Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
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No 946 Tuesday April 14 1998                                                                                                                                        10p                                                                                                                                                                    

Imperialist misery and Orange-colonist splits are the real indicator of Irish national-liberation victory. Establishment face-saving and propaganda spins cannot hide the defeat of British-state claims to a part of Ireland. Government negotiation of official treaty merely confirms what the unbeatable Sinn Féin/IRA campaigns have already won in the real political world. Path towards Ireland's re-unification now formally opened. Colonial injustice halted by revolutionary struggle. Trot bile simply lives off envy and fear of serious anti-imperialist movement. Blair & Co were irrelevant.

In spite of the best bourgeois-press attempts to hide the real significance of the Ireland settlement in a mass of confusion, disinformation, and wishful thinking, – the bitter response of reactionaries like Tebbitt, Paisley, some commentators, and Trimble's sidekick Donaldson tell the true story of Sinn Féin's triumph.

The flagship of old British colonialism, the Daily Express, told it best:

WE have been bombed into yesterday's surrender and, as a result, we will now be blackmailed into many further retreats until Ulster is ruled from Dublin. British democracy has sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, which has cracked the foundations of the State.

The hijacking of the word "peace" by the agreement's supporters should not blind us to the truth. Murderous violence, which never stopped, will not now end as by magic, for it has just been rewarded handsomely.

Even if this were not so, an ancient war such as this cannot be settled by a cloudy form of words and a few compromises. What we have in Northern Ireland is a classic ethnic conflict — two rival groups, neither willing to be ruled by the other. Nowhere has human genius found any permanent and civilised solution to such rivalry.

So, while the signing of yesterday's piece of paper is an achievement of diplomacy, the fruit of great technical skill, patience and hard work, it must be tested against reality.

The worm in the rose is the original sin of the whole project. It was designed to appease the demands of the IRA. Just as dangerous, it is also meant to buy off the Protestant murder gangs.

To do this, it must outrage the promises given by British political leaders for three decades that they would "never give in to terror". People who cheer today will be shocked tomorrow at how swiftly the most revolting killers are released from their guarded guest-house at the Maze.

Meantime, the front-line of combat against terror, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, will be subjected to a politically correct inquisition designed to make it "acceptable" to nationalists — that is, ineffective against the IRA.

These measures will be for good. They will destroy any idea that the British Government is ready to use force and authority to combat the IRA. But the political parts of the deal will not be so lasting. The Ulster Assembly must castrate itself as its first political act. It will set up the real new government of Ulster, a cross-border authority which gives Dublin ministers power to intervene in the province's affairs.

And if "progress" towards unity is too slow, the "Continuity IRA" or some other subsidiary of Sinn Féin, can let off a bomb, or leave one lying around. Sinn Féin only supports the agreement as a station on the way to its final, fascist goal.

The mooring ropes which bind Northern Ireland to the UK will be loosened, then untied, and a slow drift towards Dublin rule will begin.

What could go wrong? Well, what would you describe as wrong, when the whole thing is an insult to democracy, law and justice?

The people of Northern Ireland could reject this imposed peace at a referendum. The people of the Republic could torpedo the plan by refusing to vote to change their constitution.

The Unionist Party could split asunder, ousting Mr David Trimble for signing a document which defies its whole purpose.

What we have signed up to is further ethnic cleansing of Protestants from the West of Ulster, rising power of intimidation and protection rackets in the terrorists' enclaves, internecine assassinations, a big bomb in London to hurry things along, a quiet flight of educated and prosperous Protestants, and continued beatings and murders by IRA or UVF gangsters.

Much of this is confused half-truths or downright misleading, but what it does get across is that imperialism has been humiliated by armed revolutionary national-liberation struggle, despite all the recent promises of 'no surrender to terror', and centuries of earlier "no surrender' posturing to Irish nationalism's legitimate liberation fight. It also bluntly admits that the real government of Ireland is now half-way into Dublin's hands (where all of it belongs, in terms of purely nation-state sovereignty.) Predictions of further guerrilla-war terrorism, however, are likely to prove hopelessly ignorant, almost implying violence and mayhem for its own sake.

The Sinn Féin/IRA struggle has not been remotely anything like that. It was a highly disciplined and competent guerrilla war directed solely against the British capitalist state and its sectarian agents and backers, – in the Occupied Zone of Ireland and on the mainland. Most fringe armed violence has had purely sectarian aims and thrived by taking advantage of the unstable civil-war conditions. A period of transitional stability, on the way to Ireland's reunification which would eventually end the whole basis for nationalist civil-war conflict, could quickly see an end to sectarian killings of all kinds.

A huge propaganda attempt has been made to imply that Sinn Féin had to give most ground in the final negotiating flurry, and ended up very far from its United Ireland ambitions.

