Beyond
sectarianism
 David Ervine,
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for a loyalist area of east
Belfast, who died in January, saw that working class Protestants and
Catholics had both been conned. Ervine recounted how in July 1972 as a
young man on what came to be known as Bloody Friday he watched as the
IRA
carried out 22 bomb attacks in Belfast killing innocent people and
ripping the
commercial heart out of the city. For him it was the final straw; he
decided to join the protestant UVF then engaged in a sectarian war
against innocent
Catholics who it regarded as the soft underbelly of the IRA.
Ironically, Ervine
was reacting to the other side of the same politico-religious stimuli
that had
created the material basis for the emergence and recruitment of the
Provisional IRA in 1970. His 'war' ended when he was caught ferrying a
bomb
and was sentenced to 6 years' imprisonment.
David Ervine was a Belfast man from the east of the city, an area
which
in the sectarian demography of Belfast is mainly 'Protestant'. Though
the area
was heavily industrialised and the workforce was overwhelmingly
Protestant and Unionist, the acres of mean back-to-back houses
demonstrated the poverty of those who were fed the fiction that they
were the special concern of the Unionist government.
Some on the political Left tried to emphasise this point but the
active
political Left painfully avoided a class analysis of the local
political situation -
a failure which ultimately, in 1948, caused a split in the Northern
Ireland
Labour Party on sectarian lines. After that split, four Labour
candidates in
three overwhelmingly Protestant constituencies in east Belfast won seats
in the Stormont parliament. Labour was by no means socialist but it
represented the political philosophy of many on the Catholic side who
thought it was, thus exposing the nonsense that working class
Protestants would always support Unionism because they were 'a labour
aristocracy'.
Capitalism had sundered any little sense of unity within the
working class.
Catholics and Irish nationalists, including Sinn Fein, reflecting the
ignorance and bigotry of the Orange Order, and the Left utterly failed
to offer any real alternative to what was, and remains, a conflict of
opposing capitalist
nationalisms.
This was the world David Ervine was brought up in. In his early
youth he
might well have imbibed the dregs of bigotry and hatred and looked with
deep suspicion on workers who were Catholics equally bigoted, equally
embittered. He would have learnt from the demagoguery of Ian Paisley,
then
forging a rich fiefdom in bigotry, that the removal of the property
qualification in the local government franchise, the establishment of a
fair system of social housing distribution and the abolition of
gerrymandered
electoral constituencies would have been a defeat for his religion and
his national culture.
Maybe he was caught up in the vibrant youth culture of the
period; maybe he didn't give a damn but the combustibles of conflict
were gathering and like many other working class young men and women on
both 'sides' of the artificially-devised sectarian barrier he would
become a victim of that conflict, condemned and criminalised by holy
men and politicians and those who combined these functions and greatly
enhanced their mean earning power.
To his credit, despite his experiences, Ervine rose superior to
the politics of bigotry and hatred. In his wry way he was to show the
extent of his
learning when a few years ago he said publicly that he looked forward
to the
day when he and Gerry Adams could have a pint together. Those who know
the territory will appreciate just how far David Ervine had come and the
courage it took to voice such a sentiment.
On the evening
of his death a camera crew visited a working class club Ervine
frequented in east Belfast. The drinkers, Protestants to a man,praised
Ervine, the loquacious peace monger, the man who told them that working
class Protestants and Catholics had been conned. Specifically, he was
praised as 'a socialist'. That he was not, but he was motivated by the
same political honesty and concern for his class that motivates
socialists; he had learnt to detest the political and economic
realities of capitalism. The next step would have been an appreciation
of the fact that the problems of his class, including the generation of
division, were inevitable aspects of that system.
RM
Cooking
the books(2)
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International non
cooperation
In the December Socialist Standard we dismissed as quite
unrealistic the claim put forward by Sir Nicholas Stern in his report
to the government on the economic impact of global warming that,
despite measures to cut carbon
emissions affecting the competitiveness of different countries
differently, this "should not be overestimated and can be reduced or
eliminated if countries or sectors act together".
Perhaps, if countries and sectors could be got to act together.
But that's precisely the problem. Companies from different countries
and within different sectors are in competition with each other for a
share of world profits. It is not in their nature or interest to act
together or let one of their rivals get a competitive advantage over
them. If one country or company feels that the adoption of some measure
would result in this they won't agree to
it and will try to sabotage its adoption.
Stern's pet measure to try to reduce carbon emissions was not, as
might be expected in view of how serious he says the problem is,
coercive legislation to force companies to comply, but carbon trading,
or the buying and selling of a decreasing number of permits to emit
carbon dioxide. The EU has already
established such a scheme which has been functioning, not too
successfully, since 2005. It is due to be renewed, in theory in a
beefed-up form, from 2008 for a further four years.
At the moment it is essentially only power stations that are
covered but the EU Commission is now proposing to extend it to other
sectors, including air transport. Under a draft proposal published on
20 December, as from 2010 airlines would be required to record their
carbon dioxide emissions and from 2011 would either have to keep their
emissions down below a set level or purchase permits to emit more. This
would initially apply just to flights
within Europe but from 2012 will be extended to all flights leaving or
entering Europe.
The airlines are not happy (except with the rather generous
levels of emissions permitted). British Airways says that applying the
scheme to flights going outside Europe will undermine its
competitiveness. A BA spokesman declared: "It would disadvantage all EU
long-haul carriers against their competitors around the world. All our
flights would be covered but, for a US carrier, it would only be a
small proportion" (Times, 16 November).
The Association of European Airlines predicted it would lead to
"trade wars" while the US Air Transport Association said it "violated
international law". The US association added that such a scheme was
unnecessary anyway as airlines were already taking adequate steps to
reduce emissions.
That's more like capitalism. Trade wars. International disputes.
Denials that there's a problem. If Stern's warning in his report about
what will happen if nothing or too little is done is not just
scare-mongering, capitalism offers a
truly disturbing future: "Our actions over the coming decades could
create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later
in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated
with the great wars and the
economic
depression.
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