Category: North of Ireland
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Ireland after the Ceasefire
30 years ago, on 31 August 1994 the Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire. 25 years of armed struggle had failed to bring the unification of Ireland any closer. The ceasefire (which despite an interruption between 1996 and 1997 would eventually lead to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998) was an admission on…
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The wrong argument for a united Ireland
A recent, much-publicised study by a Dublin-based think tank, the IIEA, has concluded that the cost of the South of Ireland absorbing the North after a future unity referendum would be enormous. If their figures are to be believed, it would cost €20 billion per year for 20 years, which would translate into a 25…
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Crisis of Unionism: Reckoning with the betrayal of Britain
The world bore witness to historic defeats for Unionism in the latest Assembly and Council elections which propelled Sinn Féin to the biggest party on both occasions. This situation is hurling the DUP and Unionism into an ever deepening quagmire. Many Unionist workers and youth feel abandoned by the DUP due to the ever increasing…
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The Good Friday Agreement: a quarter century of dashed hopes
This week, 25 years ago, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed in Belfast. Heralding it as nothing less than the beginning of a new epoch for the North of Ireland, the British and Irish government signatories – along with its American architects – were inebriated with their own ‘success’. ‘History’ had been made!
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The Windsor Framework and the DUP – the crisis of Unionism continues
The British establishment is heralding the adoption of the Windsor Framework, the latest UK-EU trading arrangement. But this deal will do nothing to resolve the tensions in the North of Ireland. Only united class struggle can offer a way forward.
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Sinn Féin victory a historic blow to the union!
Sinn Féin has emerged as the first party in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. With a remarkable 29% of the first preference votes to the DUP’s 21.3%, the gap was even wider than predicted. Within hours of the polls closing, #UnitedIreland was trending on Twitter. This is another devastating blow to the prestige of British…
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Bloody Sunday: fifty years on
50 years ago today, soldiers of the British paratroop regiment opened fire on a peaceful civil rights march in the North of Ireland. 13 people were killed immediately, and a 14th victim died later as a result of his injuries. For half a century, the British state has covered up this atrocity, a crime for…
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40 years since the Irish hunger strikes: the struggle for a Socialist United Ireland continues
On this day 40 years ago, in the face of Tory intransigence, the hunger strike by Republican political prisoners in Ireland came to an end. Decades on, only revolutionary class struggle can provide a future free from oppression and sectarianism. On 3 October 1981, the remaining Irish Republicans on hunger strike in the North of…
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The implosion of the DUP and the dead end of Unionism
In the course of scarcely a month, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has begun imploding in spectacular fashion. Arlene Foster – the DUP leader and First Minister at Stormont who survived the RHI scandal, the collapse of Stormont in 2017, and the introduction of Northern Ireland Protocol earlier this year – has finally and unceremoniously…
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Sectarian riots: a bad end to a bad peace
Over the past week, the North of Ireland has seen its worst rioting in years, ostensibly over the Northern Ireland Protocol signed by the Westminster government with the EU. The threat of loyalist violence has been in the air for months as tensions have ratcheted up since the Protocol came into effect in January.