(en) Ireland, Derry Anarchists, Neither Orange nor Green:
Capitalism is Crisis - Resistance is the Solution!
We are consistently lectured to and harangued by politicians as to how far we have come
from the bad old days however when we’re told in the same breath that we should have more
faith in them and their ‘peace progress’ and the achievements they have made. Granted
things have changed to some extent in relation to the last four decades of war here but
you can’t help to look around and be angered at the devastation being inflicted upon
working class communities. The politicians and the political parties they belong to have
been comfortably cocooned away in their marble and sandstone parliament, miles from the
realities of ordinary people’s lives. ---- This can be clearly seen with the debacle now
unfolding up at Stormont over the recent killings of former IRA men Kevin McGuigan and
Gerard 'Jock' Davison in Belfast. Whether or not they believe the Provisional IRA still
exist or not, and in what form since they ordered an end to its armed campaign back in
2005 is simply just another convenient ‘sham fight’, mustered up to draw attention away
from them and the real issues at hand.
Just as convenient would have been the Assembly’s summer recess as thousands of hostile
public sector workers and welfare claimants agonise over an increasingly bleak future in
terms of imminent job and benefit cuts. Mounting sectarian tension already on the boil as
the Orange marching season got underway would have been another light break from
increasingly awkward questions over the Welfare bill.
Throughout the past number months right across the six counties, just as over the past
several decades, working class communities have been fraught with sectarian standoffs,
flashpoints and territorial battle zones. Controversial Orange marches and bonfires
dressed up as symbols of great historical and cultural significance, however despite all
the gloss of ‘cultural’ programming, most believe that such ‘celebrations’ merely hark
back to a time in which one section of the community reign supreme of another.
However amongst all of this drama, this bitterly divided sectarian assembly at Stormont
can’t paper over the cracks as they flap about aimlessly as to what to do over an economic
policy designed by a Tory dominated Westminster parliament in London eager to decimate a
struggling national health and welfare system wrapped up in a programme of ‘austerity’,
privatisation and modernisation. What passes of politics here in the North feed off
division and are happy to see that continue as they have nothing else to offer but more of
the same.
Undoubtedly this is a battle of wills with the only outcome being the collapse of the
Stormont Assembly with the immediate effect of direct rule by Westminster. This of course
will inevitably mean a new round of elections and the introduction of Tory lead policies
of modernisation and privatisation, and another step closer to the inevitable destruction
of the National Health Service and Welfare system.
In turn the hands of local politicians will be seen as clean with regards the introduction
on of Policy of Austerity initiated by the Tories when they enter yet another round of
crunch ‘talks’ to resurrect another puppet parliament, offering more of the same: poverty
and division.
If change were needed its now, power comes from the streets and it’s there a unified
working class must mobilise to ensure these political parties, Orange and Green, Red and
Blue have no say in directing or dictating our future once and for all!
