Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will put the case slightly differently from my colleagues in Solidarity in that People Before Profit subscribes to the view set out by James Connolly, namely, that partition on this island would lead to "a carnival of reaction both North and South". In the South, we got the Catholic Church-dominated, anti-woman regime that held sway and persisted until relatively recently and that has been challenged forcefully by the Repeal and marriage equality movements. In the North, people got the sectarian state, sectarian violence and conflict of the orange and green varieties. For that reason, removing partition is vital in order to eliminate the divisions and the conservative and sectarian states with which people, North and South, have had to live.

I agree very strongly with Deputy Coppinger that the alarming eruptions of sectarian violence we have seen in recent days are a stark reminder that sectarianism remains alive and well in the North. That said, we glimpse the possibility for a different type of Ireland and for unity that emerges from below through struggles for things that unite ordinary people, working people and young people in a fight for a better and more progressive Ireland. After the Together for Yes victory, it was very inspiring for me to go to the North to participate in a march at which there was a huge contingent calling for abortion rights to be extended to the North. Both Catholics and Protestants were demanding that, cutting across the sectarian division. Similarly, there is a big movement erupting for marriage equality in the North. Again, it involves Catholic and Protestant people, but young people in particular.

Perhaps slightly more worryingly, although there is a positive side, Catholic and Protestant young people who are anti-racist had to take to the streets in the past week to protest against far-right demonstrations in the North, echoing the very worrying rise of far-right mobilisation in Britain, which, terrifyingly, saw 15,000 out-and-out fascists marching in London in recent weeks. It was great to see young, progressive, left-wing Catholic and Protestant young people mobilising against the far right in Belfast. The two possible futures are the sectarian violence we see erupting and a progressive and different type of Ireland based on Catholic and Protestant working people and young people coming together to fight for a shared, better and progressive future.

The political establishment, in the North, the South and Britain, has to take some responsibility for the violence that is erupting. The political structures in the North are not about eliminating sectarianism; they are about policing apart two communities. Suggesting that Orange marches and bonfires with sectarian slogans are part of some legitimate culture that we can manage is a mistake. This culture is used to stoke up violence. It has no purpose other than violence and it produces a reaction from people who are right to be angry about the sectarianism but who are completely wrong in that reaction and manipulated by elements who want to return to a futile armed struggle that will only divide the community again and lead absolutely nowhere.

We need a different type of politics that breaks from orange and green. People Before Profit is trying, North and South, to build a politics that will oppose austerity and fight for a socially progressive Ireland, not under a flag of green or orange but under the flag James Connolly would have flown, that of working-class, progressive and internationalist politics. We could do with a dose of that in Britain and in Europe also.

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