Workers Party Northern Ireland Conference opens in Belfast

In the afternoon sessions, there’s an emphasis on international affairs.
Starting at 2, we will learn more about sectarianism and murder in Iraq from
Comrade Salam Ali from the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Iraq and at 3 there is a discussion on South Africa and the condition of its working class. The debate will be led by John Pinkerton of the Communist Party of Ireland and Gerry Grainger, Chair of the International Affairs Committee of The Workers' Party of Ireland, both of whom attended the 12th congress of the South African Communist Party in Port Elizabeth in July this year.

Before we discuss the working class further afield, I’d like to look at how
political developments might impact on workers closer to home. Our party has
been pushing for the ending of the terror campaigns and introduction of devolved government in Northern Ireland for more than three decades and we are pleased to note that the Stormont Assembly has been in place in its latest incarnation since March 26th this year. While supportive of the implementation of Devolved government, we are not without criticisms of its structures. For example, in our Assembly Election Manifesto of 1998 we noted our concern “that in the proposed structures and voting procedures for the new Assembly we will simply entrench the old politics of sectarian nationalist and unionist division”, and although there appears to be such bonhomie between McGuinness and Paisley that one wonders how they ever got on without each other, on the streets of our cities, towns and villages sectarianism appears to be more entrenched than ever.
The number of so-called peacelines has grown from 18 in the early 1990s to
57 today; in total they stretch over 13 miles, mostly in North and West Belfast [wikipedia :Belfast Telegraph, Thursday, April 26, 2007].

The DUP/ Sinn Fein coalition may be cosy up in Stormont but sectarianism has
definitely not gone away. Nor, of course, has poverty. Indeed it may have worsened. A report released in September 2006 by the Committee on the
Administration of Justice indicates that “the poorest members of our society, both Catholics and Protestants, are relatively worse off than they were ten years ago. … the idea that Northern Ireland as a whole is benefiting from increased prosperity and economic growth is nonsense”. [Tim Cunningham, “Economic with the Actualite”, 14 September 2006]. Similarly, in 2003 the think tank, Democratic Dialogue, produced a document called Bare Necessities which, according to a summary, showed that “there were 185,000 households in Northern Ireland in poverty. These contained 502,200 people including 148,900 children. The study concluded that Northern Ireland’s poverty rates were higher than the Republic or Britain, even though both these states already had extremely high poverty and inequality rates. …. Over a third of the children (37.4%) in Northern Ireland were
suffering a lifestyle and a living standard regarded by a representative sample of all people as unacceptable.” The authors of Bare Necessities concluded that ‘Northern Ireland was one of the most unequal societies in the developed world.’” [ESRC February2005, “Poverty and Income Distribution in Northern Ireland”] On the one side an expanding middle class – what Peter Shirlow calls “The haves and 'have yachts', who never really suffered that much, [and] can clearly see benefits” of the peace dividend [Belfast Telegraph, 11 January 2002.] while on the other side of the class divide the material benefits are less obvious.

But, we cannot be pessimistic. Recent political developments indicate some
cracks in the sectarian monoliths and represent some hope for the development of a different kind of politics here. For example, on Saturday 27 October this year the SDLP’s Margaret Ritchie became the first nationalist politician to speak at an Ulster Unionist Party conference. The conference “applauded her view that the SDLP and UUP should improve their contacts with each other” [UUP today] and she received a standing ovation from the party delegates when she declared “no surrender” to those who seek to dominate the UUP and SDLP. For his part, Reg Empey dared to see things in terms of left and right: he told his conference that
"...we have to win back those voters who left us for the DUP or Alliance. That
doesn’t mean trying to outflank the DUP on the right or Alliance on the left. It means replanting our banner and our values upon the very centre ground and setting out the vision we have for a Northern Ireland at peace with itself.”

UUP Assembly members, David Burnside and Basil Mc Crea said the party should be prepared to pull out of government and start effective opposition. And at the SDLP conference in Armagh,delegates warmly welcomed McCrea and fellow MLA John McAllister. Indeed, Mr. McCrea received a standing ovation.[
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/1027/uup.html?rss]

Meanwhile, the possibility remains that the SDLP could develop deeper links if not ties with Fianna Fail and Mark Durkan announced at their conference that the SDLP is to set up a working group to look at all-Ireland political links with other parties.

Another hopeful sign has come with the development of the United Community
Group in the Assembly. This group comprises 7 Alliance MLAs, 1 Green MLA and independent MLA, Dr.Kieran Deeney. As an anti-sectarian party, we in the
Workers’ Party would hope that this United Community Group might make its way out of the confines of Stormont and become a political force in the towns, villages and cities of Northern Ireland. The potential for the creation and growth of such a group is there. We should remember, for example, that in the 2004 EU parliamentary elections John Gilliland, backed by a coalition made up of the Alliance Party, the Worker's Party, Labour and Dr Deeney among others, won 36,270 votes (6.6%) on the back of a campaign that lasted only a matter of weeks. We must look to the EU elections of 2009 and this time develop a strong United Community Group campaign over months rather than weeks. Because what Northern Ireland needs and sorely lacks is focused political opposition to the neo-liberal policies that the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition are putting in place.

