Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am quite clear on what was in the agreement. The LGBT community and the 68% in the North who support marriage equality clearly can have no faith in any of the establishment parties in Stormont. People power is needed in order to win marriage equality. Despite all the rhetoric in this talks process about rights, all the parties stand for the status quowhen it comes to denying women the right to choose. A new report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women states that Northern Ireland's abortion laws are a "systematic violation of rights", with the committee's vice chairperson indicating that "the situation in Northern Ireland constitutes violence against women that may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".

Despite the two largest parties in the North being led by women, both have spoken of their opposition to the Abortion Act 1967. Sinn Féin and the DUP are complicit in this systematic violation of rights, despite the fact that opinion polls demonstrate that a majority supports abortion rights. As in the South, a new generation of young people, LGBTQ people and women will not accept systematic violations of rights. The repeal referendum here can be an historic blow to a conservative establishment and win bodily autonomy. ROSA, the socialist feminist movement, will be organising women and young people from the North to help strike a blow against the Southern conservative establishment and it will step up its fight to have the Abortion Act 1967 immediately extended to the North. Women in the North will not be happy that, once again, they are being left behind, and they will organise to win their rights. Politicians who have denied women their rights will find themselves on the wrong side of a movement demanding a real break with the status quo.

The document also illustrates that the DUP and Sinn Féin also agreed to continue the status quowhen it comes to implementing cuts and privatisation, with the leaked document mentioning public sector reform and agreeing to "the undertaking of a major transformation project in health, education, housing and justice, including progressing the existing consensus on the reforms set out in the Bengoa report". The reference to the Bengoa report is revealing, as it is the latest blueprint for privatisation and rationalisation of the health services in the North. This is unacceptable to health campaigners and it has already been met with community and trade union resistance.

This April marks 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement and the anniversary is likely to pass with Stormont in crisis and Northern Ireland under a form of "direct rule lite". The peace process is riddled with crisis because rather than seeking to overcome sectarianism, it has institutionalised it. Some 20 years on, working class communities are divided by peace walls and segregated housing and education, and 20 years on, working class communities have not received a real peace dividend. There is a need for a new peace process for the 99%, which would unite ordinary people in a common struggle for a better life for working people, irrespective of religion, waged in a spirit of real mutual respect. To do that requires a break with the dead end politics of unionism and nationalism with the rebuilding of those labour and socialist traditions that have a proud history of uniting both Catholic and Protestant.

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