The following document was passed unanimously at a recent meeting of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communists of Ireland. Here, we offer our perspective and analysis of the main trends that are shaping Irish politics and the class struggle. The rise of imperialist tensions, the election of Donald Trump and the death throes of the liberal world order risk upending the delicate position of Irish capitalism at a moment’s notice. The ruling class, North and South, will be powerless to stop these events. The key task in front of every revolutionary communist today is that of building a Bolshevik organisation.
This document will provide the basis for the discussions we will have at the Second Congress of the RCI in April 2025 – an event already promising to be the largest meeting the Revolutionary Communists of Ireland have ever organised. If you agree with the ideas here explained, then there is no time to lose. Write to us today and join the fight for communism!
For the past 17 years, the economic crisis has been fuelling social and political instability on this island and all around the world. In turn, the world political, social and diplomatic instabilities are throwing buckets full of diesel on the flames of class anger. And the pace of events has markedly accelerated over the last 12 months.
The reelection of Donald Trump to the US presidency signals a new qualitative shift, which will further precipitate the situation all across Ireland. Increasingly, Ireland will be squeezed between American and European imperialism. Ground between two millstones, the strengths of the Irish economy over the past three decades will rapidly turn into their opposite.
We are entering a period of unprecedented storms and stresses for capitalism. The consciousness of hundreds of thousands will be shaken by the titanic events approaching our shores. Many will draw revolutionary conclusions. Under the hammer blows of events, epoch-defining shifts are already taking place in the tectonic plates of the class struggle. These shifts are undermining the political superstructure of Irish capitalism, and preparing social earthquakes in the years ahead.
The building of a revolutionary communist party in the intervening period will be crucial for the success of the coming proletarian revolution that will relegate capitalism to the dustbin of history.
This perspective document is intended precisely as a guide to action to help us achieve that goal. As Marxists, we discuss theory and perspectives not as an academic exercise but to guide us in our daily work to build the revolutionary party.
It is also important to remark that all perspectives are conditional by their very nature, especially in turbulent times like the ones we are living through today. Marxism is a science, in that it allows us to understand the material conditions of society, to understand the laws that drive the development of these conditions and to draw out the main processes at play. But it is not an exact science like physics or mathematics. In that sense, Marxism is a lot more like geology. Modern geology can explain to us why earthquakes take place and what are the driving forces behind them. It can even say where powerful earthquakes must inevitably erupt, but it cannot give exact predictions. This does not make it any less of a science, nor does it make it less useful.
It is similar with Marxism and with perspectives in particular. It is impossible to predict all the particular and peculiar forms the class struggle will take. Our task is to uncover the underlying processes taking place, to give the most likely prognosis of development, and to continually refer back to the real development in updating our perspective, through articles in our paper, on our website and in political discussion at all levels of the organisation. We do this in order to uncover how events are impacting the consciousness of the working class, and, crucially, what they mean for our struggle to build a revolutionary organisation in Ireland.
The current document should be read in conjunction with the 2024 Perspectives for the Irish Revolution, approved at the founding Congress of the Revolutionary Communists of Ireland, and the Manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist International, approved at the founding conference of the RCI.
World situation
17 years of unabated economic crisis have taken a profound toll on world capitalism and its institutions. The current crisis is not a normal cyclical crisis, but an existential one for world capitalism.
However, the crisis will not continue to unfold simply as a gradual downward curve. Let us return to geology, which offers excellent analogies. In geology, as in world politics, there are subterranean forces, unseen on the surface, that must eventually burst to the surface in great catastrophes. We often speak of ‘political earthquakes’. But while geology knows earthquakes that destroy cities or remold landscapes; it also knows the kind of events that mark out whole new geological epochs.
After a long period of crisis of world capitalism, and of gradual relative decline of US imperialism, it is clear that Trump’s second term in office marks a fundamentally new stage in the crisis of the world’s foremost imperialist power and of its relations with the whole world. This has profound implications touching every corner of the globe, not least Ireland. This document cannot exhaustively examine the processes going on on a world scale, but in the present period more than ever, it is impossible to understand Irish Perspectives other than in connection with the enormous events remaking the world.
Following the economic disaster of 2008, capitalist governments the world over undertook to bail out the bosses and bankers so as to avoid an immediate collapse of the global financial system. They injected an enormous amount of money into the economy – money they did not possess – first in 2008 and on an even greater scale during the Covid crisis.
In reality, they needed a crisis to squeeze fictitious capital out of the system, to wipe out bad debt, and to begin a serious recovery. But such is the scale of overproduction on a world scale, that to have allowed the crisis to have played out would have meant massive bankruptcies, mass unemployment, and unrest that would have threatened the very capitalist regime. These enormous bailouts were in no small part driven by fear of revolution. But there is no such a thing as a free lunch. This policy inevitably ended up piling up debt, preparing new, even bigger crises in the future, and whipping up inflation.
On the one hand, inflation meant a brutal attack on the living conditions of the working class, which had not recovered since 2008 and which have further precipitated in country after country since Covid. On the other hand, inflation pushed the hand of the bourgeoisie to hike up interest rates. The result is a deadly mix of reduced consumption, rising debt burdens, and economic slowdown.
Indeed, the global economy is once again slowing down. Germany and France are in recession. Britain is facing ‘stagflation’. China is slowing down. The US continues to grow, for now. A perfect storm, where one factor feeds upon another, threatens to produce a sharp downward spiral. Unlike in 2008, after more than a decade and a half of austerity, cuts and crisis, the establishment and the institution of capitalist rule enter a new tumultuous stage in the crisis having been utterly exposed and discredited in the eyes of millions.
In an effort to try and avoid the worst effects of the coming crisis, national ruling classes have now taken to economic nationalism and protectionism. Trump epitomises this process. Tariffs and protectionist measures generally are intended to export the effects of the crisis to other countries. But while this can potentially provide some short term relief for the big powers (mainly the US), it will eventually turn into its opposite and, as tit-for-tat measures tear up world trade, feed into an endless vicious cycle. Indeed, in the 1930s it was precisely protectionism that turned the Wall Street Crash into the Great Depression.
The whole process of globalisation, that defined the 1990s and 2000s, is now moving in reverse. We are seeing a fragmentation of the world into imperialist blocs, and an increasing rivalry on a world scale. The result will be one of growing instability, leading to more and increasingly devastating wars around the world, which will feed back into the economic crisis.
We are already seeing this in Ukraine, where western imperialism is facing a humiliating defeat at the hands of Russia. It has ruined the economies of the continent of Europe, which have been unable to compete on a world scale without access to cheap Russian gas. We are seeing it in the Middle East, where the imperialists have turned Gaza into rubble, handed Syria to the Islamists and are threatening to plunge the whole region into a barbaric nightmare.
This is the defining feature of today’s epoch. Over everything, and feeding this instability, is the long-term decline of US imperialism. This has now reached a turning point with Trump’s turn towards isolationism, a recognition on the back of many expensive adventures that US imperialism can no longer assert itself everywhere on the globe at once. This places a question mark over NATO, while Trump is turning on the US’ European ‘allies’ as mere economic rivals. Ireland is trapped in the middle of these two power blocs.
