"As British as Bexley"
IN an article published in The Guardian Weekly of April 4, Dick Spring, the Irish Labour Party leader and now Foreign Minister, threw in his lot with the British government's latest (in a long line of proposals to find a
International Viewpoint #247 July 1993 settlement in "Northern Ireland".
of a local clique seeking to preserve unionism by integration with Britain. Unionism is slightly weaker, more fragmented but remaining very volatile and with a great capacity for violence.
He was concerned, as he put it, that "the Northern Ireland problem falls proportionately about four times heavier on the Irish taxpayer than his or her British counterpart."
It should come as no surprise that the British government expects the
Irish people to pay for the privilege of having a part of their country occupied. Nor will Dick Spring's attempts to prostrate himself at the feet of British proposals be unexpected
But, as our correspondent explains, following the recent local government elections' these latest plans and pipe dreams are looking a little shaken.
JOHN NORTH* — Belfast, June 7, 1993
AS British as Bexley" - that is the claim that the British right and their local counterparts in the occupied six counties of Ireland like to make about their Northern colony. It was the first casualty of the local government elections on May 17, when the recently organised local section of the British
Conservative party was wiped off the political map.
Of course this election had very little to do with the traditional concerns of the British electorate. Every election in the six counties is a referendum on partition. It features faction fights between republicanism and bourgeois nationalism on the one hand and unionism and far right loyalism on the other.
This particular election was also seen as a test for British plans to impose a political settlement.
One clear achievement of the struggle in the North has been to fragment the once homogeneous Unionist bloc. British strategy has been to protect imperialism's strategic interests by building an internal settlement.
Central to this has been the mass base of local unionists but, as they have no other programme other than military repression of the nationalist population, it has proved difficult to strike a deal with the Irish bourgeoisie.
The last attempt at talks took over five years and ended in total collapse. They were however very useful for the British, who were able to act as referee without anyone being impolite enough to point out that they ruled the area and have the responsibility to set out political proposals.
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The British have now signalled that they will bring forward proposals. They will be firm with the unionists in the time honoured way of offering them most of what they want including the abolition of the Irish constitutional claim on the six-county territory in return for some concessions on local powersharing and a nod in the direction of a paper all-Ireland council.
### Pragmatic
For this scenario to work the British Secretary of State, Patrick Mayhew, wanted some weakening of the Loyalist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in favour of the slightly more pragmatic Official Unionist Party (OUP). Above all he wanted to see a further erosion of the vote of Sinn Féin, whose President Gerry Adams had been ousted as a Member of Parliament by the bourgeois nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in last years British general election.
Mayhew did not get what he wanted, and an analysis of the results shows some very bad news for his initiative.
On the Unionist side the DUP held its vote, but this was part of a game of musical chairs in which votes shifted somewhat from the loyalist right. It was the loyalist independents in the last chair who lost their seats. The background was a low turnout outside border areas, indicating a certain demoralisation in the unionist population, and the col lapse of the pact between the two main parties. It is here that we should situate the misfortune of the conservatives — the collapse
### Sinn Fein advance
On the nationalist side the position was even worse. With a high turnout the SDLP vote held up but in a number of areas the Sinn Féin vote made significant advances. These were precisely in major urban areas that the SDLP needed to win. The most dramatic outcome was in West Belfast. Here the SDLP had won the parliamentary seat following a secret deal with Loyalist paramilitaries and by breaking electoral law and massively overspending? They had the advantage of British support, the banning of Sinn Féin from Radio and TV,3 regular state harassment of Sinn Féin and state and loyalist murder bids. Despite this the Sinn Féin vote increased - and to such an extent that the SDLP have clearly lost the electoral battle in Belfast.
Just before the elections John Hume, leader of the SDLP, had opened talks with Sinn Féin. One motive was to encourage Sinn Féin supporters to transfer votes to the SDLP (the elections in the six counties are under proportional representation). This did not happen in any overall manner and indicates that the vote for Sinn Féin is also a rejection of the bourgeois nationalism of the SDLP.
In a sense this result came despite the Sinn Féin leadership rather than because of them. They had attacked their exclusion from the talks so far, while failing to deal with the exclusive imperialist agenda that would render Sinn Féin impotent if it were to join the talks. Recent policy has sought to internationalise the conflict while sowing illusions in the role of imperialist institutions like the European Community and the United Nations. They have failed to capitalise on successive capitulations by the SDLP and, in a move to the right, have been operating a concept of the Nationalist family' that looks to unity with the bourgeoisie against the
* The author is a member of Peoples' Democracy (Irish section of the Fourth International).
1. These are elections for local councils, in a city or a county. This year, apart from the six counties, the elections were only for areas outside the metropolitan districts, ie. major cities such as London did not vote.
2. There is a limit to the amount of money that can be spent by candidates in any one constituency.
3. For a recent example of this, see International Viewpoint, May 1993.
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