Short response to Zak

[Donal <donaloc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Zak: I do not at all agree with how you view 'the struggle'
in Northern Ireland. Firstly, I'm not sure if British Imperialism is
necessarily bound to want to keep a hold on us as a colony. Whether the Uk
moves closer to Europe or the US, Ireland's fate will be, more capitalism.
Now, if the struggle against this is confined to calling for a 'national'
economy, I feel that it is doomed. The crisis will hit Ireland at the same
time that it hits the UK probably, and if the struggle here is not allied
with the struggle there, then I really see no hope. Why should we be calling
for a united Ireland? The Southern economy is as capitalist as the UK, in
fact, nearly all the main political parties down south are full-blown
neo-liberal bandwagon jumpers. Why should people in the north want to
integrate with the southern economy?

Donal: Whilst I'm not going to rehash old arguments, I will just point that
there are several arguments conflated here. To briefly deal with each:

(a) British Imperialism is not a simple force - it consists of a variety of
opinions and interests. The Labour Party itself has a variety of
forces...perhaps a good example here is a comment allegedly made by Mo
Mowlam to Martin Maguiness. She pointed to two spooks in the corner and
asked Martin, "Do you know who these guys are". Martin guessed intelligence
spooks (they all look the same). She said they follow her everywhere to make
sure that she doesn't do anything they don't know about. She didn't have the
right to get rid of them. She was elected by the British people, they were
employed by British Intelligence to ensure that the right result happened
for Intelligence (then they say Britain is a democracy). In a similar way,
there are conflicting interests within British Imperialism, the Tory wing
wants to retain the North, the Liberal wing wants out. I don't think they're
just going to say, our class interests are not being served by being in the
six-counties and pull the plug. There are relationships of power built up
over centuries and there is also a mindset of the old empire within the Tory
party in particular.

(b) Ireland's fate must be determined by its people. That's why the slogan
must be for self-determination - as it should be in any colonial nation. Far
from this being irrelevant to the achievement of progressive change, this is
centre-stage.

(c) You feel that Ireland and Britain's interests are somewhat linked. I
agree. Indeed, our future is linked to the EU and the USA also - to cut the
colonial-advanced nation connection between our country and these others is
a primary goal to socialism. That's not to say that on the basis of equality
we couldn't look to normalising relations with the English working-class but
that can't come before we gain equality and national self-determination.
It's the same with Europe.

(d) Whilst no-one can deny the unmistakeable capitalism inherent within the
Republic (twenty-six counties). It is in a different relation to global
capitalism to that of Great Britain. The Republic is a neo-colonial state
(these days the master has largely changed from the UK to the USA or the
EU). The six counties is partitioned through the intervention of Britain and
we have only very limited self-determination (or whatever you might call
that for a partial state). In any case, the call for national
self-determination rings true for both statelets and although directed
somewhat differentially in both cases can be generalised as being against
Imperialist powers.

(e) The logic of reunification is that the result will be greater than the
sum of the component parts. In effect, partition led to increased religious
domination both sides of the border because the states did not have to
adjust to take account of sizable religious minorities. In a similar way,
the achievement of reunification or some degree of national
self-determination will make possible the clearing of the air in regard to
authentic politics and will offer the opportunity for progressive groups to
actually seize power.

(f) The issue of reunification is now centre-place in the discourse of the
North. Even high-profile Unionists and Loyalists are starting to say it's
coming. The only questions are when and what sort of Ireland will we get out
of it. Trimble's threatened plebiscite on the future of the North was a
signal of how much they are running scared - he wants to nip the leakage in
the bud before the discussion gets time to bloom. It was given away by his
statement that the vote would address the issue 'once and for all'. SF
welcomed the move as creating a benchmark for further plebiscites as the GFA
calls for them at most every seven years at the descretion of the British
Minister.

Zak: As for living in South Belfast- first, how do you know I live in South
Belfast? I said in my message to you I was from East Belfast....? Secondly,
would you really rather live in Fermanagh? Thats great, personally I would
not at all- and your portrayal of South Belfast as some affluent bourgeois
hole is far off the mark. If it pleases you to know, I am entirely skint-
probably skinter than you. All my mates are in jail or skint or on drugs.
So,
please don't come off with that shit again, because it doesn't fucking wash
with me. if you think Belfast is such a pleasure ground why don't you come
up and live here? Maybe you'd get a different picture of 'the national
question' too...

My mistake, Zak, I thought you were a student from South Belfast - no
offence meant. In any case, I didn't cast any aspersions as to your own
personal position - I don't think that there's too much cash out there right
now for anyone - particularly down here near the border where whole local
economies have been built on the back of demand from the twenty-six counties
for construction workers.

My comments on South Belfast are based on my experiences of driving around
the Ormeau and environs. It certainly looks a lot more upmarket than most
other parts of central Belfast. I think that any statistical research I have
seen has clearly demonstrated the relative wealth of this area (c.f. the
most recent NISRA statistics - the Noble indicators). As far as my comments
about the nature of struggle in South Belfast, I repeat that I would rather
work in my own rough and ready morally-conservative county than up there.
There's no need to get uptight about it as I wouldn't have said that about
East Belfast which has a proud working-class tradition - even if I don't
feel too safe going through it to get to Stormont! God help me if my car
ever breaks down and I speak in my Fermanagh brogue - which even people on
the Falls Rd thinks is from the twenty-six counties!

As far as the terrible problems associated with deprivation and drugs there,
I think we all recognise something serious has to be done to remove them -
unionist communities are getting particularly shafted because they lack
credible representation (with the possible exception of the PUP). It makes
me depressed to hear reports about the DUP MP/MLA for the Constituency who
opposes the provision of free school-meals to children, opposes new-TSN (a
cross-Departmental policy aimed at pushing investment and funding to areas
categorised as significantly deprived) and opposes the abolition of the
11-plus (an exam which categorises children as either suitable for academic
secondary school or more manual types of trainin and largely falls along
class-lines) - to name but a few of his demented forays at the Education
Support Committee. Why does he oppose these things some of the foreign
readers might ask? Well, because overall they would benefit Nationalists
more than Unionists (even though his own area would benefit from them
immeasurably). It's sad to think how that sort of ultra-right demagogue can
get decent working-class people to support him in such vast numbers on the
basis of fear - fear of a united Ireland.

I trust that this response will have clarified my views and solidarity with
ordinary people from East Belfast.

Domhnall.




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