Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 22:58:36 +0100
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-G: 80% vote in Northern Ireland


The turnout in Northern Ireland reported in the referendum as the polls
just close was the huge proportion of 80%. 

The referendum (unprecedented in being simultaneous) in the Republic was
60%. There it is thought there will be an overwhelming vote for
constitutional change to remove the claim of the Republic over the North. 

In the North it is reported that the "catholic" community (Republican) has
voted overwhelmingly yes. This is a tremendous victory of Gerry Adams and
the leadership of Sinn Fein. This together with the vote in the South means
the end of the armed conflict. Those who try to continue the armed conflict
will be massively isolated.

The cliff-hanger is whether the "protestant" (Unionist) vote (two thirds of
the electorate in the north) has itself voted over 50% for the deal.
Clearly all sections of the community regarded the result as extremely
important.

But history has already moved on. It seems certain that the cake has been
divided to ensure the new Northern Ireland assembly on proportional
representation and power sharing lines as this requires only 50% of the
total vote.  Even if the ultra-unionists outweigh Trimble's moderate
unionists they will be unable to make any alliances. Trimble will be able
to be first minister with SDLP support and at the very least tacit support
from Sinn Fein. That means a major weakening of discrimination against the
republican minority in the North. Because the first past the post electoral
system has been dropped, Trimble can calculate he will win the leadership
of the unionists in the long term, even if he has not won it tonight.

Under the wings of a more global neo-liberal capital than existed at the
beginning of this century, the divisions between working people in Ireland
now have a chance of being handled non-antagonistically. That is a reform
of enormous benefit to the potential unity of working people in other
struggles. It cuts a major prop from under the feet of the repressive state
apparatus in the United Kingdon. It poses the question that conflicts
should not be settled by the violent imposition of armed state structures
over the people. And that potentially will leave capitalism more exposed in
upheavals to come.

Are these constitutional changes trivial, reformist or divertionary?  No.
Consider Lenin's argumentation in 1914 (The Right of Nations to
Self-Determination, section 6).

"Despite the very extensive autonomy which Norway enjoyed (she had her own
parliament, etc), there was constant friction between Norway and Seden for
many decades after the union, and the Norwegians strove hard to throw off
the yoke of the Swedish aristocracy. At last, in August 1905, they
succeeded: the Norwegian parliament resolved that the Swedish king was no
longer king of Norway, and in the referendum held later among the Norwegian
people, the overwhelming majority (about 200,000 as against a few hundred)
voted for complete separation from Sweden. After a short period of
indecision, the Swedes resigned themselves to the fact of secession.

"This example shows us on what grounds cases of the secession of nations
are practicable, and actually occur, under modern economic and political
relationships, and the *form* secession sometimes assumes under conditions
of political freedom and democracy.

"No Social Democrat [Marxist] will deny - unless he would profess
indifference to questions of political freedom and democracy (in which case
he is naturally no longer a Social-Democrat) - that this example
*virtually* proves that it is the *bounden duty* of class-conscious workers
to conduct systematic propaganda and prepare for the secession of nations,
not in the 'Russian way', but *only in the way* they were settled in 1905
between Norway and Sweden."



So a free vote in different territories under conditions of bourgeois
democracy, provided it does not harm the interests of working people
against capital, may be best way to reduce  the possibility of friction;
and therefore, in the decades ahead, create a new basis for greater
voluntary unity. Hurrah!

Chris Burford

London.



     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---