These gigantic events are shaking the consciousness of the working class in country after country. The old political stability of the western world is nothing but a remote memory. The cost-of-living crisis, austerity and cuts will awaken the labour movement from its decades-long slumber in country after country, including in the US. The war of horrific destruction carried by the imperialists in the Middle East has been a catalyst for radicalisation of the youth, mobilising tens of millions in the streets of all major cities for weeks and months.
The working class is looking for a way out of the crisis. They are putting one political tendency after the other to the test. They look with increasing disdain on the so-called centre ground and the traditional parties of the bourgeoisie, where those parties have not been reduced to a rump, as in France. The media, the courts, the police, the parliaments, they are increasingly discredited in the eyes of millions. It is easy, as the liberals do, to bemoan the rise of far-right parties, but what is this if not a distorted expression of massive anger and hatred being directed against the institutions of capitalist democracy and the liberal parties in the absence of a fighting, left-wing alternative?
An enormous amount of class anger is simmering under the surface, as demonstrated by the widespread sympathy for Luigi Mangione and his shooting of the United Healthcare CEO. This is but an anticipation of what we will see in the years and decades to come. In fact, thousands and tens of thousands are already moving in the direction of communism even in the advanced capitalist countries.
The so-called lefts – of the reformist, Stalinist, or sectarian type – are however in the main discredited or hated by the working class and therefore unable to provide a channel for the radicalisation taking place. They have largely taken up and given a ‘left’ varnish to the very same discredited arguments that the bourgeois liberals have based themselves on over the last few decades – especially postmodernism and identity politics. Anything, in fact, except class politics. This was again shown by the case of Luigi Mangione where many of his supporters claimed that it was not a “left or right” issue, but an “up or down” one, i.e. a class question. What a terrible indictment of the so-called lefts! The result is that, where they have not completely reduced to the margins, they have in many instances been exposed as nothing different from the establishment, and even as part of the establishment. Just look at how Bernie Sanders is now shamefully coming to the defence of the Senate and the constitution against Trump! In fact, there is a complete absence of a genuine left today.
The fact is that, for all their good intentions, the left reformists like Sanders or Corbyn share much more in common with the right reformists and outright liberals than they do with communists. While they may sincerely wish to alleviate the conditions of the working class, they share in common with the Starmers and others a fundamental belief that capitalism is the only possible system. Once you accept this, you must accept everything else that flows from this, leading to capitulation after capitulation on domestic and foreign policy alike.
Comrades, there is an enormous vacuum. We cannot hope to completely fill it, but we must use it in order to grow our forces. In one sentence, the ground has never been as favourable for the building of a revolutionary organisation in Ireland and all around the world.
Ground between two millstones
Ireland is a small country, with a weak domestic capitalist class, dominated by western imperialism. Therefore, the world economic and political situation are central to a correct understanding of Irish perspectives.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the USA emerged as the world’s sole superpower. Under US hegemony, the 1990s and early 2000s saw a massive impulse given to globalisation and the further integration of the world capitalist economy.
From a traditionally backwards state, Irish capitalism in the South developed very rapidly during this period. It did so by providing American capital (the most productive capital of the world) a convenient jumping off point to the European market. Irish capitalism became one of the most advanced in Europe, although the Irish capitalist class remained a parasitic class ever more dependent on foreign imperialism. This is illustrated by the fact that gross value added (GVA) per worker in foreign-owned firms in highly productive industries like chemicals, pharmaceuticals and big tech is €414. For Irish-owned industries it is a much lower €55 per hour per worker, and the most productive of these industries are themselves utterly dependent on foreign capital. Foreign-owned firms account for 56 percent of GVA, Irish industries accounting for the rest.
Thus, the most advanced capitalist methods were grafted on to the backwardness of native Irish capitalism, the backwardness of which is still expressed in the many infrastructural crises plaguing Ireland, from housing to water to healthcare and education. On this contradictory situation lay the secret of the ‘roaring’ years of the Celtic Tiger.
However, 17 years of relentless economic crisis have upended the post-cold-war equilibrium, promising to all but destroy the delicate balancing position of Irish capitalism.
As explained above, in the wake of the crisis of world capitalism, the American ruling class is increasingly undertaking a conscious policy of trying and exporting the crisis abroad. As a result, we are now seeing American imperialism more and more openly clashing against European imperialism.
This was already happening under Biden, who pushed the reluctant Germans and others into fighting a self-defeating war in Ukraine and who rolled out protectionist measures like the Inflation Reduction Act directly aimed at undermining European industry. But the election of Trump is going to enormously accelerate the processes taking place, with the potential to quickly unravel transatlantic relationships. And in the coming transatlantic rivalry, Irish capitalism will be unable to escape the crossfire.
Ireland is already uncomfortably sitting on the fence as it is. On the one hand, the Europeans are not happy about Ireland’s status as a tax haven for American multinationals. On the other hand, the Americans are not happy that the EU is using Ireland to regulate American Big Tech, and Trump is least happy of all about the US trade deficit with Ireland. We have already seen sparks of the friction flaring up for example with the Apple Tax, but that is a mere foretaste of the big clashes to come.
And as the Irish Times writes: “We might now end up finding ourselves between two warring big powers and kind of in nobody’s team… for so long the key to our economic success has been navigating the space between Boston and Berlin, and now we may end up the focus of hostility from both sides.”
This is the key factor in Irish politics entering 2025. It hangs like a sword of Damocles over the economy. It is why, for all the spectacular GDP growth figures, the mood in the ruling class is one of foreboding. It casts a long and ominous shadow over the new Dáil. It is exposing the sham of Irish neutrality. And it is putting the Irish ruling class in an altogether impossible position.
The economy
The economy itself hangs by a thin thread connected directly to Wall Street. Superficially, it is in a good state. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created over the last few years, and the exchequer is cashing in record surpluses. But a quick snip and the downfall would be unstoppable.
Trump is threatening to lower corporation tax in the US and has already pulled out of the OECD tax deal, threatening Ireland’s status as a tax haven for US tech. His intention is to bring back “good American jobs” to the US. Of course, to predict exactly what Trump will do is impossible. But, already, since entering the Oval Office, he signed 196 executive orders. And, “with each stroke of the pen came seismic hammer blows,” cried the Irish Times. The prospect of Trump following on his promises has the Irish ruling class shaking in their boots.
Again, at the beginning of his presidency, we’ve seen the tech giants so important to the Irish economy kissing Trump’s ring. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has ended fact-checking and equalities policies, signalling his alignment with the Trump administration and a potential clash with Europe over laws supposedly targeting ‘fake news’. Zuckerberg has also commented that Europe suffers from “an ever-increasing number of laws industrialising censorship”. This might seem like a minor clash in the grand scheme of US-EU relations, but even relatively mild jostling between the US and EU can have big consequences for Ireland, where Meta is a major employer and source of tax revenue.
In fact, Ireland is in Trump’s gunsight. Sean Spicer, who was Trump’s White House director of communications in his last administration, has said as much: “I think the Irish delegation in the US has some work to make up; they shunned Trump people over the past four years – they made a big mistake betting the whole lot on the Biden administration.” More serious and explicit was the warning coming from Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who stated on social media that it was “nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense”.
