Category Archives: Belfast

Comments on the racist riots in Belfast and response (2 of 2)

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United Against Racism organised a rally in Belfast city centre to protest against the racist attacks.  It was recalled by a number of the speakers that we had been here before after previous riots, with the Green Party speaker stating that it was infuriating to be back again.  A summary of the speeches exposes the political weaknesses that help contribute to this, even while recognising the difficulty of what is required.  Not least of the problem is that there is not really an anti-racist movement and definitely not a coherent political alternative to the forces behind the racist mobilisations and the broader sympathy that lies behind them.

The range of speakers reflected the breadth of opposition to racism but at the cost of incoherence.  It’s not enough to be against racism – the racists have a policy – a political programme – no matter how primitive and inchoate, and the participants at the rally do not.

There were repeated chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here!’, which is a fine sentiment but not an argument or a policy.  There were frequent expressions that the rally represented the ‘real’ Belfast, repeated again by the following Monday’s editorial in the local paper ‘The Irish News’ – ‘the real face of both Belfast and modern Ireland was at show at the weekend . . .’  Unfortunately, the attacks were real, they were carried by real people, and they have a real base of support in Belfast and elsewhere in Ireland.

It might be countered that this is not what was meant by expressions of the ‘real’ Belfast but if it doesn’t mean what it says it doesn’t mean anything.  More importantly the phrase reveals a failure to recognise the real world, which is absolutely necessary to changing it and which failure to do so has all sorts of negative consequences.

Holding the rally was absolutely necessary to register the scale and scope of opposition to the attacks and in order to frame the issues raised in a more progressive way; to support those under attack and continued threat, and to give confidence to those opposed to racism and its violent expression.  The rally was correctly hailed as the largest anti-racist demonstration Belfast has seen, but it is not the sole representation of a city notorious for sectarianism and once described as ‘the race-hate capital of Europe’ in 2004, when the number of ethnic minorities was even smaller than it is now.

Organisers are claiming that 20,000 attended, when dividing by four might give a more accurate estimate, which is important only as another example of the failure to face reality.  Belfast has a history of sectarianism because there are a significant number of bigots, and religious bigotry regards racism as part of the family.  This constituency has a much longer history than any movement against racism.   It is extremely unlikely that racism will be defeated if sectarianism isn’t, which reveals the problem with a movement simply based on anti-racism.

The failure to deal with reality was expressed in the failure, so far as I noted, of any speaker to name the agents of the racist mobilisation.  Instead, the problem was an undefined ‘far-right’ and prominent individuals such as Elon Musk. The speaker from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions repeatedly employed this term, as if the trade union movement did not have a problem that a significant number of its own members in the North are loyalists.  On top of this is the acceptance that it is impossible to condemn loyalism without also demonstrating one’s own non-sectarianism by at the same time condemning republicanism.  Otherwise wider unionism might see it as evidence of a pro-nationalist bias. The result is that together they veto specific identification of the concrete and real adversary.

Ironically this means that the development of racism among nationalists cannot be separately identified as a problem should it arise; so the identity of the racist constituency is continually so abstract as to defy definition and concrete identification.  Calls for workers’ unity are all fine and good, but they remain rhetorical when the opposition within the working class isn’t recognised and challenged.

A by-product of this is the view that the trade union membership has a political unity that does not exist.  Hence the unreality of the ICTU and NIPSA speakers when the former said the trade unions would do ‘whatever it takes’ to drive out the far right and the latter that if there is another death the movement could ‘shut this place down’.  He asked for the rally to offer its support to a NIPSA motion to ICTU along these lines.  What this might mean in reality was unclear; what the possibility of it being carried was also unclear; that it would not be actioned is clear.

The trade union movement both North and South seek partnership with their respective governments and state, rather against the observations of a number of the speakers, which brings us to another illustration of the problem brought to the fore by the rally and the speeches.  Speaker after speaker criticised the Stormont Executive, the role of the police, of the state generally and the political parties.  These criticisms received widespread applause from the rally.

Unfortunately, the representative from the main party of the First Minister of the Stormont Executive, the Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Belfast, was also applauded.  So was the Alliance Party representative, which is also part of the Executive.  The leader of the official opposition in the Stormont regime, the SDLP, was also applauded although it has been in the Executive until recently and is not at all opposed to Stormont.  All these speakers, plus the Green Party, support the police and support the state and also received the applause of the rally.

The Green Party speaker called for the Executive to develop various strategies against poverty, for equality and for refugees, while another speaker condemned the dead letter of the Executive’s existing race relations strategy.  Stormont has produced a number of strategies but this simply means that it has produced a lot of PDFs and word documents, and used up a lot of paper.  The ICTU speaker claimed that the problem was that the Executive was underfunded and that if this was rectified the money could help defeat the far right – the lack of money being the excuse of choice by the Executive as well.

It was claimed that this could get the far right out of the communities, which would equate to getting violent loyalists out of loyalist and unionist communities. This inadvertently rather encapsulates the failure to identify the problem, while raising the difficulty of doing so, and the challenge of defeating loyalism and its twin association with sectarianism and racism.

So, criticisms of the Executive were applauded while so also were the speakers representing the parties within it.  Criticisms of the police were applauded and so were the speeches of the parties supporting them.  The action of local groups and organisations in supporting and protecting those under threat were rightly applauded, yet most speeches looked to the state as the way forward (the one that was acknowledged to have failed). This was also applauded.

Behind these contradictions lays some awareness of the problems struggling to develop consciousness of what their resolution involves.*  The practical support of volunteers helping protect those threatened, and assisting their move if this was required, points to a political alternative that doesn’t rely on the forces that have failed but identifies these forces as a major part of the problem.

Why is it hard to understand that when the Stormont administration includes reactionary bigots providing political cover for the street thugs it cannot be the solution?  Whys is it not possible to follow the logic of the realisation that the sectarian structures of Stormont are not the answer to street sectarianism and its racist relative?  Of course, lack of an obvious political alternative is the most important reason, but just as the need for practical help for those under attack led to local anti-racists taking their own action, so does the creation of a political alternative require its creation by those who have felt the need to mobilise.  The question then becomes – what is the political basis for such an alternative?

If we look at the rally, there are no grounds for common political organisation based on the platform of speakers.  For example, Sinn Fein gets away with parading its anti-racist credentials in the North while the Party in the South moves to the right in an attempt to mollify racists.  There were banners from some trade unions but there was no mass mobilisation of the trade union membership just as there was no mass mobilisation of Sinn Fein members.

This is why we can say that there is no anti-racist movement.  This requires some political coherence and would have to move beyond simple anti-racism.  The size of the rally and that it took place at all are positives, as are the criticisms made of the state, but it is necessary to go way beyond this if we are not to simply repeat the rally outside Belfast City Hall next year, if not sooner.

* ‘We do not say to the world: cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.’ Karl Marx

Back to part 1

Comments on the racist riots in Belfast and response (1 of 2)

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I was in Glasgow when the riots in Belfast broke out following the savage attack on a white man by a Sudanese migrant.  The mainstream media in Britain generally treated it as another example of the race riots carried out by the far right, most recently in Southampton, with references to the role of social media and mentions of Elon Must and Yaxley-Lennon, the guy you couldn’t even trust to tell you his real name.

Even from a distance it was clear that this wasn’t exactly the case.  Musk and the British far-right might provide inspiration, and social media provide a mechanism to inform, but the riots were an Irish phenomenon.  This is the third year in a row for such riots with social media again calling for a ‘cross-community’ racist mobilisation, including announcing meetings in nationalist areas such as Ardoyne.  Instead, the riots and the attacks on immigrants, or those considered to have the wrong skin colour, were confined to loyalist areas, and republicans in Ardoyne mobilised to reassure and protect those residents in the area who were most vulnerable to attack.

What wasn’t immediately clear from a distance was how widespread the racist mobilisation was.  Despite the drama reported on the mainstream media, reports continually showed one street in flames, the glider bus on the Newtownards Road on fire and some other localised riots.  By the historic standards of Belfast and the North of Ireland this was all relatively small, except that shops, schools and transport seemed to be closing down earlier than they had previously in worse circumstances.

When I got off the plane at Belfast there was a larger than usual number of police interviewing passengers and not necessarily checking ID.  They were more interested in where you were from and where you were going to.  I took it they were interested in identifying any loyalists of other far-right figures arriving to join the fray.

