of which the British Empire is the crown and apex, and in like manner no English Social Democrat fails to recognize clearly that the crash which would betoken the fall of the ruling classes in Ireland would sound the tocsin for the revolt of the disinherited in England.
But on whom devolves the task of achieving that downfall of the ruling classes in Ireland? On the Irish people. But who are the Irish people? Is it the dividend-hunting capitalist with the phraseology of patriotism on his lips and the spoil wrung from sweated Irish toilers ill his pockets; is it the scheming lawyer – most immoral of all classes; is it the slum landlord who denounces rackrenting in the country and practices it in the towns; is it any one of these sections who today dominate Irish politics?
Or is it not rather the Irish working class – the only secure foundation on which a free nation can be reared – the Irish working class which has borne the brunt of every political struggle, and gained by none, and which is today the only class in Ireland which has no interest to serve in perpetuating either the political or social forms of oppression – the British connection or the capitalist system?
The Irish working class must emancipate itself, and in emancipating itself it must, perforce, free its country.
The act of social emancipation requires the conversion of the land and instruments of production from private property into the public or common property of the entire nation. This necessitates a social system of the most absolute democracy, and in establishing that necessary social system the working class must grapple with every form of government which could interfere with the most unfettered control by the people of Ireland of all the resources of their country. - Erin's Hope

⏩Shaun Harkin is a councillor in Foyleside.