Ulster Unionism

Scan page 4

Abetted by a section of the British ruling class the bourgeoisie of Belfast led the andowners and the proletariat Forking class in aborting the Liberal government's attempt it imposing a neo-colonial policy upon the whole of treland. Having dismembered Ireland the Ulster unionists had then to dismember Ulster itself.

By the racialist criteria upon which the Orange state was founded the counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan had too large a nationalist population to be easily contained. •Thomas Moles, the Unionist MP for Belfast Ormean, put the position to the protesting protestants of the border counties with brutal frankness when he said:

"In a sinking ship with life boats sufficient for only two thirds of the ships company were all to condemn themselves to death because not all could be saved?"

Within the six county coalition lof sectarian surgery the unionist ¡leaders addressed themselves enthusiastically to the task of creating what Prime Minister Sir James Craig called "a protestant state for a protestant people."

This required the drastic redrawing of loçal government boundaries to convert areas with nationalist majorities into loyalist strongholds and a protestant-only militia, the 'B-specials' : whose reputation for sectarian violence acquired in the first year of their existence, they lost only when they were abolished in 1969:

PURPOSE The entire purpose of a parliament at Stormont for what as supposed to be an integral part of the United Kingdon was well illustrated by the disclosure of the Minister for Agriculture in 1927 that:

"I have 109 officials and as far as I know there are four catholics, three of whom were civil servants landed over to me before I began."

With the state secure and the consequent threat to the union receding, the class antagonism within unionism more easily came to the surface. In 1921 P. J. Woods stood as an independent unionist against the "clique" that ran Ulster and took a safe seat from the Unionists.

Although opposition within manniel bas crippled by its defeace of the mion, the disenchantmete = expressed of lover class 174- Hiz gaining 3 and independent unionists winning 4.

Determined to stop the rot, Prime Minister Craig revealed an unsuspected capacity for irony by choosing July 12th, 1927, the day protestants celebrate the securing of their political freedom, to announce that he had abolished their proportional method of representation.

non-transferable vote would keep the simple issue of partition before the electorate. As Prime Minister Craig explained:

"We in Ulster are and ought to be a happy community. Adversity has taught us the value of unity. Unity has brought us to our present state of peace and contentment. Mr. Devlin and his party (the Nationalist Party) are the natural opposition. Why then should any loyalist constituency add strength to it and weaken the influence of my colleagues and myself."

By the 1929 general election the new voting method allowed the unionists to recapture five of the seats they had lost in 1925.

But while loyalist leaders were busy making their parliamentary fortress impregnable (at least against ballot box battalions) developments in the world economy were undermining the entire foundations of Ulster capital.

The industries of linen and shipbuilding upon which Belfast prosperity actually rested (although it should not be overlooked that up to 1926 agriculture was the largest single employer of labour) were in decline from the time that the Northern Ireland state was created.

While 226.4 million square yards of linen were woven in 1912 by 1961 this had fallen to 59.8 million square yards. Shipbuilding too declined with the recession in world trade.

So while the economy in the South of Ireland slowly stagnated behind tariff walls Ulster capital was carried through the inter war years on the crutches of British subsidies. At more or less the same time, the bourgeoisie of Dublin in 1958 and Betfast in 1957 were obliged to acknowledge that their attempts to develop their own capitals had failed.

OPEN Sean Leamass who formally declaredihis 'Free State' be open for foreign profit-maker in 1958 Sheen the

Quigley

get a definite national policy decided on in favour of industrial and agricultural protection and an executive in office prepared to enforce that policy"

No less was it recognised in the North East that foreign capital had to be wooed to the Province. A Government sponsored report suppressed for two years because of its pessimism stated in 1957 that: i) basic cause of export of capital from Northern Ireland was low expectation of profit from domestic investment. ii) greater scarcity than in Great Britain for profitable openings for new and enlarged undertakings. ili) Narrow economic base placed a question mark against the long term viability of the Province. iv) constitutional status of Province was uncertain.

PINPOINTED

This investigation (carried out for the unionist government a good ten years before a single Civil Rights banner was unfurled in the Province), pinpointed quite clearly the relationship between the sectarian structure of the six-county statelet and the economic survival of the area.

But if the bourgeoisie in Dublin and Belfast saw their future prosperity in exactly the same way, as dependant upon their capacity to create the conditions that would attract foreign investment then the original 'rationality" for a partitioned Ireland no longer existed. And Britain's changing relationship to the South and the North made her more than anxious to promote the marriage of these too satellites.

Not only was the South providing a significant percentage of England's food, but England's declining capital was finding limited but profitable markets in the Republic. As the profitability of British capital declined, the urge to off load the burden of subsidising welfare, social security, industry and defence in the North became pressingly urgent.

By uniting Ireland from above Britain hopes to relieve herslef of some of this burden while the Republic: looking as much to Europe as to Britain for her markets has revealed a remarkable disinclination to reclaim sucha turbulent part of her national territory.

A reforming group in the Northern Ireland cabinet emerged under O'Neills leadership to bring about the necessary changes. The composition of this group is significant.

It comprised politicians who were in the future to violently oppose one naother. It numbered Brian Faulkner, William Craig, Roy Bradford, Robin Baillie and Terence O'Neill himself.

OPPORTUNITY

What O'Neill was to describe as the "opportunity state" inaugorated an era of indicative planning, the coordination of industry, housing, and roads. The attempt to create a centralised infrastructure congenial to foreign investment was accelerated when O'Neill became Prime Minister in 1963. It went entirely against the grain of the localised political structure of the sectarian state.

