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Showing posts with label Harry Hutchinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Hutchinson. Show all posts
Harry Hutchinson ✉ The Labour Party former and present leader have plunged themselves into the divided issue of Irish Unity or Union with the UK. Corbyn advocating unity, Starmer the Union. 

Both fail to understand the purpose of why the constitutional question in Ireland is deliberately maintained, nor have they any approach to resolve it realistically.

Since Partition the constitutional question has dominated the political agenda both in the North and
South. In the South Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael have used the constitutional position of what they refer to as the ‘6 counties’, in order to dominate the political scene in Ireland. This is at the expense of class based politics. The use of the constitution is continued by Sinn Fein, who may form the next government in the South, on the aspiration of Irish Unity. 

Every election in the North has dominated and divided the electorate, favouring the dominance of the Nationalist and Unionist parties. 

All these parties are pro Capitalist and are essential to protecting and promoting private enterprise in
the interests of the Corporations. The essence for these parties and not without success, is to maintain
the Constitutional issue over the social and economic crisis facing people, North and South.

Irrespective of any attempts to resolve the Constitutional question under Capitalism, be it towards Irish
Unity or continue the Union with the UK, the issue will remain unresolved. It is in the interests of these Capitalist Nationalist and Unionist Parties for it to remain so and in addition the same interests of the UK and Irish Governments. The purpose is to maintain division and continue to control people in the North and South.

The Labour Party should not stand ‘neutral’ on the Constitutional question, nor so called solutions to
resolve it, like border polls. The Party should explain to people that such a poll will not lead to a solution to the Constitutional question; indeed it could ignite civil conflict, by reactionary Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries.

It is the corrupt system of Capitalism that people North and South need to unite and challenge. Any
approach to resolving the Constitutional question must be based on the people with a Socialist agenda,
where wealth is publicly owned and democratically controlled by the people.

⏩Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

Corbyn and Starmer Creating Illusions

Harry Hutchinson ✍ It was not so much history being made, but the extent of the Sinn Fein advance in the Local government elections. 

Left and environmental candidates all but wiped out. Just over ½ voters bothered to go to the polls.

It was no surprise Sinn Fein would repeat their success in regional government, to become the
largest party at district council. The extent of their gain was. Sinn Fein gained almost 31% of the vote (+7.7%) The next largest party, the DUP stand at 23.3% (-0.8%). Sinn Fein hold 144 Council seats to the DUP 122. The moderate pro Union Alliance party hold 3rd place with 13%. The slow decline for the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP continues.

On the left the decline continued for the socialist left Nationalist Party the People Before Profit
(PBP). They have all but being wiped out, holding on to 1 seat in Belfast and Derry Councils. PBP hold
1% of the vote (-0.4). The Greens hold 1.7% of the vote (-0.4%). Anti Mining Councillors and
Socialist lost their seats.

The Sinn Fein advance continues. Since partition Sinn Fein now control the regional government at
Stormont and majority at local council level. The Unionist DUP boycott at Stormont prevents Sinn
Fein exercising power at regional level.

This advance of Sinn Fein to the largest party in NI has unquestionably drawn from other Nationalist
parties, including the Socialist PBP. Hard line Catholic areas in Belfast and Derry moved significantly
to Sinn Fein as the Nationalist issue has in recent years taken a new significance. Sinn Fein now hold
majorities in the South and North of Ireland.

The Unionist parties remain split, with the largest DUP in crisis. The party fails to rejuvenate, since
being exposed as undermining the Union with Britain over Brexit; and also the fraudulent
squandering of public funding in the ‘cash for ash scandal’. Some prominent Unionists call for the
amalgamation of the Unionist parties.

The small socialist and environment representatives on district councils over the years were
effective in exposing the Capitalist privatising agenda and mining Corporations planned precious
metal mining. Most councils will now be unhindered by opposition.

In this critical period of unprecedented public sector strikes and where 1 in 6 people in NI are on the
Consultants waiting lists, most people have lost confidence in both regional government and council
bodies to solve their cost of living crisis. It is little wonder people abandon elections.

For left parties, it is not enough to dwell on the crisis working class people face. People seek a way
out of the crisis and no longer have the same belief in bourgeois institutions to solve them. Socialists
have to create the path which working class people can adhere and orientate towards. That path is
not an electoral strategy to these bourgeois institutions, but to build from the grass roots, workers
committees in factories and workplaces.

Time and again, small socialist electoral gains get knocked back. This only creates illusions in workers
of the parliamentary road to a better society. The World is now facing an Imperialist US war and
environmental annihilation in many countries. The left are failing to build the international force
required to smash Capitalism.

⏩Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

The Extent To Which History Was Made

Harry Hutchinson ✒ The final report of the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition in Northern Ireland was published last November but it has offered nothing we didn’t already have or told us anything we didn’t already know.


