Articles from 2003 can be found here

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 232
Why Sinn Fein can get on with Bush
ANY SUSPICION that Mary Lou MacDonald was speaking on the spur of the moment when she refused just prior to the US election to say who she hoped would win was removed in the aftermath of Bush’s victory. MacDonald had been on “Questions and Answers” the week before the poll when the obvious question came up: who would the panel vote for in the US? “I’m taking the Fifth on that,” said the Sinn Fein MEP— referring to the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution which lays down that witnesses can’t be forced to answer questions which might incriminate them. Pressed by John Bowman, she refused to elaborate.
Nobody would have expected MacDonald to plump for the Left’s Ralph Nader. But some thought it odd that a representative of a party which advertises itself as antiimperialist would think it incriminating to say that she’d like the architect of the war out of office. On the day after Bush’s triumph, SF’s other MEP, Bairbre de Brun, spoke at a press conference in Dublin announcing the November 13th Shannon demonstration. Representatives of the Labour Party and the Greens had no difficulty expressing disappointment at the outcome. But de Brun point-blank refused to join in the sentiment. Both Republicans and Democrats had been very helpful towards the “Irish peace process,” said de Brun, and that was the key issue.
In New York two days after the poll, Gerry Adams went further and congratulated Bush on winning four more years. What he went on to say threw light on the thinking behind his party’s neutrality on the presidential contest. If the DUP refused to share power with Sinn Fein and re-establish the Assembly, Adams told a glittering “Friends of Sinn Fein” fund-raiser, the British and Irish Governments should do a deal over their heads and exercise joint power in the North. He hoped that the US administration would support this line. This was, essentially, a repeat of Mitchel McLaughlin’s suggestion a month earlier that the British Government should form an “alliance with Irish Nationalism” to bring the Unionists to heel—a far cry from the traditional SF line that the British presence in the North was imperialist and that Brits ought to get out now.
The cynical view, favoured by many ex-Provo commentators, is that the SF leadership fears alienating any US administration because it wants to keep the corporate funds flowing in and doesn’t want crossed off the guest-list for White House wing-dings. But that’s not the main point. The point is that SF is not a party of the Left but a party of Nationalism. By far its closest precedent is Fianna Fail in the late 1920s and early ’30s, when de Valera’s outfit still had the whiff of anti-imperialist struggle about it and was regularly denounced in Independent newspapers as “Bolshevik.” The readiness of SF now to contemplate coalition with Fianna Fail confirms that, behind the radical rhetoric and coy presence on anti-war platforms, the Shinners are following in the same footsteps, bidding for the same franchise.
Sections of the Irish Left still have a sneaking regard for Sinn Fein, a shifty reluctance to distance themselves clearly from the associates of the armed strugglers of the day before yesterday. To say this is simply to say that sections of the Left are themselves infected by Nationalism. To treat Sinn Fein as a party of the Left is to collude with Nationalism in fudging the edges of socialist ideas.  

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 231
Will Sinn Fein partner Fianna Fail?
IT’S HARD for a socialist to know whether to laugh or cry at the kerfuffle over the possibility of Sinn Fein joining Fianna Fail in a coalition in the South. The Sunday Independent’s rent-a-loudmouth team has been spluttering with outrage. How could a respectable constitutional party like FF think of bedding down with people associated with shooting and bombing?
The fact that FF is up to its oxters in the carnage of Iraq—-more than 150,000 US soldiers have now used Shannon en route to oblitering towns and villages—- doesn’t figure in the loud-mouths’ line of argument. But that’s par for the course. Everywhere, supporters of wholesale violence by major powers tend simultaneously to denounce retail violence as beyond the moral pale. The rationale is that the former is legal violence, the latter illegal.
The distinction doesn’t work in relation to Iraq. Even Kofi Annan has conceded that the US/UK invasion had no legal basis. The bombing of Baghdad was as illegal as the bombing of Enniskillen. But the fact that the argument doesn’t make sense even in their own limited terms never fazes the proponents of big-power brutality.
The other Indo argument on the issue is that SF is a left-wing party intent on overthrowing capitalism and that its policies would spell ruination for the South’s thriving little economy. Much of the time, SF doesn’t object too strongly to this charge. It rather enhances the party’s radical credentials, and can be off-set against the things party leaders say when talking to, for example, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. But if we look beyond the rhetoric to what SF does in practice, it’s plain the party poses no threat to capitalism.
At the European Social Forum in London, Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald vigorously defended the endorsement of privatisation by SF ministers in the North. They’d done it reluctantly, it was explained. If was either private finance in schools, for example, or no new schools at all. This is nonsense. Under the rules of the Agreement, it would have been impossible for the other Executive parties to have forced Bairbre de Brun or Martin McGuinness down the privatisation road. SF can point to no meeting of the Executive or any other occasion when they tried to fight off privatisation plans but were overruled. Not once was the issue the subject of interparty controversy during the life-time of the Executive.
In London, McDonald was explicit that if the Executive is restored, SF will continue to privatise, “when necessary.” She dismissed the option of going into opposition and mobilising against the neo-liberal agenda. The underlying argument is that the implementation of the Agreement overrides all other considerations.
What is this other than an updated version of de Valera’s dictum that “labour must wait?” Once, it was “national liberation” which had to be achieved before class issues came onto the agenda. Now, it’s merely the restoration of power-sharing and cross-border bodies. There is nothing in this record to give Fianna Fail grief at the prospect of partnering SF in government. Sinn Fein is not a socialist party, but a nationalist party. In almost a century of existence, it has never based itself on the interests of the working class but on the idea of “the nation.” Serving in government North and South, privatising schools and hospitals on an all- Ireland basis, would be regarded by Sinn Fein not as a betrayal but as a triumph. Coalition with Fianna Fail would be a perfectly appropriate next phase for the party