The Irish economy is almost entirely dependent on the US. In 2022, the total stock of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ireland amounted to a cumulative total of about €1,300 billion, the US accounted for a staggering 71 percent of the total. The US is Ireland’s top trading destination, and the second country for imports into Ireland. Ireland’s trade surplus towards the US amounts to an astonishing €31 billion. According to an Irish Times investigation, the ten largest contributors to the Irish exchequer (accounting for 57 percent of overall corporation tax) are all American: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, MSD, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Intel, Medtronic and Coca-Cola. Furthermore, the American Chamber of Commerce reports that US companies directly or indirectly employ 378,000 people in Ireland – this is almost 15 percent of the total workforce!
Imagine the scale of the fallout if US investment dries up. The impact on the Irish economy would be nothing short of catastrophic and would make 2008 look like a Lilliputian matter in comparison.
But even if Trump does not immediately follow through on all his promises and the collapse won’t be so sudden, American corporations will now think twice before making new investments into Ireland. Even the threat of tariffs on the EU or others will make for an uncertain climate for investment by multinationals, which will ask themselves carefully: should we invest abroad, where there is a risk of Trump raising tariffs, or should we return to US shores? Regardless, the Irish economy will be left with long-term scars. The consequences for the class struggle will be far-reaching.
Head in the sand
Surely, considering all of this, one would expect the Irish ruling class to have a pretty comprehensive plan to deal with Trump’s threats. But that is not the case.
“What does one do in a situation like this?” asked an Irish Times duty editor in their podcast: “My instinct would be to make oneself as small and inconspicuous as possible.” Aside from this, you can only “double up your diplomatic effort, suck up to Trump, and do your St Patrick’s Day visit” answered the political editor. Those are the elaborate plans concocted by the finest strategists of Irish capitalism!
The point is that the Irish ruling class has nothing to bargain with. Like a good little lap dog that has upset its master, their plan is to put up a sad face and be as slavish as possible in the hope that Trump won’t kick them too hard.
But they are not even in control of the response to Trump’s threats! They can sigh and argue for appeasement at the EU commission all they like, but the big guys will decide. And they won’t have Irish capitalism at heart. If Trump carries out tariffs against the EU, the EU is likely to have to respond in kind, unfortunately for Irish capitalism. The logic of the situation is likely to pull the Irish ruling class closer to Europe and ever further away from the US as long as the EU itself holds together. But the crisis of European capitalism, which is at the heart of the world crisis of capitalism at this moment, is likely to be convulsive and will have many twists and turns. The Irish ruling class is burying its head in the sand. But even that is not a viable option to take given the acute crises threatening to ravage Irish society at all levels.
The Irish economy has been through a spectacular recovery since the days of the European debt crisis. And yet, the wealth that has flown into the country has not translated into a serious improvement in the conditions of the working class. Quite the contrary.
“I’m a 25-year-old who has spent most of my life hovering around the poverty line,” complained a voter to Simon Harris during the latest election campaign, “I was the first in my family to receive a college degree and to hold down long-term employment. I now earn €40,000 per year. Why is it that now I feel the poorest I have ever felt?” This question must resonate with hundreds of thousands of Irish workers and youth that have never felt as poor as they feel today. And, to be sure, the majority of young workers don’t even earn this much.
Indeed, real median household disposable income has been decreasing for the second year in a row now. In terms of actual individual consumption per capita, Ireland lags far behind the EU average, and it is more similar to an Eastern European than a Western European country. Over a million people live in poverty in the South.
Housing remains the biggest issue by a long shot. More than 15,000 are now in emergency accommodation (up 12 percent since last year). There were a record number of rough sleepers in Dublin over the winter (up 15 percent since last year), plus countless others are in IPA accommodation, domestic violence shelters, forced to couch-surf or stuck in their childhood bedroom. And the crisis is only getting worse. House prices increased by a staggering 8.6 percent over 2024. Average rent in Dublin stands at the eye-watering figure of €2,476 per month, up 5.2 percent since 2023. The other major cities don’t fare much better, average rents in Cork are €2,005, in Limerick they’re €2,107 and in Galway €2,114. Mortgages are out of reach for the majority, and those lucky enough to qualify for one pay on average the 3rd highest share of their income across the EU.
A similar picture is to be found across all infrastructure and services. Dublin has the worst public transport of any European capital, and the rest of the country lags sorely behind it. A staggering 705,000 are on hospital waiting lists. Ireland has the 5th lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the EU. The school system is virtually overrun, with the highest class sizes across the EU. The water infrastructure is on the brink of collapse and has now become a serious limitation on the construction of new houses. Eirgrid predicts that electricity supply and demand will be particularly tight over the next five winters. Not to mention outdated heating infrastructure, with more than 56 percent still relying on solid fuels to heat their home. As the Financial Times aptly summarised: “Ireland is a first world economy with third world infrastructure.”
This contradiction is bursting into an acute, generalised crisis. Economic questions were the number one issue at the latest general elections. In fact, every political party ran on a platform of promising milk and honey to everyone. Everyone acknowledges that a bold and long term programme of state investment is needed to solve the long term crisis of Irish infrastructure.
The problem here is again to be found in the international situation. What the Financial Times refer to as Ireland’s “first world economy” is not Irish really, but mostly American, and as explained above it can go away very quickly. The 10 American multinationals mentioned above, by themselves, contribute corporation tax amounting to the full year state spending on Housing, Transport, Justice and a good cut of the Education budget as well.
In this ocean of uncertainty, you can’t plan long term. As a result, the ruling class is stuck between the hammer and the anvil – that is, between the need to shore up economic stability by building up a layer of fat before the coming crisis hits, and the need to shore up crumbling political and social stability by making spending promises in the face of the growing anger of the working class.
Big budget surpluses resting on a narrow tax basis and an overheating economy – this sounds uncannily similar to 2008 when the Celtic Tiger crashed against a brick wall. The similarities are not lost on the Irish Times: “I get a chill down my spine having this conversation, because there’s a voice in my ear telling me that this feels very much like 2007. (1) The Irish economy is entirely out of kilter with where the major European economies are, (2) we have a set of financial structures in place which are completely inappropriate for where the Irish economy is in the cycle, (3) we are told everything is ready for a soft landing, but we are dependent on [a narrow basis for] income … and we know what happened then. We also had an election of promises in 2007 and the incumbency coming back in.”
A storm is approaching Irish shores. To weather it, the ruling class requires a strong government at the helm: one with the authority to make “tough decisions” (i.e. austerity and cuts) when the time comes.
This is to a large extent what saved them in 2008. On the one hand that crisis took the working class by surprise, the first response being one of shock. But on the other hand, the establishment enjoyed a good deal of political credit that it had accumulated in the years of the Celtic Tiger. But today, there is not a single institution of capitalist rule that is not tarnished, if not deeply despised and discredited in the eyes of millions. Their lack of a concrete plan is at bottom a reflection of their political weakness.
Establishment discredited
Confidence in the institutions of capitalist Ireland is today at an historical low. This is a long term process taking place and chipping away the foundations of bourgeois rule in Ireland. And it has accelerated in the last few years.