The political career of Mike Nesbitt, once leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), shows the extent to which sectarianism is built into the political establishment. In 2017, he made an extraordinary announcement, claiming he would vote for the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) instead of rival unionist candidates. He also claimed he wanted to attend Sinn Fein’s Ard Fheis (conference). Nesbitt’s aim, he said, was to create a more inclusive society in Northern Ireland and challenge the more sectarian parties that were in coalition at Stormont.

His claim caused outrage in unionism and also within his own UUP. In addition, there was no attempt from the SDLP leader to embrace Nesbitt’s offer. Within months, and after some poor election results, Nesbitt was forced to resign as UUP leader. But resigning as leader was not enough. The problem for the establishment was that Nesbitt could and probably would remain popular among some people in Northern Ireland, so it became necessary to destroy his reputation. Three months after his resignation, he was photographed lying, perhaps intoxicated, in a Belfast Hotel.

The photo was broadcast across the North, particularly by the BBC, the main propaganda output for capitalism in the UK. Later, the media again targeted Nesbitt after he apparently breached Covid restrictions. Both of these incidents were enough to destroy Nesbitt’s public image.

Report on the commission on Flags and Identity Culture and Tradition

Where did the Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition Commission come from? In 2016 a report was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Assembly to look into areas of conflict and to make recommendations to resolve them. From the outset, the Commission was doomed to failure. Of its 15-member committee, almost half comprised of members of the various sectarian parties; two DUP, two Sinn Fein, one UUP, one SDLP and only one Alliance (the only nominally ‘non-sectarian’ party). The rest of the committee was made up by so-called independents.


At the time the commission was set up, it was challenged to recommend some meaningful changes that would address the problem of the sectarian paramilitaries that still existed. In a powerful article and video, the full extent of paramilitary activity – at that time eighteen years after the Good Friday Agreement – was spelled out (see graphic). Five years on and finally in November the Commission reported its findings. But there is no sense in which it has met the challenged made in 2016.

The commission’s report identifies a number of ‘areas of conflict’ that needed addressing, including flags, bonfires, murals, and the use of public spaces. The commission even discussed replacing the national flag and replacing it with a civic one. But after years, and costing over three quarters of a million pounds, it offers not one single recommendation to resolve any of the issues of sectarian friction or conflict that were identified. This includes, just to take one example, the vital need of integrating education, where at present only 7% of children in NI attend an integrated school.

Forced divisions in the North

Division in Northern Ireland has been maintained historically to keep sectarian and pro-capitalist parties in power. These parties legislate in the interest of the big corporations and the wealthy and do nothing to ameliorate the daily problems facing ordinary workers. The Unionist and Nationalist parties, along with their paramilitary associates, do their best to entrench divisions by all means necessary, including ethnic cleansing and attacks on migrants. The vast majority of people in the North still live in single-identity communities. Any attempts to unite people will be resisted by the sectarian parties.


As long as there is no outright conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities, there is some natural tendency for people in Northern Ireland to move, albeit slowly, in the direction of integration. Increasingly, younger people particularly identify as being ‘non-religious’ and fewer vote in elections for the two dominant sectarian capitalist parties. If there was an all-Ireland working class party that was based on the trade unions and community campaign groups, it could reinforce that tendency and provide a solid basis for uniting the people in Ireland North and South.

On the other hand, as the FICT commission report indicates – still, nearly twenty four years after the Good Friday Agreement – the potential for sectarian conflict that still exists. The paramilitary organisations still exist on both sides of the sectarian divide; the loyalist groups alone have more than ten thousand members, many of them involved in crime, harassment and intimidation in local communities.

Despite the overwhelming desire not to go back to the killings and brutality of the ‘Troubles’, Northern Ireland is still a powder-keg. The report of the commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition’ told us nothing we didn’t already know. But the complete vacuum in its recommendations is a warning, because as in nature, politics abhors a vacuum and if the labour movement doesn’t intervene in the future, there is still the possibility that sectarian paramilitaries will step in once again.

As socialists, we must explain that attempts to bring capitalist, sectarian parties together will never advance society. Uniting working people though the struggles of the trade unions and communities to address areas of concern to workers is the only means of cutting across divisions and that is the basis of building an integrated movement.

⏩Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

Institutional Sectarianism ✑ FICT Commission Offers Nothing

Harry Hutchinson ✒ This period marks the centenary of the partition of Ireland, the establishment of the separate state in the North and the ‘treaty’ state in the South, the latter eventually becoming the Irish Republic.


A hundred years after these events, the National Question remains the unsolved fundamental issue facing the people of this island. North and South, politics has been dominated through generations by parties that have maintained divisions on this question, and they will continue to do so for as long as the question remains unresolved. It was the creation of the border in 1921 that has since divided politics more than anything else.

This division is the product of attempts to resolve the National question from an imposed capitalist perspective, something that has not and will never be the basis of a solution of the issue. Driving British Imperialism from the 26 Southern counties was indeed a major advance, removing British landlordism from rural and urban areas. But this came at great cost in Irish lives, in both the War of Independence before the 1921 Treaty, and in the Civil War that followed it, between pro- and anti-Treaty forces in the South.