Unusually, I noticed the faces of those who weren’t white, including the black guy helping to give order to the airport taxi rank.  The taxi driver, who was an immigrant as well, and having lived in Belfast for over ten years, was very scared, particularly when it became clear that at one point taxis were being stopped in some location(s) to check whether the driver had ethnic minority passengers.

This was one of the reasons for the perceived febrile nature of the events.  The targets were immediately identifiable, unlike sectarianism where – despite the stereotypes – it is not usually obvious who is Catholic or Protestant.  Every non-white face was a reminder of who the potential targets of racist violence were.  The second startling images, perhaps especially for those not living in Belfast, was of masked men going door-to-door trying to identify and attack people of the ‘wrong’ colour.

Some commentators I saw were at pains to state that it would be wrong to paint the whole unionist ‘community’ as racist.  This is an obvious truth, just as is the other claim that there are nationalist or Catholic racists.  The point however is that it was only in loyalist areas that attacks took place. As one journalist pointed out – look down at the street and the footpaths are painted red, white and blue.

The police claimed that loyalist paramilitaries were not involved, which is nonsense.  Not all these paramilitaries were active – the riots would have been significantly bigger if they were – so the police were playing the game of not blaming them as a means of encouraging those not yet involved to stay not involved.

For the police it’s a win because it might help minimise its immediate problem while the existence of these groups is publicly treated as not their problem.  For the loyalists themselves their existence is their main objective and partial disorder both shows their capacity for violence and capacity to control it.  Yes, we can be a threat, but one you can work with.  And indeed, the British state has had no problem working with loyalist paramilitaries for decades – in the background, alongside, and fronting them up.

Lack of honesty in identifying one core issue of loyalist responsibility is one not confined to them or sections of the media, but as the next article will argue, it’s a bigger issue for those opposed to the attacks.

*              *             *

The reaction from the British government, in the shape of Keir Starmer, was the announcement that he would “crack down on anyone who is fuelling this division”, although this proved to be untrue because he continued to fuel it himself.  The British Home Office let it be known that the racists had no need to do what they were doing because the government was already cracking down on immigration. “Government sources” let it be known that it would “intensify” its actions to “track down, detain, arrest and remove illegal immigrants from Northern Ireland”.  It’s hard to see how this briefing to journalists would not validate in some way the racists and fail to reassure their victims.  

The North of Ireland has a population that is 96% white, while Belfast is home to three-quarters of asylum seekers, quoted as around the 20th highest rate of all UK council areas. Yet Belfast is quoted as having had the highest number of immigration raids in the UK between 2018 and 2024.  Whoever thinks this means that ‘cracking down’ needs intensified is living in their own world of racism, which thus includes the British government.

The Democratic Unionist Party has come under attack for playing its usual role of condemning violence while giving political cover.  There is much talk, and not only by them, about ‘legitimate concerns about immigration’ and the ‘pressures on housing, healthcare and resources’, but the claim that the rioters are concerned about resources for healthcare, for example, doesn’t withstand examination when they target nurses and other healthcare workers for intimidation.  It is a commonplace that these services rely on immigrant doctors, nurses and others.  Frequent visits to local hospitals confirm this in abundance.

Reported racist incidents exceeded sectarian ones by nearly 2 to 1 in 2025/26, affecting a very small part of the population, and it has now been argued that sectarian conflict has been displaced by racist attacks.  That these attacks are mainly by loyalists is a tacit claim that it is they who are mainly responsible for sectarianism, which is not the politically correct version of reality touted by most of the media in the North and by all of it in Britain.

It is only partially correct.  Immigrants are mainly living in loyalist areas because that is where the available housing is, thereby also making them more accessible to attack. It has also been partially displaced to the sectarian institution at Stormont, where its has stagnated.  This stagnation will not last and Stormont has already had repeated breakdowns.  A final collapse threatens to put sectarian conflict back on the streets where it will join with the current violent racism.  It is one of the ironies of the reaction to the riots that those opposed to the racist attacks look to Stormont for the answer, but we will look at this in the next post.

Forward to part 2

Anti-racists in Belfast push back against the fascists

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A week after a far right rally in the city centre led to an impromptu march to South Belfast, and attacks on ethnic minorities, the far right thought that it could cement their success with a rally in the same place the following Friday night.

Their initial Saturday rally was already small but grew when it passed through some working class loyalist areas and headed for the areas with a more prominent ethic minority presence.  They were eventually stopped, not by the police, who limited themselves to a stationary presence, mainly to defend the Islamic Centre, but by residents of the lower Ormeau Road, a mainly working class nationalist area.

The following week there were numerous attacks on ethnic minority businesses and individuals, mainly in Belfast and mainly in loyalist areas, but not exclusively so.  The far-right rally drew some attention world-wide with pictures of racists waving British Union flags and Irish tricolours, with comments about how the infamous religious division in Ireland had been overcome.  In fact, the appearance together of Irish fascists and Irish loyalists is not something to write home about, but media pundits couldn’t resist commenting and far right bloggers around the world couldn’t help claiming an historic success.

The Belfast racist’s attempt to repeat their success on Friday night was an ignominious embarrassment.  An acquaintance of mine mentioned that he had gone into Marks & Spencer for a cut-price sandwich and had gone out the back door to have a look at the racist/fascist/loyalist admixture, only to find twenty or so guys, some with Glasgow Rangers football tops, wondering why they were so few.  In the end there were less than 100 facing a counter-demonstration of around 1,000. 

The counter-demonstrators had much fun chanting:

We are Many

You are Few 

We are Belfast

Who are You?

and

There are many, many more of us than you

There are many, many more of us than you

There are many, many more

Many, many more

Many, many, more of us than you

The following day thousands of demonstrators took to the streets for a demonstration to the same site in the front of the City Hall.

The actions of the residents of the lower Ormeau Road and the mass anti-racist demonstration has gone a long way to putting the racists and fascists back in their box, but there are many reasons not to think that this particular struggle has been won.

First, the Belfast events were part of a series alongside far right attacks in Britain and follow similar attacks in Dublin and across the Irish state.  In both of these the scale of attacks were much larger and broader.  The killing of three young girls blamed by far right rumours on a Muslim immigrant was the occasion for the attacks in Britain and these in. turn were the catalyst for the Belfast attacks.

The Belfast demonstration was attended by some far right protestors from Dublin, including from the Coolock group that had rioted to prevent the creation of accommodation for asylum seekers in the area.  Dozens of arson attacks across the Irish state have been made on such prospective sites and a major riot in Dublin in November followed an attack on young children by a man originally from Algeria.

Just as the attacks in Britain and the south are not new, neither are attacks on ethnic minorities across the North of Ireland, which became more frequent recently.   Most of these are in unionist or loyalist areas because demographic decline has meant that accommodation is more available and less expensive, while property for new ethnic shops is also cheaper.

For many older people the sight of significant (but still tiny) numbers of ethnic minority people is still in some ways remarkable.  It’s a bit like seeing young people wearing GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) tops in places where previously even someone suspected of being a Catholic would have been in mortal danger.  It is visual confirmation of the relative decline in the unionist population and increase in the nationalist one, alongside their greater political and social prominence.

These working class Protestant areas would once have been full to the brim of a monocultural population which considered itself the rightful subjects of the state who could look down on the Catholics as second class citizens.  Against this, a significant number of Protestant workers were consciously non-sectarian and anti-sectarian but they did not define the tone of the neighbourhoods, especially during the Orange marching season.

Racism therefore has two reasons to be more prevalent in loyalist areas – ethnic minorities are more prominent, and loyalism has always been based on supremacism – expressed in sectarianism – for whom racism is not exactly a distant cousin.  Nationalists have in the past looked to the black civil rights movement in the US as analogous to their own discrimination and resistance and have looked upon racism among loyalists as confirmation of their own world view.

So, no one on the counter demonstration or the following day’s anti-racist march was wearing a Rangers top whereas there were many GAA tops and a few Glasgow Celtic shirts.  There were many Palestine flags and at least one Irish tricolour, while at one point a large part of the crowd was singing a song in Irish.  There was also a noteworthy republican presence on the Friday night counter demonstration.

This is not at all to suggest that the counter demonstration was a purely nationalist one or that the Saturday demonstration was either, even if the political speeches were by Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the People before Profit MLA from west Belfast.  No one on either demonstration would have considered it to be a nationalist one and it identified itself repeatedly in chanting that it was anti-racist and anti-fascist. No one, however, is blind to the obvious facts, including that the racist demonstrators waved union flags and posters and the previous Saturday’s racist march was made up of loyalists that the fascists from Dublin could ‘unite’ with.  The PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) has stated that loyalist paramilitaries have been involved in the recent racist attacks.

