The 6 County cockpil

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John O'Mahony sketches in some of the background to the latest Loyalist mobilisations in Northern Ireland - why the Loyalists lash out, what they are fighting for, and why there is no solution while Partition and British occupation remain THE ORANGE camp is fragmented by political differences and personal rivalries. For ten years now, the Orangemen have wriggied like a fish on two hooks -torn between unwillingness to compromise with the Catholics and their dependence on Britain.

The Loyalists want to restore their supremacy in the Six Counties, but Britain is firmly opposed to that and will do no more than try to beat down the Catholic revolt. The logic of their bitter resentment at being deprived of the right to exercise their built-in majority would be a break with Britain and some form of independence. But whole swathes of Northern Ireland industry - Harland and Wolffs shipyard, for example - are dependent on British government subsidies.

Restoration of Protestant rule in a Six County Parliament: full integration with Britain; independence -these are the options bandied about among the Orangemen.

Central to the Orangemen's dilemma is the incompatibility of what they want for Northern Ireland with what Britain - intent on a deal with the 26 County bourgeoisie. within the EEC - wants for it They learned painfully in the early '70s that what British imperialism gave them in 1920, it could also take away. But they are not reconciled to it.

Monolith shattered

THE ATTEMPT to find a solution has in the "70s shattered the Orange political edifice, which had been a monolithic multi-class block (especially since proportional representation was abolished in 1925).

Britain has found it impossible to find political instruments to carry through its objectives in Northern Ireland. Successive Northern Ireland prime ministers -O'Neill, Chichester-Clark, Faulkner - were shattered by a revolt of the Protestants, culminating in the general strike of May 1974 which brought down the last Six County government, the power-sharing executive.

Results of Partition WITH Partition in 1920-1, Britain created a Six County sub-state, with a built-in Protestant majority, in disregard of the rights of the majority of the people of Ireland and of the Catholic segment of that majority locked against their will into that sub-state.

Having designed and created the Six County cockpit, Britain finds that now it cannot control it. So long as decisions are confined to the Six Counties, the Protestants have the tremendous weight and power that the substate's population balance was designed to give them.

When Britain and the 26 Counties drew closer together. in the 1960s, and moved towards EEC membership, Britain began to put pressure for reform on Northern Ireland.

Previously the Protestants had had control of the police, and had had one-party rule in their own Stormont parliament for so years. A mass Protestant militia, the B-Special Constables, beat down the Catholics. Britain had not interfered: a Westminster convention which lasted until the late '60s ruled out any London intervention in Six County internal affairs.

Catholics were terrorised with a permanent Special Powers Act, under which imprisonment without trial was frequently enforced. Electoral gerrymandering and frauds deprived them of control of local government even where they were a majority.

They were discriminated against in social amenities. There was always - even in the boom years - mass unemployment in Northern Ireland. There grew up a system of job preferment on the basis of religion: inevitably that in turn influenced the composition and therefore the attitude of the trade The working class The working class was chronically split and divided: the Protestants regarded the Catholics as the US white workers regarded the blacks.

Class politics were prevented from emerging. The Protestant workers were in a bloc with the capitalists and landlords, against the Catholics. When the Northern Ireland Labour Party developed, it was repeatedly shattered by sectarian and constitutional issues until it became a Protestant rump.

The Catholic workers were dominated by Republicanism, or, more often, by Paisley leads a crowd through Green Tories calling themselves the Irish Nationalist Privileges are relative. A crust amidst starvation is an enormous privilege.

Better chances of houses and jobs (or better jobs) in Northern Ireland were great privileges, which cemented the Orange cross-class bloc.

When the British government pressed for reform and an end to too blatant sectarian discrimination, the Protestant backlash began.

The upper classes and their professional politicians, like O'Neill, feebly moved to comply with Britain's wishes. The Irish prime ministers visited each other in Belfast and Dublin (1965). The working class Protestants became alarmed for reasons of their sectarian bigotry and social insecurity.

In response to the beginnings of reform from above - too little, too slowly - the Catholics began to agitate on the streeis for civil rights, in the style of the antı-war movements and student revolts of late '60s.

They campaigned for one man, one job; one man, one vote (Six County voting included property qualifications); and one man, one house.

Protestant workers understood this as meaning: divide houses and jobs. Had the issue been posed in transitional demand terms (e.g. public works to build houses and create jobs), it might perhaps have made a difference and avoided or reduced Protestant/Catholic worker polarisation. Some of us argued for this at the time: but the socialists involved were mainly Stalinists and those like Michael Farrell (of People's Democracy) trained by Tony Cliff of the SWP to regard transitional demands as 'Trotskyist superstition' Polarisation deepened to the point that in August 1969 the RUC, B-Specials, and civilian bigots attempted pogroms in Derry and Belfast. Pitched battles followed, with the Catholics defending themselves with petrol bombs and the odd gun (the zelfast Orangemen were armed).

