Workers Solidarity Movement

The brutal sectarian murder of voluntary community worker Kevin McDaid in Coleraine has again exposed the ugly face of sectarianism in Northern Ireland and the fallacy of the so-called peace settlement.

If waged employees today do practically all real work, then the capitalist has no role other than collecting dividends, living the high life, and gambling on the Stock Exchange. The big banks, all of which are now kept afloat with our tax money, and most of which are now majority state-owned, are still paying massive “bonuses” to their top people.

The recent publishing of the report by the Consultative Group on the Past demonstrates the simmering sectarian tensions and hostility beneath the surface. 

The 190 page report by the group, chaired by ex-Church of Ireland primate Lord Eames and former Policing Board vice chairman Dennis Bradley marked 18 months of consultation with victim groups and others that have been bereaved through the conflict.



There was the whiff of something in the Derry air. The constantly rising civilian death toll in Gaza had already produced the same outpourings of rage on the streets of Derry as it had around the world. Thousands of signatures had been gathered calling on Raytheon to be given the boot, while ever larger crowds had gathered for vigils at the cenotaph, marches through the city, rallies at the Guildhall and at a nonviolent blockade of Raytheon itself. Now more and more of us were becoming determined that we do not have to resign to feelings of helplessness in the face of Israel’s war atrocities. Our burning rage was igniting something positive.

A recent report produced by ‘Belfast Healthy Cities’ into the direct link between wealth and class confirms what most of us already know - class pervades every aspect of our lives from the cradle to grave. According to the report, if you live in the Shankill or Ardoyne, for example, you can expect to live several years less than someone from affluent areas just a few miles away. So much for the new era!

A major financial company with 40,000 customers in the North has admitted that it charges 183.2% interest. This is no backstreet loanshark operation, Provident Financial is a completely legal and government regulated firm.

The unveiling of Alasdair Darling’s budget, representing as it does as the strategy on the government’s part to deal with the developing recession which the global economic crisis has caused, has unsurprisingly been surrounded by hysterical commentary from the mainstream media.

The hopes of women living in Northern Ireland for the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act were dashed when an amendment to extend the act brought before Westminster on 22^nd October was not debated because of a procedural motion put by Harriet Harman, leader of the House of Commons and the Minister for Women and supported by many New Labour ‘feminist’ MPs.

The Stormont administration is at a critical juncture, with the Executive not having met in several months. It seems an eternity since Paisley and McGuinness chuckled their way through meetings and joint events.

Despite its retention of a heavy arsenal of lethal weapons including Tasers, and a litany of repressive anti-terror legislation including Diplock Courts, Hugh Orde, current Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland often refers to the force as the ‘most democratic, accountable police service in the world’. This from the same Chief Constable who has recently unsuccessfully attempted to block the release of vital documents to the Pearse Jordon Inquest. Pearse, an unarmed IRA volunteer, was gunned down by the RUC on the Falls Road in 1992.