There is thus some irony in the numerous placards and repeated declarations on the Saturday demonstration that it was in support of ‘diversity’ with one placard saying that Belfast itself was built on it. I doubt that any of the demonstrators expected their diversity to include their fellow demonstrators to be wearing Rangers or Linfield tops or waving Union and Ulster flags, or politicians from the DUP to be speaking from the back of the lorry.

Of course, when demonstrators talk about diversity they mean opposition to discrimination on grounds of race or sex or sexual orientation etc. and not politics, but this shows that politics is central and focusing on diversity erases this centrality.

One example was a young woman holding up a home-made placard telling the racist demo ‘check your privilege’.  If she had checked the racist demonstrators herself she might have noted that there wasn’t much evidence of privilege.  In general the rioters have been poor, ignorant and frequently quite stupid.  Of course they have been white, but so were the vast majority of the anti-racists.

A number of speakers pointed out that the racists are scapegoating asylum seekers and refugees for the failure of governments and their austerity policies.  They pointed to years of Tory austerity and to Starmer’s promised continuation of it, but these are not the only offenders.

These culprits are now offering their own law and order solution to racist violence and the main Muslim speaker at the Saturday rally, Raied al-Wazzan, Vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Council for Racial Equality, called on everyone to support the police – the police that had just failed the previous week.

In Britain various police forces have been proved again and again to be racist and misogynistic while they have been embroiled in scandal after scandal including corruption and spying on left wing organisations.   In the North of Ireland they have an even worse history, including collusion with the loyalists that are now behind the racist attacks.

The call for the police to protect ethnic minorities from racism at least reveals that the immediate question is one of physical self-defence and the solution to that was demonstrated by the lower Ormeau Road residents.  Workers should organise to protect their own communities and by involving the targets of racism themselves.

This was something that wasn’t argued for at the rallies despite repeated chanting and invocations that “When migrants’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.”  Lots of slogans about fighting back but zero calls or steps at the rallies to begin organising it.  Instead, there were a number of calls for Hate Crime legislation to be introduced, which is a call for increased police powers, a step to close down free speech and a weapon that will be employed against the left and defenders of women’s rights.

While we had many pointing the finger at politicians who had sowed the seeds of racism by blaming refugees for poor public services that they had been responsible for reducing, there was not a murmur at Sinn Fein who had a speaker at the Saturday rally.  Not only has Sinn Fein imposed austerity in the North, while washing its hands of responsibility by blaming ‘London’, it has formed a partnership with the DUP that jointly dispenses little more than slush funds between republican supported and loyalist ‘community’ organisations that provide power and prestige to loyalist groups.

In the southern Irish state Sinn Fein has followed the example of the Tories and Labour in Britain, and Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in Ireland, in presenting refugees and immigrants as a problem, as something to be reduced and a population of the undeserving that must be expelled as soon as possible.

Sinn Fein’s new policy of an audit of services etc. in working class areas so that a rationale can be provided to prevent accommodating refugees within them is further pandering to racist opposition.  Applied in the North, the current areas of highest refugee populations would likely fall foul of a Sinn Fein ‘audit’.  You will not be surprised that this new great policy of Sinn Fein was not proposed at the Saturday rally.

There was only one discordant note from a speaker at the rally, when the NIPSA union leader and Socialist Party member Patrick Mulholland, noted that racists had waved both union flags and tricolours while they carried out their actions.  This resulted in a few grumbles from some in the crowd but has the unfortunate quality of being true.  Irish politicians and some left nationalists have complained that this is a misuse of the national flag and the racists and fascists have no right to it. Their problem is that the racists and fascists have as much reason to claim to be nationalists as any of the other nationalist organisations.

The strength of the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement was on display in Belfast over the weekend – its numbers, its enthusiasm and its determined opposition.  Also on display was its weakness – its reliance on the state and police, the hypocrisy of many of its adherents, the poverty of its immediate organisational objectives and weakness of overall political alternative.

The answer to racism and fascism is not ‘diversity’. Like gravity, such diversity exists anyway and will continue to exist whether celebrated or not. What matters is not that we are different in many ways but that we have cause to unite; the grounds for this unity is where our interests lie and that must be our central concern.

A comment on the Palestine solidarity demonstration in Belfast

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About 3,000 people demonstrated in Belfast city centre on Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Three thousand is a large demonstration for Belfast, and for Palestinian solidarity is considerable.

The reason for the turnout is the obvious genocidal attacks of the Israeli state, on top of the existing widespread sympathy with the Palestinian cause among some sections of the population.  Israel flags have been put up by loyalists in a number of streets but this only confirms their utterly reactionary character, if any was needed.

It has become customary for commentators to smirk and disparage the different views on the Palestinian cause that overlaps to some degree with the sectarian division in Ireland, but these commentators rarely delve into the obvious explanation.  This was reflected in the speakers at the rally, where there was a speaker from the Bloody Sunday Trust, made up of relatives of the victims, and Sinn Fein as well, however, as one Protestant cleric.

A second major reason for the turnout has been the brazen endorsement of the attempted ethnic cleansing by Western states, including the British, EU and US; topped off  by deceit and hypocrisy about the Israeli ‘right to self-defence’.  In previous posts I have noted that the cause of Palestine is not only about Palestine, so the previous struggle in Ireland against imperialism should, and did, reflect consciousness about the struggle that once had Belfast at its heart.

But that was then and this is now; the anti-imperialist struggle has been buried in the North of Ireland for some time, and the politics of that defeat and the consciousness arising from it were on display at the demonstration.

Some speakers appeared to hold the Irish peace process as a model for Palestine; there were numerous calls for the ‘international community’ to call for a ceasefire, including the UN, and calls for pressure on Governments etc. to boycott, divest and sanction the Israeli state. This BDS movement “urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.”

I noted to a friend that the last time I was at a demonstration outside the City Hall it was rather smaller and was in protest against Joe Biden’s visit to Ireland.  At that time Sinn Fein was part of the wider effusion of welcomes to Biden by the Irish establishment – Sinn Fein wasn’t speaking at any Palestinian demonstrations then.  Yet everyone knows that Biden and the US has given the green light to the Zionist state’s mass murder, just as we protested at his visit for his provocations leading to war in Ukraine.

How credible then is the support for the Palestinian people by this party?  How credible does their participation make a campaign that prominently includes Sinn Fein leaders at its demonstrations?

Lots of calls were made on ‘the international community’ to intervene for a ceasefire, but the more accurate term for ‘international community’ is imperialism, and imperialism is not interested in a struggle against one of its proxies.  The UN has been passing resolutions seeking to limit Zionist actions for years to no effect – why would anything change now?

The calls for some sort of peace inspired by the Irish peace process is particularly blind and thoughtless.  What possible progressive outcome would arise from negotiations chaired by an American, organised by the British and which would exclude the Palestinians until they politically surrendered?  We don’t need to speculate.  The equivalent has already occurred and were the Oslo Accords that are a dead letter.  The current suspension of Stormont is hardly an advertisement for anything, except repeated failure.

The main problem for most of the speeches were that, for all the calls for action to end the siege of Gaza etc, these were directed at the Governments, including the Israeli, that have no intention or interest in bowing to this pressure.  Especially from those who have no intention of exercising what little power they currently have or could potentially levy.

Were Sinn Fein really opposed to the US arming of the Israeli state with the weapons that are currently killing thousands of civilians it would break off all contact with the US, including the politicians that regularly pop up in Ireland and currently include Joe Kennedy III, the ‘special envoy’ to Northern Ireland.  It would call on all its supporters in the United States to oppose their Government’s arming of Israel.  The chances of this happening are precisely zero.

The task of putting on pressure therefore becomes one of putting pressure on Sinn Fein.  The few heckles at the start of the Sinn Fein speech show that some are aware of the real Sinn Fein position.

Similar considerations apply to the trade union speaker at the rally.  Campaigners are entitled to ask where the campaign within the movement is that is trying to get workers themselves to boycott the transport of weapons to Israel.  Some might believe that this is currently impossible, but it is infinitely more likely than the ‘international community’ respecting ‘international law’ in protection of Palestinian lives.

