New Election: Same old Sectarianism

By Gerry Carroll

Anyone for a sectarian head-count? DUP and UUP back Rodney Connor in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and Sinn Fein withdraws in South Belfast to give Alasdair Mc Donnell (SDLDLP) a clear run for the ‘Nationalist vote’

Once again sectarianism has become central to the Westminster elections in Northern Ireland.

In Fermanagh and South Tyrone, an alliance has been formed between the UUP and the DUP to ensure that Unionist MP Rodney Connor is elected.

In response, Sinn Fein has pulled out their candidate Alex Maskey from South Belfast to give current SDLP MP Alasdair Mc Donnell a chance to ‘defend  nationalist seats’.

And while schools and hospitals are being starved of funding the DUP minister for culture, Nelson McCausland, announced that his department had found the money to support the construction of two Ulster-Scots cultural centres as part of a new “Ulster-Scots infrastructure” across the North.

Its not unusual or surprising that such events happen in the North given the way politics is shaped.

The Good Friday Agreement asserted that there were only two communities in NI – that being the Nationalists and Unionists.

 The Stormont Assembly is set up where the first thing elected MLAs have to do is determine whether they are Unionist, Nationalist or other and take their seats accordingly .

Class is left to the side and almost deemed irrelevant because it’s stated that the main difference between people is creed not class. The sectarian nature of the state forces people to see their difference as being between flags rather than class.

There are historical difference between SF and the DUP on the issue of the border. But they are in agreement on economic policies.

The latest example of Stormont Thatcherism came on 26 March when a new law came into force in Northern Ireland - the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act. This legislation was guided through the Assembly by the DUP controlled department of the environment and got the wholehearted support of Sinn Féin.

It is one of the most significant actions undertaken by the Assembly and will have a massive and negative impact on the North’s public sector.

The Act grants wide-ranging powers to local councils to enter into Private Finance Initiative type agreements with private businesses and allows councils to contract out services to the private sector. Previously the ability of councils to contract out services was constrained by a raft of laws which place statutory duties on local government to provide services such as environmental health.

The new Act removes these constraints and provides a series of legal protections for private companies. It opens the door to the privatisation of a range of services such as bin collections and leisure centres.

The Executive said the Act was necessary because there was a “lack of private sector confidence concerning the powers of councils to enter into long-term service contracts”.

This  law is a declaration by SF and the DUP that they intend to do away with a part of the public sector.

As the two parties put themselves at the service of big business and attempt to make working people pay for the recession, they will simultaneously try to shape politics around cultural identity in the hope that people will not see what is really going on.

Socialists need to build an opposition to the Executive. Part of building that opposition will be the exposure of the neoliberal agenda behind all the talk of cultural identity.