Workers Power: Sinn Féin votes to support the police

national | politics / elections | other press Tuesday March 06, 2007 15:40 by L5I Ireland - League for the Fifth International info at workerspower dot com

Northern Ireland elections: a referendum on the Unionist veto

In this article, Workers Power looks at Sinn Féin's capitulations for British imperialism, SWP and SEA in the elections, and how to build a new movement, fighting for a united, socialist Ireland.

The long-delayed Northern Ireland assembly elections will take place on 7th March. They follow a series of capitulations by Sinn Fein, the major party of republicanism, to the Unionists and British imperialism: disarmament of the IRA and, most recently, acceptance of the police. This has led to mass protests by those, who have suffered for decades at the hands of this sectarian force - protests which have now spilt over into the elections themselves.

For this reason, Workers Power and the League for the Fifth International call on workers, socialists and democrats to vote for those candidates standing on a platform of refusal to recognise the legitimacy of the sectarian statelet and its police force: Peggy O'Hara, Martin Cunningham and Republican Sinn Fein. This is in spite of our criticism of the dead-end strategy of RSF, which has no alternative to the failed strategy of guerrilla war. Our aim is rather to galvanise mass resistance to British imperialism, and to prevent it imposing its anti-democratic settlement on the Irish people.

Sinn Fein travel the extra mile to share power with Ian Paisley's DUP
Sinn Fein held an Extraordinary Congress - or Ard Fheis - on 28 January, at which a motion was passed, with a big majority in favour, supporting the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein's leadership, including its president Gerry Adams, has replaced their party's boycott of the police with a policy of co-operation. It marks a further betrayal of the struggle of the Catholic population of the north for equality and a united Ireland.

The Congress came less than a week after the release of an official report from the ombudsman confirming that the police collaborated with Loyalist paramilitary death squads.

The police protected loyalist informants, who they knew were committing a string of sectarian murders, at least 10, probably 15, in the 1990s. Evidence of police collusion in drug dealing and the bombing of a Sinn Fein office is also revealed in the report. Special branch handlers even "babysat" the killers during police interviews to stop them incriminating themselves.

The report revealed that this collusion continued right up to 2003, long after the IRA had enacted a ceasefire and started to hand over its weapons. But perhaps this is not so surprising when one bears in mind that while the number of Catholics in the police force increased from 8 per cent to 21 per cent in recent years, the top brass is the same as it was during the troubles.

Adams' response to criticism of his new course from within republican ranks was to suggest that these sectarian killings were all in the past and now we have "new safeguards". He says republicans will be able to use the Policing Partnership Boards to ensure impartiality. This, he claims, will lead eventually to a united Ireland.

However, the British government's response to the report reveals the terrible limitations of Adams' approach. The British Secretary for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, remains in command. His immediate response to the report was to rule out a public inquiry on the grounds that #200 million had already been spent on the Bloody Sunday inquiry! The ombudsman has also been refused the right to investigate MI5, which is clearly up to its neck in the web of deceit and murder.

How can Police Boards change all this? Certainly, questions can be asked and grievances aired, but PSNI operations will remain outside the Boards' control. Therefore, the police and security services will still be Unionist dominated; they will still have a monopoly on violence; their role will still be determined the British government.

In reality, Adams and fellow leader, Martin McGuiness, want to get into government alongside Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists. The British and Irish governments demanded Sinn Fein support for the police force as a condition for power sharing. That Sinn Fein's leaders are prepared to do this shows that they are no longer opposed to British imperialism and the sectarian state. Inevitably, once in "power", they will be forced to make more concessions and turn a blind eye to more atrocities.

Unionist veto
The roots of this latest sell-out lie in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. This took shape when Sinn Fein and the IRA sued for peace in the 1990s after the shortcomings of a purely military campaign became evident. Instead of taking the struggle to a higher plane and seeking to mobilise working class action on an all-Ireland basis against repression, to organise a class war against imperialism, Sinn Fein chose a parliamentary path.

