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Assembly election: stability
proves elusive in the North of Ireland
The May 2016 Stormont elections in the
North of Ireland passed in silence, with the main issue persuading people
to vote. The reason for the apathy was that voting makes very little difference.
There is only one possible administration and the programme for government
had been agreed in advance and accepted by both the political parties and
civic society. Not only were the main elements of the administration’s
programme not discussed, they were rarely referred to. This was a cause
of great satisfaction for British secretary of state Theresa Villiers,
who claimed that the acceptance of the mixture of austerity and sectarianism
contained in the Fresh Start accord meant a new era of stability
in the statelet.
But in words ascribed to former British
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan setting out the inherent uncertainty
of political life: “Events, my dear boy, events.” No sooner was the last
vote cast than local politics began to spiral out of control yet again.
The central item on the agenda was the
continuation of a grim and unmoving sectarian division. As in every election,
the Democratic Unionist Party had played the Orange card with the slogan
"Keep Arlene as First Minister". Only Unionist unity around the DUP can
prevent the Catholic Martin McGuinness becoming first minister. To bring
this message home DUP leader Arlene Foster appears nowhere without a British
crown in her lapel.
The second big issue of the campaign was
the economic programme within the "Fresh Start" agreement. This outlines
eye-watering austerity and includes sharp cuts in welfare payment, 20,000
job losses in the private sector, privatisation and a mass transfer of
public funds to transnationals through a reduction in corporation tax.
Neither sectarianism nor austerity were
discussed in the election. As a result it was mind-numbingly boring
and generated waves of apathy.
Misrepresentation
Sectarianism is ignored because the reality
is constantly misrepresented by the media and liberal commentators. Foster
and the DUP are presented as ill-mannered, gauche and out of tune with
modern times. Their boorishness is unimportant because the offices of First
Minister and deputy First Minister are equal. It doesn't matter who has
the title.
This flies in the face of reality. A Sinn
Fein First Minister would throw the political system into deep crisis.
The whole facade hangs on the primacy of unionism and, to placate their
right, they demonstrate this primacy regularly. Unionists oppose the settlement
and dream of the day they can expel Sinn Fein. Bribery and patronage keep
them in line, but any serious restriction of sectarian privilege would
lead to moves to collapse the executive. The main concern of the British
is to keep the Assembly afloat, so they resolve disputes in favour of Unionism.
In contrast Sinn Fein are heart and soul
behind the settlement. They believe that constant conciliation will win
over the unionists. The collapse of the executive would see the collapse
of their political strategy and all their claims to have won gains from
the settlement. They would quickly find themselves targets of the wrath
of Dublin, London and Washington.
This basic inequality explains why the
Stormont executive doesn't work. It is not an instrument of shared government,
but a mechanism for sharing sectarian spoils, with the major party
consistently questioning the need to give the nationalists anything. It
also explains the slow gavotte of local politics, with the unionists moving
right and Sinn Fein dragged behind. A recent example on the eve of the
election was the DUP, with the acceptance of Sinn Fein, blocking funding
for coroner's courts to look into historical killings. The DUP will not
accept criticism of state forces and these issues will not be resolved.
So the explanation of sectarianism as
a meaningless holdover from the past is an ideology designed to prevent
protest and reflects the satisfaction of the Catholic middle class with
the gains they have made. The circumstances of the working class have hardly
changed, but this causes no concern.
Anti-austerity?
A similar mechanism explains the silence
around the Fresh Start agreement. Sinn Fein tried to preserve an "anti-austerity"
stance by protesting the welfare element of an economic programme designed
to slash public sector services and jobs and cut corporation tax. When
the British threatened to close down Stormont they endorsed the package,
telling their supporters that they were "British cuts" and that they had
won a hardship fund to protect them.
The first version of Fresh Start, the
Stormont House agreement, was initially opposed by trade union leaders.
However the occasional strikes and demonstrations are only decoration on
a fixed mechanism for lobbying the Stormont administration. For them also
the threat of suspension was enough to bring them to heel. In addition
the bureaucracy are frantic supporters of the political settlement. In
their statement of capitulation the union leadership argued that Stormont
was so important that the workers had to sacrifice themselves to preserve
it.
As is standard, the remaining republican
organizations proved unable to mount any serious challenge, either
politically or militarily, to the northern state despite the advantage
of the 1916 centenary. For its part the state demonstrated its determination
to suppress that tradition by the mass arrest of an IRA funeral colour
party on the day of the vote.
Change source
There was one potential source of change.
The election saw the arrival of a spectrum of mostly youthful left candidates
- a mixture of long established groups standing young candidates and new
youthful formations. All are anti-sectarian, which is a cause for
hope. However all these are children of the peace process and their horizons
constrained by the colonial and sectarian environment they live in. Sectarianism
is seen as individual bigotry rather than inherent in the state structures.
The candidates failed to make an impression with the exception of a substantial
vote and two seats for the SWP/People before Profit front.
More to be said about PBP vote in separate
article, the main element of the election was not their vote alone, but
that vote within a sharp fall in the electoral support of the nationalist
parties. This change is not a rejection of the political settlement. Disgruntled
older Sinn Fein and SDLP voters enthusiastically supported the settlement
and young voters have known nothing else. Failure to achieve the goals
of peace is seen mostly as incompetence and corruption on the part
of Sinn Fein. Alongside nationalist discontent is a growing recognition
by the smaller unionist and nationalist parties that, in the way of all
coalitions, it is they who suffer when public discontent grows. As a
result they have jumped ship and left the all-enclosing coalition that
constituted the administration to form an opposition.
Phoney war
Working class nationalists are protesting
is the failure of the system, and specifically of the nationalist politicians,
to produce any change. Their anger is deepened by rampant corruption.
On the other hand, among the middle class, there is self-satisfaction with
new areas of opportunity and patronage. Polls show that a majority of Sinn
Fein voters no longer support a united Ireland. There is great enthusiasm
for creating a new “Northern Irish” identity. The changes are of major
significance. For working class voters Sinn Fein’s claim to have reformed
Stormont has proved false. In the middle classes they have been all too
successful and support for Irish unity has fallen. Given that the background
Sinn Fein analysis involved a crude sectarian out-breeding of Protestants
they are left bereft of strategy.
However the political shifts hide many
blind spots. There is a wide acceptance of the democratic credentials of
the Stormont executive and a belief that protests and lobbying can obtain
liberal and economic reform. The fact that policy is decided by sectarian
deals and that the DUP have an absolute veto is never discussed.
In the same way the sectarian nature of
the state is never confronted. It is seen to be enough to assert individual
opposition to bigotry. The need to tear down the material basis of sectarianism
and the state structures that sponsor and enforce it, is not recognized.
The anti austerity campaign is seen as
being carried on by common action with the trade union bureaucracy, even
though they have accepted the constraints of the Fresh Start agreement.
Stormont can easily accommodate what is
already being labelled a "naughty corner" for its opponents. What it
cannot do is grant their demands or see them grow to a size that would
see a major collapse of Sinn Fein's political base and disrupt the sectarian
carve up of the state. At the same time the opposition would need to confront
the nature of the state to pose a more serious threat.
However we are in the phony war phase
of the struggle against austerity. The fact that Sinn Fein has received
such a slap in the face gives hope for the future when they physically
enforce the coming offensive on the working class. |
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