Comrade Ryan
05-09-2008, 07:58 PM
09/05/08
One year ago, in May 2007, the British government, the Twenty-Six County government, a plethora of international governments and almost every political party in Ireland ushered in the formation of a ‘new’ Six-County assembly with a harmonious and deafening chorus of praise.
The broad nationalist population in the British-occupied six counties can be forgiven for believing that this truly was the beginning of new dispensation for Irish political affairs. Until 2007, the Six-County assembly had functioned for a total period of six months in 9 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and to date, this year has been its longest lasting period of relative stability and functionality.
However, from then until now the nationalist population have endured some serious blows due to the new political framework and time after time the Unionist veto has proven to be insurmountable and reminiscent of the worst days of Stormont rule. British governance of Irish political affairs in the northeast is as stable as it has ever been since the formation of the state.
The DUP began their new term of office by vetoing any potential Assembly debate on collusion, despite the Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, making public her evidence that 17 people had been assassinated by the UVF in north Belfast between 1992 and 2005 with varying degrees of collusion with British state forces.
It was no shock that in the same month a debate on why women are so underrepresented in the upper echelons of power in occupied Ireland was vetoed off-hand.
Within no time the annual triumphalist charade of the Orange Order marching season had began in earnest. Nationalists witnessed the opening of security fences and sealing off of their streets to facilitate the time-old tradition of British rule in Ireland with a new state financial injection, no less, for the sectarian institutions involved.
This happened in conjunction with increasing cuts to community-based festival initiatives, strangling further the already struggling capacity for cultural expression within the broad nationalist community.
Throughout the year corruption within the unionist hegemony has been rife. The fire brand anti-catholic, anti-homosexual, anti-Irish Ian Paisley Junior, who until recently jointly dominated the most senior brief in the assembly along with his father, secured a litany of financial incentives from the British Government for his friends and family, and no doubt boosted the Paisley dynasty in the process.
As of February ’08 it was revealed that the entire institution is rife with nepotism and truly exposed how senior politicians seem to be building individual empires and fiefdoms reminiscent of feudal times.
Irish cultural identity has seen set backs and attacks more common in Penal Ireland, with the promised Irish Language Act feeling the wrath of the veto, and the Irish Language Broadcast Fund axed completely. A number of primary schools have collapsed under the strain and have been forced to amalgamate, naturally detracting from an overwhelmingly under-represented sector of schooling. Whilst other schools remain housed in Third World conditions within makeshift mobile huts, some like Derry’s Bunscoil Cholmcille going for 25 years or more without a state-funded premises despite meeting every quota and protocol laid down.
The biggest workers strike in years, called by classroom assistants to address a 12-year-old dispute over unjust working conditions and wage theft, was broken and one of the most important assets in the education and nurturing of children has been seriously undermined. The classroom assistants are now left with paltry compensation and an unsure future, whilst the unions have been fractured further as a result.
The RUC-PSNI and British MI5 have increased their capacity, from new buildings and infrastructure to new weaponry and lately have been parading Irish streets branding MP5 assault rifles to match the new tazers and streamlined higher velocity plastic bullets introduced earlier in the year. Agents and spies are commonplace and the high profile examples remain the tip of the iceberg.
All of this begs the question: Is it worth it?
From workers broken, to culture denied, to an increase and solidification of British rule by force, 2007-2008 has been a bad year for the working people of occupied Ireland. With 1700 sectarian attacks, 44,000 children in abject poverty, more ‘peace lines’ than ever before in our history, housing waiting lists growing, and unemployment at a much higher ratio in the nationalist community, coupled with a military occupation of 5000 British army soldiers and 9000 fully- and increasingly-armed RUC-PSNI personnel, it is patently clear that abnormality reigns for most of us, whilst the political elite preach normality and prosperity.
It is clear that change is needed and that it cannot be achieved in any sense through the British constitutional political framework supplanted in this country. However, progressives continue to push for real change from a grassroots level and small examples have shone through of how communities educated and organised can stem and even quell the march of greedy economics and imperialist normalisation.
We must take inspiration from the battles that are being fought on the streets by ordinary working people, in pickets and rallies and debates, and which continue to stand in the face of the massive odds pitched against them.
As with the women’s movement of the twentieth century, or the Afro-American civil rights movement and our own civil rights struggle now 40 years gone, it is from the bottom up that real change is made, and it has not at any stage in the history of British involvement in Irish affairs been made easily.
The British government and its surrogates with veto power in the Six-County Assembly will give not an inch that is not taken from them and it is the duty of each and every progressive individual and group, to continue to push and cajole until the institutions of British rule in Ireland crumble under the weight of their own hypocrisy and corruption.
We must all redouble our efforts in the coming months and years, and stand side by side in the face of the massive injustices permeating from the joint problems of British rule and exploitative free market economics, to continue the building of a truly mass and unstoppable progressive movement for Irish liberation.