“…your efforts will be in vain”

If anything is to be learned from events a hundred years ago, it is that imposing a solution on the ‘Irish problem’ from a British or even an Irish capitalist perspective is usually dealt at the end of a gun, and in fact it doesn’t resolve anything for the majority of the people of Ireland as a whole.

As James Connolly once said:

if you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of a socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule over you.

Much has changed since Connolly’s era, in relation to capitalism internationally, particularly the utter collapse of Britain’s power and prestige on the world stage in the last hundred years. Nevertheless, Connolly’s words still resonate today, in the sense that in any approach to the Irish national question, the essential requirement is a socialist agenda, to empower the overwhelming majority of people – the working class – to own and control the means of production, distribution and exchange, and thereby to properly determine their own destiny.

Much has changed since Connolly’s time,
but many of his writings still resonate today

Partition between the North and South, and within the Northern state, between Catholics and Protestants, was a deliberate act by British Imperialism. It was a means of maintaining a ‘divide and rule’ policy, principally by means of the different religious and culture traditions in the North, to check the movement of the working class at that period.

Calls for a capitalist united Ireland

To the detriment of the people of the whole of Ireland, partition has dominated the political scene for the last century. Capitalist Unionist and Nationalist parties have dominated the Northern state for decades and in the South, Treaty and non-Treaty parties. Sinn Fein emerged as an all-Ireland political movement calling for a (capitalist) united Ireland. The terms still set today by Sinn Fein for a united Ireland remain based on capitalism, despite nods in the direction of ‘radical’ reforms, and they risk further division and at least the potential of renewed civil conflict.

After partition, discrimination against Catholics in the North in terms of jobs, housing and education were continued throughout the whole period of Unionist Government. Gerrymandering of boundaries ensured that Catholic majority cities like Derry remained in Loyalist hands and there were voting restrictions that limited Catholic votes and boosted Protestant votes.

Likewise in the South, the ethnic cleaning of Protestants continued throughout the century. Arson, intimidation and looting drove over 10,000 out of Dublin alone in the early 20s. Attacks on Protestants took place in 19 of the 26 counties in Ireland. Even in the recent centenary of the Easter Rising, in 2016, Protestant churches were forced to close.

Any attempts for a solution left to the capitalist and sectarian parties is doomed to failure, as is any from a British and/or Irish government intervention. None of these parties have the political capacity to bring workers together in a way that would resolve the problem of partition. On the contrary, there is a danger that the Northern state, which is more divided than at any time in its history, could degenerate into further violent conflict, leading to further ethnic cleansing from Protestant and Catholic enclaves.

Intelligence gathering during the Troubles

One of the main objectives pursued by the British throughout all of the period of the Troubles was intelligence-gathering. It is estimated within one year of the Thatcher Government coming into office, there were hundreds of Republican informers working for the British state. By 2002, when the IRA broke into Castlereagh Barracks and stole documents listing informers, one senior security officer claimed there were so many that the IRA were unable to act on their findings. Effectively, for them the ‘war’ was over.
The ‘Battle of the Bogside’ in August 1969 is usually marked
as the beginning of the Troubles in modern times.

Republican, Loyalist and British sources have claimed there was hardly one terrorist incident that the British security services did not know about in advance. British security either turned a blind eye or directly instigated killings, largely though the notorious Glenanne Gang, made up of British security personnel and Loyalist paramilitaries. The brutal gunning down of innocent civilians within a five-month period in Ballymurphy and then Bloody Sunday by paratroopers is today recognised as an International war crime.

Atrocities throughout the Troubles, like the 1974 Dublin/Monaghan bombings, which killed 34 people, to the 1998 Omagh bomb, the single largest loss of life in one incident, killing 29 people, were known in advance by British intelligence. Nothing was initiated to prevent these attacks, which included sacrificing RUC officers, to protect the identities of informers. Intelligence-gathering took precedent over people’s lives.

Ruthless repression used by British Army

The families of victims seeking justice have been frustrated by the British. Half a century later, some inquiries have taken place, like the Bloody Sunday and Ballymurphy Inquiries, and they have exposed the ruthless repression used by the British in Northern Ireland. Of the number of inquiries by the Historical Investigations Unit, almost all have pointed to British security involvement. Yet only one British solder is facing trial for his crimes.

For the Britain to allow genuine and open inquiries into terrorist incidents during the Troubles, it would expose the role of MI5 and other security establishments. Terrorist incidents led to over 3,500 deaths. It remains one of the highest numbers in any conflict zone in the world and Britain cared nothing for the deaths.

The flaws in the Good Friday Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement heralded a new era in Northern Irish politics, and it was supported overwhelmingly in both the North and the South, as a welcome ‘new dawn’ after 30 years of troubles. Workers both Catholic and Protestant were tired of the senseless sectarian deaths on both sides.

