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Loyalist Intifada? PSNI targetted in Loyalist 'Anti-State' riots!
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miscellaneous |
opinion/analysis
 Sunday March 05, 2006 20:06 by Sean - Organise!
PSNI targetted in Loyalist 'Anti-State' riots!
From WCR 11. We don't usually print articles from WCR so soon after publication but in light of requests made in the wake of the rioting in Dublin sparked by an attempted Love Ulster rally we are making this article available online at this time.
A Scottish comrade who used to live in Belfast decided, along with his partner, to pay the Belfast Local of Organise! a wee visit at the end of the summer. They arrived as Septembers Loyalist riots kicked off and as more violence than our comrade had seen in the couple of years he lived here seemed to occur in the space of a few short days. The riots intensified in the wake of a decision to re-route the Whiterock Orange Parade on Saturday 10 September. We say intensified because the UVF had already been orchestrating riots as a result police raids on a number of drinking dens associated with that organisation.
Kicking Off
While regarded, with good reason, by many as a planned attempt to divert attention from ongoing loyalist feuding and sectarian attacks on Catholic homes across the north it was the largely anti-state nature of the riots that demands a closer examination. Not that loyalism has ever had an aversion to taking on the British state (see page 8).
Meanwhile, from the safety of ‘nationalist’ North Belfast we watched the plumes of smoke rising from what looked to be Mount Vernon, while landrovers dripping fresh paint made their way up and down the Antrim Road to and from the barracks. Helicopters hovered over the Shankill, the Shore Road, city centre, and East Belfast. As we watched smoke rose into the air from further in the distance as things heated up over in the East. At one point, or rather over a good 5 minute stretch, some sort of massive, white, mobile HQ crawled past us at about 5 mph with sirens wailing, tiny blue lights flashing all accompanied by high pitched laser noises. The back doors were open to reveal rows of seats, and peelers at consoles in the back. “What the fuck is that?” our Scottish comrade asked.
The next evening we watched trough the window of a nearby pub, from over our pints, as more landrovers, Army and Police, many of them with scorch marks and plastered with paint, piled into the Musgrave Street barracks – one veteran remarked that he hadn’t seen anything like it since the eighties.
Panic – I Predict a Riot
It took a while getting home that evening but our visiting comrades were somewhat more inconvenienced the following day when they tried to make their onward journey to a planned romantic vacation in Venice. Cutting it fine already they arrived to get their bus to the Belfast International Airport only to find buses being cancelled as ‘I Predict a Riot’ blared over the intercom.
Panic ensued, frantic phone calls were made, taxis refused to take them so far out of Belfast in case they couldn’t get back. But one taxi-driver was eventually convinced to take our duo to the airport, so they made it to the book in with only seconds to spare – only for them to find that their flight was delayed!
Other people, mostly working class Protestants from the areas affected by the rioting, were faced with more serious disruption. When the buses and company vans ran out it was all too often cars and vans belonging to other working class people that were transformed into burning barricades, while many more faced inconvenience, uncertainty, fear and intimidation.
Class tensions at work
This violence was primarily anti-state with hostility being directed towards the PSNI, Parades Commission and the Government. But what really fuelled the Loyalist intifada?
The rioting was concentrated on poorer Protestant working class areas of Belfast, in areas that, like other working class communities, have gained least from the peace process and which have suffered worst from de-industrialisation.
Clearly underlying any sectarian motivation for the riots class tensions are also at work. Traditional industries that provided employment for predominantly Protestant skilled workers have relocated to parts of the globe with cheaper labour costs and little in the way of union recognition.
This process has been deliberately exacerbated by the acceptance of ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies by all of the north’s major parties. From the ‘socialist’ Sinn Fein to the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the UUP to DUP, even the working class loyalist PUP accepts such economic ‘realities’. All of our politicians have encouraged a process that sees the redistribution of poverty, as opposed to the redistribution of the wealth created by working people for the benefit of working people, while Northern Ireland’s wealthy elite gets wealthier.
Exclusion and blaming the ‘other’
Working class Protestants are feeling excluded, demoralised and they are losing out. Less than two in every hundred people in the Shankill – including mature students – make it to third level education. For many working class Protestants there is no way out of poverty or exclusion and all too often this feeds into not only the likes of last September’s riots but it also feeds into the growing ranks of the loyalist paramilitary youth wings of the YCV and the UYM. It is a situation that has, given the fragmented and increasingly sectarian nature of our society, led to demonisation of the ‘other’ community by a younger generation of working class Protestants and Catholics. It plays out in recreational rioting, increasing riots following Scottish football matches between Rangers and Celtic and in sectarian attacks carried out by young people on both Protestant and Catholic homes and communities.