Go n-éirí linn.
One year ago, in May 2007, the British government, the Twenty-Six County government, a plethora of international governments and almost every political party in Ireland ushered in the formation of a ‘new’ Six-County assembly with a harmonious and deafening chorus of praise.
The broad nationalist population in the British-occupied six counties can be forgiven for believing that this truly was the beginning of new dispensation for Irish political affairs. Until 2007, the Six-County assembly had functioned for a total period of six months in 9 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and to date, this year has been its longest lasting period of relative stability and functionality.
However, from then until now the nationalist population have endured some serious blows due to the new political framework and time after time the Unionist veto has proven to be insurmountable and reminiscent of the worst days of Stormont rule. British governance of Irish political affairs in the northeast is as stable as it has ever been since the formation of the state.
The DUP began their new term of office by vetoing any potential Assembly debate on collusion, despite the Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, making public her evidence that 17 people had been assassinated by the UVF in north Belfast between 1992 and 2005 with varying degrees of collusion with British state forces.
It was no shock that in the same month a debate on why women are so underrepresented in the upper echelons of power in occupied Ireland was vetoed off-hand.
Within no time the annual triumphalist charade of the Orange Order marching season had began in earnest. Nationalists witnessed the opening of security fences and sealing off of their streets to facilitate the time-old tradition of British rule in Ireland with a new state financial injection, no less, for the sectarian institutions involved.
This happened in conjunction with increasing cuts to community-based festival initiatives, strangling further the already struggling capacity for cultural expression within the broad nationalist community.
Throughout the year corruption within the unionist hegemony has been rife. The fire brand anti-catholic, anti-homosexual, anti-Irish Ian Paisley Junior, who until recently jointly dominated the most senior brief in the assembly along with his father, secured a litany of financial incentives from the British Government for his friends and family, and no doubt boosted the Paisley dynasty in the process.
As of February ’08 it was revealed that the entire institution is rife with nepotism and truly exposed how senior politicians seem to be building individual empires and fiefdoms reminiscent of feudal times.
Irish cultural identity has seen set backs and attacks more common in Penal Ireland, with the promised Irish Language Act feeling the wrath of the veto, and the Irish Language Broadcast Fund axed completely. A number of primary schools have collapsed under the strain and have been forced to amalgamate, naturally detracting from an overwhelmingly under-represented sector of schooling. Whilst other schools remain housed in Third World conditions within makeshift mobile huts, some like Derry’s Bunscoil Cholmcille going for 25 years or more without a state-funded premises despite meeting every quota and protocol laid down.
The biggest workers strike in years, called by classroom assistants to address a 12-year-old dispute over unjust working conditions and wage theft, was broken and one of the most important assets in the education and nurturing of children has been seriously undermined. The classroom assistants are now left with paltry compensation and an unsure future, whilst the unions have been fractured further as a result.
The RUC-PSNI and British MI5 have increased their capacity, from new buildings and infrastructure to new weaponry and lately have been parading Irish streets branding MP5 assault rifles to match the new tazers and streamlined higher velocity plastic bullets introduced earlier in the year. Agents and spies are commonplace and the high profile examples remain the tip of the iceberg.
All of this begs the question: Is it worth it?
From workers broken, to culture denied, to an increase and solidification of British rule by force, 2007-2008 has been a bad year for the working people of occupied Ireland. With 1700 sectarian attacks, 44,000 children in abject poverty, more ‘peace lines’ than ever before in our history, housing waiting lists growing, and unemployment at a much higher ratio in the nationalist community, coupled with a military occupation of 5000 British army soldiers and 9000 fully- and increasingly-armed RUC-PSNI personnel, it is patently clear that abnormality reigns for most of us, whilst the political elite preach normality and prosperity.
It is clear that change is needed and that it cannot be achieved in any sense through the British constitutional political framework supplanted in this country. However, progressives continue to push for real change from a grassroots level and small examples have shone through of how communities educated and organised can stem and even quell the march of greedy economics and imperialist normalisation.
We must take inspiration from the battles that are being fought on the streets by ordinary working people, in pickets and rallies and debates, and which continue to stand in the face of the massive odds pitched against them.
As with the women’s movement of the twentieth century, or the Afro-American civil rights movement and our own civil rights struggle now 40 years gone, it is from the bottom up that real change is made, and it has not at any stage in the history of British involvement in Irish affairs been made easily.
The British government and its surrogates with veto power in the Six-County Assembly will give not an inch that is not taken from them and it is the duty of each and every progressive individual and group, to continue to push and cajole until the institutions of British rule in Ireland crumble under the weight of their own hypocrisy and corruption.
We must all redouble our efforts in the coming months and years, and stand side by side in the face of the massive injustices permeating from the joint problems of British rule and exploitative free market economics, to continue the building of a truly mass and unstoppable progressive movement for Irish liberation.
Go n-éirí linn.