Of course, this will cause dissension among supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, but while that may be the cause of an organisational split it will not be the cause of a political one because that already exists, it’s just currently hidden.  Pretending that Sinn Fein retains any sort of anti-imperialist character may be important to the Sinn Fein project, and to many of its members and supporters, but this is already being exposed as fraudulent the more it succeeds.  It is better that it be exposed by others than that it expose itself through yet more betrayals.

Otherwise the promise of the demonstration yesterday will be wasted and we will have politics as performance, something that is becoming all too prevalent.

Going to see ‘Belfast’ by Kenneth Branagh

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I went to see ‘Belfast’ by the actor and Director Kenneth Branagh with an open mind, and I left wanting to like it more than perhaps I did.  It’s an autobiographical film of a small Protestant boy and his working class family at the beginning of the Troubles.

Since I was once a small Protestant boy at the beginning of the Troubles, and living in a working class area, I came with my own experience as a comparison.  Despite this being a political blog, and almost obliged to pen a political review, I’ll do that less than I would otherwise because of this.  An autobiographical review then of an autobiographical film.

So, some things struck me that perhaps others wouldn’t notice and are probably irrelevant to any reasonable review, but there are points I really would like to make.  I’ve written a long series of posts on the start of the Troubles but this one relates particularly to the initial period in the film and provides some political context.

My wife informed me that a friend of hers told her that the film was from a Protestant view.  I’m not sure if this was a criticism but it is obviously true.  The story of a Catholic family in a mixed, but mainly Protestant street, would be more harrowing.  It could easily be more ugly and bloody.  It is, however, no criticism of the film to say that this is not what the film is about, or ever could be.

A review of the film, or rather of the reality of the film’s backdrop, by Max Hastings in ‘The Times’, who covered the events as a journalist, mentions at the end of it – of Branagh – that ‘back in 1969 his tribe bestrode the dunghill, while Catholics suffered at Protestant hands.’

Whether intended or not, this gives the impression that Branagh belongs to a tribe and that this tribe, without distinction, oppressed all Catholics.  At which point I’m compelled to say that he’s missed the effing point.

For the point of the film, in so far as it can be interpreted as a political film, is not that all Protestants oppressed Catholics; but rather that some didn’t, that some even opposed it, and that some had to get out because they too became targets of loyalist bigots on account of this refusal.  To get all autobiographical myself, my own family did not oppress Catholics, were not even unionist in politics never mind loyalist, and actually supported the civil rights movement as some other Protestants did.

This matters, because it points to an alternative to forever being a creature of your ‘tribe’ both then and now.  I don’t see any nostalgia in the film for any tribe and the cliched love across the sectarian divide is not overwrought as it so often is.  Whatever saccharine aspects the film has, it avoids any empty self-exoneration because none is required.  If anything, the Catholic characters are hardly developed; to repeat, that’s not what the film is about.

As it proceeds it becomes less political and more personal. For this reviewer the personal elements are often more evocative of my own back story than the political.  The discovery by the small boy recalls my own that there are such things as Catholics and Protestants; that we were Protestants and some people expected us to hate Catholics, although without me having a clue why, or them for that matter.

On a lighter note, I remember going to see ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ but I refuse to buy the portrayal of the family as hard up.  They have a phone and the boy has more toys than I could ever have dreamed of.  They do say they haven’t had many holidays but however many they had was exactly the number more than me.

We didn’t have any religious upbringing, which is rather more important to the characters in the film, but the role of the organised, determined and principled woman in holding the family together was from my experience typical.  Hiding under the table when there was a riot outside reminds me of doing the same when there was a gun battle in my street.  The uncertainty of leaving also reminds me of my own experience although I didn’t have the film character’s desire to stay.

On other aspects Hastings is right, especially that Belfast was a much uglier city than portrayed in the film.  The streets are too clean and tidy as is the entry at the back, which in my granny’s Shankill Road home was a rotting tip the whole way down.  There are no painted kerb stones and no flagpole holders on the houses, not to mention flags sticking out of them.

The film is too soft in this respect, so that the loyalists are not dark, repellent and menacing enough, and the film doesn’t therefore truly portray the stifling and oppressive environment of the time and place.  Again, it’s not that sort of film because it arises from an escape that is not only the author’s history but, he appears to believe, the history of the place full stop. It is ultimately a story of good fortune because that’s what came out of it.

The film is a simple story made vivid by the excellent performances from all the cast.  Only one scene borders on the ridiculous and if the background just about passes muster, the accents and language do so as well.  Enough certainly for the vast majority of audience which will watch it.

My main qualification for being a critic is that I am comfortably at home being critical, and as I say, I left wanting to like it more, and maybe I will.   It reminds me of something I heard a long time ago – that Belfast is a great place to come from.

From civil rights to ‘the Troubles’ 14 – the aftermath of August 1969

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shankill road

Two days after the attempted loyalist pogrom the Stormont Government gave a press conference before bewildered journalists, who became increasingly angry as the previous days’ events were described as an IRA plot in which Catholic residents had burned their own homes.  A claim repeated by others, including Ian Paisley.

There was no criticism of loyalists or the Shankill Defence Association, and the B-Specials were defended.  One journalist pointed out that not one loyalist had been arrested, and when it was asked who information for a potential inquiry should be given to, ‘almost the entire hall burst into laughter’ when the Minister of Home Affairs suggested the police.

Academics from Queens’ University in Belfast later estimated that 1,505 (82.7%) of the households that had been displaced were Catholic while the number of Protestant households was 315 (17.3%) .  This was an under-estimate and did not include the intimidation by the SDA between April and July.  A separate  academic study estimated that during August and September 1969 3,500 families had been forced to leave their homes with 85% of them Catholic.  In a later three-week period in August 1971 a further 2,069 left.  Yet another study claimed that between 8,000 and 15,000 families in the Greater Belfast area were forced to flee their homes.

But this is not all there was to Belfast in these few days in mid-August 1969 and it has been argued that to believe so is to see only a partial and therefore distorted picture.  One author has noted* that at this time Belfast was divided into six police districts within which the majority of violence flared in only two, with it further concentrated in only three areas within these two.

District A, which included the centre of the City contained two potential flashpoints – Protestant Sandy Row and Catholic Markets – which remained quiet, with two local peace committees working together to maintain it.  District D covered North Belfast, including the Antrim Road which had a number of potential areas of conflict, but saw no sign of serious disturbances, and again some co-operation helped prevent them.  ‘E’ district covered East Belfast which included the small Catholic enclave of Short Strand and the RUC prevented two incursions by Protestant mobs; residents did put up barricades but did not seek to expel the RUC from the area.  The Catholic Committee worked with the mainly Protestant ‘East Belfast Peace Committee’ and with RUC so that the police presence was ‘at the barest minimum.’  ‘F’ district was the site of a number of attacks on Catholic property but barricades on the Donegall Road ‘were manned by Catholics and Protestants working in harmony’ and peace was secured during this period.

The importance of this is that despite it being widely considered as the start of ‘the Troubles’, the attempted pogrom of 14/15 August 1969 did not make ‘the Troubles’ inevitable and certainly not in the form that it was later to take.  This required the introduction of two further developments.  It is also important because it explodes a popular and lazy view that ‘the Troubles’ were an inevitable product of immutable religious/ethnic differences that equally inevitably would lead to violence.  However with this wider lens we can see that many people went to great lengths to avoid or prevent it, and even where it occurred many Protestants were shocked and opposed to the intimidation and expulsion of their Catholic neighbours.

Even in the Harland and Wolff shipyard the shop stewards were able to take an initiative to ensure sectarian violence, which would have led to a repeat of previous expulsions of Catholic workers, did not occur by calling a mass meeting of the workers to prevent it.  The political limitations of this were obvious however as Unionist politicians were invited to address the shipyard meeting and the resolution presented to the workers called upon the Government to enforce ‘law and order’.  The problem being, of course, that the forces of law and order had often led the attacks taking place, including the use of armoured cars and indiscriminate firing of heavy machine guns.

The Northern Ireland Labour Party members most prominent in East Belfast were also on the right wing of the party and led its later further degeneration as ‘the Troubles’ developed.  With this level of political consciousness, the spontaneous effort to limit the spread of violence could go no further, and certainly could not make itself an obstacle to the political developments that fueled the growth of violence over the next period.  These efforts were unable to develop an alternative organisation never mind any sort of force representing a political alternative.

