HAIN'S ACES

November 24 is the deadline by which the Northern Irish politicians must settle their differences - or lose their salaries. We look at the historical background.

Peter Hain, once the enfant terrible of the Young Liberals and now the Secretary of State for both Wales and Northern Ireland, obviously retains the personal ambition that motivated his career move from ill-disciplined youth activist to ruthless Labour politician. Peter is now in the throes of a major political gamble that could be the prelude to even higher, if not the highest, political office. If he has some understanding of the roots of the “Irish Problem” he might judge that history is on his side but, on the other hand, his odds might be blighted by the possibility of the Blair clique doing for Labour what the monomaniacal Thatcher did for the Tories. Both Blair and Hain have to know that a final, peaceful resolution of the Irish question would bestow on them a niche in history.

Now that the practicalities of governing have exposed the role of politicians as simply time-serving careerists there seems to have developed a rush among some political leaders and aspirants to that role to seek such a niche. Blair inherited from Major what he perceived to be an opportunity to draw a line under the notorious problem which for the past hundred years has wrought revenge on British politicians for inventing and on the Tories for using the infamous “Orange Card” in their earlier struggles with the Liberals.

To be fair, Blair has devoted a considerable amount of time and effort in trying to lay the ghost of the several Government of Ireland Acts which the British Parliament has imposed on Ireland. Peter Hain has not got so much time; he's a man in a hurry, probably with the whiff of opportunities arising from the stench of conflict within the leadership of the Labour Party. With the arrogant contempt of a colonial governor for the local politicians he has told them that they have three months to bury their ancient enmities or he will sack them, stop their plum salaries and bloated expenses and give permanence to the coterie of unelected Labour nonentities currently mismanaging affairs in Northern Ireland. The deadline is 24 November.

Hain holds a couple of aces. Freed from the fear of an injured electorate taking revenge, his administration has threatened massive rates increases and new and additional water charges, the latter especially to fund decaying infrastructure that was neglected over three decades of financing the war against the Provisional IRA. Indeed, Hain can already claim a minor victory in creating an issue that uniquely unites Unionists, Nationalists and Republicans in the conviction that the proposed charges are intended to coerce them into a spurious legislative unity, for the stick comes with the carrot that if they re-establish the Northern Ireland Assembly it can legislate on the proposed charges.

Particularly cruel to Paisley, who founded a most lucrative political career on ranting against the Pope and the Republic of Ireland, is Blair's additional threat that if the northern politicians do not co-operate in a local Assembly, the Government of the Republic - already enjoying a meaningful input into northern affairs - will be invited to work more closely with the British government in administering the affairs of Northern Ireland.

Politically, the strongest party on the Unionist side is Paisley's so-called Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) whose political appeal is to traditional Protestant bigotry, which was supplemented at the last elections by Protestant detestation of the IRA. Conversely, the DUP's main opponent and recipient of the majority of Catholic votes is Sinn Fein (SF) or the political face of the IRA.

In other words, it is the old enmities that sustain politics in Northern Ireland and the big question for the principal political contenders - especially the DUP - is whether those traditional enmities can surmount the harsh financial reality of substantially increased rates and charges. Will individual members of the public feel they are paying dearly for the lack of co-operation among the politicians and might significant numbers be persuaded that the bigoted absurdities they have been voting for have become too expensive?

Second political ace

In the past the Northern Ireland economy was based principally on large labour-intensive industries. Belfast, for example, boasted the largest shipyard in the world with all that that implied in ancillary industries. Again, in rope making and linen manufacture it was an international leader and in aircraft production and light engineering it had a substantial presence. New technologies embraced by more dynamic competitors have rendered most of this industrial activity redundant and today employment is sustained largely by small localised companies much more vulnerable to the effects of swingeing increases in their on-costs.

The Northern Ireland state was established in 1921 by Westminster enactment; it was demographically tailored to ensure that the almost-exclusively Protestant majority that was hostile to Irish unity could impose a permanent minority status on the almost-exclusively Catholic minority that wanted unity. Interestingly, a brief look at the material circumstances that created the politics of division and the establishment of two separate - and hostile - states in Ireland might reveal Hain's second political ace.

