DUP: WHO THEY ARE AND HOW TO FIGHT THEM

Far from being strong and stable, as the robotic Theresa May repeated ad nauseum during the general election, the new Westminster government is a toxic Tory coalition of chaos.
May's reliance on the misnamed Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in her desperate bid to cling onto power - and prevent a left-leaning minority Corbyn government - has built explosive instability into the very foundations of her regime. 

But who are the DUP? What are their roots? How did they manage to become the biggest party in Northern Ireland? And how can socialists and trade unionists dislodge this reactionary Tory party from its dominant position?

The DUP's particularly reactionary brand of conservatism has smacked those previously unaware of their politics like a stinking wet fish in the face. 

This is the party that blocked equal marriage by wielding their power of veto in the Northern Ireland Assembly, after a majority had voted in favour of bringing the North into line with every other part of the UK. The DUP regard LGBT people as "an abomination", with one of their MPs declaring they could only be "saved by the power of prayer". In fact, in 1977 they launched and were at the heart of the charmingly named campaign, Save Ulster From Sodomy. 

They are creationists, denying science. Climate change deniers - although as we will mention later, ruthless, corrupt opportunists when they can make a fast buck out of allegedly 'green' environmental measures, as implemented by their power-sharing government with Sinn Fein!

Old Testament DUP 

Their attitude to women is equally prehistoric. They deny women the right to control over their own bodies through the right to abortion - even in cases of rape. 

As Theresa May discovered after declaring her intention of negotiating a 'confidence and supply' deal with "our friends in the DUP" - a loose version of coalition government - the DUP are strict Sabbatarians. They refused to negotiate on a Sunday, and kept the hapless May waiting until the Monday. 

It's hardly surprising that comedian Frankie Boyle described them as "the political wing of the Old Testament", or that another wag dubbed the DUP "the Old Testament with fortnightly bin collections."

Pork Barrel Politics
But when Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson rushed to the nearest TV cameras to declare she had been on the phone to Theresa May asking for reassurances that a deal with the DUP would not mean a reversal of legislation on LGBT rights here, she was guilty of one of three things. Profound ignorance of the politics and roots of the DUP; cynical opportunism to win kudos amongst voters for her 'oh-so-liberal' social policies; or a bit of both. 

The DUP are backward-looking reactionaries, but they are also masters at duping their own electorate by having other policies attuned to win votes from mostly working-class Protestants. In fact, surveys have shown that 73% of DUP voters favour advances on abortion rights, and a majority favour equal marriage. So pushing their bigotry on these social issues doesn't win them a majority amongst Protestants at the ballot box, and won't be their preoccupation in carving out power and influence for themselves at Westminster.

Instability 

Rather than push their reactionary social policy agenda, the DUP are far more interested in exploiting their unexpected power as kingmakers to wring funds out of May for some vote-catching projects, or as the BBC N Ireland correspondent rightly put it, "to have slightly less severe austerity than they'd otherwise impose, for they certainly won't get enough funds to avoid austerity measures altogether". 

As opportunist vote-hunters with an ear for working class concerns, the DUP are opposed to Tory plans on pension cuts, and call for UK-wide abolition of the bedroom tax.

And whatever concessions this pork barrel politics forces on May, it will add to the severity of cuts for working class people elsewhere in the UK; another strand of government instability. 

Brexit Chaos 

One of the DUP's other policy planks could spell disaster for their Tory friends: they are pro-Brexit, but oppose a 'hard border' between the North and South of Ireland. Some close observers believe they preached the virtues of a Leave vote in the EU Referendum in order to curry favour with voters concerned to hold onto their British identity, in the belief that a majority in the UK would reject their advice and vote to Remain - thereby handing the DUP a win-win situation. 

Their voters in the working class and rural poor would be potentially crucified by the impact of border tariffs and trade barriers, so the DUP try to square the circle, advocating an open border between the EU member state in the South and the Brexit North - but try to avoid arguing for special status for Northern Ireland within a Brexit deal, in case that encourages the SNP in their pursuit of the same for Scotland, thereby undermining the cohesion of the 'United' Kingdom. 

At the very least, their presence in the Westminster government weakens the full-blown, Little Englander 'hard Brexit' advocated by the Blue Brexiteers of the Tory right, now advocated by May. Even on that one issue, a 'coalition of chaos'. 

Sectarian History 

Those who rightly condemn the DUP for their mind-blowing reactionary social policies - but leave it at that - are in serious danger of implying all Protestants who made them the dominant Unionist party in several recent elections are a homogenous block of Bible-thumping, anti-women, homophobic, anti-Catholic bigots. 

Not so! Many of the DUP's party activists undoubtedly fit that description, but their broad base have voted the way they did for entirely different and varied reasons, rooted in the history of Ireland, the consciously divisive role of the British landowning and capitalist class in Ireland historically, and indeed the role of other political forces in Ireland to this very day. 