After the initial shock of the 2008 crisis, Ireland witnessed a wave of struggle against austerity North and South. There was big pressure on the leaderships of public sector trade unions in particular for strike action against austerity, but the leaderships succeeded in blocking the working class on this front. We then saw a wave of mobilisations on the streets, particularly against water charges, reaching its high point in 2014, with over a hundred thousand marching in Dublin.
There were opportunities to give this anti-austerity movement a political expression, particularly in the form of the United Left Alliance, but the weak Keynesian politics and left-sectarian shenanigans of its main component parties (the SP and SWP) ensured that this never took off as a broad party with an open membership.
When the working class is blocked on one front, what we tend to see is a turn to other fronts to achieve its aims. Without this anger being given a clear political expression, and with marches and protests reaching their limit, the working class put to test any and all opposition political parties in Ireland. First the Labour Party rode this discontent, before disillusioning voters by going into power with Fine Gael.
For a time, it was then Sinn Féin that rode on this wave of discontent, by leaning to the left. Their rise seemed unstoppable. In 2007 they took a mere 6.9 percent of the votes. They topped the polls in 2020. And at the peak of the cost-of-living crisis in Autumn 2022, they were polling upwards to 37 percent – higher than any party obtained at any election since 2011. It looked as if a Sinn Féin Taoiseach was inevitable.
But, as we explained at the time, Sinn Féin had absolutely no perspective of breaking with capitalism. This meant their downfall was inevitable. Indeed, the current Sinn Féin originated as a right-wing split in the Republican movement at the end of the 1960s, and their policies follow entirely from their character as a petty-bourgeois nationalist party.
To be sure, it all unravelled much more quickly than we initially envisaged. The more they felt themselves to be a government-in-waiting, the more strenuously they sought to reassure the capitalist class and the imperialists that they are a reliable pair of hands – the more they appeared as an establishment-in-waiting. In the context of the acute crisis ravaging Irish society, rising imperialist tensions, and the precipitation of the war in Gaza, their cowardly attitude exposed them well before they got in power.
The ruling class also tried to destroy them, regarding them as a force that they would not entrust their interests with, but ultimately Sinn Féin have themselves to blame. There was a slight rise in support for the party as election day came, but it was nothing like the enthusiasm that existed between 2020 and 2022.
While Sinn Féin isn’t completely finished to be sure, the hope that they could bring significant change has been snuffed out for now among many, especially the youth. A big vacuum is now opening up in Irish politics. In the absence of any sizeable revolutionary alternative, we will see all sorts of political tendencies – to the left and the right – rushing in to fill up the vacuum.
But the very vanquishing of Sinn Féin contains dangers for the ruling class. Without a serious opposition party that can safely capture anger at the main parties, apathy is developing towards the whole political system. This doesn’t necessarily mean people are apolitical, but rather that hatred at the establishment is increasingly directed not just at the so-called civil war parties, but at the whole political establishment and its institutions.
A 2024 poll by the CSO, found that only a meagre 26 percent have any trust in political parties, only 47 percent trust the media, and 49 percent trust the Oireachtas. Another poll by the Irish Times found that 59 percent recognises that “most politicians only care about the interests of the rich and powerful.” Indeed, every political event in 2024 – the two referendums, the local and European elections and the general elections – registered record low turnouts in the state’s history.
This is dangerous stuff from the point of view of the ruling class. In normal times, the institutions of the capitalist state are wrapped up around an aura of legitimacy and untouchability. The two-party system for example provides a safety valve for anger accumulating against the government – giving the working class the chance to change Tweedledee for Tweedledum, and back again in 5 years. Or we could point to the role of the Catholic Church, which has always been a bastion of reaction in Ireland for centuries. It will never again be able to play quite the same role.
The crisis is increasingly exposing the whole lot of them as nothing but a tool of class rule. All that has happened in the last few years – the referenda, the crises, the scandals afflicting all parties and major institutions etc. – all of this is irreversible.
Right at a time when we are about to enter one of the stormiest periods Irish capitalism has ever faced, the establishment is already running on fumes. This is the chemical recipe for an explosive class struggle to set off all around Ireland in the years ahead.
The new government
At the last general elections, the ruling class celebrated Fianna Fáil topping the polls and Sinn Féin’s relegation to third place. In reality, the elections have only further demonstrated the extent that the whole establishment is discredited.
On a historically low turnout of 60 percent, the combined mandate of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael amounted to no more than 24 percent of the electorate. The two parties that ruled Ireland for over a century together were unable to muster the votes of even 1 in 4 voters. Such a result would have been unthinkable just a generation ago.
Despite Sinn Féin’s anaemic performances, FF and FG did not obtain an outright majority of the votes. After the eventual refusal of the Labour Party and the Social Democrats to join them in coalition (both eager to save their own skin from electoral annihilation), they were therefore forced to turn to the independents. The very fact that they have been forced into coalition with Michael Lowry – whose record was such that even FG wouldn’t take him, and who was found by a report to have acted in a way “profoundly corrupt to a degree that was nothing short of breathtaking” – epitomises what a weak position FF-FG are in. The result is one of the most unstable coalitions in the state’s history.
Already, the coalition is tainted by shady deals and corruption scandals. This will be a government of crisis from day one. Even before Micheál Martin was voted in as Taoiseach, bedlam descended on Leinster House when the independents pushed for being both in government and in opposition at the same time. They are making a mockery of whatever semblance of legitimacy Irish democracy even had at this point – and the government has barely begun.
The whole farce also placed in the spotlight the €255,000 salary of the speaker of the Dáil. Reading the social media comments on these news items, the same terms recur: “clown show”, “circus” – not referring to this or that party, but to the whole Dáil. A circus, yes, but a circus that is expected to navigate Irish capitalism through some of the choppiest water it has yet faced.
Neutrality and militarism
We have already looked at the enormous headwinds the Irish economy will be buffeted by in the coming period with the threat of trade wars and tariff barriers tearing up world trade. Already, the OECD is advising the Irish government, that whilst it has placed “around half of the estimated windfall corporate tax receipts” in sovereign wealth funds, “it would have been more prudent to put all [of it]” away for a rainy day. In other words, all the promises of the election must be shelved.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. A new crisis and a collapse in tax receipts could easily find the Irish government once more running a deficit. Austerity would again be on the agenda.
The new government’s woes won’t be restricted to purely economic questions. Trump wants European NATO countries to foot the bill for their own militaries, demanding they increase their spending to 5 percent. With the US being such an unreliable ally, the imperialists in Europe will be forced to drive up military budgets to secure their interests. The growing inter-imperialist tensions will increasingly trap Ireland in their pincers.
Irish neutrality has, in reality, always been a farce, masking the very real subservience of the Irish ruling class to the imperialists. Indeed, it couldn’t be otherwise: on a capitalist basis, a small nation like Ireland cannot be really independent.
Connolly explained over a century ago: “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.”
These words ring as a prophetic anticipation of the semi-colonial status of the South after partition under both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. For a time, the Irish ruling class managed to square their subservience with a fake neutrality on international relations. They could pay lip service to the cause of oppressed people around the world, or at least to a humanitarian foreign policy, while at the same time, in deeds, cosying up with the same imperialists who are oppressing those people.