Queen Elizabeth 1 died in 1603 and her successor, the Anglicised Scottish monarch, James 1, agreed to the colonisation of Ulster by Scottish and English planters. There is contention around the issue of the extent to which the Scots were Gaelic-speaking lowlanders but they were distinguished from the native Catholic Gaels in that they were mostly Presbyterians and, of course, they were used to dispossess the natives of their lands.

The newcomers established a dynamic colony. Whereas the native Irish had few skills beyond those associated with farming, the planters brought with them skills like spinning and weaving that would later form the basis of new industries. Further, unlike the native Irish in the rest of the country, whose miserably small holdings were held without security of lease, the planters were able to use their vital place in the strategy of the English government to establish what became known as Ulster Custom and which gave them security of tenure, fixity of rent and the freedom to sell and profit from their leases.

Throughout the rest of the country the majority of the people endured a hand-to-mouth existence. Such trade as existed took the form largely of urban merchants trading in wool and importing goods for the landed gentry. As far as the peasantry, the generality of the people, was concerned, a money economy was virtually absent and, with capital accumulation thus restricted, only a weak middle class without the political and economic clout of its Ulster counterpart could slowly emerge.

By the late 19th century, however, widespread political agitation forced land reform and the gradual ending of the iniquitous system of landlordism. So a more vibrant middle class in the south began to use its substantial representation in the British House of Commons as a bargaining counter between the Whigs and the Tories in a struggle for a measure of Home Rule that would allow an Irish legislature to protect native industry with tariffs and import quotas. Firstly the Irish Parliamentary Party and after 1905 Sinn Fein politicised the demand for an Irish Parliament and trade protection.

“Home Rule is Rome Rule”

The demand struck horror into the Northern capitalists whose large industries had developed apace with those of the north-west of England after the Industrial Revolution and were based on access to the British home market and the benefits of what was then known as Empire Preference.

The result was a serious dichotomy within Irish capitalism. Ulster industrialists made it clear to a Select Committee of the British parliament that separation from the British and Empire markets and from their primary source of energy within an all-Ireland state practising trade protection would be ruinous. Conversely, the emerging capitalists in the south were equally insistent that their nascent industries could only prosper within a protectionist economy.

It was the classic basis of conflict and war but armies are largely comprised of workers and they are not recruited on the blatant expression of the needs of capitalists; they have to be given reasons why they should fight and it is the job of the politicians to conjure up those reasons. In the case of Ulster the Unionist politicians employed bitter religious sectarianism, raising the slogan “Home Rule is Rome Rule”; in the south the nationalists and republicans used emotionalised nonsense about freedom with an infusion of faith and all enshrined in the need to support the demands of Irish native capitalism.

Today

Thus the economic basis of the political fictions that were injected deeply into the vein of the working class on both sides to give them a cause to kill for - to kill their fellow worker in a struggle wholly concerned with the interests of each side within a divided capitalist class.

The hatreds and division have endured, fuelled by the fascist-style posturings of Paisley and his politico-religious ilk and complemented by the inanity of the IRA, whose nonsensical analysis of the Irish problem led them to become murderous sectarians perpetuating an ongoing conflict.

But unlike the situation that gave rise to the division of Ireland in 1921, today there is no class interest involved. Now there are amicable relations between the capitalists north and south with each eager to trade and co-operate in each other's territory and each vociferous in its forceful condemnation of violence and unlawful political activity. Britain and Ireland are both members of the EU and it is only when you have passed over the unmanned Irish border that the change in the road signs from miles to kilometres lets you know that you have changed countries.

The political face of the Provisional IRA, Sinn Fein, is cringingly obsequious in its efforts to be part of the government of Northern Ireland despite the fact that the raison d'ĂŞtre behind its establishment in 1970 was the destruction of the northern state. Its interests lie south of the Border where its participation in the executive of a northern administration would give a substantial fillip to its electoral fortunes, making it a natural coalition ally of Ahern's Fianna Fail.

Paisley shows little appetite for reconciliation. The same bigoted mentality that some forty years ago had him throwing snowballs at the car of a visiting Irish Taoiseach still dominates his political consciousness but reality now impels his party towards an overt reconciliation with nationalists and republicans. Whether that can be achieved on or before 24 November when the British and Irish governments categorically affirm they will effectively sack all the local Assembly members is a moot question. One suspects that Paisley's lieutenants are quite anxious to weep at the bier of their inflexible master.