Looking at the growth of the DUP - from a fledgling party launched in 1971 by Ian Paisley, to the winners of 36% of all votes cast in N Ireland recently - actually only serves to emphasise their anti-working class role, as perpetrators of division within working class communities. 

In turn, it shows that socialists and trade unionists in Scotland who wish to help break the grisly embrace of the DUP over many working class Protestants need to assist those brave forces fighting for working class unity, equal rights and socialism in Ireland - not reinforce the sectarian divisions by being cheerleaders for the nationalist Sinn Fein. 

Divide-and-Rule 

Ireland was conquered as Britain's first colony. The methods used included bloody military conquest, land robbery, mass death through entirely avoidable famines, and a long history of 'divide-and-rule' tactics, pitting Catholic and Protestant peasants and workers against each other. 

But throughout the centuries, waves of united struggles confronted the same ruling classes of Britain, with peasants and - in the 20th century - workers periodically overcoming the sectarian divisions injected into them by the landlords, capitalists and military chiefs, who sought to exploit them. 

The pinnacle of division was reached after the 1920s Partition of Ireland - and the religious and class-based discrimination that particularly hammered the Catholic minority in the North, but also working class Protestants. For instance, businesses had up to 30 votes in council elections - the bodies allocating jobs and housing - but poor Catholics and Protestants without property (tenants) had no vote at all, right up to the late 1960s!

Workers' Unity

In the 1960s, the trend was towards integration of working class communities, through mixed housing estates, radical struggles and united strikes by workers, and then the mass upsurge for Civil Rights in 1968, involving masses of young Catholics, but also big sections of Protestant youth and trade unionists. 

The entirely justified demand for an end to discrimation against Catholics on jobs, housing allocation - and even voting rights - initially won widespread support across both communities. 

But the leaders of both the Civil Rights and trade union movements failed to clearly link the demand for civil rights with a struggle for well-paid jobs and decent housing for all. 

This opened the door to reactionary bigots like founder of the Christian fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church, Rev. Ian Paisley, to whip up support for his anti-Catholic vitriol amongst the most reactionary minority of rural, middle class and despairing sections of Protestants. 

He was able to whip up the justified fears of many that in a society of mass unemployment, low wages and appalling housing conditions (amongst the worst in Europe at the time), more opportunities for Catholics meant fewer for Protestants. 

Paisleyite Thuggery 

Paisley wasn't averse to mobilizing thugs with guns and truncheons to attack Civil Rights marchers - or two years later to arson-attack Catholics in their homes, leading to the biggest population displacement since the Second World War. 

By the 1960s the British ruling class had no interest in holding onto Northern Ireland. British monopoly firms by then were making twice as much profit from investments in the South as in the North. 

For them, some arrangement of a unified capitalist Ireland, willing to provide copious profits for British and multinational companies, was far preferable to subsidizing an unstable statelet they'd created half a century earlier. But they'd created the monster of sectarianism, which wouldn't lie down and accept the plans of the modern British capitalist class and their governments. 

Failed Opportunities
History is made by the struggle between living forces. The 1960s in Ireland - in the context of world-wide movements against inequality, capitalism and wars - was a golden opportunity for the organised trade unions and labour movement to advance working class unity and struggle towards a socialist Ireland. 

Instead, the leadership of that movement failed to advocate and lead such a unifying struggle, and the forces of Paisleyism went from a tiny but violent fringe - held in contempt by most Protestant workers - to a much bigger, and brutally divisive force.

The failures of the same labour movement leadership to resist state repression - after the Paisleyite pogroms against Catholics, and the introduction of British troops in August 1969 - led to the emergence of the Provisional IRA. Regardless of the intentions of the young volunteers, the methods of the Provos deeply alienated Protestants, driving them further into the arms of the likes of Paisley - their own worst enemies. 

DUP Launch

Paisley and his cohort launched the DUP in that context, in 1971, appealing to the fears of many Protestants that the upper-class Unionist Party leadership - landowners and factory owners, dubbed by many 'the fur coat brigade' - were selling them out. 

The Unionist Party tried belatedly to arrange power-sharing with middle-class nationalist politicians, hoping to stabilize Ireland for better profit margins for the rich. 

At first only a minority - mostly in rural villages and small towns - responded to the DUP's sectarian rants. But over the years they made inroads, based on growing suspicions towards the 'fur coat' Unionist politicians; fear of being driven into an unattractive united Ireland by the armed struggle and sometimes nakedly sectarian actions of the IRA; and the (false) impression that the demagogic Ian Paisley was standing up for 'the Protestant people'. 