Yet the view that what happened was a result of historic divisions that survived years of peaceful coexistence to suddenly erupt in communal violence is precisely the view that is proposed by the author who brings the wider and more mixed picture to the fore. Sectarian violence had been occasioned during the creation of the state and had also erupted in the 1930’s but these were clearly instrumental. Firstly in creation of the Northern state, by suppressing the Catholic population opposed to its creation, and then in the 1930’s to reimpose the sectarian division that had briefly broken down.  There was otherwise no widespread violence or even latent warfare despite the permanence of the state’s special powers of repression.

The main districts of violence were districts B and C, which included the Falls/Shankill interface and the Crumlin Road with Ardoyne on one side and the Eastern side of the Shankill and Woodvale on the other.  The writer puts the occurrence of violence here “to be explicable in terms of the role played by local collective histories of violence.”  He does mention the role of the police but employs the affected areas “folk memory” of previous sectarian violence to explain where it occurred in August 1969.

This does not explain why sectarian attacks took place later in areas that apparently were without this ‘folk memory’; does not explain how these other areas had ‘forgotten’ about previous sectarian clashes, and why the people of the areas that did suffer in August 1969 seemed to get on for years before 1969.   In doesn’t attempt to explain why folk memories should lead to sectarian attacks and how these memories led loyalists to attack Catholics and Catholics to seek to defend themselves, while the majority of Protestants did not to take part in any of the attacks.

It does not explain how these folk memories, were they so strong, and so recently validated, could be reflected in the particular response to the sectarian attacks by Catholic defence committees.  These were dominated by figures in the republican movement, local clergy and a few Catholic businessmen; but whatever their shortcomings, they did not support the sectarian intimidation that exploded in mid-August 1969.

The newsletter issued by the defence committees on 21 August said this – “For members of the Catholic community to attack Protestants is to sink to the same level as the B Specials and the Unionist extremists . . . The defence committees in the Catholic areas must offer the fullest protection to the Protestant families and Catholic sectarians caught interfering with these families should be severely dealt with.’  What ‘folk memories’ did such sentiments as these spring from?

In other words, this is an explanation in itself requiring an explanation, which is sufficient in itself to expel any speculative ideas about ‘folk memories’ causing the pogrom in 1969.

Such an explanation is a tendentious attempt to explain the violence that erupted in a couple of areas but not in others but fails to realise that it was not two areas but one from which the violence sprung, and this was the Shankill, from which loyalist mobs attacked the Falls to its west and Ardoyne to its east.  The single area can be identified because what happened was not ‘sectarian violence’ in some sort of general sense but an attempted pogrom by directly identifiable actors – the Shankill Defence Association, which had been engaged in such violent intimidation and attacks for the five previous months.

The SDA had succeeded in driving out the RUC, because it wasn’t violently sectarian enough, and had evolved as a particularly virulent strain of sectarianism from the movement around Ian Paisley.  We have seen its close relations with the highest levels of the Unionist regime and its even closer relations with the armed forces of the regime, especially the B-Specials.  This impunity, that continued throughout its attempted pogrom, gave it the wherewithal and confidence to take the initiative in open acts of terror without fear of actions by the state to stop it.  In fact, the state facilitated the attacks in the most direct way by often leading them.

So, what stood condemned by the August attacks was not so much loyalist sectarianism but the Unionist regime and state. The mobilisation of sections of the Catholic population to support the defenders of the Bogside did indeed inflame Protestant anger and fears but to blame this mobilisation is to ignore the political motivation behind such fears that had found expression in opposition to civil rights and the lower level sectarian intimidation of previous months.

Loyalist anger was recharged again when the British Government (Cameron) inquiry, commissioned to look into the events around the early civil rights marches, reported.  The findings of the Commission, which did not simply blame the civil rights movement, prompted yet more attacks on Catholic property.  Once again Catholic owned public houses were a particular target, although the RUC Commissioner described them as “just sheer hooliganism, nothing else.”  Very much, as in later years of the Troubles, sectarian killings by the hundred were described as ‘motiveless murders.’

In October this anger boiled over once more when the Hunt Report recommended that the RUC be disarmed and the B-Specials be replaced by a new locally recruited regiment of the British Army, to be called the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).  This was recognised as an important step and was described by the forerunner of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Derry as a “hitherto unbelievably successful conclusion” to the civil rights movement if fully implemented.  Peoples Democracy described the reforms as striking “at the very heart of the traditional Unionist machine.”

John Hume welcomed the findings of the Report, while his fellow MP Ivan Cooper appealed for Catholics to join the RUC and Austin Currie stated that he was prepared to join himself.  The NICRA executive stated that the long-term good required every section of the community to join.

In the event the RUC was never disarmed, they were even at this early stage permitted to carry arms ‘in certain circumstances’, and the replacement for the B-Specials was suitably similar for it to earn its own reputation for sectarianism.  Even at the time it was clear that the personnel in the existing RUC responsible for violent sectarian acts were going nowhere and the even more unacceptable members of the B-Specials were being sent application forms to join the new UDR, which many of them did.  Half the UDR in County Derry when the force became operational in April 1970 were former members.

In true Orwellian style John McKeague from the Shankill Defence Association warned that “the day is fast approaching when responsible leaders and associations like ourselves will no longer be able to restrain the backlash of outraged Loyalist opinion.”

On Saturday 11 October 3,000 loyalists decide to show how they would defend the RUC that a few months earlier they had expelled from the Shankill Road.  As ever, anger at actions of the British Government was to be expressed through attacks on Catholics, in this case the march down the Shankill was to attack Unity Flats.

Yards from the Flats they met an RUC line with the British Army behind.  Waving Union flags they attacked the RUC and, when the scale of the rioting reduced, they opened fire with rifles, sub-machine guns and machine guns.  The RUC retreated behind the military, so that twenty-two soldiers were hit and one RUC man killed. This was Victor Arbuckle, who was to be the first policeman killed in ‘the Troubles’, shot by loyalists protesting against the possibility that the RUC might be disarmed.

Image result for victor arbuckle ruc

The British Army did not immediately return fire but by 1.45 am they had begun using live rounds and no doubt expended their pent-up frustration at holding back for weeks while loyalists had thrown abuse.  By the end of the rioting 100 had been arrested and two had been shot dead, with fifty requiring hospital treatment, twenty with gunshot wounds. Loyalists attacked police in East Belfast with petrol bombs and snipers while the military prevented the burning of a Catholic church in North Belfast.  The next day the Shankill was sealed off and, as one British major put it, “we are searching everything, I’m afraid we’re not being very polite about it.”

– – – – – – –

Catholics initially felt satisfied at the actions of the British Army, although this was only a taste of what they were later to receive in much greater measure.  In Derry, Eamonn McCann recorded that ‘in the immediate aftermath of the fighting [the battle of the Bogside] relations between the army and most of the people of the area were very good . .’  He notes that women in the Bogside squabbled about whose turn it was to take the soldiers tea, although relations with the youth ‘were to deteriorate very quickly. ‘

James Callaghan had visited Belfast and Derry after the introduction of the British Army on the streets  and while Westminster publicly reaffirmed Stormont’s position, the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson also announced that the B-Specials would be phased out, a tribunal to investigate the riots would be set up and one would be commissioned to look at re-organisation of the RUC.  Behind the scenes reforms were to be speeded up and the Government in London would monitor what was going on more closely through the appointment of a permanent representative in the North.

The reaction to the visit of the London Minister of Home Affairs also demonstrated the support and trust that most of the Catholic population offered at that time.  As McCann again records – ‘Callaghan had not just impressed members of the Defence Committee; he had been very popular with the people as a whole.’

He also impressed the Belfast Central Citizens Defence Committee (CCDC) which was discussing whether to take the barricades down and accept the promise of the British army that their presence at the end of every street would prevent further loyalist attacks.  These attacks had continued at a lower level of intensity in West Belfast, Ardoyne, Highfield Estate, the Shore Road in North Belfast and in East Belfast.

The Catholic Church played a prominent role in trying to get them down and, first in Belfast and then in Derry, the Defence Committees agreed, with the last coming down in October.  The republican Jim Sullivan stated that the CCDC ‘were now confident that the army would provide adequate protection.’

After the clashes between the British Army and loyalists on the Shankill the leaders of the CCDC allowed the police to come back into the Falls and on 16 October the new RUC Inspector General was conducted on a tour of the area by Jim Sullivan and Father Murphy, a prominent Catholic priest who had pushed hard to get the barricades removed.