We stand fully behind the Trade Union movement in its opposition to Workforce 2010, a PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contract involving the transfer of 77 Civil Service office buildings to the private sector. With the trade union movement, we resolutely oppose the outsourcing of public service jobs and the attempt to downgrade the terms and conditions of public sector workers. We fully support the Classroom Assistants in their current dispute with the Education Boards. We also note the bare-faced hypocrisy of Sinn Fein in relation to this issue. Paul Butler, who had previously joined the workers on the picket-line, called on Nipsa to change its stance. Using the classic defence of strike-breakers since time
immemorial, Butler declared ‘I do not believe that the planned industrial action by classroom assistants will achieve anything accept to create more hardship for children, parents and classroom assistants. The impact on our special schools and the most vulnerable children is unacceptable.’ [Belfast Telegraph, Thursday, November 15, 2007]. The same, of course, apples to Catriona Ruane. We applaud Brain Booth ,Nipsa, branch secretary, who said in September. We are absolutely disgusted with her attitude. Caitriona Ruane's statement is rhetoric without real meaning. She is going to implement what every classroom assistant across Northern Ireland rejected in June. [Belfast Telegraph, 25th September].

In relation to the prospect of sharing power with Paisley, Adams talked of “a battle a day”. The reality is more like a sordid little U-turn a day. No wonder some call it New Sinn Fein. I mentioned Private Finance Initiatives earlier. The Strategic Investment Board, is the Government-owned Quango which is pushing most for the delivery of upgrades in infrastructure in such areas as roads, waste management and education through PFIs. The SIB describes itself as “a bridge between the public and private sectors”, while John Molloy in Unity [June, 2007] has more accurately termed it “an asset-stripping wrecking-ball”. According to
David Gordon of the Belfast Telegraph the SIB is “widely regarded as one of the most influential official bodies in Northern Ireland” but it’s hardly an official body’ at all. It is in fact a limited company "owned" by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFDFM). In August this year the BBC reported that David Gavaghan, the chief executive of the SIB, has received a salary of more than £213,000 - almost £26,000 higher than the prime minister. He also received £34,287 in national insurance and £15,213 in pension contributions. An OFDFM spokesman said the SIB needed to attract high calibre, private sector staff with specialist skills. "It was therefore necessary to offer competitive salaries.” Tell that to the striking classroom assistants!

Earlier this week the BBC reported a possible conflict of interests when it announced that James Stewart, a SIB director, is also the chief executive of
Partnerships UK plc (PUK), an outfit which received more than £2 million rom the SIG for its help in “providing public and private sector commercial expertise for public private partnerships”. Comrades and friends, it stinks! And the entire PFI approach to public services stinks to high heaven. PFIs are also woefully inflexible. Balmoral High School in Belfast was built 5 years ago using PFI generated cash. The school closed this year but the education authorities here will have to pay out £7.4 million over the next twenty years regardless of whether the school remains empty or not.

According to George Monbiot, an expert on wasteful PFI scams in the UK, “[t]here is only ones means of meeting the outrageous costs of PFI, and that is by cutting public services”.Sinn Fein is quite open about its twisted attitude to PFIs. On its website it declares that:If forced to announce PFI projects, [Sinn Fein] Ministers should make it clear that 'PFI is only one option and not my preferred option'. [Sinn Fein] MLAs and other public representatives should support them with coordinated statements that are stronger in their opposition to PFI and
which emphasise the degree to which the Minister is bound and restricted by
the Executive in their choice of funding public projects. The Executive is determined to continue with a strategy of developing PFIs and encouraging inward investment that it inherited from the New Labour direct rulers. For example, over the past six years the union-busting computer firm Seagate, based in Limavady, has been in receipt of £12 million in government money through Invest NI and it’s predecessor, the IDB. But that didn’t stop it relocating to Malaysia with the loss of more than 900 jobs here. And what is to stop the next union-busting multinational from upping sticks when it feels the need to? In relation to Seagate, again we have to applaud the trade union movement. Although the firm is non-union, UNITE has announced that it is setting up an advisory taskforce to help the Seagate workers.

And we must join with the trade unions in fighting the anti-worker, anti-public service ideology of the DUP/Sinn Fein administration. We could do no worse than follow the approach of the Northern Ireland Committee of ICTU, who in their recent statement on the economy, Not Old Wine In New Bottles, offer a robust defence to the neo-liberal agenda. The right wing tell us that public sector is too large in Northern Ireland. The ICTU document demonstrates the falsity of the neo-liberal position and argues instead that “it could be said that the public sector is too small” [p. 6]. Not that ICTU is content to let the public sector rest on its laurels. For the unions..rather than just importation of managerial ideology in the running of public services, the key task is to reconfigure their operation to tackle
root causes [p.6]