Ulster Resistance: DUP paramilitary wing

The fortunes of Paisley and the DUP were boosted by the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, arranged over the heads of the population by the governments of London, Dublin and the Ulster Unionists in Belfast. This earlier variant of a power-sharing agreement met a torrent of vitriol from Paisley at a series of mass 'Ulster Says No' rallies, which whipped up the fear of rule by Dublin amongst sections of increasingly beleaguered Protestants. 

But when the Tories tried to block Jeremy Corbyn's advance amongst the working class and youth in the recent General Election by dredging up his links with Sinn Fein and the IRA in the days of the Troubles, they display their customary, rank hypocrisy by now holding hands with the DUP. 

That's the party whose founders and past leaders - including Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster - all attended the secretive, invitation-only rally in Belfast in November 1986, to launch the paramilitary Ulster Resistance. Paisley was secretly filmed donning the red beret of this militaristic outfit, then saluting its assembled 'soldiers'. 

From the Bullet to the Ballot Box
Ulster Resistance collaborated with the murderous loyalist paramilitaries of the UVF, Red Hand Commandos and UDA to smuggle guns, rocket launchers and copious caches of ammunition from the likes of Lebanon and South Africa.
One of those arrested for these gun-running operations - more than once - was Noel Little, whose daughter Emma Little Pengelly has just been elected as DUP MP for South Belfast. 

So Ulster Resistance was effectively the paramilitary wing of the DUP in the few years of its active existence, at the height of Paisleyite mobilizations against the power-sharing 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. 

But in a parallel evolution to that of Sinn Fein/IRA, the very same DUP luminaries turned towards the ballot box rather than the bullet in subsequent years, grabbing power (and privileged incomes!) for themselves - through the new version of power-sharing... with the politicians they'd for years denounced as the Devil incarnate, mobilizing and misleading hundreds of thousands through a sectarian quagmire for their own ends. 

Demand for Peace 

After 30 years of 'the Troubles', with over 3,600 dead and countless maimed and scarred for life, working class communities were war-weary, sick of the killings, and made their desire for an end to the bitter conflict known to the loyalist killing gangs and IRA, through a series of vast demonstrations, peace rallies and united workers' strikes against killings and death threats. 

Those movements of trade unionists, and women in the communities - combined with the growing exhaustion of the paramilitaries, as they came to recognize the failures of their armed methods, and felt increasingly isolated from the mood of 'their own' communities - led to the peace talks, and the ceasefires of 1998. 

Paisley - who for decades had demagogically denounced any suggestion of 'power-sharing' as a concession to 'Popery' - was instrumental in establishing the power-sharing government, becoming First Minister, with his Deputy in the person of ex-IRA leader Martin McGuinness. The two became popularly known as 'The Chuckle Brothers', such was their level of friendly collaboration... including in horrendous austerity cuts, privatisation, welfare benefit attacks, and a drive to reduce Corporation Tax! 

Power-sharing Agreement - for the Political Elite  

The Peace Process, through both the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the 2006 St Andrew's Agreement, established a system of power-sharing that is purely between a political elite; it certainly doesn't open the door to working class people of either or both communities sharing power. 

It's a system with a history in other nations (such as Lebanon) also bedeviled by communal conflicts; divisions implanted by imperialist powers in the first place. 

It's an institutionalized arrangement between parties rooted in segregated communities.

Whilst the accompanying ceasefires were and are welcome - and the overwhelming majority of both Catholic and Protestant people are totally and utterly opposed to going back to the bleak, bloody days of the Troubles - the power-sharing agreement tends to reinforce the sectarian segregation between communities. 

Institutionalised Sectarianism 

In the Northern Ireland Assembly, every elected MLA has to be designated as either a Unionist, Nationalist, or Other. Additionally, what's called the Petition of Concern gives a full-blown veto to any 30 MLAs - either Unionist or Nationalist - against anything the Assembly majority might vote for. In that built-in mechanism, the duly elected MLAs who refuse to define themselves as either Unionist or Nationalist, but are classified as Others, literally disappear from the voting process. So much for democracy! 

A recent case, before last Christmas, illustrates this monstrously sectarian set-up. A majority of Assembly members voted for a motion demanding the resignation of Arlene Foster over her handling of Cash for Ash, which 30 Unionist MLAs vetoed, turning the Assembly majority into its opposite. 

The same device was used by the DUP to block lifting the ban on same sex marriage. 

DUP/Sinn Fein Austerity 

Theresa May is being propped up in office courtesy this voting system in Northern Ireland, which institutionalizes and reinforces a sectarian headcount, as was the case to an unprecedented degree in the June general election.

For a decade, the DUP and Sinn Fein caught up with and then eclipsed their more 'moderate' rivals in the respective communities: the Ulster Unionist Party and SDLP. 