On the day of the publication of the Hunt Report the Derry Defence Committee announced through its chairman, Sean Keenan, later to be a member of the Provisionals, that it was to disband, saying that the government “might wait a week before sending in the RUC, but that is entirely a matter for the military authorities.  With the police force reorganised there will be no objection from the residents of the Bogside. I hope they will be wearing their new uniforms when they come in.”

When he arrived, the British officer commanding the newly deployed troops, General Freeland, predicted that the Army’s honeymoon with the nationalist population would not last, and it didn’t.

*Liam Kelly, ‘Belfast August 1969’ in ‘Riotous Assemblies’

Back to part 13

Forward to part 15

The Belfast rape case and women’s rights

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The nine-week rape trial in Belfast gripped not only the interest of many people in the North of Ireland but many in the South as well. I normally don’t take much, if any, interest in these cases as I regard them as normally fixating on individual questions of evil or wrong doing and diverting from social problems that often lie behind individual misfortune.  They often seem to be exercises in schadenfreude and prurience for many people.

I followed this case because it quickly became apparent that it involved not only trauma for the young woman at the centre of it, and a question of the guilt or otherwise of the four accused, but because it didn’t so much divert attention to an individual assault considered in isolation, as draw into focus sexual violence against women in general, and by extension wider questions of the position of women in society.

The verdict of not guilty found on behalf of the four accused – two charged of rape, one of indecent exposure and one of perverting the course of justice – prompted demonstrations outside the court in Belfast and in Dublin city centre, as well as a couple of other Irish towns.

This was a result of a number of factors, including the ‘celebrity’ status of the accused, with those charged with rape being prominent rugby players who had turned out for Ulster and Ireland, and the way the case was conducted.

For example: the trial involved the young woman being questioned over 8 days while each of the accused sat for no more than one day in the box. The latter was due of course to the decision of the prosecuting lawyers, who must have decided that while the testimony of one woman had required eight appearances, that of each of the accused warranted no more than one.  No wonder it is claimed that it is often the woman who appears to be on trial.

Two other points stood out.  The defence barrister’s summing up included the statement “why didn’t she scream the house down? A lot of very middle-class girls were downstairs. They were not going to tolerate rape or anything like that.”  Unlike presumably working class women?  That anyone thought this was a good argument to put to a jury says something for some attitudes in the legal profession.

This alone makes the statement of the Green Party politician Claire Bailey, that the case was not about class but only about gender, mistaken.  As the young woman texted in the morning after – “What happened was not consensual. I’m not going to the police. I’m not going up against Ulster Rugby. Yea because that’ll work.”

If one sport in Northern Ireland can be regarded as steeped in class it’s rugby, with its roots in ‘middle class’ grammar schools and traditionally played by Protestants.

It’s not something I have any affinity with, even though I had to play it at school. My father had no interest in it at all and used to tell me it was a game for the toffs; I should support Wales because it at least had working class players.  And while the development of the professional game has eroded such factors, I get the impression that this isn’t quite so much the case in the North of Ireland. Having been to one Ulster rugby match I could tell it was nothing like watching football.

The other crucial point was exposure of the numerous Whatsapp messages between the accused after the party at which the rape was alleged to have taken place, which were crudely misogynistic.  It is these displays of vulgar insults against women which have been taken up by subsequent protests and that has fuelled the continuing controversy, precisely because there is no denying their provenance.

On top of these was the less than contrite tone, in fact many might say quite aggressive tone, of the statement following the trial by the defence solicitor for the most prominent of the accused.  The latter hardly smoothed the waters by threatening to sue those who questioned the verdict on social media afterwards.  His more contrite tone in a statement issued nine days later was dismissed by many as way too late, with the suspicion voiced that it had more to do with countering the growing call for an end to his current rugby career than being a genuine act of regret.

Calls, including a petition and newspaper advert, for the players not to be selected again for Ulster and Ireland were countered by opposite calls by other Ulster rugby supporters, who said they would refuse to buy season tickets if the players were not selected again.

Call me paranoid if you want, but when I read statements that seem to see only the man as the victim, that claim to be from the “silent majority’ (who are of course never silent when they make this claim, irrespective of whether they are actually a majority or not); and use other common reactionary tropes such as being “real fans” of Ulster, presumably in contrast to the unreal(?) ones who called for them not to be selected again; well I think I’m entitled to argue that this ‘silent majority’ are also reactionaries who are oblivious to the misogynistic rants of their heroes and the gravity of the effect of their behaviour, whether criminal or not.

I’m afraid however that I must also say that I don’t give a shit whether they represent Ireland and Ulster again or not, and not just because I don’t give a shit about rugby itself.  The Green politician Claire Bailey again said that “this is my Ulster team as well’ – she must be a fan of rugby; while for me the very idea that a sports team could represent a whole country or province is such a lot of fictional nonsense that only buying into the notion of a united ‘national interest’ or un-conflicted ‘national identity’ could make any of this in any way rational. But then nationalism is essentially reactionary anyway, and all the more powerful for being uncritically assumed in many different circumstances, including this one.

I’ve never felt that something being Irish meant I had to have some positive feelings about it, from the Irish State to Irish beef from Irish cows – what the hell is an Irish cow?  These people never ‘represented’ me at any time, no matter what might be understood by such an idea.

However, if there is one thing more powerful than nationalism it is the power of money, and it may well have been that the power of money coming from sponsors has weighed more heavily than anything in the club’s decision that the players will no longer play for them.

For those campaigning for such a decision, this will be seen as a victory against a misogynist culture within the sport, including a victory for women rugby players, with wider ramifications for the position of women in society.  Unfortunately, it is by no means obvious that the demands of the Belfast Feminist Network raised during protests are altogether progressive.

There can’t be any objection to improved education against misogyny, and in this case on the question of consent, but the oppression suffered by women is grounded in much more fundamental aspects of society than the culture of the media, justice system and education.  All aspects of the same state from which they expect a solution.

As I’ve noted, far from class being irrelevant, the explicit references to it and the role of money in determining one outcome of the case demonstrates that the position of many women in society, and women as a whole, is based on inequalities of power that are rooted in the class structure of society.  It will simply not be possible for women to achieve full equality if class inequality remains.

This is neither a claim that women’s demands must be dropped while class demands are pursued, or that progress on removing class oppression will of itself remove oppression suffered by women.  It is a claim that women’s equality cannot be simply gender equality within a class-ridden capitalist system.  This meets neither the interests of working class women or of men.

The goal of a socialist society is the free development of the individual from social oppression, not from the individual antagonisms that eventuate from imperfect human beings who will never live in a perfect society, even if that term meant anything.  This is not an excuse for continued sexism but a claim that ending social oppression can only arise out of the struggle to which socialism is devoted, and that this must include the ending of systematic oppression of women, plus repression of gay people and an end to all forms of racism.

Most immediately in Ireland the outcome of the Belfast rape trial shows the importance of repealing the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution which criminalises abortion.

There is widespread commentary that, while there is sympathy among some that women should be allowed to have an abortion in cases of rape, the eighth amendment should not be repealed because legislation will be introduced that facilitates abortion up to 12 weeks in cases where there hasn’t been rape.

What this case shows is that even on this rather narrow ground this is indefensible.  We already know that most sexual assaults aren’t reported and this case has shown what sometimes happens even when they are.  What it highlights, is the need for women to be able to control their own bodies. The fight against rape is one such fight and so is the struggle for abortion rights.

James Connolly, Socialism and Sinn Fein

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The front-page headline of ‘The Irish News’ yesterday read ‘Sinn Fein and DUP accused of ‘political carve-up’ of £4m’ – a report on the joint decision of the two parties in Belfast City Council to spend £2m on museums and a ‘training hotel’.  The training hotel is a ‘social economy training hotel’ in the loyalist Shankill area and the museums include an Orange Hall museum and a ‘James Connolly Interpretive Centre.’

The latest collaboration between the two best of enemies has not been prevented by their failure to agree terms on a return to Stormont rule, and has been compared to the paramilitary slush fund that is the Strategic Investment Fund.  Opponents have claimed that the funding of the projects in the home base of the two parties has not offered “even an illusion of fairness” and has been put forward with a “complete lack of transparency”. According to ‘The Irish News’, Belfast City Council could not provide minutes of the committee meetings at which the decisions were taken.