Graffiti in Derry. Sinn Fein is not the radical
party some on the left make it out to be.
However, the Good Friday Agreement was founded effectively on the institutionalisation of sectarian parties. The Unionist and Nationalist Parties had no intention of bringing the people of the North together. On the contrary, they have used every opportunity to maintain the divide between working people to maintain their electoral base. The divisions can be seen in the increase in the number of so called ‘peace walls’, which are more like ‘division walls’ at the interfaces between Protestant and Catholic communities.

After the GFA and the reopening of Stormont, the two main Parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, formed a coalition, their cosy power-sharing arrangement isolating all other political parties. Unlike in the past, Sinn Fein are no longer able to act as a opposition to cuts in public services, and alongside the DUP, they have supported ruthless cuts in spending on hospitals, schools and other services. They have essentially abandoned the most vulnerable by handing over benefit reform to Westminster, with resulting hardship to many and tens of thousands of premature deaths.

Any illusions that a new all-Ireland agenda can be based on these neo-liberal sectarian parties or on building something on the Good Friday Agreement must be dispelled.

Labour and the trade unions.

The first Irish Labour Party, formed by Connolly, Larkin and O’Brien in 1912, was an all-Ireland Labour Party. Partition cut across this and it resulted in a reactionary “Unionist” Northern Irish Labour Party and an Irish Labour Party in the South that abandoned both the North and, since the 1950s, any pretence of working-class struggle in the South.

The NILP actively supported the Northern state remaining part of the UK. In the 1973 border poll, it urged people to vote to remain in the UK. This position split the party and its Catholic members left en masse. In the same year, the NILP even supported a strike called by the Ulster Workers Council that effectively brought down a Stormont government. It brought the Northern state to a standstill, although it was largely by roadblocks and intimidation, rather than by democratic work-place mass meetings or trade union votes. The NILP at that time, despite a momentary shift to the left, was soon supporting a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.

The NILP effectively wound up and the newly-formed SDLP – although largely a Catholic party – is looked upon by the British Labour Party as its ‘sister’ party. In the South, the participation of Labour in successive capitalist coalitions has reduced the party to a machine for the furtherance of a handful of parliamentary careers. It has not a single trade union affiliated to it today.

Neither of these two parties, therefore, is in any position to advance the struggle to defend the living standards and interests of the working class in Ireland, or to take up the challenge of the National and border questions.

Many missed opportunities

At different periods in the last century, there have been opportunities presented to both Labour Parties to unite workers around a struggle for change. In the run up to partition and after the involvement of the Irish Citizens Army in the Easter Rising, and subsequently the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Labour emerged as a potential major force in Ireland, including in the more industrialised North.

With partition looming, the Irish Labour Party leadership unfortunately failed to intervene and to appeal for unity between Northern Protestants and Catholics, as they could have done, on the basis that a British-engineered Parliament had nothing to offer them. They were being offered rule by a reactionary capitalist Unionist government that would offer them at best meagre advantages over Catholic workers.

Just as important, Irish Labour failed to struggle for an alternative to a capitalist Home-Rule, all-Ireland state, leaving the scene to be dominated by Sinn Fein. Their policy offered nothing to change Irish society, only a state dominated by the Church. This was in the context of a wave of workers’ struggles and revolution sweeping Europe in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Sinn Fein given a free run in 1918

Instead of an independent class programme, the Irish Labour Party even stood to one side and allowed Sinn Fein a free run to win a landslide in the 1918 all-Ireland election, an event that opened up the perspective of a Catholic Church-dominated all-Ireland state, in the eyes of the Protestant North.

Decades later in the late 1960s, we had the Civil Rights movement and the Battle of the Bogside in Derry. Although the CR movement was predominately Catholic, it had passive support among important sections of the Protestant working class and particularly among the youth. Again, the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions failed to intervene and unite workers – as they could have done, linking civil rights to the issues of low pay, housing, unemployment, education, and so on.

That left the Civil Rights movement to be taken over by largely Catholic nationalists and Church figures and then to be brutally crushed by the British state. Events that followed, like internment, the massacres in Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday were the inevitable consequences of the suppression of the Civil Rights movement two years earlier.

There have been crucial opportunities, therefore, for the Labour and Trade Union movement to intervene and change the course of Irish history, but such opportunities have not been taken.

Workers’ unity persists in the workplace

A key question facing the labour movement today is the campaign for a border poll. A significant head of steam has been built up by the Trade Unionists for a New United Ireland, which, although it appeals for workers’ unity in words, is in fact entirely based on the notion of a capitalist united Ireland. As it was in 1918, it is a case of first unification, and only then socialism.

The central question facing socialists today is exactly as it was a hundred years ago. Any campaign for a new Ireland can only be based on workers’ unity between Protestant and Catholics in the North and between workers North and South. This is not an incidental extra; it is the essential element of any resolution of the National Question.

The main organisation of the working class is the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which represents over 800,000 workers across the whole of the island. The Northern Ireland Committee of the ICTU represents over 200,000.

These trade unions, their leaders and their tens of thousands of shop-stewards, reps and branch officials have a vital role to play in the struggle for unity that is the essential foundation for any development towards a genuine new Ireland. It remains the case today, despite the sectarian divisions in the North in terms of housing, that most large workplaces, particularly in the public sector, are fully integrated. This essential integration of the workplace could be a foundation on which a mighty new unified workers’ movement could be built.