 
Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 230
Sectarianism threatens gay rights
Last month’s Belfast gay pride march was one of the most cheering demonstrations any of us had been on for an age. The large, loud, gaudy procession was applauded all along Royal Avenue from pavements packed three or four deep with smiling Saturday afternoon shoppers. The only sour notes came from a clump of sad-faced fundamentalists at the City Hall.
It says something about Northern politics, then, that when the Civil Partnership Bill is voted on at Westminster on October 12th, an impression will be given that it’s those in favour of gay rights who are isolated on the sidelines, and the fundamentalists who are the mainstream majority.
The Partnership Bill won’t deliver equality. But it’s a step in the right direction. It guarantees gay couples who register their relationship the same tax benefits as married couples, social security and pension rights, next-of-kin hospital visiting rights etc.
Prevent
The six DUP MPs will vote against it. Their aim is to prevent the bill becoming law or, if this fails, to exclude Northern Ireland from its provisions. One of the five Ulster Unionists may support the bill. The others will vote No.
At the time of writing, the three SDLPers haven’t declared their hand, but past performance suggests that abstention is the best we can hope for. Sinn Fein’s four members will not, of course, be involved in the proceedings. The votes of Northern MPs, therefore, are likely to suggest, totally inaccurately, that more than 90 percent of Northerners take their stand with the City Hall hecklers.
New Labour, with its huge majority, could carry the day anyway. But this won’t happen. The vote had originally been set for September 23rd—which coincided with the Leeds Castle talks. Paisley demanded a postponement so he could be at Westminister to vote No. And Blair immediately agreed. This recalls the performance of Mo Mowlem on the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to the North, which she’d passionately supported in opposition. But in office she used her clout as a Minister to browbeat Labour back-benchers who wanted to follow though on the policy. “You are stirring up the tribal elders,” she warned one MP. The implication was that pushing for equal reproduction rights for women in the North might rile the likes of Paisley and thus put the prospect of a peace deal at risk.
Argument
Now the same argument is being used to stymie a move towards equality for gays. This is a result of accepting a pattern of politics based on the rival rights of “the two communities”, so that for practical purposes “equality” means only equality between Catholics and Protestants. If the fundamentalists succeed in excluding the North from the bill, the battle won’t be over. It will have only just begun.
The issue may be devolved to a restored Assembly. But, Assembly or no Assembly, what we will need is to mobilise all who support gay rights, in order to expose the false notion that “Northern Ireland is different”. There is a real chance of beating the bigots on this one. If we do, we will have struck a blow not only for gay and lesbian couples but for all who have lost out over the years from communal politics allowing bigots to dominate our lives.

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 229
Is this man an honest broker?
IT’S generally accepted the Provos and the Paisleyites don’t trust one another an inch. How could it be otherwise, given what they represent and after the last 30 years? Thus the splurge of articles explaining the need to “build trust” if any secure deal is to be done. Strange that nobody makes much of the untrustworthy nature of another leading figure at the Leeds Castle talks—-Blair’s personal envoy, Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell.
Powell talking about the need for all sides to renounce violence is like Dr. Harold Shipman delivering a lecture on care of the elderly. On September 19th 2002, as Blair fine-tuned the lies he was using to lure Britain into war with Iraq, Powell became alarmed that the intelligence information wasn’t helpful. He e-mailed intelligence chief John Scarlett: “I think the statement on page 19 that ‘Saddam is prepared to use chemical and biological weapons if he believes his regime is under threat’ is a bit of a problem. “It backs up the argument that there is no CBW (chemical and biological weapons) threat and we will only create one if we attack him. I think you should redraft the para.” Which Scarlett duly did.
Powell was admitting that the truth was the opposite of the case Blair was making. So he wanted the reverse of the truth. This is a man plainly willing to lie to precipitate the misery and death that war inevitably brings. What does it say about those gathered in the leafy luxury of Leeds Castle that not one is prepared to throw this fact back in Powell’s teeth? Or even to make reference to it in interviews or public statements on progress, if any, in the discussions?
What’s revealed here is that all the Northern parties accept that the conflict they are discussing is primarily between “the two communities. “ If a memo were unearthed quoting Peter Robinson suggesting that lies be told to persuade Unionist people of the case for violence, wouldn’t the Nationalist parties be shouting their anger on every news bulletin for a month? As Unionists would if Martin McGuinness were shown to have engaged in the same sort of manoeuvre. But once it’s accepted that the British are, essentially, standing above and between “the two communities,” their involvement in violence elsewhere becomes irrelevant to the issue.
It’s a far cry from the days when Nationalists— “Republicans” most shrilly of all—would regularly insist that their conflict was decidedly not with the Unionists but with Britain. The untrustworthy character of Britain in other eras and parts of the world would be cited. Once the perfidious British were ejected or persuaded to depart, ran the theory, Unionists and Nationalists could get down to doing a deal.
The relevance of the British to a deal with Irish Nationalism has now been turned on its head. Just a couple of days before the decampment to Kent, Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin publicly suggested that if the talks come to nothing, Britain should form “an alliance” with Nationalists to reach a settlement above the Unionists’ heads. No essential contradiction, then, between the British ruling class and the interests represented by Sinn Fein. Just as socialists have been arguing for years.    

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 228
Clinton’s fans
ONE OF the staples of socialist comedy over the past couple of years in Ireland has been An Phoblacht's report of Bill Clinton's .lap of honour . around Ireland just before he left office in December 2000. The account of Clinton's climactic meeting in Dundalk has provided no end of merriment at fund-raising socials and the like. How did Clinton appear on-stage? .He basked in the moonlight.. And what feeling did this engender in the audience? .We had come into the light.. How did the Shinners say cheerio to the pudgy Arkansas sax-abuser? .So long Bill, it was a truly excellent adventure.. And so on.
Some Shinners fail to see the funny side. Those who regard themselves as Left-wing point out that the next edition of An Phoblacht carried letters from other Sinn Fein members objecting to the tone of the Dundalk article: it didn't represent the party's real attitudes, they insist. Well, Clinton was back last month, so we have had a chance to check out the real attitude. Clinton, let us remind ourselves, is the man who ordered the bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20th 1998.-the day of Monica Lewinski's testimony to a grand jury. On December 16th the same year, he sent his ambassador to the UN, Peter Burleigh, to order chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler to withdraw his team from Iraq so that the US and Britain could start bombing.
December 16th was also the day Senate impeachment hearings into Clinton's perjury began. George W. Bush may be a repulsive character on any number of counts. But, as far as we know, he never ordered people killed for a reason as trivial as covering up perjury or a semen stain on a dress. Or consider Clinton's reaction when he arrived in office in January 1993 to discover the US adventure in Somalia falling apart. Chief spin-doctor George Stephanopoulos recalled in his memoirs: ..We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers,. (Clinton) said softly at first. .When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.. Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising and his fist pounding his thigh, .I believe in killing people who try to hurt you, and I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks...
These are but a tiny selection of actions by Clinton which would alienate utterly anybody wanting seriously to be seen as Left-wing. It comes as no surprise that none of this rated a mention in mainstream media or political circles during Clinton's visit. What ought to be surprising, but actually isn't, is that none of it was mentioned either by any Sinn Fein figure. Instead, Sinn Fein efforts were devoted to manoeuvring themselves into the picture any time a camera was pointed at Clinton. Gerry Adams straight-faced described Clinton a .a man of peace.. MP Michelle Gildernew claimed that Clinton's presence in the North .will provide a much-needed boost for the peace process.. And so on. A search of the web reveals not a single statement from a Sinn Feiner critical of Clinton during his visit. People within Sinn Fein who regard themselves as socialists should give over twisting themselves into knots trying to reconcile their party with their political philosophy. They should get out, and join in the effort to build a serious socialist organisation as an alternative to the sort of opportunist nationalism exposed yet again during the Clinton visit.

