John McAnulty

14 August 2007
 

On 25th July A meeting took place in Belfast to set up a campaign to protest plans to develop a six-story apartment complex on the site of the old RUC barracks in Belfast’s Andersonstown area.  At one level it was the most humdrum of meetings.  Called by People Before Profit, the local front of the Socialist Workers Party, it clearly had in mind developing the last election vote for the local PBP candidate.  ‘Save our Barracks’ was to use the template of ‘Save our Seafront’ implemented successfully by Richard Boyd-Barrett, the PBP/SWP candidate in Bray.

That said, there was clearly a local issue of some significance.  The six-story structure proposed was supremely ugly, an attempt to squeeze the maximum number of apartments and retail units into a tiny area of ground with maximum stress on the environment.  It involved a transfer of public land to private developers, with all the loss being to the public and all the profit to the developers. It simply adds insult to injury that some sort of broom cupboard area is to be included in the development as a ‘community space’.

However there is one overwhelming fact, one elephant in the living room, that undercuts the campaign strategy and poses very serious dangers for the tiny socialist movement in the North and for working-class organisation in general.  That is that the current campaign is being organised in a new environment – the environment of the restoration of Stormont and of Sinn Fein in government.

Before, all government responsibility rested with the British and the left were anti-government (at least on social and economic issues – most groups had in practice accommodated to public support for the reinvention of the sectarian and colonial Stormont set-up). A big weakness of this approach was that the campaigns against water charges centred on non-payment, avoiding the fact that the unpopularity of the charges was counteracted by the mass support for parties like the DUP and Sinn Fein, with right-wing pro-business and privatisation agendas. If the socialist movement and working class campaigns were to grow they would have to confront these forces.

Now weakness is turned into rout.  When campaigners met to discuss opposition to the Andersonstown development the main organisation attending was Sinn Fein. No one asked about the party’s previous support for privatisation.  No-one remarked that the gold rush of property development and the razing of the area to build apartments involves figures associated with Sinn Fein.  No one remarked that the party’s economic policy is a right wing pro-business platform. Above all no-one remarked that the campaign against this unpopular government policy was being led by… Sinn Fein the government party – nor was there any suggestion that Sinn Fein in government should take any action. 

A central aspect of the campaign case was that locals had not been consulted about the development of the land, but when Sinn Fein issued their own leaflet and staged photo-opportunity demonstrations during the West Belfast Féile an Phobail they called for re-consultation.  The fact is, as Sinn Fein clearly acknowledges and as anyone with local knowledge should know, there was extensive consultation when the barracks was closed. It was Sinn Fein who took those results into the secret negotiations around the re-establishment of Stormont.  The proposed development is the result, the proposed community area all that they were able to wring from the British and unionists.

That’s the issue for the working class – the fact that this local issue is the St. Andrews agreement writ small. Sinn Fein went to the table to accept a deal that, besides being colonial and sectarian, is all about meeting the needs of capital. It is hardly surprising that the concessions that they wring from this mechanism are tiny and are dwarfed by the temple to private profit that has been pencilled in for the Glen Road site.

This pattern is repeated everywhere.  The furore over the H-blocks site and the proposal to have a conflict resolution centre obscures the fact that the deal that was reached and that Sinn Fein agreed to was designed to obliterate any memory of the cruelty and repression of the H blocks and leave the Shinners with only a fig leaf.  Calls for the employment of ex-prisoners by the British obscure Sinn Fein’s inability to achieve any legislation guaranteeing equality. Protests calling for an Irish language act ignore the fact that such an act was guaranteed in the St Andrews deal.  Calls for ‘truth’  about collaboration and state killings ignore the fact that British decisions to bury the Pat Finucane killing and Ormeau Road massacre has been accepted by Sinn Fein, who responded by endorsing the police and joining the policing boards. Just how supine the Sinn Fein response is can be seen when we contrast it to the police response to findings of collusion – they immediately broke off relations with the ombudsman’s office and took legal action against her.

On all these issues Sinn Fein have a simple response – they simply pretend that they aren’t part of the government, setting up protest movements that go nowhere.

The Sinn Fein strategy is clearly very unstable, and this is where the small socialist movement comes in. There is the potential to challenge Sinn Fein, to knock them off their pedestal and to begin to draw people away.  As it is, the groups don’t ask hard questions or directly challenge Sinn Fein and as a result end up being left cover for the Shinners con trick.  Just how gullible the left is being can be seen when we consider that the Andersonstown campaign is the first public protest that targets a Stormont minister.  The fact that that minister is Margaret Ritchie, from Sinn Fein’s nationalist rival the SDLP, shows the hypocrisy of a party that has remained silent in the face of the most outrageous reaction from their partners in government in the DUP, their silence covering sectarianism, homophobia and attacks on the working class – even direct and crass attacks on Sinn Fein go unanswered! 

The SWP are far from being alone in their opportunism and gullibility, but their position is especially ironic, as it is only a few months ago that that a major strategy document from their leadership proclaimed that Sinn Fein capitulation marked a real opportunity for the left.

And so it is – but to make opportunity reality socialists have to break from the politics of opportunism and provide a political opposition!