But now, with growing tensions in the international arena, with the exposing of the so-called international rule of law, Ireland’s elbow room is disappearing. The imperialists are demanding Ireland steps into order, doing away with its ambiguity. Sean Spicer, again, stressed: “Ireland shouldn’t be fighting other people’s battles. If you want to lecture the US on issues that don’t directly affect Ireland, that would be a huge mistake”.
The reference to Palestine will be lost on no one. Indeed, it was not lost on Micheál Martin, who broke his first promise even before his government got voted in, by shelving the Occupied Territories Bill. But it is not just Palestine. For too long Ireland – which spends only 0.24 percent of its GDP in defence – has been a freeloader as far as the major transatlantic powers are concerned. It is time Ireland too pays its fair share in military terms. This is particularly the case with respect to paying for the protection of the West’s substantial strategic interests in waters along Ireland’s west coast, and particularly transatlantic cables. The destruction of Nord Stream and the more recent suspected sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic region have shone a spotlight on this question.
“Jump” says NATO, “How high?” respond Micheál Martin and Simon Harris. Budget 2025 saw record military spending of €1.35 billion, along with promises to ramp up military personnel by 55 percent in the next three years. In fact, the programme for government spells it out: “We are not politically neutral,” and while paying lip service to so-called “military” neutrality it also promises to “reform” the Triple Lock.
But if the government thinks they can do all of this unimpaired, they are sorely mistaken. The traditions of the Irish people comprise centuries of struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Hatred for imperialists of all stripes runs through the veins of the Irish working class. Last time FF and FG tried to push for NATO membership by calling a “Consultative Forum on International Security Policy”, which they scandalously packed with pro-NATO ‘opinionists’, they had to quickly sound the retreat because of the backlash that provoked. Their hypocrisy was most glaring of all on Palestine, sparking 15 months of some of the largest protests that Dublin has seen since the water charges.
Here too they sit in an uncomfortable position, sandwiched between the demands of their imperialist masters and the anger of the working class. Flammable material is accumulating at every level of Irish society.
Growing anger
Wars in the Middle East, wars in Europe, the crisis of infrastructure, the gap between rich and poor, ‘neutrality’ being exposed, a circus in Leinster House, and the prospect of a fresh new crisis – all of this is accumulating layer upon layer of seething anger against the establishment.
While the establishment pride themselves on having bucked the European and American trend, with the far right having failed to break through at the latest elections, the process of radicalisation that will take place in both directions is not finished, on the contrary.
Where the far right manages to make significant gains, it is by tapping on the hatred that exists against the establishment, and blaming the symptoms of the crisis of capitalism on immigrants. This does not represent a shift toward fascism, but the confusion of a backward layer of the working class that has just woken up to political life, while being given no lead by the so-called leaders of the labour movement. But the far right cannot deliver on its promises, and its rise will inevitably be followed by its downfall. More than this, we saw with the far-right riots in Dublin, Belfast and Britain, where small fascist elements are emboldened by their success in tapping into incoherent moods of discontent with their demagogy, they can overreach themselves and spark big backlashes.
As we have seen before in Ireland, when the working class is checked on one front, we can expect to see class anger expressed on other fronts. This can even take on an extremely distorted character.
We return to the analogy of geology. Enormous pressures accumulate under the tectonic plates. But if, for whatever reason, those forces cannot explode on one part of a fault line, it is made more likely that they will explode with even greater force at another point along the fault.
The working class has been disappointed on the political front. Temporarily they may look away from this avenue to express their burning discontent. We should therefore expect new struggles to erupt on the streets, in workplaces, and in communities. This may take the form of strike action, new waves of unrest over austerity in the context of a new crisis, mass mobilisations over Palestine or in response to provocations by the far right, or over some question as yet impossible to predict.
We cannot say for certain how or when it will explode, only that it will. And when it does so, the ruling class will find itself equipped with a weak government of crisis without the authority to calm the situation. Splits could quickly open up, which may even bring down the government before the end of its term given its evident weakness. We must prepare our forces for the events to come.
The North
Seismic changes have taken place in the North of Ireland over the last few years and threaten to upend the uneasy appearance of calm at a moment’s notice.
For almost two centuries, Belfast and the surrounding areas were the most developed parts of this island. But the policy of British imperialism has been one of utter short-sightedness. The century-long decline of British imperialism, which has become ever more parasitic, failing to invest in industry and instead gambling on stock markets, has seen the deindustrialisation not just of Britain, but to a large extent the North of Ireland. Their short-sightedness has also been expressed politically: in the repeated whipping up of sectarian monsters they cannot control, and most recently in the disaster for British capitalism that was Brexit.
Since 2008, and ever more recently, the decline in the Six Counties has taken a logic of its own. A decade and a half of vicious austerity carried out by the Tories have turned life into a nightmare for workers and youth. Stormont has been through political crises for almost its entire existence since the signing of the GFA, and that has now been compounded by a deep crisis in its public finances. The establishment that set itself at the helm of the Six Counties in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement is increasingly being exposed.
Unionism is in a ‘permacrisis’. The material reason behind the strength that unionism once had laid in the promise of somewhat better living standards awarded to Protestant workers compared to their Catholic counterparts. This was the material basis for dividing the working class and formed the foundation of partition. Now, the terminal crisis of British imperialism means the crisis of Unionism.
Sinn Féin has now obtained a relative majority in the Stormont Assembly, in local government and also in Westminster seats for the North. In 1921, the Six Counties were cut up from Ulster in such a way as to guarantee an in-built unionist majority. Fast-forward a century, and Unionism has lost its majority at every level of government. Whatever appearance of democratic justification the statelet once had (and to be sure it never really had any) is now gone. In fact, the whole regime has been hit by a crisis of legitimacy.
The North of Ireland currently resides inside of both the EU Single Market and British market due to the Windsor Framework arrangement. This is a glaring contradiction that simply cannot last under the pressure of world events while also being a source of ire for hardline Unionists. The hardliners want a clean break from the EU to ensure “no Irish Sea border” claiming the Windsor Framework to be “a stepping stone to all-Ireland unity.” Disgraced former DUP leader Jeffery Donaldson managed to keep the hardliners at bay, but with his resignation, the doors have sprung open for a challenge to the current arrangement. Given the increasing economic tensions with the EU and the US and the looming threats of tariffs from Trump, this contradiction is likely to burst asunder with dramatic ramifications for the North and Stormont.
Trump can reignite the border question with a single stroke of the pen. If he places tariffs on the EU but not on the UK, with a de facto Irish Sea border, the Six Counties will be seated in a very uncomfortable position. The EU would be forced to respond with tariffs of its own, and the North of Ireland would be forced to enforce these tariffs. The liberals hailed the Windsor Framework and the NI Protocol as the ‘best of both worlds’: untrammelled access to both the EU and British markets that would make the North an ideal site for new investment. Now the reality is that the North could quickly find itself in the worst of all worlds: facing US tariffs on imports, and enforcing EU tariffs on exports, not to mention trade with the region being tied up in all manner of bureaucratic hurdles. It would then be at a competitive disadvantage to the UK.
The North finds itself continually sapped by its connection to British imperialism. And the last word has not been said on the crisis of British capitalism or on the Brexit saga. At present, the Labour Party enjoys a large majority, but in a few months, it has disillusioned millions of voters. The anger bubbling up in the British working class, for want of a clear expression, is finding a partial expression, again, from the right.
