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

In his supposedly emergency budget on 8 July the British Chancellor, Mr. George Osborne, as part of the new all-Tory Government, triumphantly announced measures, sticking the boot into working class and middle class people and again making their struggle to get by even more difficult. He slashed tax credits and housing benefit and maintained public sector wage increases at just 1% for a further four years. Those who will be particularly worse off after his budget will be future parents with more than two children. As a result of his vindictive cuts, many children in larger families will be condemned to greater poverty than those in smaller families.

The Tories have also stated their priority to introduce laws curbing the right to strike, introducing a ban on strikes by public sector workers, unless at least 40% of those eligible to vote vote in favour. This is from a government which crept back into power with the votes of 24% of the electorate. This vicious austerity budget will have a disproportionate effect on people in the North which has the lowest level of income of any part of the United Kingdom. It comes after £1.5 billion worth of austerity measures have already been implemented in the North by the Tories but also by local Assembly parties, including the DUP and Sinn Féin. By signing the so-called fantasy budget they have signalled that, despite the crisis in welfare reform, they are intent on moving forward with an austerity programme to which they agreed in the Stormont House Agreement which will result in up to 20,000 redundancies in the public sector, scandalously financed by Stormont borrowing £700 million from Westminster to lay off thousands of workers. Up to 500 schools are under threat under the watch of the North's Minister for Education, Mr. John O'Dowd, MLA, of Sinn Féin. This has not gone unresisted in Belfast, with communities rallying to defend Suffolk primary school in the west of the city, Avoniel and Dundonald schools in the east and Malvern school on the Shankill Road. They also want to push ahead with the selling-off of public assets. The Waterfront Hall and Belfast Harbour have been earmarked for privatisation and the DUP Minister, Ms Arlene Foster, MLA, recently stated Northern Ireland Water could be a potential revenue raiser if water charges were introduced.

This austerity agenda which the Tories alongside their colleagues in the DUP and Sinn Féin have been implementing has not gone unresisted. Thousands have taken to the streets against attempts to close Daisy Hill Hospital and the Downe Hospital. Most importantly, tens of thousands of workers - I was present - took strike action against the Stormont austerity budget in March, which assisted in forcing a crisis at Stormont over the implementation of welfare reforms. However, sadly, the majority of trade union leaders were not prepared to carry through in following up this strike action with further action against austerity. Instead some of them believe that some at Stormont are friends of the trade union movement. Parties that implement austerity measures are no friends of the trade union movement. Parties that base themselves on sectarian division and which during elections distribute sectarian material cannot be allies of the trade union movement. It is vital that a real strategy, including co-ordinated industrial action, be discussed in the trade union movement to challenge Stormont austerity.

The rioting that has happened in Belfast once again shows the urgency of building a political alternative to the politics of sectarianism. Sectarian politicians are incapable of solving the problems of sectarianism. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution. We need a new movement based on uniting working class people that can challenge sectarianism in all its forms and find solutions to contentious issues through dialogue between working class communities.

There is another side to developments in the North, which is the disenchantment of a growing layer of people, especially young people, with what passes for politics. They are fed up of being left behind when it comes to women and LGBTQ rights. A total of 20,000 people marched in Belfast to demand marriage equality and 68% in an opinion poll said they support marriage equality, yet politicians in Stormont, not just the DUP but others, including the SDLP and Alliance Party, have opposed this or abstained in the vote. One cannot be neutral on these questions of oppression. The same applies to the right of women to access abortion. Recently, we heard the horrific story of a women being prosecuted for providing her daughter with abortion pills. As in the South, all the establishment parties, from Sinn Féin to the DUP, are complicit in denying women the right to choose and it must be resisted.

People in Northern Ireland are increasingly disenfranchised from the politics of dinosaur politicians who deny basic rights and who refuse to stand up four square against oppression. They are fed up with politicians who make excuses for implementing austerity and they are sick of sectarianism which is a daily menace to the lives of ordinary people. That is why the desperate need, which the Socialist Party is committed to, is to build a working class and socialist alternative to the abysmal failure of sectarian politics and politicians in the North.

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