Bread and butter issues, not constitutional issues are key

It would be a movement that focused not on ‘constitutional’ issues or the border per se, but on the issues of low pay, job insecurity, unemployment, health, education, welfare, housing provision and all the necessities of working-class life. It would raise the issue of socialist demands and socialist change to put into effect measures in the interests of working class people. The only way that a ‘new Ireland’ can be brought about in a way that respects all religious and cultural rights, along with human, civil and sexual rights, is on the basis of such a campaign for socialist change.

Across the whole of Ireland, including in the South, there are many community-based campaigns and struggles. There are environmental campaign groups, like the anti-mining movement. There have been huge campaigns in the South against the imposition of water rates, and there have also been very successful campaigns on women’s rights, on abortion, divorce and for marriage equality and reproductive rights. All of these have been supported by the trade unions and overwhelmingly by young workers. All of these campaigns can play a part in shaping a new Ireland.

An all-Ireland Labour Party

What is missing is a political voice to challenge the parties of capitalism and the status quo and to take up the National question on the basis of a unified front and bring people together with a socialist agenda to create a new Ireland. Ireland needs a new political voice, based on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and for the whole of the Island of Ireland.

What is absolutely essential now is bringing together all the community campaigns, environmental campaigns and especially the trade union movement in a new all-Ireland party of labour.

Build confidence and trust among Protestants and Catholics

A new Ireland Labour Party would need to deal with the Irish question from the standpoint of the day-to-day needs of workers, with social questions at the core of its programme: homes, pay, employment, investment, democratic state/community control of education and health services, and so on. Only on that basis would it be possible to build confidence and trust among Protestant and Catholic workers in the North. Uniting workers around a socialist agenda would be the main priority of an all-Ireland Labour Party, not just a thin veneer to hide a sectarian head count.

More than anything, a new Irish Labour Party would have to rest on the solid foundation of the trade union movement. It could provide a basis for building strong links with the labour movements in Scotland, England and Wales and with the trade union movement in Europe.

An-Ireland Labour Party could be a voice for working people in the whole of the island of Ireland. It could form the basis of a real unity among workers, instead of division. In a skilful and meaningful manner – meaningful in the sense of concrete day-to-day workers’ needs – it could bring the working class of this island together. It could be a solid foundation for a united movement to end centuries of capitalist exploitation and for a fight for a socialist united Ireland.

⏩Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

Socialists Must Fight For An All-Ireland Labour Party

Harry Hutchinson ✒ A week of violence, on a scale not seen for many years, has escalated tensions in Northern Ireland. 


Loyalist youth, some as young as 12 years old, have attacked police, journalists, public transport and Catholic areas, at those places where the two communities interface. In one case, they breached the so called ‘peace wall’ between the protestant Shankill and the Catholic Springfield areas of Belfast.

A few nights ago, a bus was hi-jacked, its passengers terrorised, and the driver assaulted, before it was set on fire by gangs of youths. Now, for the first time in decades, water cannon has been deployed against rioters, although notably not against the Loyalist youth who have rioted for the best part of a week, but against Catholic youth rioting on the other side of the ‘wall’.

Tensions have been brewing for months because of trade restrictions on goods coming from Britain to Norther Ireland, as a result of the protocols agreed between the UK and the EU over Brexit. These trade regulations are seen by loyalists as effectively a trade ‘border’ down the Irish Sea (as indeed it is) and that is something they have long opposed. To them, it is a further step in the separation of Northern Ireland from Britain.

Sinn Fein members at funeral

Added to issue of the Protocols, which have been rumbling on for weeks, there has also been the issue of the Sinn Fein members who joined hundreds of mourners at the mass funeral for a prominent former IRA member, Bobby Story. The funeral was held without any adherence to Covid regulations, but it seems that no legal action is planned against the Sinn Fein members who participated, allowing DUP politicians whisper ‘favouritism’ into the ears of loyalist youth.

Most of the violence is being coordinated though social media and it is expected to continue throughout the coming weekend, including a Loyalist protest at Belfast City Hall. The loyalist paramilitary umbrella group, the Loyalist Community Council (LCC), set up in 2015 and consisting of the UDA, the UVF and the Red Hand Commandos, have already declared that they no longer feel bound by the Good Friday Agreement. As yet, they have not responded publicly to the violence, leading many to believe they are orchestrating it. On the other hand, it is possible these loyalist groups have, to some extent, lost control over the youth.

The parties at Stormont all claim to be powerless to quell the violence and can only call for the end to street unrest. But some of them are playing a double game. The DUP have never supported the Good Friday Agreement and they have ongoing contacts with the loyalist paramilitaries. DUP Assembly members and leading figures have been making incendiary speeches against the Brexit protocols in the period leading up to the riots – and more recently about the Sinn Fein funeral – and they bear a direct responsibility for the increased sectarian tension.