At present, Farage’s outfit, Reform, is riding in first place in the polls – a party that until recently was not only promising to scrap the Windsor Framework, throwing relations between Britain and the EU into turmoil and reopening the question of the border, but was even in an electoral partnership with Jim Allister’s TUV! One small detail: in December, Reform sacked its Scottish organiser because of his links to the UVF and sectarian terrorist attacks against Catholics in Glasgow. What would the implications be for Ireland and the border question of a Westminster government comprising, and even led by Farage’s Reform? A party that has all kinds of crazed, bigoted, sectarian elements at all levels. It would be hazardous to guess, but it certainly would not bring stability in its wake.
With each of the twists and turns to come, the more extreme wing of Unionism will opportunistically use them to try and whip up hysteria to gain support, as Jim Allister already tried to do in the British Commons on the question of Trump’s tariff. All the contradictions left unresolved since Brexit could forcefully flare up once again.
Last time, in 2021, they led to the worst riots seen in years. The North was just one accident away from descending into chaos. At that time, it would only have taken rioters breaking through peace walls for Catholic homes to have been firebombed, potentially sparking revenge attacks that could have led rapidly in a reactionary direction. The threat of the re-escalation of sectarian barbarism is anything but gone. On the contrary, in the absence of a genuine proletarian alternative, it is only made more likely by the acuteness of the domestic and international crisis.
The North is full of flammable material, just waiting for a spark to set the whole thing ablaze.
The DUP
Over the last few years, the downfall of the DUP has been spectacular. They became the most voted Unionist party shortly after the signing of the GFA, and have ruled over the North ever since. They peaked in support in 2017 at the height of the Brexit negotiations, when out of the 18 MPs for the North 10 were DUP. But now, at the latest Westminster elections in July 2024, they won only 5 seats. And three of these seats will be marginal at the next general election. Most telling of all is the fall of Ian Paisley Jr, after 54 years of family domination in North Antrim. Sandwiched between the ‘moderate’ UUP on the one side and the hard-line TUV on the other, the DUP are facing the real prospect of getting completely annihilated.
After almost a quarter of a century in power, the DUP is riddled with scandals, the last but not least of which were the charges of historical sexual assaults against its former leader, Donaldson. But it doesn’t end there, the stench of corruption coming down from the party that prides itself on Christian family values is unbearable. All of this has combined to provide for the fantastic collapse in support we are seeing now.
The demoralisation and feeling of humiliation in the ranks of political unionism must be reaching new heights – and there’s no end in sight. What successes do they have to their name? They were used and betrayed by the Tories. The Irish Sea border is a fact. Complaints, riots and protests achieved nothing. They lost their majorities in every election. The demographic balance has tipped and the Protestant majority is gone. Then you have the Donaldson scandal, and worst of all, a Sinn Féin first minister!
Political unionism is thus, at present, utterly demoralised. A tide of anger is building up in the Protestant communities against their established representatives. This was shown quite graphically by the results in East Derry, where the DUP almost lost their seats to Sinn Féin and kept it only for 179 votes – which would have been a shocking defeat for unionism. To think there were 4,363 unionist voters that voted for the TUV, preferring to risk losing the seats to the nationalists rather than voting for the DUP is remarkable, and descriptive of the mood of betrayal that exists among unionist communities. In fact, at the polls it was the hardliners of the DUP – i.e., the ‘historical’ leaders – that received the hardest kick.
To say what is, the DUP is in an impossible position. They started as the wing of the most uncompromising unionists during the Troubles. They gathered support from a ‘loyal’ population abandoned by ‘their’ monarchy by making a red herring of whatever issue they could find.
But the problem is this: while Britain cannot let go of the North – because of the instability that such a move would risk provoking – they don’t really care about the North. That is, it doesn’t enter into their imperialist calculations as any more than an annoying post-scriptum. They have themselves to blame for allowing all this to develop beneath the surface since the GFA, when they congratulated themselves on solving the problems of the North. In fact, they had only packed in ice all the contradictions accumulated there. But those contradictions have piled up and are now thawing out. More than once we have now seen the interests of British imperialism coming up in direct contradiction against those of Unionism.
The key factor here is what we are seeing everywhere in the world, compounded by the special crisis of British capitalism. On the back of the crisis, the political establishment is increasingly discredited and hated. But without a mass revolutionary, class-based alternative, the growing anger in Protestant communities among backward and disenfranchised layers, which could be channelled in the direction of class struggle with the appropriate leadership, is distorted beyond recognition in the hands of reactionaries and sectarians.
Labour government
The Six Counties are one of the poorest regions in North-Western Europe, with a stubbornly high percentage of economically inactive people. Decades of myopic sectarian administration in the 20th century, followed by 30 years of conflict and a financial crisis have left Northern infrastructure in tatters.
The NHS is crumbling. Hospital waiting lists are the longest in the UK. Between 2014 and 2023, health and social care waiting lists grew by 216 percent for initial outpatient appointments, 147 percent for inpatient treatment and 151 percent for diagnostic tests. The road network is in shocking conditions, with around 120,000 road defects recorded in 2024 alone.
Housing is increasingly becoming a major issue, and widely recognised to be just a few years behind the scale of the crisis in the South. A record 47,000 households – a shocking 6 percent of the total – are on the waiting list for social housing, nearly double the figure it was 20 years ago. This amid plans for only 400 new social homes in 2024. Indeed, housing construction in 2023 hit a 60-year low, despite the growing population. The rental stock has shrunk by 50 percent over the last 7 years, and rents are rising 10 percent year-on-year. Despite the erosion of conditions in Protestant communities, the crisis is accentuated in Catholic areas, with 83 percent of those in waiting lists in Belfast being in Catholic areas.
But nowhere is the crisis of infrastructure in the North as apparent as in the scandalous conditions of Lough Neagh. The source of 40 percent of the freshwater of the Six Counties is drowning in filthy pollution and toxic algae – and nothing is being done about it.
Massive public investment would be needed in healthcare, housing, education, transport, water, energy and across the whole infrastructure to solve the pressing issues facing workers and youth. But even with Stormont back after a two-year-long hiatus, there is nothing they can do to solve it. On the contrary, Westminster is demanding further cuts.
Labour Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn admonished Stormont: Northern Ireland “must live within its means,” there are “no easy answers” for the crisis. In plain language, just because the crisis is so acute does not mean you are going to get anything from us. The Belfast Telegraph, described it as a case of “telling Oliver Twist not to be asking for more.”
There was a big fuss after Stormont finally agreed on a draft programme for government – a programme promising to turn the North into the land of milk and honey. But as the Belfast Telegraph explains, promises are cheap but “delivery is expensive. Anybody that thought that this would be a Labour government that would bring piles of money to Northern Ireland will be very very very disappointed. It really seems that Labour is going to continue with Tory austerity policy.”
Stormont has a £560 million overspending running over the last two years. Labour has promised to write off the debt if Stormont implements cuts of at least £113 million.
Scandalously, Sinn Féin has accepted the deal and will now be heralding Westminster-dictated austerity in the Six Counties from the pole position. Caoimhe Archibald, Sinn Féin finance minister, has threatened her colleagues in the assembly that if they don’t balance the books “there will be grave consequences.”