For a decade the DUP and Sinn Fein were content to collaborate in savage cuts; privatisation of services either through the Assembly or councils they controlled; a shared ambition to reduce the public sector; reduction of corporation tax; and benefit cuts averaging £2,000 to over 100,000 people. 

The DUP is reactionary to the core on women's issues; Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams have both described Sinn Fein as 'an anti-abortion party'. In the South's parliament, the Dail, Sinn Fein TDs abstained in a vote on a Bill calling for the right to abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities in 2013, only adopting that one narrow concession to abortion rights at their subsequent party conference. 

Cash for Ash Scandal 

Before his death, McGuinness toppled the DUP/Sinn Fein government led by Arlene Foster in January 2017, by resigning as Deputy First Minister. The issue was the Cash for Ash scandal. 

This was a scheme introduced in Britain, then adopted by Foster when she was Enterprise Minister in 2012 - with one critical alteration that opened the door to outrageous corruption. 

The cap on state subsidies for use of allegedly environmentally friendly biomass wooden pellets was scrapped, so that for every £1 spent by businesses, big farmers and individuals burning this fuel, they were awarded £1.60 from the public purse. 

When her advisers alerted Foster of the dangers of abuse, back in 2013, she dismissed them, and several of the DUP hierarchy, advisers and friends accelerated their investments in the scheme. 

Empty factories and farm outhouses literally burnt these pellets endlessly. They burnt taxpayers' money, to the extent an estimated £490million overspend in subsidies mounted up, with warnings from the Audit Commission that the eventual handout to these corrupt chancers will reach £1billion. 

Turning a Blind Eye to Corruption 

These corrupt practices were known to all the major politicians since at least early 2016, but not one of the parties - including Sinn Fein - lifted a finger to expose or end it. 

As recently as December 2016, Sinn Fein abstained on a vote in the Assembly demanding Arlene Foster's resignation as First Minister pending a public inquiry. They only brought the issue to a head, through Martin McGuinness triggering the March 2017 Assembly elections, after public protests erupted, with Sinn Fein at risk of losing their popular base for turning a blind eye to their DUP partners' corruption. 

Sectarian Headcount 

In the March Assembly elections and subsequent June 2017 general election, Sinn Fein whipped up righteous anger at the DUP's methods. In the words of their recently elected Fermanagh MP, Michelle Gildernew, they called on Catholic voters "to put manners on them".   

They conducted a belligerent campaign to make Sinn Fein the biggest party in the North, which wiped out all remaining SDLP MPs, but also played right into the hands of the DUP. 

The DUP focused on dire warnings to the Protestants that SF, Gerry Adams and 'the IRA' would become the biggest party unless they all voted DUP. 

In the most blatant sectarian headcount since the height of the Troubles in 1970, with appeals to "keep out the other side", the DUP rose to 36% of all votes cast by both communities, and Sinn Fein to 29%. 

The inbuilt sectarian division that the power-sharing system assumes allowed both major parties to escape scrutiny on their appalling track record on austerity; on social, economic, class questions that impact on the lives and livelihoods of working class people, regardless of what religious tag is attached to them; which side of the 'peace lines' they live on. 

United Working Class 

The DUP are blatant reactionaries, who only get away with their anti-working class agenda by whipping up the fears of working class Protestants of losing their identity and rights by being coerced into a capitalist united Ireland. 

Sinn Fein is nothing like a socialist party - even though many who vote for them are - and are incapable of appealing to Protestant workers - in part because of their historic links with the IRA's campaign of individual terrorism. 

In the recent elections, they've turned up the volume on their calls for a border poll - referenda North and South on reunification of Ireland, as permitted under the Good Friday Agreement - something now also echoed by the Green Tory Fianna Fáil party in the South. 

Sinn Fein have become increasingly triumphalist and belligerent on this demand, with references to demographic changes possibly making the Catholics a majority in the North a few years ahead. The sum total impact of that approach was to dragoon even more Protestants into voting DUP, whose vote rose nearly 10%, out of fear and uncertainty. Further sectarian polarization on the electoral front. 

There is a growing, desperate need for a working class socialist party that actively reaches across the community divide, uniting workers on class issues, but also guaranteeing the democratic rights of all communities in a socialist Ireland. 

A Socialist Ireland 

The vision of a socialist Ireland - a world apart from the type of societies that currently exist, North and South - is what's required to unite working class people, by convincing  them not only of the social and economic advantages, but that guarantees for all minorities would be embedded in such a socialist democracy. 

Consent, through patient explanation - and above all years of united struggle by working class people on common, class questions - is the route to a socialist Ireland, not ultimatums or coercion in any form.

NORTHERN IRELAND: for working class unity and socialism

The March 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly Elections have thrown up all manner of questions and crises.