A new generation of youth

Since the Good Friday Agreement, which was supposed to bring in a new era of peace in the North of Ireland, the two main sectarian capitalist parties have only deepened the sectarian divisions between the two working-class poverty-ridden areas. The new generation of youth who have witnessed division, poverty, drugs and an utter failure of politicians to deal with these issues.

Unfortunately, these youth are being weaned, like their grandparents fifty years ago, on the poison of sectarianism, and some of them have now taken matters into their own hands and that might bring a summer of violence to Northern Ireland.

The Protestant youth, as it was in the past, rather than fighting for real and meaningful social change, are being urged to fight against the ‘creeping unification’ of Ireland and a perceived ‘bias’ in favour of Sinn Fein. The Catholic youth are likewise urged to support a border poll to unify Ireland, as the answer to their problems.

Sinn Fein are now actively supporting the idea of a border poll. Without in any way addressing the questions of low pay, housing, poverty, unemployment and other social questions, a border poll for the unification of Ireland, presented as a purely ‘constitutional’ issue, is a dangerous and divisive policy that threatens to multiply sectarianism ten- or twenty-fold. It is an irresponsible policy.

It doesn’t matter that a majority of Northern Ireland voted against Brexit, or that opinion polls point to a majority for Irish unification. The fact of the matter is that a significant – and armed – minority will oppose this if it is a sectarian question, as it is now being presented.

The key question facing socialists in Northern Ireland today

The key question that faces socialists in Northern Ireland today is essentially as it has been for the last half century – the unification of workers around a programme of fundamental social change to address the day-to-day problems that all workers face, on both sides of the sectarian divide.

The youth in the Protestant and Catholic areas should direct their protests, not though mindless violence, but against a Stormont system that has utterly failed them. They should direct their protests against the ruthless paramilitaries who, despite the Good Friday Agreement, still control their lives in drug racketeering and crime.

Nationalist and Unionist politicians and the police all work behind the scenes with these paramilitary organisations, to manage and control community unrest. Keeping communities divided on the constitutional issue of ‘Nationalist’ versus ‘Unionist’ is a part of this control.

Unlike the sectarian politicians, the Labour and Trade Union movement can play a leading role in uniting communities. The Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish TUC has issued a statement in support of transport workers who are boycotting areas of Belfast.

Translink bus-drivers protest against attack

“The trade union movement,” the statement says:

entirely supports this protest by our public transport workers. Theirs is an act of generosity towards their fellow bus driver who was shockingly attacked last evening …Workers across Northern Ireland will not accept being the subject of attacks when going about their duties. The Translink workers are standing up and proclaiming this loudly.

This is all well and good, but the NIC should not limit itself to calls for ‘peace’ and ‘restraint’. It has to come out openly making political demands of the politicians. “Politicians”, they say, “need to come together, work together and make politics work in the interest of the entire community”.

That may be the case, but the NIC itself should now be demanding political and economic measures that would meaningfully address the problems of working-class people. The answer to the growing threat of sectarian violence is not appeals to restraint. It is for the labour and trade union movement to point the working class in an entirely different political direction, based on the common interests of all workers.

⏩Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland’s Fragile Peace

Harry Hutchinson ✒ The British Government is forcing though parliament the most oppressive anti-civil rights legislation in modern times. The Policing Bill will empower the Home Secretary and the police to brutally crackdown on protests that are deemed illegal under the new law.


The Tories are using the Covid regulations as a platform to enact draconian legislation that compares Britain to dictatorial countries. The expansion of stop and search, dictating the time of when marches start and end, deeming it illegal to “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisances”, (which includes noise) mean that the British state, though their use of brutal riot police, can suppress any protests they desire. [See earlier article on more details of the bill].

 There will be a huge impact on the travelling community, and the tactics used by environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion, and protests outside Parliament will be outlawed. Pulling down the statues of former slave-owners can land you a draconian 10-year prison sentence.

Bristol protests battered by police

Not surprisingly, ‘Kill the Bill’ protests have spread right across Britain in recent weeks. In Bristol, a week-long series of protests has met a violent police response. Protesters were congregated outside the city police station in a sit-down vigil. According to the official line of the Avon and Somerset Police, a ‘violent mob’ attacked officers, leaving 20 with injuries, including broken bones and one officer with a punctured lung. These claims were reported unreservedly by the British media, particularly the BBC.


However, footage later emerged of the actual events in Bristol and it then went viral, showing mounted police and riot officers with dogs moving in quite unnecessarily and assaulting peaceful protesters and journalists with batons and shields. The Guardian (March 27) described how journalists who identified themselves as such were still beaten by police. A reporter from the Daily Mirror tweeted:

Police assaulted me at the Bristol protest even though I told them I was from the press. I was respectfully observing what was happening and posed no threat to any of the officers.

On woman told The Guardian:

A policewoman barged me with her shield and I tripped. I fell to the floor and I went on to my back. My phone went and my keys went [out of my pocket]. I had my knees up to my chest and my arms over my head. I had two policewomen on my left using their shields to batter me, and two men on my right and they were hitting me with batons…The irony was that they kept asking me to get up.

