After two days when the first item on the evening TV news was the brutal Gardai attack on a Reclaim the Streets party it was not surprising that thousands joined a rally against police brutality outside Pearse St police station on Thursday night. The protest passed off peacefully despite paranoia from some quarters that there was ‘bound to be trouble’. (May 9 2002)
The reality of the Orange Order is that it is a counter-revolutionary institution set up and maintained to target not just Catholics but also ‘disloyal’ Protestants. It’s formation and spread was encouraged by the British state in the years leading up to the 1798 rebellion precisely in order to drive a wedge between ordinary Catholics and Protestants. The 12th of July was picked as the key date to provide an alternative attraction to the marking of Bastille day and in itself to mark the sectarian massacre that led to the formation of the Orange Order.
While we should oppose the Orange Orders parades where ever local people reject them (and our ideal would be for ‘Protestant areas’ to also oppose them), there are real problems with the way these campaigns are proceeding. The central problem however is that the residents’ groups are fighting on the sectarian terrain chosen by the Orange Order. With its membership declining and its influence on the state under threat, the Order needs an ‘anti-Protestant’ opposition to justify its continued existence.
THERE IS LITTLE hope of a new IRA ceasefire, the loyalist death squads may restart a full campaign of assassinations and terror. We may be heading back to a situation of bloody murders every other day. After the British government’s carry on during the ‘peace process’, after Drumcree, after the bombs, after Harryville there is a pessimistic mood throughout the six counties. So where do we go from here?
The peace talks represent the ditching of Sinn Féin’s left gloss and a return to good old nationalist politics, pure and simple. They started with the Hume – Adams dialogue, a still secret document but one which clearly set out to demonstrate that the northern nationalists could be trusted (by both Dublin and London) to ‘behave’ in the event of British withdrawa.
In August of 1968 NICRA called its first march. 2,500 marched from Coalisland to Dungannon to protest against local housing discrimination.
The huge vote, North and South, in favour of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ shows that the vast majority do not want a return to pre-ceasefire violence. Can this agreement get to the root of the sectarian problem and deal with the hatreds, fears and suspicions that have bedevilled our country?
The real cause of the housing crisis is neither the tens of thousands of returning Irish born migrants nor the 15,000 or so asylum seekers. The reason housing is in short supply and expensive is because of the hoarding of land and super profits of a handful of speculators.
After six years of massive house price increases it is now (2000) almost impossible for the average worker to buy a house in Ireland. Average house prices in Ireland rose from 11.3 times the average income in 1989 to 18.2 times income in 1999. The increases in rent and house prices have, for many workers, completely wiped out any gain made from tax cuts in our take home pay. And for the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the working class the housing crisis is becoming a disaster as the rapidly growing number of young people sleeping on the streets demonstrates
Sellafield is a great vote winner for political parties come election time. It has got to be the single issue on which almost every person in Ireland agrees: Sellafield is bad and it should be shut down. So in the next months we can expect pickets of the British embassy, press conferences and the promises of European court cases as the parties vie for our vote.