Sinn Féin are putting themselves in a very risky position. Any proposal to bring more money in through increasing local rates or introducing water charges would be incredibly unpopular. But cutting spending when every department is running deficits despite the abysmal level of infrastructure would be no less unpopular. And that is not even the worst prospect for the party.
Wages are lagging behind inflation everywhere in the North. Last year, public sector workers won a pay increase deal. Now teachers, water workers and healthcare workers are threatening further strike action as well. But Sinn Féin has to implement cuts! They’ll increasingly come on a collision course against the workers’ movement.
United Ireland
None of this is happening by chance. It is the logical outcome of Sinn Féin so-called plan for a United Ireland. Their whole idea is to appeal to the imperialists and the ruling class by making themselves appear as a sensible pair of hands capable of running things in their interests – that is, they hope to make the argument for a United Ireland by showing… that they can make the North a viable state! Certain things follow from that. At a time of crisis, this means cuts. In many ways, they are now a more reliable pair of hands for the imperialists than the DUP.
Sinn Féin’s climb to power has been unstoppable in the North. They have conquered one post after the other since they first walked up the steps of Stormont. The momentum towards unity, with the rise of Sinn Féin in the South as well as demographic changes in the North, plus the constant baiting of nationalist communities by unionist politicians, has given a big impulse to their rise. They now collect most of the nationalist vote behind them, and their popular vote increased by 50 percent over the last 6 years.
But nobody has infinite political credit. They are now directly responsible for administering Westminster rule in the Six Counties. They will be responsible for British-dictated austerity. And they have taken many steps that would have made many a republican stomach stir in disgust. It goes without saying that none of this is going to bring a United Ireland any closer.
When signing the GFA, Sinn Féin de facto agreed that the right to Irish self-determination belongs to Westminster. Only the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has the power to call a border poll. But it is not in the interests of the British ruling class to call for a referendum, and neither is it in the interests of the American or European imperialists to put ‘pressure’ on the British to do so. No amount of ‘sensible’ politics by Sinn Féin can change that.
The last one hundred years of imperialist domination of the South have proven that the imperialists don’t need direct political control of Ireland in order to defend their interests there. On the contrary, handing political control to a pliant local ruling class would relieve them of all the political headaches involved.
The problem is that any move in that direction from the British ruling class will be met by the fiercest resistance of unionism and loyalist paramilitaries, which still have their weapons. This would provoke the reaction of workers and of nationalist communities. The instability would quickly spread from Belfast to Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, London and the whole of Britain. The imperialists cannot afford any of this. And there is nothing Sinn Féin can do to change that.
Therefore, they are in an impossible position. Indeed, Starmer has made it clear, a border poll “is not even on the horizon.” What can Sinn Féin do, given that they are committed to the constitutional road, and those with the constitutional power to grant a border poll say no? They can do nothing but accept that answer and add a few more years onto the timeframe for getting to a United Ireland… equivalent to another term of the British parliament. As the Irish Times explained “You need only consider that in 2011, Gerry Adams told us Northern Ireland would have left the UK by 2016. By August 2021, Gerry had changed 2016 to 2024. In May 2022, Mary Lou McDonald called for a border poll by 2027 and by July 2022, Mary Lou McDonald had changed 2027 to 2030. And just this month, Michelle O’Neill had shifted the Sinn Féin goalposts again to call for a border poll by 2034.”
The seeming certainty of Sinn Féin’s rise in the South coupled with the perennial crisis of Unionism could keep the illusion of a constitutional vote being ‘just around the corner’ for a while. But it’s not possible to forever delay the aspirations of the nationalist community.
Recent polling by the Irish Times suggests support for Irish unification continues to rise. Among Catholics it is up from 55 percent in 2022 to 63 percent in 2024. The gap between those polled in the North who would vote for remaining in the union and those who would vote for Irish unification has narrowed from a 23 point gap to a 14 point gap according to the same polling. But the idea of a constitutional road to a United Ireland is looking ever more doubtful to wider and wider layers. On the one hand, we have the intransigence of Westminster, on the other Sinn Féin’s anaemic development in the South.
The only path towards ending partition would be the revolutionary struggle against capitalism North and South, i.e. the socialist revolution. The basis for the rising support for unification among working-class nationalists in the North is precisely the atrocious social and economic conditions that capitalism and imperialism are creating, generating a burning hatred of the link with British imperialism. This is likely to continue. But the temporary enthusiasm of middle-class nationalists in the North for a capitalist united Ireland within the EU could easily cool as the crisis of capitalism returns with a vengeance in the South, whilst the EU is torn by its own contradictions. Only the working class can solve this question, by seizing power across Ireland and carrying out the socialist revolution. As Connolly explained: the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour, the cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland.
A century ago, it looked like nothing could remove the Nationalist party of Joseph Devlin from primacy over the nationalist community. 50 years ago the same could be said for the SDLP. And the same goes for Sinn Féin today. Even if a collapse in the vote is unlikely because of the sectarian setup of the statelet, increasingly radicalisation will find a channel in other avenues, in the streets and in the workplaces.
A century and more of history since partition teaches us that the workers’ movement cannot ignore the national question. We are not like those that equate Unionism and Republicanism as twin reactionary ‘nationalisms.’ The first is the nationalism of British imperialism. Republicanism instead encapsulates the democratic aspiration for national self-determination of the Irish people and a struggle against imperialism and colonialism going back centuries.
However, it has always contained class contradictions, with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships in the Republican movement artificially severing the democratic and national question of Irish independence and unification from the class question. Where the workers’ movement has failed to take up the national question in a revolutionary way, these leaders have been given free reign and have always ended up betraying. Thus the freedom fighters of yesterday end up kowtowing before British monarchs and carrying out policies on behalf of British imperialism.
We stand for a socialist united Ireland. We point out that we cannot succeed on the basis of capitalism. The question of ending partition starkly poses the question of a united, revolutionary struggle of all workers, Catholic, Protestant or other, North and South, against the capitalist system and imperialism. Only a socialist programme can win over significant layers of workers from Unionist communities into the ranks of the revolutionary party and drive a wedge between them and their traditional ‘leaders.’ The socialist revolution alone can cast partition aside in its mighty sweep.
The potential exists for such a movement. Political Unionism is demoralised; Sinn Féin’s hold is nowhere near as strong as it outwardly appears; and class anger is building up in all working-class communities. But the leadership is found wanting.
Socialism or Barbarism
Labour militancy has been on the rise in the North for several years now. The strike rate in the region was more than three-and-a-half times that of England and Scotland over the 2023/2024 winter, this at a time when the UK hit a 30-years record of days lost to strike action.
One of the most significant recent events in the Six Counties was the strike of the public sector that took place on January 18 of last year, when more than 150,000 striking workers brought the North to a grinding halt. While the DUP and the Tory government were busy squabbling over green and red lanes, first ministers etc., a two years long impasse in Stormont was solved when the working class forcefully banged its fist on the table. It sent a shiver down the spine of the establishment, and its effect won’t be easily forgotten among the workers either. What a striking illustration of how a united movement of the working class can break the impasse in the Six Counties. With Westminster and Stormont gearing up for further cuts, even greater future class battles are preparing.
