Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Once again, we are told we have a monumental step forward, as the First Minister, Peter Robinson, put it; the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, described this document as astounding; and the US diplomat, Meghan O'Sullivan, described it as a new era for Northern Ireland politics. In contrast to all of the empty bluff and bluster, the ad by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in the North says very accurately that this is a bad deal, fit only for a land of pound shops and food banks. Despite the overblown rhetoric and spin, this is another agreement to disagree on contentious issues but, at the same time, to implement a savage agenda of austerity that will create unemployment, destroy public services and attack those who are currently unemployed.

Patrick Murphy, columnist, described it well:

The north is to be privatised, its past sanitised and its electorate anaesthetised. That appears to be a reasonable summary of what the Stormont parties agreed in their annual sleep-over at Stormont.

On the issues of flags and emblems, of contentious parades and of dealing with the past, all that is agreed is new mechanisms to kick the can down the road. No real solution can ever be achieved by politicians who rely upon and have a vested interest in maintaining sectarian division. This can clearly be seen in the area of dealing with the past, where we are told there was most agreement. New support will be provided for the health needs of the victims and survivors but, in every other way, victims will be short-changed. They deserve a truthful account of the past. The proposals will not deliver the truth. No party or Government has an interest in exposing its own record to scrutiny because a genuine examination would expose the role played by the sectarian parties and the paramilitary groups, and the role of the British state, which employed vicious repressive methods for decades. The sectarian forces in the Executive and the British state are fundamentally incapable of delivering this.

There was a genuine consensus, however, among the DUP, Sinn Féin and all the main parties in Stormont, and that is the implementation of a programme of austerity so vicious that it would make Margaret Thatcher blush. It includes deep cuts to public services. It means public services like health, that are already in crisis, will be stretched even further. Again, Patrick Murphy says:

If this document does not exactly reflect the hand of history, it certainly smacks of the hand of Margaret Thatcher. It was achieved by the British government moving from bribing Stormont with its own money, to bribing it with its own debt.

There is a redundancy scheme across the public sector, with 20,000 jobs to be wiped out over a period of four years. Whether that is voluntary or compulsory, the end result will be 20,000 fewer jobs in the public sector in the North, in an economy that everybody knows is particularly dependent on the public sector, which is a massive blow to employment prospects for young people. There is a further five-year pay freeze for public sector workers, which is another significant cut in real terms. Shamefully, given the revolt we have here against water charges, there is even the threat of the privatisation of Northern Ireland Water, which would inevitably lead to attempts to introduce water charges again in the North.

What do they get in exchange for all of this? The agreement states: "In view of the progress made in the talks, legislation will be introduced ... to enable the devolution of corporation tax in April 2017." So, in exchange for implementing all of this savage austerity against working people in the North, Catholic and Protestant, the parties in the North get the right to reduce corporation tax for big business - more handouts for big business at the expense of austerity and the destruction of public services. The reality is seen in the impact on the economy, which has no green shoots and is slipping back into negative growth, with wages continuing to fall.

Martin McGuinness, obviously a member of a party that strongly criticises austerity in the South, has said that anyone opposed to this budget needs a good shake and is living in fantasy land. To be honest, you would have to be living in fantasy land to call yourself a friend of the trade union movement while implementing massive job cuts; you would have to be living in a fantasyland to call yourself anti-austerity while kicking the poorest in society by agreeing to Tory welfare reform; and you would have to be living in fantasyland to call yourself left-wing while agreeing to massive cuts to public services at the same time as preparing to cut corporation tax.

They will get a surprise. They will get the good shake that Martin McGuinness referred to on 13 March, when there is a massive one-day strike of all public sector workers and a layer of private sector workers. It has the potential to be the biggest day of working class action and working class power since April 1980, when a major strike against Thatcher shut down the North. It must be the opening shot across the bow in a sustained campaign, including further public action to reverse those attacks. Hand in glove with that is the need to build a new, united working class movement against sectarianism and austerity, and for radical socialist change. A united working class movement would be able to come up with real agreement around the issues that divide society and open up a real new era for Catholic and Protestant workers and young people in the North.

See this speech in context