The justification for the museums etc. is that they will hugely develop tourism and promote heritage.  So very Irish and very peace-process; money to oil the wheels of ‘peace’.

What James Connolly would have thought of his relatively short stay in Belfast being employed as part of a political carve up, with him on one side and an Orange museum on the other, is not hard to guess.  A report of the new ‘interpretive centre’ has a link to a speech by Martin McGuinness, stating that the centenary celebrations of the 1916 Rising and subsequent events should be “mature and inoffensive”.  One must therefore look forward to any new centre providing such an interpretation of Connolly’s views on Orangeism, with which his memory will now be twinned.

I also look forward to its interpretation of Connolly’s socialism, which is the very opposite of Irish republican and of much socialist opinion as well, and which is particularly apposite to this proposed municipal initiative.  The following article – ‘State Monopoly versus Socialism’ – written by Connolly in the ‘Workers Republic’ in 1899 is more relevant today than when it was written over a century ago:

“One of the most significant signs of our times is the readiness with which our struggling middle class turns to schemes of State or Municipal ownership and control, for relief from the economic pressure under which it is struggling. Thus we find in England demands for the nationalisation of the telephone system, for the extension of municipal enterprise in the use of electricity, for the extension of the parcel system in the Post Office, for the nationalisation of railways and canals.”

“In Ireland we have our middle class reformers demanding state help for agriculture, state purchase of lands, arterial draining, state construction of docks, piers and harbours, state aid for the fishing industry, state control of the relations between agricultural tenant and landlord, and also nationalisation of railways and canals.”

“There is a certain section of Socialists, chiefly in England, who never tire of hailing all such demands for state activity as a sign of the growth of the Socialist spirit among the middle class, and therefore worthy of all the support the working-class democracy can give. In some degree such a view seems justifiable. The fact that large sections of the capitalist class join in demanding the intervention of the State in industry is a sure sign that they, at least, have lost the overweening belief in the all-sufficiency of private enterprise which characterised their class a generation ago; and that they have been forced to recognise the fact that there are a multitude of things in which the ‘brain’, ‘self-reliance’, and ‘personal responsibility’ of the capitalist are entirely unnecessary.”

“To argue that, since in such enterprises the private property-holder is dispensed with, therefore he can be dispensed with in all other forms of industrial activity, is logical enough and we really fail to see in what manner the advocates of capitalist society can continue to clamour for such state ownership as that alluded to – ownership in which the private capitalist is seen to be superfluous, and yet continue to argue that in all other forms of industry the private capitalist is indispensable. For it must be remembered that every function of a useful character performed by the State or Municipality to-day was at one time performed by private individuals for profit, and in conformity with the then generally accepted belief that it could not be satisfactorily performed except by private individuals.”

“But all this notwithstanding, we would, without undue desire to carp or cavil, point out that to call such demands ‘Socialistic’ is in the highest degree misleading. Socialism properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism – it is only State capitalism.”

“The demands of the middle-class reformers, from the Railway Reform League down, are simply plans to facilitate the business transactions of the capitalist class. State Telephones – to cheapen messages in the interest of the middle class who are the principal users of the telephone system; State Railways – to cheapen carriage of goods in the interest of the middle-class trader; State-construction of piers, docks, etc. – in the interest of the middle-class merchant; in fact every scheme now advanced in which the help of the State is invoked is a scheme to lighten the burden of the capitalist – trader, manufacturer, or farmer.”

“Were they all in working order to-morrow the change would not necessarily benefit the working class; we would still have in our state industries, as in the Post Office to-day, the same unfair classification of salaries, and the same despotic rule of an irresponsible head. Those who worked most and hardest would still get the least remuneration, and the rank and file would still be deprived of all voice in the ordering of their industry, just the same as in all private enterprises.”

“Therefore, we repeat, state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism – if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials – but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.”

“Schemes of state and municipal ownership, if unaccompanied by this co-operative principle, are but schemes for the perfectioning of the mechanism of capitalist government-schemes to make the capitalist regime respectable and efficient for the purposes of the capitalist; in the second place they represent the class-conscious instinct of the business man who feels that capitalist should not prey upon capitalist, while all may unite to prey upon the workers. The chief immediate sufferers from private ownership of railways, canals, and telephones are the middle class shop-keeping element, and their resentment at the tariffs imposed is but the capitalist political expression of the old adage that “dog should not eat dog.”

“It will thus be seen that an immense gulf separates the ‘nationalising’ proposals of the middle class from the ‘socialising’ demands of the revolutionary working class. The first proposes to endow a Class State – repository of the political power of the Capitalist Class – with certain powers and functions to be administered in the common interest of the possessing class; the second proposes to subvert the Class State and replace it with the Socialist State, representing organised society – the Socialist Republic. To the cry of the middle class reformers, “make this or that the property of the government,” we reply, “yes, in proportion as the workers are ready to make the government their property.”

 

 

The politics of murder in Belfast

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images (11)The murder of Kevin McGuigan on 12 August in East Belfast is widely seen as revenge for the former’s claimed involvement in the earlier murder of Provisional IRA leader Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) have done their bit to protect the Provisional movement by claiming that although Provisional IRA members were involved there is no evidence that it was authorised by the leadership.  Since complete denial of Provo involvement would stretch credibility to breaking point and reflect on the PSNI as well as the Provos, this was as much as they could do.

Of course this makes no sense, although it was notable that some nationalist commentators were prepared to swallow it.  Much amazement was feigned by unionists that an IRA even existed, so ‘answers’ were demanded.  The British Government said that of course it knew the IRA existed but that what was important was what Sinn Fein said (i.e. not what the IRA actually did) and especially that it continued to express support for the ‘principles of democracy and consent”.

The Garda in the South had previously claimed that the IRA had no military structure but are going to look at it again and the PSNI claimed it was a lobby group for “peaceful, political republicanism”.  Sinn Fein spokesmen claimed that of course the IRA was not involved, that it had “gone away” and all allegations to the contrary were ‘palitics’.

So the Provos continue to support the police but not as far as allowing them to get in the way of taking revenge or protecting themselves and their enormous financial empire. Support for the police is therefore purely ‘palitical’.

In the hypocrisy and lying stakes each out-does the other.

So the British Government and PSNI are claiming that while a much slimmed-down ‘peaceful’ IRA exists there is no evidence that it sanctioned the murder of McGuigan; although investigations will continue, which means that if it suits the political purposes of the British Government such a judgement can be easily changed. And easily justified – a ‘peaceful’ IRA with guns, that murders its enemies, and which by its very reduced size and tightness makes inconceivable the idea that the murder was not approved from the top.

The meaning of this is obvious: the British state and its police force doesn’t care if the Provisional IRA kills people it doesn’t like.  It doesn’t care if loyalist paramilitaries kill people they don’t like. Round the corner from where McGuigan was killed a young woman was almost killed by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force but the PSNI refused to blame the UVF who were responsible.

Today it is reported that the murder of another Short Strand man Robert McCartney by the Provos was subject of a secret deal between the PSNI and Provos, with the cops offering not to go after those who cleared up the murder scene, in exchange for Provo information on the less important hands-on killers.  No one has gone to jail and the Provos kept their mouths shut.

The political import of the killing is the following:

The Provos can kill and the state will give them impunity but it will expect a price to be paid.  Anyone who thinks that the end of Sinn Fein’s meagre opposition to austerity through opposition to some welfare cuts will not form part of the price probably believes that everything that the British Government, police, unionists and Sinn Fein has said about the murder of Kevin McGuigan is 100% true.

A message has been sent to all enemies of the Provos, political or criminal, that they are willing and able to kill, no doubt under some new set of initials such as AAD (Action Against Drugs).

The slow crumbling of the architecture of the political peace settlement has speeded up and now threatens the current arrangements.  The Ulster Unionist Party has withdrawn from the all-party Executive, putting pressure on its supposed more rabid rivals in the DUP to follow its lead.

The DUP has now proposed that Sinn Fein be expelled from the Executive, although Sinn Fein can prevent it, and only the British Government can do this.  If the British do not support such a move the DUP would then be forced to either put its money where its mouth is and walk themselves, bringing down the Executive, or reveal themselves as joined at the hip to the Provos in the great gravy train on the hill.  It might then start losing support.

As the pro-settlement ‘Irish News’ editorial put it today, the Executive is so discredited most will not care if it remains or goes.  And as I have noted before, the current Stormont regime is so rotten it has little credibility left.