The working class in the region has been incredibly strengthened. Its absolute numerical force has skyrocketed since the beginning of the Troubles, from 574,000 in 1970 to 831,000 in 2024. A whole generation of young workers has been brought up since the signing of the GFA – a generation for which capitalism has only meant crisis, a generation that is sick to the stomach of sectarian division. Indeed only 20 percent support the GFA as it is.
A 2021 census illustrated a sharp decline in British identity in the North, and survey results consistently indicate that a growing number of 18 to 24 years old feel no affinity towards Unionism. Since 2006, more people identified as “neither unionist nor nationalist” rather than unionist. The figures for religious identification are also quite interesting. While they show little change among youth in Catholic communities towards ‘no religion’, among youth in Protestant communities it is interesting how much of a swing there has been towards ‘no religion’. This is unsurprising given how the ‘Protestant’ identity is turned into a sectarian hobby horse by the political leaders of Unionism. The potential starting point for a united movement of the working class is there: particularly among the most radical youth of both communities.
If we survey the situation in the North, we have to say that a contradictory picture emerges: one of enormous potential for class battles, but also an increasingly dangerous and fraught environment with the potential for reactionary consequences. In history, it often happens that the forces of revolution and counter-revolution march in time, both gathering strength.
The tragedy of the current situation lies in the so-called leadership of the working class, and above all the trade union leaders. With little more than the snap of a finger, these ladies and gentlemen could raise the working class to its feet and make the ruling class tremble. Instead, they consciously abdicate the political leadership of the working class to ‘their’ community leaders – i.e. to the outright unionist reactionaries on the one side, and the nationalist petty-bourgeoisie on the other! In their reformist cowardice, they imagine this to be the way to create a united movement. But they couldn’t be more wrong. On this path only disaster awaits us.
The history of the last 100 years is punctuated by periods of rising militancy of the labour movement, and an initial tendency towards unity in the ranks of the working class. But in the absence of a militant leadership, the reactionary elements in society can whip up sectarianism, drag the backward layers with them, breaking the incipient workers movement and plunging the whole region into a barbaric nightmare. The decisive question is one of leadership.
We saw the potential that existed in the 1907 Belfast dock strikes, when under the leadership of Jim Larkin both Catholic and Protestant dock workers united in their fight against the bosses. They carried with them wide sections of the working class, even leading to a mutiny in the RIC.
Compare that with the late 1960s and the beginning of the Troubles. There too, there was the potential for united action, as militant elements in the Catholic-majority Bogside in revolt and in the Protestant-majority Fountain neighbourhoods of Derry showed. But aside from very courageous elements in the Derry Young Socialists, and a small of group of radical students organised in People’s Democracy in QUB, the revolutionary forces were almost non-existent. A potentially revolutionary situation descended quite rapidly into sectarian barbarism.
Those events themselves showed that, in the complete absence of militant workers’ leadership in the North of Ireland, it doesn’t take much for even a small group to become a point of reference, as was the case with the Housing Action Committee in Derry and the QUB students of People’s Democracy, which were catapulted to the forefront of a mass movement. The problem was that, while brave, militant and self-sacrificing, these youths were ultimately unequipped with the organisation or political programme necessary to arm the movement in the complex events that unfolded. They were outflanked by the petty-bourgeois leaderships of the SDLP and the Provos.
Comrades in the North and South must make it their duty to learn the lessons of this history, and of the revolutionary history of Ireland more broadly, which are contained in Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution by Alan Woods and much other written material produced over years by our organisation.
Comrades, the lesson that comes out is this: we have to build a revolutionary party – and with urgency! This alone will be the factor that will make the difference in the big events to come. On the back of the crisis and the impasse of the North, many are drawing revolutionary conclusions. We can’t complain of a lack of opportunities, they are there if we seize them. Our task is to organise them under a revolutionary programme for a Socialist United Ireland as soon as possible.
Build the Communists!
To paraphrase Trotsky in his Transitional Programme, North and South the political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
The political establishment is increasingly discredited on both sides of the border. And the storm clouds of a fresh new crisis are about to batter the shores of our island. In a sentence, the field is completely open for us to build the organisation.
We see it ourselves in our daily work. Despite our small forces, we are able to attract the attention of dozens who apply to join the organisation each and every month. Thousands of young people in Ireland are interested in communism. Tens of thousands more are just one step away from it. Given our size, the possibilities are almost unlimited. As Ted Grant used to say events, events and more events will shape the consciousness of the working class. And how many will be looking at the monumental events taking place right now and will increasingly draw revolutionary conclusions?
The objective conditions have never been as favourable for the building of a revolutionary organisation in Ireland. The only limit to our growth is a subjective one – our quantitative and qualitative strength – which we have to consciously fight to overcome. There is also another factor: our will to grow, to educate ourselves in the theory, to rise to the historic challenge and to break every barrier in our path on the way. Do we have that will?
The step from nothing to almost 50 has been a difficult one. The step from 50 to 100 will pose many similar challenges, and also new ones, but we must and can achieve it in a fraction of the time.
We need to set our sight towards the tasks ahead: above all recruitment and education, laying the basis for a regular magazine, a growing full-time apparatus, a professional centre in Dublin, establishing branches in all the major towns and cities in Ireland, deepening our presence in Dublin and Belfast, and building and educating new layers of leadership at branch, district and national level. What tremendous steps ahead those would be for the forces of revolution in Ireland! And from 100 genuinely Bolshevik members, becoming the most active and best recognised far left organisation in Ireland will be in our grasp. Our goal is not just to comment on events – but to become a factor in the class struggle itself, and ultimately to become a decisive factor.
As Lenin puts it in What is to be done?, “this is what we should dream of!” But not as a remote possibility. On the contrary, if we do our job correctly, all of this will be a concrete reality sooner than many might realise.
But it all starts from each and every single one of us. It starts from grasping the essence of the perspectives, the enormous implications they have on the possibility for growth, and understanding the role that each one of us plays in this. If we combine this with a patient but relentless struggle to build the organisation, to raise our political level, and to build roots in the working class, then there is no force on Earth that will be able to stop us!
At a time when the rest of the left is in disarray, we are making big strides forward. We are laying the foundations for the mass communist party of tomorrow, the party that will lead the Irish working class to victory.
In the coming years and decades titanic events will shake the very foundations of world capitalism. Millions will mobilise in a life and death struggle against capitalism and for the proletarian revolution. It will happen in country after country, including Ireland. We have to draw the lessons of more than a century and a half of struggle of the working class and build a revolutionary leadership well in advance of these events.
In the words of Ted Grant: “Revolutionary audacity can achieve everything. The organisation must consciously pose itself and see itself as the decisive factor in the situation. There will be no lack of possibilities for transforming ourselves from a tiny sect into a mass organisation on the wave of the revolution.”
Comrades, we need to do everything in our power and beyond to prepare ourselves! Like 100 years ago, the choice before humanity will again be socialism or barbarism. Equipped with the all-powerful ideas of Marxism, and with our unshakeable faith in the working class, we will win!
Forward to the 100 members!
For a socialist United Ireland!
Fight for the international proletarian revolution!