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 227
A French hoax and a plane landing in Tel Aviv
LAST MONTH, a ‘plane from Paris chartered by the Israeli government landed at Tel Aviv airport carrying 200 Jewish immigrants. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was on hand to greet the new citizens. Full citizenship is automatically available to all Jewish immigrants to Israel, irrespective of where they've come from or whether they they have had any prior association with the country.
On the same day, back in Paris, a woman called Marie Leonie admitted that she’d made up a sensational story which had been dominating French news outlets. She’d claimed that six ”North African looking” men had attacked her in a train at a station in a Paris suburb, overturned her baby carriage, ripped clothes from her body and painted swastikas on her belly. All the time, she'd said, the men had mouthed vicious, anti-Jewish insults. The most appalling aspect of the story was that, according to Ms. Leonie, around 20 other passengers in the carriage had stood idly by during the assault.
Anger and guilt spread across France. President Chirac publicly apologised to Ms. Leonie. Then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intervened, suggesting that Jews would always be at risk in France and urging every Jewish person in the country to emigate “without delay” to Israel.
Wisdom
The scenes at Tel Aviv airport seemed to confirm the wisdom of his advice. Back in Paris, however, Ms. Leonie, a Catholic, was confessing that her story had been totally untrue. Distressed at events in her personal life, she had, for reasons she didn’t herself fully understand, made the entire thing up. The episode could be written off as an embarrassing and ultimately irrelevant black farce. But it illuminated a couple of important political truths which tend usually to remain hidden.
The first is that in France, as in Ireland, antisemitism, if not rife, is at least a common phenomenon. Were it not, Ms. Leonie’s story wouldn’t initially have seemed credible to so many. The second is that in France, as everywhere, Zionism and anti-semitism are not opposing but complementary ideologies. In proposing that Jews should get out of France fast, Sharon was recommending precisely the course of action favoured by the sort of low-lifes who daub swastikas on synagogues. Zionism and anti-semitism share one key idea- --that it’s futile for Jews to try to integrate with, or even to live congenially alongside, other peoples; that Jews, to survive, have to build a Jewish State for Jewish people where only Jews count.
The people who pay the price are those upon whose land the Jewish State is being constructed. One of the ‘plane-load of arrivals at Tel Aviv kissed the ground upon which he had never previously set foot, then told CNN that he "loved" Israel, and that he intended now to settle in “Judea”. That is to say on the West Bank, in one of the illegal settlements from which armed Zionists lord it over the people whose land they have stolen and who, under Israeli law, can never aspire to citizenship in the country of their birth. I wouldn't doubt that suicide bombers were busy being born as the joyous pictures from Tel Aviv were beamed into the teeming camps where Palestinians are corralled.  

 Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 226
Imperialism and the anti war protests
THE demonstrations against the Bush visit at the tail-end of last month were vibrant in spirit and of a heartening size. But there were aspects of them for anti-war activists to ponder as well. The reason they were heartening is that many had feared they might be significantly smaller. This in turn reflected a degree of confusion and uncertainty in the anti-war camp. The unspoken question was, whatever happened to February 15th? To the 100,000-plus in Dublin and as many elsewhere who had marched last year? Not to mention the thousands of students and others who had taken to the streets in often spontaneous demonstrations, chanting, picketing and blocking traffic? How come the movement seemed to begin to decline just a few weeks later, when Bush and Blair went ahead with the war anyway?
One reason is simply that the war did go ahead. Many concluded that we’d failed. What was the point of campaigning against a war which was already under way? The best we could do was to seethe silently and hope for a good outcome. (The other side of the same coin was seen in the petulant reaction of elitists whose admiration for their own daring has always outshone any faith in mass action.) Once Baghdad had fallen, the argument arose that, irrespective of our anti-war views, we couldn’t now just demand the withdrawal of US and British forces. Their abrupt departure would mean chaos and civil war. In the interests of the Iraqis themselves, we had to accept that they’d remain—for the time being anyway, and with the involvement of the UN, and speedy progress towards democracy, and no more torture...
Many in the movement began looking towards the November US elections in hopes of a Kerry victory. The fact that Kerry has made it clear his Iraq policy won’t differ in any essential from Bush’s cut no ice. The loss of confidence in mass action generated support for a strategy of backing anybody-but-Bush.
Analysis
Looking to the UN and Kerry meant ditching any analysis that went deeper than railing against the evil of the incumbents. Which helps explain why even the horror pictures from Abu Ghraib didn’t trigger a mass return to the streets. If the moral turpitude of individual leaders or the national arrogance of particular countries was at the root of the problem, what was needed was not mass demonstrations but different leaders and/or a transnational institution in charge.
Well, the UN now has endorsed the occupation. At Drumoland Castle, Bertie Ahern argued that this removed the central argument against the occupation and against the the use of Shannon as a military staging-post. And he was right—in relation to those whose main argument against the war had been that it lacked a UN mandate. Thus, a “realistic” strategy designed not to alienate any potential pocket of anti-war sentiment resulted in the demobilisation of the mass movement.
Behind this apparent contradiction lies the fact that the invasion didn’t result from a particular administration making a specific decision and then dragging other governments along. It was driven by imperialism, exactly as were the invasions of Africa in the 19th century or of Vietnam in the 20th. If we take that as our starting point, we may be able better to understand the war of resistance now beginning to unfold in Iraq, and how to build a mass movement in solidarity with it.

