against the stream

From the Archives: NIPSA union conference majority support ‘political fund’ (2010)

April 8, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

A future of sectarianism and poverty: Working class needs its own party

First published by Socialist Party 27th July 2010

Working class people in Northern Ireland face a future of sectarian conflict, unemployment and poverty. The North has now been in recession since November 2007, almost three years. The anaemic economic upturn in Britain has entirely passed us by.

Officially, unemployment in Northern Ireland rose to 56,100 in June, an increase of 600 on the previous month, and of 6,700 on a year ago. The rate of “economic inactivity” (the real measure of unemployment) is higher than in England, Scotland or Wales. The projected £1.5 billion of public expenditure cuts planned for the next four years will put thousands more on the dole. It is predicted that 14,000 more jobs will go in the next two years, meaning that unemployment will treble over the five years between 2007 and 2012. The unemployment rate for 18–24 year olds is already 17.4%.

None of the Assembly parties represent the interests of working class people. At times, these parties voice their opposition to public spending cuts — but this is nothing more than a cheap confidence trick. The sectarian parties consistently unite in the Assembly by supporting a programme of draconian cuts. This is one area they all agree on — that the working class must pay for the economic crisis.

Workers on strike, communities campaigning against the cuts, people opposed to water charges, public sector workers facing a Tsunami of attacks, anyone who rejects sectarianism — none of these people have a major political party that truly represents their interests.

The National Question in Ireland Today: Meeting the Historic Challenge

April 5, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

This article was originally written for discussion at the Socialist Party Conference in March 2018, as “Notes on the National Question Today”

On May 3^rd, 2021, Northern Ireland will be 100 years old. Partition was an historic defeat for the working-class movement in Ireland and we continue to live with its consequences today.

The workers movement could have prevented partition, and today the workers movement remains the only force in society which can overcome division and point the way to a better future for all.

In order to meet this historic challenge, it is essential that the ideas of Marxism reach the widest possible audience and that we build a politically strong a mass Marxist party in Ireland.

Reaching wide layers of workers, both Catholic and Protestant by background, will only be possible if we apply the ideas of Marxism to the burning issues of the moment. This is particularly the case with regards to the difficult issues which divide working class people along sectarian lines. What can come across as abstract appeals for working class unity, or as correct but vague generalisations, are not enough.

Instead, we must both seek to fully analyse and understand the consciousness and mood of different sections of the working class and engage in detail with each issue around which division crystallises.

Ιρλανδία: Ήττα για την κυβέρνηση στο δημοψήφισμα για τη φροντίδα και την οικογένεια

April 4, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

Irish Referendum, Greek language version: from Ξεκίνημα

Στις 8/3 η ιρλανδική κυβέρνηση προχώρησε σε δημοψήφισμα για την αναθεώρηση δύο άρθρων του Συντάγματος. Το ένα άρθρο σχετίζεται με την Οικογένεια και το δεύτερο με τη Φροντίδα των παιδιών, των ηλικιωμένων, των ατόμων με αναπηρία, κλπ. Σε φραστικό επίπεδο, οι αλλαγές που πρότεινε η κυβέρνηση έδειχναν να έχουν προοδευτικό χαρακτήρα, καθώς αναιρούνταν απαρχαιωμένες διατυπώσεις σχετικά με τον ρόλο της γυναίκας στην οικογένεια, αναγνωρίζονταν ως οικογένειες σχέσεις που δεν βασίζονταν στον γάμο, κλπ. Την ίδια ώρα όμως, οι διατυπώσεις που πρότεινε η κυβέρνηση επιχειρούσαν να μετατρέψουν τη φροντίδα σε υπόθεση των μελών της οικογένειας, αφαιρώντας ουσιαστικά τις σχετικές υποχρεώσεις του κράτους από το Σύνταγμα.

Τα παραπάνω, σε συνδυασμό με τη συνολική αντικυβερνητική διάθεση σε σημαντικά στρώματα της κοινωνίας, αλλά και με τη συνειδητή προσπάθεια της ακροδεξιάς και της εκκλησίας να επενδύσουν στα αντανακλαστικά των πιο συντηρητικών στρωμάτων, οδήγησαν το κυβερνητικό σχέδιο σε παταγώδη αποτυχία. Διαβάστε παρακάτω διασκευή του σχετικού άρθρου του Κίραν Μαλχόλαντ.

Irish Establishment Defeated in Referendum: Voters overwhelmingly reject changes to Constitution

April 3, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

On Friday 8th of March, voters delivered the largest defeat in history for a referendum put forward by the Irish government. They voted to reject proposed changes to the “Family” clause in the Constitution by 68% to 32% and the “Care” clause by a record 74% to 26%. Turnout was 44%, a sharp drop from the last referendum in 2018 of 64%.

The scale of the defeat was a humiliation for the government parties-Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Green Party-but also the opposition parties and so-called “civil society” advocacy groups who had united to support a “Yes-Yes” vote.

