‘Power Sharing’ Assembly delivers austerity, as sectarianism grows
2010 - Time for united working class opposition!
Published in the Winter 2009 - Issue 24 of SocialistVIEW
The prolonged row between the DUP and Sinn Fein over the devolution of policing and justice powers is just one of many political battles that could lead to the collapse of the Stormont Executive, reinforcing the need for a socialist alternative writes Gary Mulcahy.
The planned introduction of household water charges next April looks to be in serious doubt. It seems the parties in the Executive have privately admitted to themselves that they haven’t a hope of making people pay, despite their best efforts to disguise the introduction in some form next year.
The mass opposition to the charges and the support for mass non-payment which has been built by the We Won’t Pay Campaign has not dissipated. In fact with record job losses and falling incomes, the potential for mass non-payment is now greater than ever. It is this fact which has led the Executive parties to realise if they go ahead with their plans to introduce water charges next year, they face almost certain defeat.
The UN’s Copenhagen climate summit has failed to deliver any significant response to the rising threat of global warming. This is unsurprising given recent history of such events, with most industrialised countries currently failing to meet even the grossly insufficient targets agreed at Kyoto back in 1997. This further demonstrates the inability of capitalism to solve the key problems facing the world today.
The nights of rioting which took place in East Belfast, beginning on the evening of Monday 31st August, brought into sharp focus many of the underlying issues which exist in Northern Ireland. They demonstrated that, eleven years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, we still live in a deeply divided society with huge social problems, problems which the politicians in Stormont are incapable of dealing with.