The news of the latest rewriting of the Irish peace agreement was met by a wave of apathy and indifference.

There are a number of reasons for public disinterest. The high levels of corruption and sectarianism, coupled with almost absolute impunity even when corruption is exposed, has led many workers to regard the local administration with contempt. The fact that there is no alternative to the current set-up breeds disinterest. Rather than any discussion of an alternative, local civic society, with the exception of a sizeable unionist opposition, is marked by frenzied support for the continuation of Stormont without any conditions. The local representative of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions vowed unconditional support for any deal. The cancellation of an anti-austerity campaign shows that union leaders accept that workers must meet the cost of the massive welfare cuts at the heart of the deal.

The latest crisis hung around two elements. On the Sinn Fein side there was a reluctance to be seen to be imposing welfare cuts just as they hope for sizeable gains in the forthcoming elections to the Dail and the possibility of a junior place in a Coalition government.

On the Unionist side there has never been any agreement that they should share power with republicans and there are constant battles between pragmatists willing to be bought by the mountain of bribes and patronage and those who believed that the agreement could be constantly adjusted until Sinn Fein were eventually forced out of government. The hook for the latest revolt was the unsurprising announcement that the IRA still existed and that their members had been involved in the murder of an opponent.

The unionists were outraged, despite the fact that they were recently cheek by jowl with the unionist paramilitaries in campaigning for the right to carry out sectarian intimidation.

A new element of the situation is the attitude of the British government. Their report on IRA activity made no concessions to the Unionists. The Provos were told that any fig leaf on their implementation of welfare cuts would be constructed from a line of credit rather than extra funds and that if they did not move rapidly to a deal Stormont would be shut down.

The British have had enough of endless crisis. There will be no further re-writes of the Good Friday Agreement.  Either the parties work together or direct rule is re-imposed. They would regret the fall of the institutions, and deplore increasing sectarian violence, but the anti-imperialist sentiment that Sinn Fein once expressed has been dead for two decades and offers no threat.

The result is utter reaction; mass poverty, mass transfer of wealth from workers to transnationals, savage cuts to public services to facilitate mass privatization, all against the background of a whitewash of state killing and a political deal that further embeds sectarianism just at the point where we can expect increased rivalry for scarce resources.

Our immediate concern lies with the dog that didn’t bark – the trade unions have lobbied in the run-up to this deal and kept silent after. ICTU tell us that the first priority is to save Stormont. It is up to socialist and republican groups to come together to fight for a genuine fresh start – built on the rubble of the sectarianism and austerity in the current institutions.