Will the Assembly institutions collapse? Will there be another immediate election? Will Westminster have to impose Direct Rule and risk an almighty backlash from both Catholic and Protestant communities? How did the DUP cling on - just, by one seat - as the biggest party in the midst of the stink of corruption enveloping their leader, Arlene Foster? What does the 3.9% rise in Sinn Fein's vote share signify? Will they push for an Irish border poll? And above all, what should socialists - or even active trade unionists - think of all this?

CASH FOR ASH

The elections arose from the Cash for Ash scandal, which eventually led to Sinn Fein's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness resigning, thereby collapsing the power-sharing Executive between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein (SF), triggering another Assembly election just 10 months after the previous one.

What is Cash for Ash? Rotten, stinking corruption of the highest order, costing £490million in overspend in subsidies to businesses and landowners, which will have to mean £490m additional cuts to other public services. This in a society where savage austerity is already being implemented by the outgoing DUP/Sinn Fein Executive - with, for instance, 75% of the GP surgeries in my native County Fermanagh facing closure!

The Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI) was introduced in 2012 by the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Arlene Foster - MLA for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, and subsequently Northern Ireland First Minister. The RHI is a scheme first introduced in Britain, with subsidies for non-domestic heating systems that are supposedly environmentally friendly. 

BURNING TAXPAYERS MONEY!

But one profound amendment to the UK scheme was made by Foster and her DUP political advisers; a quite conscious, blatantly corrupt amendment. The cap on the subsidy available was removed. This means that for every £1 spent on biomass wooden pellets to heat up barns and outhouses the likes of big farmers enjoy a subsidy of £1.60! Hence the phrase Cash for Ash; the more they burn, the more money they get off the public purse - from working- and middle-class taxpayers. 

Empty factories and barns have been heated to harvest vast sums of money for businesses and landowners. The Audit Commission for N Ireland has warned it could eventually cost the public an astonishing £1billion in handouts to these corrupt, profiteering chancers.

DUP CORRUPTION 

When some of the DUP advisers raised concerns about the scheme as far back as 2013, Arlene Foster dismissed them. Not only that, but friends and families of the DUP hierarchy proceeded to speed up their applications for RHI subsidies, with a spike in applicants in the months and years following the concerns being raised and ignored by Foster and her cohort. 

To give one more example from my home county: Viscount Brookeborough - part of the Unionist family dynasty that included the longest-serving Prime Minister in the old, post-Partition, sectarian Stormont - owns a vast landed estate of 1,000 acres in Fermanagh. He has grabbed £1.6million for heating buildings on his estate, through this monumental scam.

NO ACTION TAKEN BY MAIN PARTIES 

But until very recently the DUP/SF power-sharing Executive did nothing to combat this crass corruption. The projected £490m overspend was known to all the parties in Stormont since early 2016, but nothing was done by any of the major parties, Sinn Fein included. As recently as December 2016, a motion for Foster's resignation was put to the Assembly; Sinn Fein abstained in the vote, rather than topple the corrupt First Minister and Executive. Only the eruption of growing disgust amongst the population, aired in the local media, led to SF's Martin McGuinness eventually taking a hardline stance, resigning as Deputy First Minister on 8th January, forcing out Foster and triggering the new elections.

VOTERS' REVULSION 

During the elections, SF made much of the RHI corruption scandal, with posters declaring RHI - Respect, Honesty, Integrity. Their calls for respect and equality particularly resonated with Catholic voters. 

Revulsion at Foster was by no means restricted to the Catholic community that SF are exclusively based in. Many Protestants were appalled, sickened into not turning out to vote, or in a minority of cases voting for 'others'. 

And at time of writing, rumblings within the inner sanctums of the DUP itself are growing louder, with reportedly a third of the DUP MLAs wanting Foster to resign as leader. 

This rumbling rebellion in the DUP reflects the disgust amongst their electoral base - as well as their desire to remove this human roadblock to them getting on with enjoying their over-paid positions, rather than run the risk of yet another election after the 3-week deadline for forming a Unionist-Nationalist power-sharing government.

HOW DID FOSTER CLING ON?

One of the remarkable facts of the election is that the DUP managed to cling onto its absolute vote, although its share fell compared to May 2016 - for the third election in a row. How?

Fundamentally because Foster endlessly recited warnings that Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams and 'the IRA' would become the biggest party unless Protestants turned out and voted DUP. Many will have cast their vote on this negative basis, whilst holding their noses at the stench of corruption surrounding Foster's DUP. Others didn't; hence their net loss of 10 MLAs, and slightly reduced share of the popular vote, in a greatly increased turnout compared to 2016. 

Underlying the success of that communal appeal rests the entire system of government established by the Peace Process in 1998. 