Whole streets were burned out in Catholic Belfast, and there was a beginning of the population shifts - which, over 12 years, have been the largest in Europe since the late '40s.

The artificial state was decomposing into communai civil war. The British Army was sent in by the Labour government to take control. The strategy was that it would be an emergency scaffolding to shore up the state structure and allow reforms to be carried out urgently.

Catholic West Belfast and Catholic Derry maintained the barricades thrown up for defence from August to October 1969, and declared themselves free areas with their own governing councils and defensive militias (armed with sticks).

The British Army respected the barricades (until they got them laken down by agreement) and Britain rushed through reforms - disarming the police, disbanding the B-Specials, and seemingly taking the Catholic side. In October 1969 the British Army declared …a curfew on the Protestant Falls Road and fought gun battles with Orange militants.

The problem was that they could not satisfy the Catholics, especially the masses of youth radicalised in the civil rights movement and in the period of Free Derry and Belfast.

The fundamental civil right the Catholics lacked was the right of selt-determination. This fundamental lack had led to the loss of the other other rights they mobilised for. The Six County Catholics were locked in the Northern Ireland statelet against their will.

The civil . rights movement steered clear of nationalism, but the logic was inevitably nationalist. The nationalist movement began to revive. A primitive form of Republicanism mushroomed, drawing on social discontent and on the discrediting of the socialist Republicans who had been inadequate defenders of the Catholic ghettoes in August.

In the 1960s the Republ icans had begun to understand James Connolly's criticism of pure Republicanism - that formal independence was not enough, and there had to be a break with the capitalist system. The understanding was clouded by Stalinist influence. The Provisionals, breaking away from the Official Republican movement, had a simple message: full national independence is the coal, armed struggle is the way to get it.

The Provisionals They recruited the radicalised youth because they could cut through all the complications. The British soldiers on the street corners epitomised imperialism; and the Provisionals gave the youth guns and, pointing to them, said: "That's imperialism shood it Less than one year after going on the streets, the British Army was fighting Catholics. Britain's commitment to stabilising the Six Counties led to a policy of beating down the Catholic revolt, which in turn rallied the Catholics to the Republicans. In April 1970, the Ulster Defence Regiment - a part-time regiment of the British Army - was set up, to become a Protestantdominated armed force.

Its membership has overlapped seriously with the Orange paramilitary groups.

The decision of Stormont (backed by London) to introduce internment in August 1971 led to a mass revolt throughout the Catholic community. Hundreds were picked up, and without charge or trial put in concentration camps. Many were tortured.

Britain's basic role

In two years the rights movement of the Catholics reached its logical development revolt for the right of the Irish people to self-determination Britain Was openly playing its basic role: millary guarantor of Protestant state. for repressing those in revolt against it.

_ TOT. internment, mass raiding of Catholic culminated in January 1972 when the British Army in Derry shot down 13 unarmed men taking part in a peaceful political demonstration.

The reaction internationally and in the 26 ; Counties _ where Ine DausE budas»! was burned down - shocked the British government out ot synch regime. In March when Northern Irelanc prime minister Brian Faulkner relused le agree to sec from Doormone by London, the Heath government abolished took direct control.

Immediately there was a mass rolestall strike and the UDA DOTE WILI encouragement from the British Army. which sav the IRA as the main enemy).

The destruction of Stormont was the high point of the IRA offensive. . It was less Britain merely basic position, remaining committed the with it and reform it.

After consultation, the Heath government reiterated the British guarantee that the Northern Ireland unit was to stay until the majority wanted •unerwisc Except that the majority could no longer be allowed to act as a maiority! he sub-state had democrat!

validity, said the British government: but if majority rule civil war Logic was and is on the side of the Protestants when they claim Ine democratio right to rule as a majority unless it is admitted that the state itself is illogical and the majority is not a legitimate political majority but a communal-sectarian one But Britain has rofused to admit that. Instead, 1972, the scarch was on for a form of power-sharing in the Six Counties and for a formula to satisfy, olics by recognising an all-Britain was to hold the ring of the sectarian statelet and that. in the stances, meant beating down ne Catholics - while searchig for a solution within the artition framework.

In March 1973 a referen um was held on the constittional position of Northern eland (referendums were cheduled to be held each ecade). It was boycotted by ne Catholics and the result ras a foregone conclusion.