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 225
Tap Tax: Can’t pay Won’t pay
IF EVENTS of recent weeks confirmed anything, it’s that we live in a sharply divided society. The day after polling in the European election it was revealed that, from 2006 onwards, people in the North living in poverty will be forced to fork out around six pounds a week for water. A “confidential memo” from the office of Minister John Spellar declares that water charges here—-if we allow their introduction—-will likely be among the highest in the UK. And people on benefits or living on poverty wages will be expected to pay 75 percent of the bills.
It is generally expected that the charges will initially be set at around £400 a year. Six pounds a week may seem next to nothing if you’re living on the equivalent of a Ministerial salary. But if you are already on the breadline, it could push you over the brink. One Anti-Poverty Network activist remarked yesterday, “I mean it. There’ll be suicides out of this.”
Nine months ago, Spellar promised that that the charges would be introduced in a way which would provide “clear and firm protection” for people on low incomes. Now we know what he meant. Twenty-five percent off, while the offer lasts. The memo continues: “The arrangements for the protection of low income households and vulnerable groups should be provided for a minimum period of three years with a thorough review to consider whether the period for the provision of these arrangements should be extended, or the level of discount should be phased out or reduced.” Get rid of the guff and what this means is that once the charges are bedded in, the poor will be told they’re to pay the full whack from now on.
The chief executive of the General Consumer Council, Eleanor Gill, was moved to remark that, “If these proposals were implemented...NI consumers would pay some 47 per cent above the current average water bill of our nearest comparable neighbour, Scotland...It is imperative that costs are driven down for the most vulnerable...One in every four homes here earns less than £200 a week. These households would be at risk of falling into water poverty.” Water poverty. Now there’s a new concept New Labour has introduced us to.
Debt
In the same week, an Audit Office report revealed that housing developers in the North owe the State more than £9 million which isn’t being paid.  The debt refers to tax-payers’ money used to provide drainage for privately-developed housing.  In 1990, Westminister’s Public Accounts Committee told the NIO—-in line with standard practice across the rest of the UK—-to set about collection of this money. But 14 y ears later, the NIO is still scratching its head wondering how to arrange this transaction. The money has not been repaid and .there is no mechanism for repayment in place.
Some of the developers are among the new millionaires who have prospered so mightily in recent years. They could easily afford to pay. But they are entitled to argue that it’s not their fault, that the NIO simply refuses to call round for the readies. We oughtn’t contemplate this matter too closely, lest the mind boggle ‘til it turns to jelly. Meanwhile, the average-paid worker struggling with a mortgage, or the below-average worker scrimping to put food on the table, won’t be able to avoid water charges.
Once again, it’s one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. Is there anything can be done? Well, there’s this. We could begin now to build a serious non-payment of water-charges campaign. If all those in politics and union and community organisations who say they want to and are willing to fight the “tap tax” put their weight behind Communities Against the Water Charges, we will have a network across the North by 2006 able to tell Spellar (or whomever), “Can’t pay, Won’t pay.” We don’t have to just lie down and take it, you know.

 Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 223
Rights and wrongs over ‘anti social’ teenagers
The British Government and Republican paramilitaries may disagree sharply on a range of issues. But when it comes to dealing with troublesome teenagers, they basically take the same approach. Last week, the Real IRA ordered two teenagers out of Derry under threat of being shot. The RIRA statement accused them of “anti-social activities.” This came in the week when NIO minister John Spellar announced the extension to the North of Anti Social Behaviour Orders. Under ASBOs, the courts will ape the paramilitaries by exiling young people, under threat of imprisonment.
The two schemes are also similar in that the accused are not entitled to due process. Gossip (“hearsay evidence”) is admissible. And the “charge” doesn’t have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. The Real IRA’s stated reason for existence is to end British rule in the North. Yet here they are, in effect, enforcing the same rules as the British authorities, and on the same section of Irish people. The practical difference lies in the nature of the punishment— shooting or jail—not the underlying principle.
Impose
The Real IRA is following other paramilitary organisations. The Provisionals, the INLA and the alphabet soup of Loyalist armies all try to impose their will by force on disruptive teenagers in working class communities. In some estates, there is an element of competition as to which paramilitary group will get to shoot or batter local “anti-social” teenagers. In the near future, there’ll be young people hit with an ASBO and then with a baseball bat or bullet—or the other way round—since the late-night and lightof- day punishment squads don’t recognise one another’s remit.
The futility of the paramilitary/ASBO approach is evident in the fact that one of the teenagers ordered out of Derry last week was reportedly shot by the Real IRA just weeks earlier. Socialists oppose punishment attacks of both the ASBO and paramilitary varieties. In searching for a solution, we should look first at where these activities are concentrated. It’s in the poorest areas, with the worst services, where young people have the least hope for the future. We should be looking to have a level of educational, health and youth service resources to provide a positive alternative to youngsters who feel they have no stake in the society around them.
Expansion
We need a massive expansion in youth service training and provision, and in existing schemes for education outside the formal schooling system. We need an end to low pay, an increase in benefits and huge new investment in poorly-off areas. The money required would be massive. But it’s available, as shown by the billions being spent on the Iraq war. Every youth worker can tell tales of teenagers regarded as totally hopeless who have blossomed and shone when shown they are valued.
What on earth is achieved by ordering a 16-yearold out of his home and away from his family and threatening to maim him with a bullet if he dares show his face in the district again? It may (or may not) get that one teenager out of the way. But it will also contribute to the atmosphere of violence and sense of abandonment which makes the behaviour which is being punished inevitable. It’s not enough to oppose paramilitary punishments while endorsing ASBOs, or the other way round. We need a radical alternative to the punishment approach. The problem for mainstream opinion is that any viable alternative involves the sort of shift in government policies and spending priorities which the political mainstream can’t contemplate.  

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 222
Cooper-Flynn is only small fry.  What about the big fish?
THERE has been much tut-tutting and shaking of heads at the reaction of Mayo voters to Beverley Cooper-Flynn coming a cropper in her libel action against RTE. The Fianna Fail TD had complained about RTE’s saying she had made a mint by selling tax-avoidance schemes to well-off people who didn’t fancy paying their whack towards schools, hospitals, etc. The Supreme Court upheld a jury verdict that Flynn was a liar and a fraudster. Bertie Ahern moved swiftly to have her drummed out of Fianna Fail. But reporters who trekked down to her Mayo constituency found that some local people thought she’d been badly treated.
"We'll support her, we won't let down our own," was one man’s defiant response. Which was widely interpreted as parish patriotism taking precedence over political ethics. But maybe folk around Castlebar figure that it’s unfair Flynn should be singled out for doing something which was common practice among the monied elite. After all, the most revered entrepreneurs in the land make no secret of their view that outsiders have a damned cheek questioning how the rich became rich and whether they broke any laws in the process.
Consider Tony Ryan, for example, founder of Ryanair. Three and a half years ago, he was asked by Matt Cooper of the Sunday Tribune what he thought of the tribunals into political and business corruption then getting into their stride. The tribunals had set out the areas they intended to investigate but hadn’t yet got round to taking evidence from most of the major players. “I think it is time to drop (the tribunals) and put them behind us,” declared Ryan. “Fortunately, they are of no interest to anyone other than the Irish public. They get no coverage overseas...The Irish just like this type of gossip.” Cooper also interviewed Michael Smurfit. He’d been chairman of the semi-State Telecom Eireann when its Ballsbridge HQ was sold to a shadowy company which it turned out he had a stake in for a fiver, then sold on for a zillion pounds. (The figures are approximate but the political point is exact.)
Prurience
Smurfit hoped that “this purgatory” for Irish business would soon end. “I don’t see that it does Ireland any good. This is self-flagellation...As soon as these tribiunals are over and done with the better for everybody.” Then there was the fat and fabulously rich Tony O’Reilly. “The tribunals are an instrument of politics, not of law. They are an opportunity for prurience, allowing people to look over the garden wall.” He, too, believed that they should be wound up and forgotten about.
What’s interesting about this trio is that they are supposedly a cut above the likes of Joe Murphy, Tony Gilmartin etc., builders who ruthlessly clawed their way up from lowly beginnings, using fair means and foul for advancement. Ryan, Smurfit and O’Reilly are the creme-de-lacreme of the Irish ruling class. Not millionaires but billionaires, moving in the highest circles of global capitalism. Not one of them wants the corruption at the heart of Irish public life brought into the open. And with good reason. They understand, even if mainstream politicians and the media contrive not to, that the entire edifice of Irish capitalism has been built on a dung-heap of corruption, of tax-evasion, bribery, fraud and theft.
Allow the mass of the people to “look over the garden wall” and they’d see what a moral slum the megarich exist in. This may be what the Mayo man had in mind. Why come after Cooper-Flynn for cheating the State of hundreds of thousands when the highest in the land measure their ill-gotten gains by the multible million? Where the moralists of Mayo get it wrong is in suggesting that Cooper-Flynn ought therefore be let off the hook. The proper solution is to throw the rest of the criminals into the clink with her and throw away the key.   