And it's also that governmental structure - the power-sharing arrangements between Unionists and Nationalists - that helped fuel the further advance of Sinn Fein as the biggest party in the Catholic community. In fact, SF were a minuscule 1,168 votes behind the DUP's First Preferences, winning 27.9% of all first preferences against the DUP's 28.1% - as they far more successfully mobilized than the DUP, as reflected in the increased overall turnout of voters - up 10 points from May 2016 to 64%.

POWER-SHARING AGREEMENT - FOR THE POLITICAL ELITE

The Peace Process, through both the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the 2006 St Andrew's Agreement, established a system of power-sharing that is purely between a political elite; it certainly doesn't open the door to working class people of either or both communities sharing power. 

And it's a system with a history in other nations also bedeviled by communal conflicts; divisions implanted by imperialist powers in the first place. 

It's an institutionalized arrangement between parties rooted in segregated communities that was infamously applied in the Lebanon, between parties based in the Christian, Sunni and Shia populations. A divisive political arrangement which only reinforced the communal divisions and eventually fell apart, leading to a savage civil war that decimated that country over 15 years of bloody conflict, from 1975 onwards.

INSTITUTIONALISED SECTARIAN DIVISION 

In the Northern Ireland Assembly, every elected MLA has to be designated as either a Unionist, Nationalist, or Other. Additionally, what's called the Petition of Concern gives a full-blown veto to any 30 MLAs - either Unionist or Nationalist - against anything the Assembly majority might vote for. In that built-in mechanism, the duly elected MLAs who refuse to define themselves as either Unionist or Nationalist, but are classified as Others, literally disappear from the voting process. So much for democracy! 

A recent case, before last Christmas, that illustrates this monstrously sectarian set-up was when a majority of Assembly members voted for a motion demanding the resignation of Arlene Foster over her handling of Cash for Ash, which 30 Unionist MLAs vetoed, turning the Assembly majority into its opposite. The same device was used by the DUP to block lifting the ban on same sex marriage. 

WE ARE DEFINED BY CLASS 

For socialists, class is primary. It's the key definition of the nature of capitalist society. It explains the roots of poverty and inequality. Working class people in Ireland (as in Scotland and worldwide) are exploited by capitalists, bankers and landowners regardless of which religious tag (or none) is attached to them. 

British imperialism has a particularly long, bloody, filthy history of exploitation in Ireland, through ruthless repression and naked incitement of sectarian divisions; the age-old trick of divide-and-rule, rehearsed in its first colony, then practiced across the globe as they conquered lands and labour for the enrichment of the British ruling class. 

Those who view the Assembly elections purely as an unavoidable contest between two irreconcilable tribes, resulting in the dog-fight between the DUP and SF, miss this critical factor entirely.

HIDDEN HISTORY OF WORKERS' UNITY 

Irish history is strewn with the tragic results of imperialism's divide-and-rule. But Ireland's hidden history - all too often unknown even to trade unionists and socialists in Scotland or beyond - also contains whole chapters of heroic working class unity in struggle. 

That's what Edinburgh-born James Connolly and Liverpool-born Jim Larkin strove to build in Ireland - with many glorious successes - over a century ago. 

That's what produced wave after wave of united strikes in N Ireland throughout the 30 years of 'the Troubles'. Not one single industrial action was broken by sectarian division throughout that terrible period. 

In fact, if it hadn't been for the fundamental unity in most workplaces, and several strikes against sectarian threats and killings from either sets of paramilitaries - with Catholic and Protestant trade unionists braving the dangers, striking, picketing and marching together - civil war would have engulfed the North in the 1970s or 1980s. 

WORKING CLASS ROOTS OF CEASEFIRES 

And what most commentators - including many self-defined socialists - utterly ignore, is that the Peace Process itself was at bottom the product of growing opposition to sectarian killings and continued armed struggle by the mass of the working class, both Catholic and Protestant. 

Working class communities became war-weary and sick of failed republican 'urban guerillaism' tarnished by sectarianism, and of the vicious killings of Catholics by the Loyalist paramilitaries. 

People marched in protest, made the armed volunteers aware of their feelings in their respective communities, and the British ruling class seized this opening - and the exhaustion of the armed volunteers - to isolate the paramilitaries and gradually broker a settlement that led to ceasefires and the power-sharing Assembly.

In the absence of a mass, united socialist movement that could bring that instinctive unity and desire for peace to a socialist conclusion, the Peace Process and all its institutions were formed, ensnaring the Republican movement in the ballot box rather than the bullet. 

FLAWED PEACE ASSUMES ETERNAL DIVISION 

But the fatal flaw of that settlement is that it leaves two interlinked features of Ireland entirely intact: sectarian division, and the capitalist system of exploitation that spawned sectarianism in the first place.

The NI Assembly and all its structures assume the working class will never be united, that they'll be forever politically divided, segregated. 