‘Battle of Orgreave’ deliberately distorted by media

It was only after these later revelations that the Avon and Somerset Police were forced to retract their false account of events, not that there were any such corrections in the mass media or on the BBC. We still remember the so-called ‘Battle of Orgreave’ during the miners’ strike, when unarmed miners in T-shirts were brutally attacked by hundreds of riot police and dozens of mounted police. The miners, naturally enough, fought back.

That evening, on peak TV News time, the BBC deliberately swapped over the video footage to make it appear that the police action was a response to the miners’ ‘violence’. It was a calculated and deliberate distortion of the truth for which they have never apologised. When it comes to Bristol, therefore, we should not trust the media or the BBC any more than for Orgreave.

Police lies have been exposed by videos gone viral

In Bristol, the police claim that their intervention was necessary to deal with a ‘violent mob’, but the overwhelming majority of the protesters were peaceful and sitting down. Now, the police lie has been exposed. However, ten of those peaceful protesters were arrested and will still face charges.

It has even been suggested that there may have been agents-provocateur among the protesters. Infiltrating protest movements to initiate violence is a known tactic of the police. The idea of agents provocateurs is believable, because we know – and there is even an official enquiry into it going on – that the police deploy officers in under-cover roles.

These police spies infiltrate all kinds of quite legal political and trade union organisations, sometimes for years at a time, even fathering children with women completely taken in by their fake identities. Now, thanks to a new bill recently gone through parliament, such spies, as well as their informers, are immune from prosecution.

All the equipment of a police-state

Well-equipped riot police are now a feature of all police forces throughout the whole capitalist world. They have not been established to protect people, but to protect the capitalist state from the people.

Britain has increased its police force by six thousand in the last year, but the number of riot officers and ‘special’ patrol groups are unknown, as is the number of police deployed to spy on legal protest groups. Riot police are heavily armed with helmets, shields, clubs and body armour, as well as tear gas and pepper spray, which they use liberally even at close quarters. This is not a ‘community’ police force in any sense. It is a political force established to protect the status quo.


Environmental and human and civil rights groups have universally condemned the new Policing Bill as an infringement of civil rights. And with the Tories having an in-built majority, it is now only by taking to the streets that the bill can be defeated as it goes through its final stages in Parliament.

Policing is a class question

The question of the police and policing is, like other political issues, a class question. Workers justifiably grumble that they have little community ‘protection’ from crime. Threatened with physical violence or being the victim of a burglary or a car theft, workers are lucky to get a crime number. But if the same workers were involved in an industrial dispute or a political protest movement, the police will think nothing of deploying officers to spy on them and preventing them from exercising their democratic rights.

Even the leader of the leader of Britain’s police chiefs, in an interview in The Guardian, frankly admitted the police have no ‘legitimacy’ in many working-class areas. That is not a result of the actions of the local community, but due entirely to institutionalised racism and the approach the police adopt.


“Official figures” The Guardian writes:

show black people are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched, according to the latest official data. There were six stop and searches for every 1,000 white people, compared with 54 for every 1,000 black people. 

More than twenty years after the McPherson Inquiry found that there was “institutionalised racism” in the police, nothing has changed.

Police still riddled with racism and misogyny

The labour movement must develop policies that distinguish clearly between the political functions the police carry out in the services of the capitalist state and their purported ‘community’ functions.

That means Labour should demand the disbanding of special riot police. It means the dismantling of the networks of spies sent into the trade union and labour movement and legitimate political organisations. It means the elimination of racism and misogyny, which are endemic in the force.

It means that in pursuit of ‘community’ functions, the police should be fully accountable – including all so-called ‘operational’ issues – to elected community bodies. Democratic accountability has to mean, not remote Police and Crime Commissioners, whose remit covers a vast area and whose functions are hedged around by police chiefs, civil servants and bureaucratic obstacles, but smaller and more local elected bodies, to which local working-class communities can relate and in which they can be confident. At present there are 14 ‘Labour’ Police and Crime Commissioners and to our knowledge not one has spoken up on the new bill going through parliament.

The Labour Party has to oppose by every means possible the new Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill and put forward a socialist alternative that addresses the needs of working-class people.

➽ Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

British State Seeks To Ban Legitimate Protest

Harry Hutchinson  ✒ It was weeks in the planning. 


Far right social media sites “The Donald" and “Conspiracy theorist QAnon” called on protesters to “storm the capital” and for “violent insurrection”. 

The site also urged protesters to bring their guns and it made direct threats to House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and even to Vice President Mike Pence.

Timed to coincide with the election declaration, the far right, predominately “Proud boys” rioters, easily stormed Capitol hill. Despite all these warnings, security around Capitol Hill was lax. Rioters easily broke through barriers (some of which were removed by police) and overwhelmed the US Capitol Police and the Metropolitan force.