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 221
Questions US Congress Commission will not ask
MANY in the United States and beyond have been transfixed by the hearings in Washington of the September 11th congressional commission. Appearances by Bush’s former top terrorism expert Richard Clarke, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, FBI and CIA chiefs and other high administration officials have attracted widespread rapt attention. Bush and Cheney are also set to appear.
The point has commonly been made that, irrespective of one’s views on Bush and September 11th, or on the decisions which led to the Iraq war, it’s a tribute to the democratic spirit of the US system that a commission of this sort is able publicly to interrogate the highest in the land. But the one thing people won’t learn from the hearings is the thing which it is most important to know: why did the suicide bombers attack the Twin Towers on September 11th? To say this is not to suggest that the killing of thousands of innocent people can be justified by reference to the reason it was done. But no understanding of what happened can mean much if it doesn’t include some understanding of the motive behind it.
If you read through reams of the commission’s proceedings you will discover a great deal about the failures of the FBI and/or CIA to detect the Al Qaida plot in advance. You will find lengthy and engrossing discussion of the extent to which the administration’s focus on Iraq might have blinded it to warnings which the intelligence agencies passed on. Or, alternatively, the extent to which warnings weren’t passed on because the agencies knew the administration was blind to any threat which wasn’t related to Iraq.
What you will not find is discussion—scarcely a word—of why Al Qaida did it. It is inevitable, then, that the commission’s report, expected at the end of July, will have nothing to say about the reasons the mass slaughter was perpetrated. The commission will then be wound up. No other formal US investigation into September 11th is planned. From the point of view not just of the Bush administration but of US government generally—the commission is a bipartisan affair—the matter will be closed.
 Debate
The commission’s report will inevitably draw attention to this or that inefficiency or “structural defect” in the intelligence agencies and in the pattern of relationships between the agencies and the administration. There’ll be lengthy debate on television about how particular points in the report will play in the presidential election campaign. What the report won’t do, however, is offer an opinion on the possibility that US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, played a part in generating the circumstances in which the idea of the atrocity formed in the minds of the people who did it. The report can have nothing to say about the desirability of a change in policy.
The banal “explanation” of the atrocity regularly offered by George Bush, and repeated at his unnervingly incompetent White House press conference—that the reason the perpetrators set out to kill themselves and thousands of others was that they are “evil” and “hate freedom”—will not be challenged. This doesn’t mean the commission must be accounted a failure. Far from it. On one reading, it will simply have fulfilled its function. Former CIA analyst Bill Christison told the radical website Counterpunch: “The commission was designed from the start to do nothing that mattered. It can recommend all the reorganising it wants. But no organisational changes will accomplish much if they are not accompanied by changes in present US policies that generate legitimate hatred against America and thereby perpetuate terrorism against us.”
The appointment of the commission had nothing to do with a democratic spirit. It’s purpose was to divert democratic scrutiny away from the aspects of the issue which matter. The millions of Americans who want the truth will have to look outside established political structures to find it.  

 Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 219
Bush’s man accuses Sinn Féin of telling lies
THERE are some who will snigger at the discomfiture of Sinn Fein at being called liars by one of the lying liars who lie for George Bush. But this would be wrong.
Bush’s “special envoy” on the North, Mitchell Reiss, has denounced a full-page ad. on policing placed in the New York Times by Sinn Fein as, “at best enormously misleading and at worst untruthful.” The ad.—-it reportedly cost £25,000—-contained “massive untruths,” Reiss told BBC Northern Ireland. He added that the party should “reconsider its position” and join the Policing Board.
Reiss also accused Sinn Fein of “double standards” for refusing to meet with PSNI chief Hugh Orde while criticising the DUP for refusing to meet with Sinn Fein.
The party appeared taken aback by the tone as much as the content of Reiss’s interview. For a decade now, US Government spokespersons have been, in their own terms, neutral in their pronouncements on the North. During long stretches of the Clinton years, indeed, White House comments were widely regarded as tilted towards the Republican position. Since the Florida/Supreme Court coup which handed the presidency to Bush, the SF line has been that nothing had changed, that relations with the new regime were hunky-dory. Gerry Adams is on record as believing that Bush “hasn’t put a foot wrong” on Ireland.
But from the SF point of view, he has certainly, through his envoy, put his foot in it now. The notion of a Bush crony lambasting anybody for untruthfulness is inherently hilarious. From Bush’s own lying about his military service record, to the systematic perjury over the entanglement of members of his government in the Enron fiasco, to the mountain of lies used to justify the attack on Iraq, this is an administration so twisted that corkscrews uncurl in its presence.
As the New York writer Jimmy Breslin remarked, “If Bush’s lips are moving, he’s either reading or lying.” Or, in the event that he’s studying Government statements, both.
Lecturing
One reason Sinn Fein might find observers less than sympathetic is that the party has chosen to make none of these points. Nobody has sent a message back to Reiss mentioning the inappropriateness of a pot slagging off a kettle for blackness. Gerry Adams hasn’t pointed to the glaring contradiction of a world-class warmonger lecturing anybody on the need for “exclusively peaceful means of winning political goals.”
As for “double standards”—-here again, surely, the White House is a sitting duck for a retaliatory strike. Even as they urge everyone in the North to follow a legal, constitutional path, the Bush gang are openly scornful of the International Court and the UN.
In a sense, then, the Shinners are the authors of their own PR misfortune. If you spend years sucking up to a cabal of villains and whimpering with pleasure any time they tickle your tummy, you’re not well placed to denounce their villainous behaviour when, eventually, they turn on you.
And yet, it’s reasonable to cut Sinn Fein some slack in this matter. Because—-just as those that SF dubs “dissidents” aren’t doing anything which SF didn’t thoroughly approve of just a couple of years ago—-so SF isn’t doing anything in its relationship with the Bush regime which previous Republican generations didn’t get up to in their day. Check Dorothy McArdle’s highly sympathetic “The Irish Republic,” for example, and note that in 1919, the First Dail was sending emissaries to Washington to assure the Wilson administration that Irish Republicanism was on-side with the US and totally opposed to Bolshevism—-while simultaneously sending messages of revolutionary solidarity to Moscow.
It may suit some to depict SF leaders, particularly Gerry Adams, as “selling out” the anti-imperialist struggle and therefore deserving of whatever knocks he might take from the likes of Reiss. But the underlying politics aren’t of Adams’s making. They are the bedrock politics—-which is to say, Nationalism—-on which modern Irish Republicanism has been built. 