Class not country
There is a sense that nationalists have benefited from the peace process, and this has been deliberately fostered by unionist politicians in a manner encouraged by the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement and the concept of Equality being promoted in the north. This is a notion that has been encouraged by Sinn Fein representing every minor concession as a major victory for their party and by statements that claim we’ll see a united Ireland by 2016. With no prospect of class unity emanating from that quarter its difficult to imagine exactly what they mean by ‘united’.
The truth is that the jobs that have brought unemployment levels so low are largely casual and low-paid – all working class people in the north are suffering the effects of poverty, lower wages, higher prices and an increasingly ruthless government onslaught on our welfare and services.
Only unity in opposition to water charges, rates hikes, education and health cuts offers any alternative to increasingly alienated and impoverished working class communities. Unionism or Loyalism, nor Nationalism or Republicanism, offer anything but more of the same, or worse, to working class people.
We have no common interests with British, Irish or global capitalists. We have no common interests with the politicians who enact economic policies that benefit the rich and penalise the poor – nor do we have common interests with those politicians who aspire to that role.
Unity worth fighting for
Some people, active in their own communities and often from loyalist or republican backgrounds have done excellent work to try and alleviate the worst impacts of poverty and sectarianism but we need to go further than this. We need to build a movement capable of breaking with the baggage and misguided nationalist notions of loyalism and republicanism. We need to break with the cancer of militarism that has blighted so many lives.
We need to organise as workers, in our communities and workplaces, to pursue our own interests as only we can. We need to make government and capitalism history in a struggle that forges a new unity – the only unity worth building and fighting for – class unity in opposition to all bosses and states.
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Comments (13 of 13)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13Wise up son. We've heard it all before - that crude, unreconstructed, text-book formula about everything 'misconceived' but your own (politically) sectarian clap-trap. The a door-to-door born again christian would not sound so utterly impotent, one-dimensional and sadly self-righteous.
Organise yourself and let the grown ups change the world!
(I tried to go for the ball - honest).
What?
I think I know what he is saying. Your basic view of republicanism and loyalism representing the same blind interests of 'nationalism' amounts to crass reductionism. Equating the two is wrong factually and is quite myopic.
We are still facing of a neo-colonial sceneria in the North with DUP loyalism blocking the way to everything, including class politcs, underpinned by MI5/Special Branch and all you can do is talk about abstract unities.
By the way have you seen the 76 responses to the Socialist Party's position on the riots in Indymedia? How many have you received? What am I doing wasting my time here anyway?
Obviously, class tensions were at work which was also highlighted by the mainstream media at the time. However, the sectarian nature of the riots is clearly underlined in the article.
As for republicanism and loyalism, do they have the potential to build class unity today? Never have and never will!
Obviously, on paper there is a difference between republicanism and loyalism and republicanism could be considered more progressive historically in terms of a reaction against absolute monarchy.
In Ireland, in reality catholic nationalsim provided the muscle in Irish Republicanism especially since the 19th century which has been re-inforced over the last 30 years and sectarianism strengthened.
In terms of abstract unity you talk about, there is no doubht that it is difficult to build such unity but recent struggles such as the posties strike has overcome such division with some affect.
The whole point of the article is point to alternatives which are not abstract and if you think that amounts to ´´class reductionism´´ thats your opinion but i happen to believe that class issues and day to day issues are more important for me and others than what flag flies from stormont or the dail.
Same old story, same old rhetoric. It might not fit into your six county mentality but tell me how we can build a society of equals on this island with out first dealing with partition and the economic and social structures that it has created.
Loyalists are victims of colonial rule ( do you see the six counties as a colony ? ), but they are keen supporters of the aparthied state that Norn Iron is, willing to kill for their freedom to oppress.
Working class solidarity cannot be achieved while partition divides workers. The economic conditions that afflict loyalist working class areas are a result of class oppression, however the loyalists were always willing to make sectarian allies cutting across class barriers, before they were ever willing to make solidarity with republican/socialist workers, suffering from the same economic mismanagement.
How much support did Organise give to working class whites in racist South Africa, while some of them lived in poverty while maintaining white rule..none probably..in my eyes your support of loyalism is mis guided..make northern ireland history first, then working class solidarity and internationalism can be built.
