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

The Socialist Party has a unique, distinct and socialist viewpoint on the Good Friday Agreement. The key gain from the 1990s was peace, which was vital for both communities and for every individual living on this island. How did peace come about? First and foremost, it was the result of pressure from below, including the large street protests and strikes against the atrocities of the early and mid-1990s that sent a clear message to the paramilitaries that the game was up.

US and British imperialists are not emissaries for peace, as was clearly shown in Iraq just five years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed. However, it was in the interests of Clinton, Blair, Ahern, Adams, Trimble and others to conclude an agreement in 1998. This was done.

In so doing, however, the North was left with a form of institutionalised sectarianism and with promises of a peace dividend that was never delivered in any real sense. These facts are major factors in the very real sectarian divides that remain to this day on the ground. Ironically, this divide is shown by attitudes to the Good Friday Agreement itself 25 years on, with near-unanimous support in Catholic communities but with only 34% support in Protestant communities. The lesson of the old unionist regime is that a minority cannot be coerced into a state against its will. The same applies today. The Protestant minority on the island were not coerced into a united Ireland by bullets, nor will they be coerced today by ballots in the form of a border poll. The Catholic population, meanwhile, will not accept the constitutional status quo.

The way to break the deadlock is to look at the force that broke the deadlock previously, namely, the working class, and to make the issue of consent central and key. Workers stood united today on picket lanes throughout Northern Ireland to combat the cost-of-living crisis. Now is the time for that unity to be extended onto the political plain, with the establishment of a new working-class party to oppose both the sectarian parties and capitalism itself. The working-class movement can go further again and forge a vision of an alternative Ireland, a socialist Ireland based on consent, agreement and a unity forged in struggle against capitalism and for real change.

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