Right and far right individuals and groups, and conservative Catholics, have sought to claim credit for the outcome. The result has been contrasted to the 2015 same-sex marriage referendum and the 2018 abortion rights referendum which resulted in progressive change and seemed to mark Ireland’s arrival as a modern secular, liberal state. Some on the right are claiming that the referendum marks an end to the onward march of the “woke” agenda with former Fianna Fáil Minister, Willie O’Dea proclaiming it’s time “to stop playing to the woke gallery”,

But the truth is much more complex, as Hugh Linehan, Deputy Editor of the Irish Times (March 16^th) argues: “….the result remains hard to read. The amendments were ultimately defeated by a patchwork coalition of wildly disparate parts that are unlikely ever to come together again. Gender-critical feminists stood alongside anti-abortion activists. Rural social conservatives voted the same way as urban Trotskyists”.

The Killing of Michael McIlveen, Ballymena, May 2006

March 30, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

Introduction

Schoolboy Michael was punched, kicked, and beaten with a baseball bat in an alleyway in Ballymena in May 2006. The 15-year-old died hours later in hospital. Four people were given minimum terms ranging from 13 years to 10 years at Antrim Crown Court for killing the teenager three years later, Another man convicted of manslaughter was given a three-year suspended sentence. Two others were also sentenced-one was given 10 months for affray and criminal damage, and the other a conditional discharge for criminal damage.

The Socialist Party and Socialist Youth intervened in Ballymena, seeking to build a united, anti-sectarian movement amongst young people in the town. This is one example of many when of the conscious efforts of comrades to influence events.

From the Archives: Riots Expose Reality of Sectarianism (2010)

March 30, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

Social decay causes alienation and conditions for conflict

First published July 27th 2010 by Socialist Party

Fierce rioting erupted in Ardoyne after an Orange Order parade on 12 July and continued for three days. The period before, over and after this year’s Twelfth was also marked by rioting in other areas and a number of gun and bomb attacks. There was trouble across Belfast — including the New Lodge, Broadway, the Markets, Short Strand, Ormeau Road-and in Derry, Armagh, and Lurgan.

Three PSNI officers were shot in the New Lodge and shots were also fired at the PSNI in Ardoyne and in the Bogside area of Derry. A landmine exploded in South Armagh and there were a number of blast bomb attacks. In total, 88 PSNI members were injured. The PSNI used potentially lethal baton rounds on a number of occasions but fortunately no-one was killed. The police claimed that the trouble in Derry was the worst in a decade.

For a few days, the atmosphere in Northern Ireland was thrown back to a darker, more violent past. In the days after the Twelfth, mainstream politicians and the media conducted a post-mortem on the events in very strident and inaccurate terms. Rioting on this scale is not part of the script of the “peace process” and has to be explained away. It is important that socialists do not exaggerate recent events but soberly estimate where we are at this time.

From the Archives: Sick of Sectarian Politics (2003)

March 24, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

First published in Socialist Voice, paper of the Socialist Party, June 2003

A RECENT opinion poll demonstrates that a significant minority of voters in Northern Ireland are sick of the sectarian parties and are looking for an alternative. Up to seventeen per cent declared their intention to vote for smaller parties outside the sectarian circus.

Many trade union and community activists have been stunned by the anti-working-class policies of the Assembly and the Executive. Many young people reject sectarianism, and because of their experiences of opposing the war in Iraq and globalisation are beginning to question the entire system.

The IRA’s Long War

March 23, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

A Review of “The Provisional IRA: from insurrection to parliament”, author Tommy McKearney. Published by Pluto Press, 2011

Review first published by Socialist Party, 2013

Tommy McKearney’s “The Provisional IRA, From Insurrection to Parliament” is a serious attempts to explain the genesis of the Provisional IRA and its subsequent trajectory over four decades. The author is not a bystander or commentator from afar but was a key Irish Republican Army activist in the 1970s and a participant in the 1980 hunger-strike. Since that time he has emerged as an articulate critic of the mainstream republican movement. Recently he spoke at the Socialist Party’s Socialism 2012 event in Belfast.

A View from the North, March 23rd, 2024: Marxism and Individual Terrorism

March 23, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

This week, we republish a review of the book The Provisional IRA: from Guns to Government, which was written by ex-IRA prisoner and hunger striker. McKearney is a left critic of Sinn Fein today but continues to hold that the IRA campaign was the only way forward in the early 1970s.

From the Archives: Dirty Tricks & Collusion. Will the truth come out? (April 10th 2004)

March 16, 2024 / Ciaran Mulholland

THE PUBLICATION of the Cory Report into the deaths of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Billy Wright and Robert Hamill, and of the Dail report into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, has provided further evidence of the nefarious role played by the British State in the conflict in Northern Ireland.

British Government policy during the last 30 years has been by and large one of pragmatism. Over the first two decades of the Troubles, it relied on a policy of repression, overwhelmingly directed against Catholic areas, allied with repeated attempts to create political solutions based on the “constitutional” parties. All attempts at a political solution failed.