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 218
Irony over senior Sinn Féin man’s resignation
IT WAS ironic that Sinn Féin’s first response to the resignation of John Kelly came at a press conference in Mid Ulster called to promote SF’s candidate in the European election in the North, Bairbre de Brun.
Chairing the press conference, South Down Assemblyman Conor Murphy suggested that Kelly had been embittered by his failure to be nominated for Mid Ulster in November’s Assembly election.
In fact, Kelly had resigned from the party earlier and hadn’t sought nomination. But that’s a minor point. What’s of interest is that journalists covering the press conference were handed a statement by Gerry Adams commending de Brun to Mid Ulster voters and assuring them that SF believed that “stripping acute services from Tyrone and south Derry is...unacceptable.”
But who was Minister for Health at Stormont in 2002 when the plans were published to “strip acute services from Tyrone and south Derry?” The self-same Ms. de Brun, of course. Was she embarrassed at hearing her party leader describe the policy she’d presided over as “unacceptable?” Apparently not.
There’s another thing. The Executive Ms. de Brun was a member of rode rough-shod over trade union and community objections to impose Private Finance Initiatives on hospitals and schools.
Hostility
There was some uneasiness about this in the SF rank and file. Who was the one SF member to voice unequivocal hostility to PFI on the floor at Stormont? John Kelly. Here’s part of his November 2001 speech.
“The British Medical Journal described PFI as ‘perfidious, financial idiocy that could destroy the NHS.’ PFI projects...reduce pay, employment and working conditions. PFI represents an unacceptable increase in the privatisation of economic and social life. Critically, PFI involves the determination of such public services as health and education, using unaccountable, commercial criteria rather than those based on social need. In a nutshell, PFI represents profit before people.
“No party which calls itself a social democratic party or, like Sinn Féin, a Socialist Republican party, indeed, no party with a social conscience...can give way to the concept of PFI...”
But SF went ahead and privatised hand over fist. It was that contradiction as much as any other which pushed Kelly and the party he had helped to found apart. Media coverage of his departure concentrated on his “flabbergasted” reaction to Gerry Adams denying any involvement in the IRA. But his stance on PFI is more directly relevant to current argument. Anyone in the South tempted to take the anti-privatisation declarations at the recent ardfheis seriously should ponder Kelly’s experience.
On-message SFers have a stock response to these observations. The North’s different, they say. The fact that we compromised on privatisation (and much else) at Stormont doesn’t mean we’ll back down on the same issues at Leinster House. The Executive wasn’t a normal coalition. Our long-oppressed electorate would have been left unrepresented if we hadn’t joined. So we had no choice.
This is nonsense. Working-class voters—-whether they gave Sinn Féin first preference or not—-would, clearly, have been better represented had the party opted for opposition and boosted the fight against PFI. The excuse given for joining the Executive is just a cover-story for a policy of “Labour must wait.” Every party in history which ever ditched progressive policies in order to get into government has explained that this was in the wider interests of their electorate. To have stayed out would have left their disadvantaged voters at the mercy of unrestrained reactionaries. Labour in southern Ireland, the Greens in Germany, etc. have all spun the same line. Nobody ever says, We did it because we wanted our backsides on ministerial seats. They all say what Sinn Féin is saying. There is no reason to believe that what they did in the North they won’t do in the South, if the post-election arithmetic allows it. It was because John Kelly couldn’t bring himself to continue down that road that he and Sinn Féin parted company.  

 Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 217
What lies behind the Ardoyne tradgedies?
Virtually every piece of commentary on the suicides of young men in Ardoyne mentioned the area being left behind by the peace process. But few ventured to suggest what it was about the peace process which had brought this about.
Local Sinn Fein and SDLP leaders claimed that, compared with Protestant areas, Ardoyne has been starved of facilities. All four leisure centres in north Belfast are in areas Catholics wouldn’t be safe traveling into, for example.  The message is that the process is tilted against Catholics and that this has helped create conditions in which young men have despaired, and turned inwards.
This is curiously reminiscent of the explanations offered a year ago for the attacks on Ardoyne children walking to school past neighbouring Glenbryn.  Glenbryn had been left behind, it was said. Local residents couldn’t visit the post-office in safety. Abandonment and alienation had generated resentment, directed outwards against Catholic children making their way to Holy Cross.
A £9 million refurbishment programme was put in place for Glenbryn. Now it’s reported that, “special efforts will be made to tackle the lack of facilities for (Ardoyne) teenagers.”  Some might wonder how the same situation can have sparked despair on “both sides.” If the Catholics are left behind, surely the Protestants must be forging ahead? Or vice-versa.
But, as this paper has long argued, not only is it possible, it’s inevitable that “both sides” will feel shortchanged as the process is played out. The Agreement corrals Catholics and Protestants into separate camps, assuring each of fair play as they compete for diminishing resources. This is a sure-fire recipe for generating grievance on both sides.
This does have relevance to the spate of suicides in Ardoyne. Urged by all in authority to find your sense of validation in the advance of your community vis-à-vis “the other side”, the realisation that, actually, you are regarded by society as worthless, and that there’s no communal remedy, can devastate the spirit.
Grotesque
But it would be grotesque to advance this as a full explanation. Every suicide is a specific and personal individual act which cannot be rationalised by reference to general truths.  The specific factors in Ardoyne include “punishment” attacks by the “Irish National Liberation Army.” Although this, too, cannot be offered as a full explanation, neither can it be coincidence that Anthony O’Neill and Barney Cairns, both 18, who ended their lives in recent days, had been victims of INLA assaults.
A spokesman for INLA’s political wing, the IRSP, explained the assaults: “The INLA, against their will (were) acting under pressure from the community.”  According to his family, young O’Neill had been stripped by an INLA gang and left trembling naked down a manhole for hours before being dragged out and subjected to a prolonged vicious beating.
The notion that the INLA had done this “against their will...acting under pressure from the community,” is an insult to the people of Ardoyne and to working class people generally. It’s hard to imagine anything more calculated to reduce a youngster’s sense of self-worth to nil.
The socialist approach is from the opposite direction. It begins from observing two solid facts—-that the main cause of “anti-social behaviour” is poverty, and that, overwhelmingly, young people want to play a positive role in society.
Tackling the problem is only possible in the context of fighting against poverty. And young people have to feel that they have a valued role in this fight.  And it’s the fight against poverty that the divisions enshrined in the Agreement can be overcome.
Neither the pro-Agreement commentariat nor the likes of the INLA have anything to contribute to this project.  Youngsters from Ardoyne, as from any working class area, need politics which invite them to take control of their own lives as part of a movement of the working class and the marginalised to take control of society.
Only revolutionary socialism can offer this vision.

 Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 216
The struggle goes on
IAN PAISLEY looked a little bewildered at Belfast’s Ramada Hotel on February 6th at the launch of his party’s proposals for restoring devolution. Some observers thought he was a bit out of it, on account of decrepit old age. But more likely he was perplexed by the unusual experience of one of his policy initiatives failing to draw hostile fire from any mainstream media or political direction.
“A blueprint worthy of study,” reckoned the Irish News. “A thoughtful and constructive document,” declared the Belfast Newsletter. “Some very interesting ideas...I think they are worth discussing,” mused Northern Secretary Paul Murphy. None of the other main parties rushed to endorse the proposals. But none dismissed the document out of hand either.
All agreed to discuss it. Among the wider public, there wasn’t exactly a fever of excitement. Radio journalists dispatched to record reaction on the streets had difficulty finding passers-by who knew what the proposals were, and even greater difficulty coaxing comment out of them. For the record, the DUP is offering three possible new arrangements at Stormont—-voluntary coalition, mandatory coalition and corporate Assembly. Anyone desperate for the detail can look up the DUP website.
Essentially, all are ways of ensuring, (a) that there can be no Executive without the DUP and, (b) that the DUP cannot be forced to sit on an Executive with Sinn Fein if the IRA hasn’t disbanded. The DUP says the proposals are its opening shot in the renegotiation of the Agreement. The other parties say there’ll be no renegotiation but that they’ll discuss the proposals in the context of a “review” of the Agreement.
Talks are already under way about how to organise the renegotition/review. But nobody expects progress until June at least, because none of the parties wants to go into the European election having conceded ground to anybody else.
Background
Against this background, it’s small wonder hardly anybody outside the membership of the mainstream parties can muster interest. The sense of futility is increased by a widespread feeling that sooner or later, when it suits them, all four main parties are certain to do the business and resume office. After all, Sinn Fein has accepted that partition will remain until such times as the majority in the North says otherwise—-which has been the Unionist position since 1921.
At the other end of the sectarian spectrum, the DUP has accepted that Nationalist assent is necessary for any system to work. So, there’s a solid basis for a deal already there. It might be thought, then, that there’d be signs of rising frustration and increasing pressure on the parties to get on with it. But that’s hardly the case either.
Which suggests that few people expect that a functioning Assembly and Executive would have a dramatic effect on the day-to-day problems which they face.
Functioning
If there was palpable feeling that a functioning administration would have a positive impact on wages, living standards, the state of the health service, the funding of higher education, whatever, then we’d expect loud insistent calls on the parties to get on with it. Unions, community and student groups, campaigns of one sort and another would be making their voices heard. But there’s little sign of this happening.
Certainly, a majority of people on all sides in the North would prefer a devolved administration to the present set-up. The line-up of third-rate Blairites at the NIO has something to do with this. And, as one NIPSA striker remarked at a Guildhall Square rally in Derry, “When it’s the local lot, you at least think you have a chance of getting your hands on their throats.” But it’s a broad preference, not a sharp, desperate desire, for devolution. Because it’s widely sensed that the action that’s needed will come elsewhere. Whatever happens in the renegotiation-review over the coming weeks, the real problems will continue to seethe. Assembly or no Assembly, the struggle goes on.

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 215
Why Fianna Fail is not so unusual
AS THE Tribunals at Dublin Castle trundle endlessly on, the question is asked: what is it about the political culture of Southern Ireland, and Fianna Fail in particular, which makes it so vulnerable to the backhander and the brown envelope?
 Huge tracts of the Amazon have been scythed down to provide newsprint for pondering the answers. Is it the malign influence of Charlie Haughey?  Or weak regulation? Or a tradition of local cronyism carried into the world of big business?  Before answering these questions, we might ask another: what it is about Italian politics which has led to a spate of corruption stories, of which the dodgy dealings of Prime Minister Berlusconi and the Parmalat affair are merely the most prominent?  Or, what aspects of US politics helped produce the swarm of scandal engulfing vice-president Dick Cheney’s Halliburton company? The latest twist has seen the company, and Cheney personally, accused of bunging more than $100 million to officials in Nigeria to smooth the way to a multi-billion gas plant contract.
 This is par for the course in Nigeria, it seems,  where three former cabinet ministers have just been charged with pocketing huge bribes from French suppliers of computer systems. What does this say about the political culture of the African State?
 Then there’s Israel, where property developer David Appel has been indicted for slipping $700,000 to the son of Ariel Sharon for help in pressurizing Greek officials for the go-ahead to build a gigantic casino-cum-hotel complex on a Mediterranean island. Something to do with the cultural assumptions on which Israeli politics rest, perhaps. But what?  
And what’s the connection between British political culture and the complicity of the Bank of England in the staggering Bank of Commerce and Credit International affair?  BCCI turns out not to have been a bank at all but to have been an elaborate scam from the outset, set up to siphon zillions from victims all over the world.  Key to its success was its Bank of England licence, issued despite glaring evidence of wrongdoing,  endorsing BCCI as an upstanding, properlyconstituted institution.
 Then there’s tycoon Mikhail Khordorkovski, currently resident in a small cell in Moscow awaiting trial on theft and political corruption charges involving sums beyond the range of imagination. This may tell us something about Russian political culture. But what?
Disgrace
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl now lives in obscure disgrace after revelations that he accepted illegal political donations. Is there something German about this, some flaw in the political culture of that country that leads to chancellors trousering bribes?
 We could make a world tour of political scandals at the moment. France, Australia, Sweden, Brazil,  Japan, etc., etc. Everywhere, we’d find local commentators earnestly wondering what it is about their particular country or their leading political parties which has brought this appalling situation about.
 But if the explanation is to be found in the political culture of individual countries, or in the underlying nature of Fianna Fail, Likud, Forza Italiana, the US Republicans or whomever, how come the phenomenon is found everywhere? Isn’t it more logical to look for an explanation in what these countries and parties have in common?  
For the last 20 years, all across the capitalist world, governments have bowed down to market forces. “Regulation” has become a dirty word.  Establishment commentators pour scorn on the notion of State enterprise or control. The free-wheeling entrepreneur fixated on quick profit, with no time for red tape and no patience with petty interference,  is the hero of the hour.
What do all the countries and parties mired in scandal have in common, then? Capitalism, that’s what. And a prevailing political culture holding that capitalist market forces must be given free rein.  That’s not the conclusion we find in the mainstream media. Because the mainstream media are themselves part and parcel of the capitalist system.