In June 1973 elections rere held for a Northern Ireind assembly to create a rovincial government minus aw and order' powers. Inder pressure of Britain nd the South, a majority as created within it for ower-sharing between the 'aulkner Unionists, the 'atholic SDLP, the Northern rn Ireland Labour Party, nd Alliance.

Amidst rowdy scenes, ncluding fist fights in the hamber and (at one stage) he ejection of lan Paisley nd 17 other Orange bigots, he new coalition hoped to rove itself, using patronage nd the subsidies from the British government. A Counil of Ireland was set up. "here was seething Protestnt discontent.

Protestants felt, with ome cause, that Brian Faulkner had cheated them. 3ut the majority block held. Chen the British miners orced Edward Heath to call in election, which allowed he Protestants to express heir views by electing 11 inti power-sharing Westminiter MPs out of 12 (Robert 3radford was one of them).

The coalition limped on, itterly discredited. When the power-sharing executive won i vote of confidence by 44 o 28 on May 14, it triggered ndustrial action by the power workers, backed by paramilitaries. The action quickly became a general strike.

The 1974 strike In two weeks during which the British government was paralysed, unsure if it could rely on the British army, a revolutionary general strike in support of sectarian counter-revolution paralysed Northern Ireland. On May 28 the Unionists resigned from the executive and it collapsed.

Almost immediately, in July, Britain announced new elections - for delegates to a constitutional convention. They were held in May 1975, producing a vote that reflected the communal blocks. The one Unionist leader of any standing to fight for power-sharing, William Craig, found himself isolated.

There were Catholic fears that when the convention sat the Protestant majority would declare itself the democratic government and appeal to the Orange population. That would have triggered civil war, which is probably why, in the event, it was not done.

For most of 1975 there was an IRA ceasefire and a rash of Protestant assassinations and bombings. From 1972 to about 1975, there were hundreds of sectarian assassinations of Catholics picked at random. The Republicans rejected a tit for tat response, through some sectarian killing of Protestants did occur.

A report • demanding majority (i.e. Protestant) rule was rejected by the British government, and the convention dismissed in March 1976.

All this was predictable with a fair degree of certainty.

From the end of the convention to the present strike wave is one distinct period. Britain gave up trying to find a solution, and settled in to hold on within the Partition framework The new period of British policy was ushered in When political status for newly convicted prisoners was abolished on March 1 1976. Britain had granted political status as part of the attempt to find a solution after Bloody Sunday, January 1972. Its withdrawal was the measure of the recognition of failure. The Republicans discuss had been taken to with the British prime minister in 1972, were now to be criminalised. Raids on the Catholic areas were stepped up to the extent that even the leading Catholic clergypublicly. O'Fiaich, Republican man, protested prisoners' blanket protest for political status dragged on its terrible years-long course before it culminated in the hunger strikes and the mass rallying of the Catholic population to the prisoners.

The Troubles opened, as many revolutions in history have, with attempis at reform from above which stimulated revolt below and then massive Protestant backlash. That was the Six County twist to the pattern.

Britain would have been happy to be rid of Northern Ireland in the '60s. It found its own sectarian creation uncontrollable, and in 1969 civil war ignited in one of the provinces of the UK -civil war that would probably have spread to cities like Glasgow and, perhaps, Liverpool. The British ruling class held on, to serve Its interests in Britain and in both parts of Ireland.

It granted the Catholics reforms, but not enough, and then tried savage repression in alliance with the Orange state in its traditional form. Then it tried a more radical restructuring. Instead of the sectarian Orange dictatorship, it tried to make the Six County entity act against Its nature by creating an institutionalised sectarian coalition.

The Orangemen rose in revolt, repudiated their own politicians, and wrecked the only form of local government Britain could then give them. So, with the agreement of the Southern Irish government, Britain settled in to maintain the Six County status quo and beat down the Catholics. Then the terrible weapon of the hunger strikers drew world attention to what was happening, and pressure for a new British political initiative' became irresistible.

Now, at the beginning of new British moves to find a solution while maintain partition, there occurs a new Orange backlash, helped into existence by a seemingly calculated act of the Provisional IRA, which shot Robert Bradford.

Oxfordshire Trades Councils conference Ireland Saturday, December 12 10 to 5 at West Oxford Community Centre, Binsey Lane, Oxford.

Delegates credentials

£3, observers £1.50 (unwaged £1), from Marie Campbell, 167 Walton St, Oxford.

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1 socialst Organiser, Thursday November 26. 1981 Page 5