But the Northern Ireland state cannot be taken over and used for the purpose of introducing a non-sectarian and equal society. The six county state is inherently sectarian; its raison d'etre is to preserve Protestant supremacy over Catholics and the union with Britain that guarantees it.

The northern state was artificially carved out of Ireland at the end of the Irish war of independence. The retreating British state armed the Protestant minority, who formed a majority in only six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster in the north-east, and organised them to create "a Protestant state for a Protestant people", as James Craig, the first prime minister of Northern Ireland, infamously declared.

The Protestant opposition to a united Ireland is based on defending a series of privileges over the Catholic population in the spheres of jobs, housing, education and, to underpin it all, the police. Although, the 1998 agreement has got rid of some of the worst excesses of this discrimination, sectarianism is as alive as ever. The Unionist veto over the future of the state remains: hence their ability to drag their heels and extract concession after concession from Sinn Fein.

Centrist evasion
In the elections, the Socialist Workers Party is standing its long time leader, Eamonn McCann, under the banner of the Socialist Environmental Alliance. McCann made his name in the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s, which fought against this oppression of the nationalists, but the economism of the SWP has continuously downplayed the importance of the anti-imperialist and national liberation struggle in Irish politics. They have always yearned for the "normalisation" of the class struggle.

Today this can be seen in McCann and the SEA's approach to the PSNI. On 22nd January, the SEA had this to say about a foreign, imperialist police force in Ireland: "We do not believe that the ongoing debate between the Sinn Fein leadership and republicans who disagree with them about policing is productive from a working-class point of view."

Would McCann and the SWP have the same view about the Iraqi police force? Would it abandon its principled support for the Iraqi national liberation forces to attack the sectarian and pro-imperialist police? Of course not, but then, Iraq is a long way away, and there is no chance of gaining a seat in an assembly on an opportunist ticket.

In his election statement, McCann went on at length, denouncing police harassment of youth, exposing their role as defenders of capitalist property on picket lines, and encouraging young people not to join up. But he ends his statement with this perfectly reformist statement on the relationship between bourgeois democracy and this body of armed men:

"We believe that the only proper position of elected representatives is to remain at all times independent of the police and hold them to account and subject them to public scrutiny. In a phrase, to police the police."

This ignores the whole issue of the national question, the gerrymandered nature of the Six Counties, which give a built in majority to the Orange parties. Do McCann and the SWP really believe the PSNI is fundamentally different to the RUC? Do they believe they can be made accountable to the nationalist population, to Protestant as well as Catholic workers, via Stormont or Westminster? Both revolutionary Irish nationalists and revolutionary socialists should know that this whole state, with its police force and army, needs to be smashed, not just "held to account." Of course its every crime against the youth, the nationalist community, the workers of the province needs to be exposed and fought from every tribune available, including the dunghill of Stormont.

But above all what workers need is their own defence force - like James Connolly's Citizens' Army, which originated to defend the picket lines of workers in struggle. This is necessary not only against sectarian attacks from Orange bigots but against the PSNI too. It needs to be a mass force, drawing in and training the youth, guarding and aiding the growth of a mass movement for equal rights, for immediate social and economic demands, such as jobs and decent housing for all, and, crucially, for a united workers republic of Ireland.

From dissent to power
Within Sinn Fein, the youth wing, Ogra Shinn Fein, urged delegates to the Ard Fheis to vote against the motion. More than 400 people attended a public meeting in Derry, called to oppose the policy. But despite their opposition they have already said that they will stick with Sinn Fein.

Moreover, Ogra Shinn Fein's alternative proposal of a municipal and non-political police force was a utopian pipe dream. Their new police force would still serve the imperialists. It can never be free of politics; it is part of the capitalist state.

The task facing workers and youth in Northern Ireland, fighting for a united, socialist Ireland, is to link the fight against sectarianism and discrimination to the struggle for a fundamental transformation in pay, jobs, housing, social services, and control in the workplace, opening the way to working class power. But to reach this goal a revolutionary party is vital, one linked to similar parties worldwide in a new, Fifth International.