Its not about flags Sean its about practical republican socialist politics.
GPG SAID, Same old story, same old rhetoric. It might not fit into your six county mentality but tell me how we can build a society of equals on this island with out first dealing with partition and the economic and social structures that it has created.
Firstly, tell me how has the struggle against partition over the last 30 years, moved us closer to achieving a united ireland? except bring more sectarian division in such a way that SF have changed their strategy to accomodate this.
Personally, the 'labour must wait' theory that you seem to advocate is a pipe dream and past its sell by date and therefore offers no way forward.
GPG said, Loyalists are victims of colonial rule ( do you see the six counties as a colony ? ), but they are keen supporters of the aparthied state that Norn Iron is, willing to kill for their freedom to oppress.
Standard simpistic republican analysis here which suggests that loyalists are 'duped' or agents of the state. The loyalist relationship with Britain is somewhat more compicated than this, hence the recent riots in loyalist working class communities. As has been clearly stated loyalism is a sectarian reacttonary idelogy which offers no way forward.
GPG said, Working class solidarity cannot be achieved while partition divides workers.
Therfore we have to wait for republican socialism to bring us to the 'promise land'? like the last 30 years?
Well, Organise! was not around at that time, but anarchists were providing solidarity to those fighting the apartheid regime whilst maintaining a class analysis.
Are you trying to suggest that apartheid existed in N.Ireland? There was discrimination and oppression but not one the same level as S.Africa in terms of policies introduced.
Well then we clearly disagree then and aims and strategy but i would rather build now, improve our conditions within our communities and workplaces based on internationalism and opposition to all artificial states, then wait for a future fantasy Dail Eireann that will bring us more of the same shit!
This is the sort of nonsense that makes Anarchists irrelevant . You pick a victim group make the victimisers into martyers and Hey Presto! You have got the recipe for a Brave New Anarchist World but one thats more like Alice Through The Looking Glass.
At least Irish Anarchism is to some extent redeemed by the stance which the WSM have taken on the Irish National Question. But I suppose if ORANGEise had been in Dublin during the riot they would have been on FAIRs dide.
This is quite an interesting article suggesting that similar forces are at work in the poorest sections of the loyalist working class in the north that were at work Saturday before last amongst the poorest sections of the Dublin working class.
There is really little point in picking one side or the other to cheer for when it comes to riots like these. Although they may be associated with orange or green nationalism, they are as much an expression of the anger of the underclass as they are of any particular political point of view. While republicanism has historically been a much more progressive force than loyalism - which is purely reactionary - nationalist inspired riots don't have much to do with republicanism and have more similarities with loyalist inspired ones than many would like to admit.
The challenge, to my mind is to try to channel the anger that people in deprived areas feel towards constructive political projects rather than the destructive and nihilistic outlet of riots.
"nationalist inspired riots don't have much to do with republicanism and have more similarities with loyalist inspired ones than many would like to admit. "
So if any anarchists had participated in the Dublin riot you would disown them? Or are you stating the opposite and asserting that some force other than republicanism was responsible for the disturbances?
You pick a victim group make the victimisers into martyers
I'm pulling this line out because I think it underlines the problem with a lot of the republican aligned left thinking on the situation.
Your may be right that many of the rioters were members of a loyalist paramilitary group or the OO and hence could also be described as victimisers (i'm hoping your not just using that label to apply to all prods). But then many of the mostly male participants of a nationalist riot may also be sexist, homophobic or even racist.
So we could construct a tower of oppression with black working class catholic lesbians at the bottom and white male protestant capitalists at the top. And we could argue over exactly where everyone belongs on the steps in the middle. There are strands of the left, in particular in the USA, that seem to do little else.
Or we could say that this riot - like the previous one - is a reflection of something more complex than what the partipants think on the national question. Quite what we do with such a conclusion is open for discussion - but I don't think it is good to have a go at Organise! for pointing it out.
The spin and lies coming from that kind of comment is dishonest and the same usual digg from the sparts who are not only irrelevent but can only dig from the sidelines.
If you read the article properly the whole ethos of loyalism being defined as a sectarian ideology is clearly emphasised.
Sparts, are yous still running around like middle-class religious zealots spreading the good news?
if working class loyalists are getting stuck into the state forces , nationalist youths should follow suit . if we work together well beat them . rather than sitting drinking in a pub organise should have been organising a sympathy riot in ardoyne.