The peace process has been built on the lie that the rotten sectarian arrangement brought about the absence of widespread political violence.  In fact the defeat of the Provos and the ending of widespread violence preceded the creation of the rotten sectarian arrangements.  Again and again the sectarian political settlement has been defended by the claim its overthrow would bring us back to the troubles.

The recent killings demonstrate precisely the opposite.  The existence of the sectarian Assembly and Executive is now justifying collusion between the state, Provos and loyalist paramilitaries in violence, intimidation and large scale criminality.  The message from the British pro-consul has been explicit:  as long as Sinn Fein supports the sectarian settlement and police that is what counts.  What it actually does will be excused and glossed over if remotely possible.  The so-called peace settlement and its preservation is now the justification for allowing political and criminal violence.

Socialists must continue to oppose this rotten settlement.  They should continue to oppose the PSNI and expose its collusion with the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitaries.  They should oppose the austerity imposed by the British Government and the Stormont parties, especially Sinn Fein and its phoney anti-austerity posturing.

It should likewise refuse to offer political support to any opposition by Sinn Fein to its exclusion from Government should this occur.  The Provisional movement is an obstacle to working class people in the North and South of Ireland identifying their own interests and defending them.

Racism and anti-racism in Belfast

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DSC_0117“Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.  Enoch Powell was a prophet, he called it that blood would flow on the streets and it has happened.”

When a Protestant minister in North Belfast’s Metropolitan Tabernacle Church declared that Islam was “satanic” and “heathen” and compared “cells” of Muslims in Britain to the IRA the First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, who is known to have attended the church, was widely called upon to speak out.

Oh dear.

When he did, he said that Pastor McConnell had been demonised, that it was the duty of any preacher to denounce what he described as “false prophesy” and said he would not trust Muslims either, particularly with regard to those who had been involved in violence, or those who are “fully devoted to Sharia law, I wouldn’t trust them for spiritual guidance”; however he would trust Muslims to “go down to the shops” for him or to deal with a number of “day-to -day issues”.

Cue lots of people with their heads in their hands, especially those considering the Northern Ireland administration sponsored trips to the Middle East to promote trade and investment.

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A newly elected unionist councillor for Belfast had that week been found to have tweeted a year earlier that “I’m so sick of the poor Catholic b*stards they make me sick I wish they would just go down to Ireland . .” but she was young and sectarianism is hardly news in the North of Ireland unless someone in the media decides to make it news.

But racist attacks, especially by loyalist paramilitaries, have already been in the news and have increased by 43 per cent over the year, twenty seven per cent of them in North Belfast.  Having been called upon to comment in order to denounce racism, Robinson was then called upon to apologise for his own offensive and insulting remarks.

Anna Lo, the Hong Kong born local politician, had just received some racist harassment herself and called upon him to resign if he did not publicly apologise, vowing to leave Northern Ireland because of local racism and  sectarianism and stating that she would not stand for election again.  One Democratic Unionist Party councillor then called her a “racist” and was dropped by that party as its candidate for mayor of Newtownabbey, which is adjacent to North Belfast.  Other ministers and unionist politicians backed McConnell and claimed Christianity was being persecuted.

Two Muslim men where then beaten in their homes in the north of the city and stated that their attack was connected to Robinson’s statement – he had “lit the fire”.

Some in the press and other unionist leaders attempted to minimise the impact of the insult by claiming he was just clumsy.  Michael Nesbitt, leader of the Unionist Party, claimed that “we say things we don’t really mean or express them in ways that perhaps we could have thought through better.”

Robinson then made a private apology to some prominent local Muslims, except it wasn’t an apology.  He didn’t admit to being wrong, did not withdraw the remarks and did not say he was unconditionally ‘sorry’.   What apparently he did say was that “If” anyone thought he had said anything derogatory “he would be hurt” and he would apologise, but he didn’t because he didn’t think so.  He had been ‘misinterpreted’.

So he might be the injured party in this episode and it was everybody else’s fault for not understanding him.

But still the calls for a public apology raged and eventually Peter Robinson did publicly apologise – except the apology wasn’t public.  It was one of those occasions when the media reports something and you look to see when and how it happened but you can’t actually find any evidence of it having happened, and when you look closer it appears that it hasn’t actually happened.  Yet most assume it has because it has been reported and before you now it it has happened because, well, that is how it has been reported.

In such cases this can only occur because everyone with any power to get across a media message has decided it’s in their interests to go along with the concealment.  For the unionist parties the interest involved is obvious.  Any gain in stature among its racist, sectarian and lumpen base has been achieved, while the reality of selling local business to Saudi Arabia etc. cannot be ignored so the controversy has to be closed down.

The British Government especially would be happy for the story to die no matter how this might happen and they showed no intention of doing anything that might shine a light on the bigoted character of their local political settlement, sold to the world as a model to be admired and to emulate.

But what about the nationalists, including Sinn Fein?  The second dog that did not bark was the failure of these parties to call upon Robinson to resign, as – to her credit – Anna Lo did.  Had such remarks been made in Britain by a leading member of the Conservative Government their feet would not have touched the ground as they headed for political exile and extinction. But not here.

What we got here was a bland resolution sponsored by Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Assembly opposing “racism, discrimination and intolerance of any kind, wherever it occurs”  but for God’s sake don’t mention that the First Minister has promoted all three.

What such resolutions reveal is not the willingness of Irish nationalism to oppose racism and bigotry but its willingness to avoid doing so, to avoid identifying and condemning it in reality, to replace lofty, banal and meaningless condemnations of racism in general for dealing with it in concrete reality.

Sinn Fein is setting itself up to be in Government North and South in 1916, 100 years from the Easter Rising that saw the beginnings of an attempt, that failed, to achieve Irish independence.  To do so it must ensure that there is an administration around in the North for it to be a part of.  Since this requires unionist participation no provocation or act, irrespective of how outrageous it is, will be allowed to threaten the political structure in the North no matter how rotten, dysfunctional and bereft of credibility it may prove itself to be.

In this way a political settlement based on sectarianism demonstrates its bigoted logic by ensuring that the most offensive statements can be made without fear.   In this way, but not only in this way, Irish nationalism becomes complicit in feeding the bigotry on which the Northern state rests, even while it self-righteously insists on its own non-sectarian character and its supporters continue to be the main victims of the bigotry.

What the Government parties are called upon to do, unionist and nationalist, is to deliver another document on “building a united, shared and reconciled community “, another piece of paper reviewing Stormont’s ‘Unite Against Hate’ campaign and together parrot inane promises from within ”its clear commitment within the Programme for Government.”

So if nationalism cannot provide an opposition to racist bigotry who can?

In a demonstration of thousands called quickly over social media a trade union spokesmen could only say that it was organised “in response to a worrying increase in the number of racist attacks in recent weeks, a situation which has been exacerbated by inflammatory comments by some religious and political leaders.”

Once again the identity of these racists couldn’t be stated.  Throwing a punch in mid-air takes the place of landing a blow on the real bigots who are allowed to continue to disclaim responsibility through the connivance of the media, political opponents and cowardice of others.

What political leaders are the racists?  How can you oppose something when you cannot even name it?  How are their excuses and non-apologies to be challenged?  How is the collusion of others to be highlighted and exposed?  How is their hypocrisy to be demonstrated?  And what is your alternative?

The trade unions bemoaned “the absence of the promised Racial Equality Strategy and the lack of coherent political leadership from the Northern Ireland Executive” as if pieces of paper are a solution and coherent racism would be better.

This hasn’t worked before and it’s not going to work now.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Amnesty International and the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic minorities called a second demonstration today and got a good turn-out given the bad weather.  Again however there was no call for Robinson to resign despite his remarks and his non-public public apology that retracted nothing of the substance of what he had said.

Some People Before Profit placards called for his resignation and some chants from the Socialist Party contingent called for him to go but the latter’s leaflet didn’t mention it and instead claimed his apology was a great victory for anti-racists despite it being obvious that these forces played a relatively minor role.

Such repulsive episodes highlight the rotten character of politics in the North of Ireland because they involve relatively new targets but the solution that is always proposed is that local politicians be something that they are not and do something opposite to what they have just done.  That they oppose bigotry and sectarianism even while the sectarian basis of the political settlement is supported because it is part of the peace process.  ‘Peace’ becomes the excuse for yet more and more injustice because an alternative to the present political deal cannot be conceived.

Debating what such an alternative could be would be a start to addressing this obstacle.