Hence the Unionist/Nationalist/Others categorization of elected MLAs, and the governing Executive being always made up of Unionists and Nationalists, the biggest of them nominating First Minister, the other choosing his/her Deputy. 

It institutionalizes sectarian division, rather than remove it. It segregates political parties, giving them a vested interest in keeping communities apart so they can retain their electoral base, scaring the living daylights out of voters about the risks of victory for 'the other side'. It consciously cuts across the emergence of class-based politics for the working class. 

YOUNG GENERATION SICK OF THE DINOSAURS 

A whole generation has grown up since the ceasefires of nearly 20 years ago. They're overwhelmingly sick of the dinosaurs who dominate political life - but still suffer the complications of the segregated political system. They're mostly in favour of equality on issues like same sex marriage and abortion rights - both blocked by the socially reactionary DUP in particular.

When elections occur, it's almost like two parallel elections happening simultaneously; one for the biggest Unionist party, the other for the biggest Nationalist party. 

For a good 20 years, both of the smaller Unionist and Nationalist parties - the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP - have been discarded by a majority of voters in the respective communities as being useless, untrustworthy, or ineffective - although they both still hold onto seats in certain areas.

GLIMPSES OF A DIFFERENT FUTURE 

But the modest glimpse of the potential for an entirely different future, free of communal politics, sectarian camps, are to be seen in two distinct forms in recent years. 

One is the growing number who refuse to go out and vote, despite all the pressure to do so in communities that often feel under siege, or on the brink of winning what they want - because they are 'sick of the lot of them'. 

Last May a full 46% of registered voters stayed at home. Disaffection expressed in falling turnouts featured in five elections in a row since 2000. The latest election bucked that trend, as Catholics in particular turned out to avenge the corruption and disrespect they felt from Foster's DUP. 

The other, more positive feature is the modest but important vote for parties and formations that refuse to be pigeon-holed as nationalist or unionist, the 'Others'.

The Alliance Party is non-sectarian, but screamingly middle class. It's vote comes especially from more liberal-minded, well-off layers of the population.

The Green Party is also non-sectarian, and critical of austerity - unlike its sister party in the South who entered an axe-wielding coalition government with FIne Gael and suffered the retribution of voters they so richly deserved! It held onto its two MLAs. 

NEITHER ORANGE OR GREEN, BUT SOCIALIST 

More significant still, though only at an embryonic stage of development, are the votes for two avowedly anti-sectarian, anti-austerity, left-wing, pro-socialist formations: the People Before Profit Alliance and the Cross Community Labour Alternative.

The PBPA openly declares itself 'neither Orange or Green', has been active in anti-cuts campaigns, and in 2016 won two MLAs - veteran socialist and well-known journalist Eamonn McCann in Derry, and young West Belfast city councillor Gerry Carroll. 

In the recent elections, McCann lost his seat in the final count,  and although he retained his place in the Assembly, Carroll's vote was squeezed from over 8,000 First Preferences last year to over 4,000. 

Other socialists and trade unionists have established Cross Community Labour Alternative in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership election. They won 644 votes in Fermanagh & South Tyrone, standing a well-known trade union activist who has been involved in numerous local campaigns against cuts and fracking - and lesser votes in three other seats, straddling both communities in East, West and South Belfast.

MASS STRUGGLES REQUIRED TO END THE DIVIDE 

The juggernauts of Unionism and Nationalism, based on a sectarian Orange versus Green headcount, mostly crushed the challenge of these smaller forces - in part because the fear remains that voting for them would 'let the other side in'. 

Until such time as more sweeping, generalized struggles of workers and communities erupt on social, economic, class questions, the tendency for polarized voting between two communal camps will prevail; in large measure because that's how the Peace Process institutions are designed. Deliberately!

THE LEFT AND SINN FEIN 

Nobody on 'the left' in Scotland or beyond needs any time spent convincing them the DUP is a bigoted, conservative, anti-equality, reactionary party of neo-liberalism - steeped in corruption to boot - that exploits the allegiance of rural and working class Protestants to fill their own pockets, and those of rich landowners and capitalists.

But some of those who see themselves as 'lefts', even 'socialists', would do well to pause and ponder their uncritical excitement at the 3.9% rise in Sinn Fein's share of the vote compared with 2016. 

SINN FEIN IS NOT A SOCIALIST PARTY

Sinn Fein is not a socialist party and never has been - though some of its members see themselves as such. At most, SF do what the SNP also do in a very different political context; they face both ways at once, depending on their audience. The SNP tries to appeal to left-leaning former Old Labour voters in Scotland's urban Central Belt, with radical-sounding phrases. But they also woo and soothe the tartan Tory voters of the well-heeled, rural north of Scotland, refusing to tax the rich, diluting even their calls for Scottish independence. 