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 214
Bush set to collect the peace dividend
CAMPAIGNERS against the arms trade scored a victory in Derry at the beginning of January when the city council passed a resolution condemning the global arms industry and instructing the town clerk to write to Raytheon for confirmation that no military equipment is being produced at its Derry plant.
Raytheon, the third-biggest arms manufacturer in the world, was introduced to Derry five years ago by Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume. Both Hume and fellow 1998 Peace Laureate David Trimble cited the arrival of the company as evidence of a “peace dividend”.
The glaring irony helped focus attention on the company’s start-up in Derry. The Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign (FEIC) was the result.  FEIC led a dogged, imaginative campaign which culminated in the special council meeting and resolution.  Although the SDLP and Sinn Fein supported the FEIC motion, their position wasn’t clear-cut. Both parties said they’d want Raytheon out if it was discovered armaments were being produced in Derry.
Bt they accepted Raytheon’s assurances that this asn’t so. FEIC doesn’t take Raytheon’s word, but didn’t highlight this difference on the day. The motion was “as much as we could have hoped for,” said a spokesperson, adding that the council vote had confirmed “the integrity of the peace process”.
Boasted
However, on the same day, January 7th, news came from Tuscon, Arizona, which threw light from a different angle on what’s at stake in the Raytheon issue and put a question mark against “the integrity of the peace process:” Raytheon announced that the Irish Government had ordered a batch of its Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The Javelin, boasted the company, is “the world’s first, one-man-transportable fire-and-forget antiarmour missile system. It saw extensive use by US and allied soldiers, marines and Special Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Javelin is approved for international sales through the US Army’s Foreign Military Sales System.”
The last sentence is key. The Javelin is a high-tech state-of-the-art weapon which can only be exported after the US Army has scrutinised the sales contract and approved both the purchasing government and the purposes to which it’s intended the weapon will be put. The Dublin deal, said Raytheon, “the first sale (of the Javelin) to a neutral, nonaligned nation,” would “provide the Irish Defence Forces with a highly effective means of deterrence in front-line peace-keeping missions, (allowing) a single soldier to defeat all known armoured vehicles.”
Clearly, Southern Ireland is now seen as a State which can be counted on to make no move which the US military might disapprove of. The “front-line peace-keeping missions” will be such as to meet US approval. “Neutral and non-aligned” the South might be, but neutral and non-aligned on a particular side.  It was this development announced in Tuscon, rather than the passage of the resolution in Derry Guildhall the same day, which was the more significant for understanding the “peace process.”
Welcomed
The Dublin Government, the SDLP and Sinn Fein have all warmly welcomed the US as arbiter and supervisor of the peace process. It’s commonly suggested that the US has undertaken this role selflessly, that there’s nothing in it for Washington, that it has no implications for attitudes to US power generally.
Sinn Fein leaders in particular maintain that they can work with the Bush administration as allies as far as the Agreement is concerned, while opposing US empire-building elsewhere.
But it’s a nonsense to imagine that the relationship which has developed between the US and Ireland with regard to the peace process is entirely separate from the developing relationship illustrated in the Javelin deal.
From the point of view of Bush, Powell etc., Raytheon’s deal with Dublin represented another little fragment of the New World Order falling into place—all the more neatly on account of the peace process.
There’s a peace dividend alright, paid out in political influence, and presently being pocketed by George Bush.

Taken from Socialist Worker Issue 213
Now that is how to fight poverty
There was an irony about the fact that the Nipsa strike in the North came on the same day—December 11th—as British Chancellor Gordon Brown’s pre-budget statement at Westminster.
Brown’s statement was so brimming with rhetoric against social injustice that one Guardian columnist described it as a “declaration of war on child poverty.” Another suggested that it “embraced the traditional Left values of the unions and Old Labour”—supposedly part of Brown’s strategy to replace Blair as Labour leader some time in 2004.
In fact, the Nipsa action will do more to fight poverty than Brown’s rhetoric. Indeed, the strike was aimed against policies associated with Brown which generate poverty.  And as for the “values of the unions,” the strikers were hamstrung by Tory anti-union laws which have been retained by New Labour.
All evidence suggests countries with low levels of child poverty have two things in common—high “market wages” (what you get before benefits or tax credits), and a relatively narrow gap between high and low pay. Northern Ireland doesn’t conform to this model, and nothing in Brown’s statement will change this reality.
Gap
Northern Ireland has the lowest wages in these islands, and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. These are the main reasons that the levels of child poverty here are so high.  More than half of children living in poverty come from families where there is at least one person working. And some of these workers are the government’s own employees—the very people who were on the picket lines on December 11th. Many of the strikers are so low-paid they can claim Working Tax Credit.
The difference is that, while New Labour talks of eliminating the reasons for child poverty, the strikers were actually doing something about it.  Going round the picket lines in Derry gave an inkling of what had driven the Nipsa members to take action. In one recently decentralised office, many work seven-day weeks in an effort to make a decent wage. One man told us he had had one Sunday off since the summer to be with his children.  “When you tell someone you’re a civil servant, they think you’re on the pig’s back. They assume you are earning a decent wage. But most of us aren’t.”
When the jobs in question were moved from Belfast to Derry, there was rejoicing in the city. But the strikers explained that to get the job they had to agree to weekend working and eight-to-eight shifts. So much for “the work-life balance.”
Cushy
And in case anybody thinks that, while many civil service jobs may be poorly paid, they are still a cushy number, the strikers had tales of working conditions that were little short of mind-boggling. At the moment, there are thousands of “temporary casual” workers on as little as £8,000 a year. In one office, some of them don’t have a chair to sit on.
They have to hope that someone will be off sick so they can borrow a chair. Otherwise, they kneel at desks or in the middle of the floor! Over the coming weeks, civil servants in the North will work to rule, and there will be more strikes. Nobody should doubt rank-and-file determination.
But the obsession of the union leadership with avoiding all-out action and staying within the law is a source of potential weakness. An official Nipsa leaflet on the day warned members not to place more than the permitted six picketers on any one workplace, to annoy nobody, and to obey the police at all times!
The general lesson is not to put faith in the manoeuvring of New Labour leaders but to understand that the way to fight poverty and social injustice is for the working class to organise itself and go for the strongest and most effective action that has adequate support, irrespective of pleas from the communal politicians or pressure from the Tory/New Labour anti-union laws.