Northern Ireland

Socialist Party Statement November 2010

The cuts are coming – and the parties in the Assembly are not standing in their way – they have agreed that they will implement them, not oppose them. One after another, all the parties in the Assembly Executive are queueing up to identify where cuts can be made – cut education spending, privatise the Housing Executive, close hospitals, sell off Belfast Harbour, increase household rates for ordinary workers, cut civil service workers pay, introduce water charges…

A savage attack has been launched on working class people in Northern Ireland. The Comprehensive Spending Review announced by the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition government on 20 October represents around a 6.9% cut in public spending in the North over the next four years. This amounts to some £4 billion in revenue spending, and a 40% reduction in capital spending (on roads, hospitals and other public projects).

Fierce rioting erupted in Ardoyne after an Orange Order parade on 12 July and continued for three days. The period before, over and after this year’s Twelfth was also marked by rioting in other areas and a number of gun and bomb attacks. There was trouble across Belfast - including the New Lodge, Broadway, the Markets, Short Strand, Ormeau Road-and in Derry, Armagh, and Lurgan.

The Assembly Executive is preparing an act that will criminalise the right to protest. The “Public Assemblies Bill” proposed by the working group on parades after the Hillsborough Agreement will mean all protests of 50 or more people will be illegal acts unless they ask permission 37 days before hand!

The publication of the Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, more commonly known as the Saville Inquiry, has brought to light, once again, the murderous and brutal lengths the British capitalist state is prepared to go to defend its interests. The Saville Inquiry, which cost nearly £200 million and lasted 12 years, has officially confirmed what everyone has known all along - that those who were murdered by the British Army on Bloody Sunday were innocent. What the inquiry has failed to expose or even attempt to explain, is what was the role of the Edward Heath Tory government in 1972 and the British army chiefs, in the events of Bloody Sunday and in the subsequent cover-up. On these crucial questions, the Saville Inquiry is silent and has failed. In that respect, it is another form of an official cover-up of the role of the British state in the events of that day and their aftermath.

To mark the second anniversary of the death of Peter Hadden, leading member of the Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers' International we are reprinting this eulogy to our beloved comrade.

The recent revelations of Peter and Iris Robinson’s lucrative dealings with property developers has once again revealed corruption at the heart of the political establishment.

Thirty eight people died and over 70 were badly injured when two bombs exploded on the Moscow metro during yesterday’s morning rush hour. This is not just a tragedy in which working people died, but an act intended to terrify people, an act which will have serious social and political consequences.