Sinn Fein has a long history of sounding semi-socialist, certainly anti-Tory, in their working class heartlands, especially West Belfast. But they punt more nakedly sectarian appeals to 'Catholic voters' and 'the nationalist people' in areas such as rural Fermanagh.

SHARING CUTS COALITION WITH DUP 

More fundamentally, SF are happy to power-share with the monstrous Orange Tory DUP.

SF are currently playing hardball in demanding the corrupt, corroded Arlene Foster must go as DUP leader and therefore First Minister. But it seems absolutely certain that if Nigel Dodds or some other DUP figure replaces Foster, Sinn Fein will readily embrace the DUP in a new power-sharing Executive, again.

SF did nothing noticeable to expose the Cash for Ash scandal for years, including the years of sharing government responsibility with the DUP, and moreover abstained in the December vote demanding Foster's resignation over this poisonous corruption. 

And beyond the immediate Cash for Ash outrage, SF has jointly implemented savage cuts to welfare benefits that will slash the incomes of 100,000 people by up to £2,000. That's on top of previous years of austerity cuts, and privatisation of services, whether in their role in the NI Executive or in local councils. And it's as well as Sinn Fein's support for cuts to Corporation Tax which they share with the Orange Tories - Arlene Foster included - which will actually rob the public purse of at least as much every year as the Cash for Ash scam does! 

FAILURES OF LABOUR MOVEMENT LEADERSHIPS 

SF has conquered deep roots in working class Catholic districts as their perceived defenders from decades of state repression, and in the absence of determined, militant resistance being organised by the leadership of the trade union and labour movement over those same decades. 

In particular, labour and trade union movement leaders' failure to build a united political voice of the working class, based on the unions and communities, taking up all the issues of repression, poverty, austerity, sectarianism and the complex issue of Irish partition on a firm class basis. 

But that is still no excuse for pretending Sinn Fein is a socialist party, or of hiding from their baleful track record in government alongside - in coalition with - the DUP.

IRISH WORKING CLASS DESERVE BETTER 

The working class of Northern Ireland deserves better than two political tribes going to war for votes, so they can then go to war on the living conditions of the working class. 

A united, anti-sectarian socialist party is easier wished for than created and made into a mass force. But that makes it none the less necessary and urgent. Working class unity and socialism go hand-in-hand, and are the only route to solutions to poverty, inequality, austerity, corruption, equal rights for women and minorities, or indeed the vestiges of the national question. 

NO RETURN TO THE PAST!

Even if frustration at the current deadlock in the institutions of post-Troubles N Ireland erupts, there is no appetite for a return to the past, to the days of armed struggle and sectarian killings. The mass of the working class were instrumental in enforcing the ceasefires of the past 20 years and are not about to give support to any resumption of those methods. 

But the peace has always been fragile, flawed, prone to flare-ups on unresolved issues such as flags and emblems, parades, the Irish language and the century-old issue of the border created by British imperialist partition.

BORDER POLL?

Loose talk by some on 'the left' in Scotland about the case for a border poll in Ireland  - as mooted by Sinn Fein in the context of both Brexit and the first ever majority vote for nationalist parties in Northern Ireland's Assembly - is dangerous and divisive. 

It was brutally wrong that Ireland was partitioned by imperialism in the 1920s; it ushered in the 'carnival of reaction' predicted by James Connolly over a century ago. It was entirely unacceptable that the Catholic minority in the North were imprisoned in a statelet that meant systematic discrimination, repression and abject poverty for them. 

But it would be equally wrong to try to force the Protestants into a united capitalist Ireland, just because Catholics may outnumber them in the North in the years ahead. And in any case a big minority of northern Catholics (including Sinn Fein voters) are also opposed to joining the capitalist South, as it today exists, according to various opinion polls. 

A SOCIALIST IRELAND 

The vision of a socialist Ireland - a world apart from the type of societies that currently exist, North and South - is what's required to unite working class people, by convincing  them not only of the social and economic advantages, but that guarantees for all minorities would be embedded in such a socialist democracy. 

Consent, through patient explanation and above all years of united struggle by working class people on common, class questions is the route to a socialist Ireland - not the ultimatum of a border poll, let alone armed force. 

HELP BUILD WORKERS' UNITY AND SOCIALISM 

Working class unity and socialism may not be the prevailing state of affairs in Ireland in 2017. But it's the watchword for progress, the cause worth fighting for, the route map to a future free of exploitation, repression and division in Britain's first colony. 

And instead of reinforcing illusions in forces like Sinn Fein - just because they're electorally powerful - Irish working class unity and socialism is the aim that trade unionists and socialists in Scotland should bend their efforts towards helping fellow workers and socialists in Ireland achieve.