This structure of patronage which tied the protestant working class to Ulster unionism by allocating jobs as a reward for 'loyalty', was so powerful in Ulster because of the nature of Ulster capital, small, local family labour intensive units. But the new capital that was entering the Province (while Ulster capital declined) was export orientated and capital intensive.

Being so much more productive than local capital it had much less incentive to utilise sectarian divisions in its employment policy.

The first visible signs of the tensions that were gathering within unionism came to the surface in 1962. In February an unemployed demonstration demnading the right to work marched on Stormont while in the May elections of that year the unionists lost two seats to left nationalists, Gormley and Fitt.

As unemployment rose in this period so too did its companion sectarianism. At the fifty year commemoration of the signing of the 1912 Covenant in October, protestant workers marked the occasion with the first serious sectarian rioting in twenty years.

Against this background Paisley raised the cry that O'Neill was "betraying unionism". And Paisley on this question was essentially Paisley and Bunting: anti-working class agitation right - for what the unionist bourgeoisie was trying to do was to structure a new relationship with imperialism while abandoning its petty-bourgeois and proletarian allies to the cold winds of the world economy.

While Paisley was marshalling his followers under seventeenth century flags it was twentieth century conditions that were driving them to his banners.

By exciting hopes of reforms that he could not realise O'Neill inspired a civil rights movement from a nationalist population that was no longer prepared to passively accpet its status as a sub-caste in a racialist state. Its demands when carried on to the streets further convinced the Protestants that Paisley knew what he was talking about.

Seeing their mass base deserting them the unionist leaders one by one abandoned their leader O'Neill.

But the repudiation of O'Neill was in no way an abandonment of his politics. With Ulster capital Visibly disappearing in front of their eyes the Unionist bourgeoisie could have no future unless they could turn themselves into a junior partner of imperialist interests operating in the Province.

They knew this quite well, but its consequence, a rupture with the mass base, their bulwark against nationalism, was too fearsome to contemplate.

Thus a process was set in motion whereby a unionist leader was brought down by forces inside unionism's own ranks. But having brought down their leader they have no alternative but to promote another leader pursuing the same policies who has nothing more to do than await the same fate. Thus O'Neill is toppled by Faulkner who is toppled by Craig who is brought down by the very forces he mobilised against Faulkner.

SPLIT

The most recent split in the unionist ranks between Paisley and Craig is explained by the bourgeois philistines as one between a clerical bigot and a contrite extremist won to "moderation". But why the one should repent while the other remains. obdurate is a secret sealed with seven seals to such idealist philosophers. For materialists the difference was one between a bourgeois who could accomodate to imperialism and a petty-bourgess who could not.

Basing himsel! 300=: pa estas: stilli aries :: Belter 235 pass storages aho ....- The his one-time mentor Desmond Boal close to republicanism as sixty years earlier it had taken Sloan and Crawford.

While Paisley's grip on the loyalist forces tightened bourgeois representatives like Craig who had tried to retain credibility with the protestant masses by distancing themselves from their Unionist colleagues, were obliged to show their hand. For imperialism the importance of Craig's challenge to Paisley lay in the fact that Craig appeared to have substantial loyalist troops to throw against Paisley.

Ğlenn Barr as a spokesman for the protestant labour aristocracy was on the Ulster Workers Council as well as being a member of the UDA. George Green was the leader of the notorious disbanded B Specials. Yet no sooner had these leaders spoken than the same class divisions revealed themselves within these organisations too. The UWC leadership was purged of all Craig supporters, Green complained that his Association was being taken over by Paisleyites while the UDA came down on the side of Paisley.

Further, Craig's own party split with his deputy Ernest Baird abandoning him. 'As Paisley's party demanded the expulsion of Craig and his Vanguard co-thinkers from the Ulster Unionist Council the third party of the council the Official Unionists within which lurk bourgeois sympathisers of Craig like John Taylor, attempted to paper over the split by abstaining from the vote.

Yet again the class antagonisms came out and three official Unionists, Heslip, Sheena Conn and Jean Coulter, all petty-bourgeois who had only entered politics since the recent troubles began, defied their party and voted with Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party for the motion that expelled Craig, and his Vanguard supporters from the UUC.

The middle class protestants of Ulster have been quite unable in their eleventh hour to provide any leader to challenge this lower class radical. A brilliant agitator and superb tactician lan Paisley is a truly tragic figure, like the Protestant farmer Edward Mitchell who defeated the future Prime Minister James Craig in the North Fermanagh election of 1903 on the platform of "the peoples' cause versus the landlord wolves" Paisley stands in and continues the protestant radical tradition, emasculated and blighted by its racialist vision.

The entire logic of the Paisleyite movement for maintaining the protestant ascendancy has led them nearer and nearer to directly challenging for state power. Yet the British Army and the Tory Party (locally, if unotficially, represented by Enoch Powell) dare not contemplat such populist forces holding the reins of government in their hands -Thus in Ireland the crisis of political leadership is one which engulfs the political struggles of both the working class and capitalist class alike. As the economic crisis continues to worsen throughtou the UK everyone of these tensions in Northern Ireland politics is mass ively intensified.

Our hiorical analysis of some aí the main features of this crisis is therefore a starting point for furtber articles on the struggle to build independent working das leadership needed to fight for to fundamental demands of complet

Scan page 5

ministrative and handling cost of less than £2 each!

----- pull-quotes -----

"STRAIGHT" Instead, the single, 'straight'