There were no signs of the tear gas that was used against the BLM, or in Lafayette Square, to make way for Trump to carry out his propaganda stunt, Bible in hand. The National Guard were not mobilised until rioters had dwindled to a few hundred.

Police offered little restraint to the storming of Capitol Hill. Many Officers even had their picture taken with the Proud Boys, in marked contrast to the brutal repression by these same Officers of the peaceful BLM movement. Similar ‘Storm the Capitol' protests had taken place across America before and by the same mobs: notably in Michigan where a fascist mob occupied the state government building last Summer.

Party splits

The Republican Party is split on its support for Trump. A hundred and thirty-nine Republican representatives and eight senators challenged the presidential election result, although Vice President Pence refused Trump’s appeal to object. A fascist wing of the Republican Party is solidly behind Trump.

However, ten former Secretaries of Defence, including some appointed by Trump, signed a letter against military involvement, effectively opposing violent means to overthrow the election result. There is now a spilt in the American establishment.

Aims achieved

The storming of Capitol Hill achieved its objective. It demonstrated that this fascist movement can infiltrate the levers of power in the US, with at least sympathetic support from security personnel and the part of the establishment. Although many protesters saw this as a takeover of the state, for it to be an effective coup, the conditions and time were not right. Certainly, Trump with the assistance of Fox News, has developed a major shift in US ideology to the far right, as witnessed by his seventy million votes. But although the Far right is not yet mature or influential enough to seize power, that is the objective of this movement.

The Trump ‘steal the vote' campaign has already raised $200m. The aim now for the far right is to build this movement further, possibly leading to another Trump challenge for the White House in four years. But more importantly, the aim for the far right is to be in a position to replace a ‘parliamentary’ capitalist democracy with a fascist dictatorship.

The January 6 storming of Capitol Hill is a warning to working class people in America and across the globe. Far right groups see Trump as the champion of their cause. Fascist groups will be invigorated by this insurrection, in Europe and the East. An anti-fascist movement of organised working class people must be built to counter balance this fascist movement. Trade unions, in particular, must now throw their resources into organising working class people against this fascist threat.

➽ Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

Coup Attempt In America

Harry Hutchinson ✒ On the 12th of February 1989, Ken Barrett, a leading figure in the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA), along with an accomplice, smashed into the North Belfast home of criminal defence lawyer, Pat Finucane, and shot him fourteen times in front of his wife and children.


An RUC road check was set up to assist the gunmen in their escape from the murder scene, after Police Special Branch and the British MI5 service were informed of the pending attack.

Pat Finucane was a successful human rights lawyer who represented mostly Republicans, including IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, but he had also represented Loyalists. He became a well-known figure in Northern Ireland and the British state were intent on silencing him.

Public Inquiry demanded

The Tory Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis, this week ruled out a public inquiry into the Finucane killing, claiming “other review processes would have to run their course.” This is the latest attempt by the British to prevent any proper inquiry into the Finucane murder, a murder that highlights Britain’s involvement into state collusion with paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland. Despite promises to the Irish Government that they would institute a public inquiry into his killing, the British have again reneged on that.

Findings from as far back as 1999 in the Stevens Report by the former, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, uncovered evidence of state collusion in the Finucane murder. In addition, in 2000, further evidence in the Finucane killing, uncovered by Canadian Judge Peter Cory, “disappeared.” In 2012, an inquiry by Sir Desmond de Silva uncovered extensive collusion between state collaborators and Loyalists and the admission was admitted in parliament by Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who also issued an apology for it.

Paid informer confessed to killing

Pat Finucane’s killer was Ken Barrett, a paid informer of Special Branch, who confessed to Finucane’s murder to the RUC. However, the tape of his confession “went missing", only to resurface again after a Panorama documentary in which Barrett again confessed his involvement in the murder. Barrett was handed a 22-year sentence in 2003, but was released in 2006. Brian Nelson, a member of Force Research Unit, a covert military unit of the British Army, claimed that he alerted his handlers of the planned Finucane killing. William Stobie, a quartermaster in the UDA, was arrested for supplying the weapons that were used in the murder, after evidence emerged from the Stevens inquiry. However, Stobie’s trial collapsed after he claimed he had informed Special Branch of the planned attack.

Solid evidence of state collusion

Despite the European Convention on Human rights reporting “solid evidence” of state collusion with paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the British Government blocks all attempts to carry out a proper public inquiry into the involvement of the state with paramilitaries throughout all the years of the troubles in the North.

Bodies like the Historical Inquiries Team, set up to look into over three thousand unsolved murders, have been stalled due to budget cuts. Britain's involvement in collusion with both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries stretches back to the 1970s. There was involvement, both in what they knew and what they directly instigated in terms of murders and bombings throughout the duration of the troubles. This is what they want kept hidden from the public, because were their true role revealed, it might emerge that British state forces prolonged the duration of the ‘Troubles’ that left a deep scar on Northern Irish society and caused more than three thousand deaths. 

➽ Harry Hutchinson is a member of the Labour Party Northern Ireland.

British Government Cover-Up Over Killings

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