This deliberate confusion-mongering entirely misses the point of the whole historical movement taking place. Yesterday, 'Northern Ireland' was the sole reality, – an unquestionable part of the British state for all time, established by British bayonets in 1921, enshrined in British law, and governed ever since by utterly intransigent British colonial ruling-class whose religion was "No Surrender any further to Irish nationalism".

That reactionary gerrymandered imperialist fortress, – a by-word for brutal discrimination and non-stop judicial terror against Irish nationalist dissent by the persecuted minority, – has now crumbled irreparably. That is the movement of history. That is what has climaxed in a new settlement this past week.

How much immediate progress has been made towards Ireland's reunification, – the only ultimate justice, legitimacy, and sensible administration, – is a different question, and small negotiating points may not have all gone Sinn Féin's way for the moment.

But what has been achieved is a victory which can only be described as one of the most miraculous successes ever by a national minority in a revolutionary stand and armed guerrilla-war. This has sensationally routed the minority 'democratic' rights with which imperialism tried to fob off Irish nationalism, which could only have meant continued injustice and frustration under the stifling Orange-colonial tyranny, permanently set.

Now the door has been forced open wide again for the completion of Ireland's legitimate national aspirations for reunification of all its territory in the not-too-distant future.

Yet the one thing which reactionaries of EVERY description promised time and time again was that NEVER would any further concessions be made to Irish nationalism as a result of guerrilla-war actions by armed revolutionaries and their political representatives in Sinn Féin.

To look at what Sinn Féin and the IRA have allegedly 'not yet achieved' is to have missed the plot utterly on Ireland. Only the middle class, with their instinctive hatred of all seriously successful anti-imperialist revolution this century, – the bourgeois out of dislike of any violence disturbing the status quo, and petty-bourgeois Trots out of their anti-Stalinist fear of proletarian dictatorship, – will hate acknowledging this Irish national-liberation triumph.

The longterm overwhelming general impression on international working-class opinion, however, will be that British colonial-imperialist decadence has been monumentally defeated.

Even the carefully manipulated bourgeois reports give the game away:

HE SUDDENLY looked very old, and his powers of scathing response were hit by the stutters.

Ian Paisley was in trouble.

His former supporters, working-class loyalists, were taunting the North Antrim MP and Northern Ireland MEP. One 22-year-old had three screamed words of advice for the founder of the Martyrs' Memorial Church: "Shut your mouth."

Amid chaotic scenes, Mr Paisley's new foes ruined his press conference at Stormont, called to denounce the treacherous negotiators at Castle Buildings. He once persuaded them to appear on rolling hills clutching firearm certificates to demonstrate opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. He has marched them up the hill too often.

Now their political representatives, from the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party, are younger, urban and working-class. And, unlike Mr Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, they were in the talks. Nobody had been so rude to him before. "What about that big house you've got?" one heckler cried, underlining the financial division they had once been prepared to ignore because of Mr Paisley's uncompromising Unionism.

He was 72 on Monday. But he seemed to age as he was greeted with shouts of "Grand old Duke of York. Go home". One called: "You are a dinosaur. Your days are over." Another shouted: "You ran away from the talks. You are too old to run."

Mr Paisley hollered back, but the press conference descended into farce. He was on the outside, and there are those who wonder if he is finished, cut out of Northern Ireland's future. It looked like the end of an era.

One of the shouted comments early yesterday was to link the DUP with the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It is enough to send Mr Paisley into fits of apoplexy.

His former supporters, linked to the rival mainstream loyalist terror groups who are on ceasefire, are behind the accusation. It is based on the appearance of former DUP MP for Mid-Ulster Willie McCrea on a platform with LVF leader Billy Wright. He also spoke at Wright's funeral service in December.

The LVF is one of a growing number of small terrorist groups opposed to the ceasefires and to the negotiations at Stormont. It has murdered nine people, one of them Protestant.

SITTING in his front room, beneath a framed sketch of Orangemen marching to Drumcree parish church, Ivor Young has little doubt what the peace process will mean for Northern Ireland. 

"Of course there is going to be a bloodbath," he predicted yesterday before the agreement. "If the deal goes through, true loyalists will fight back."

Mr Young's doom-laden prophecy may appear as an irrelevant symbol of outdated, entrenched hatred.

But his opinion cannot be dismissed out of hand. Mr Young is typical of disillusioned hardline loyalists, whose vote will count at the referendum scheduled for May 22. He is also typical of many Protestant voters in David Trimble's constituency of Portadown.

More than 70 per cent of the town is loyalist and the reminders of it are everywhere, on most walls of the housing estates that surround the high street and on the red, white and blue kerbstones. This is one of the most staunchly loyalist populations in Ulster.

The former home of the murdered loyalist terrorist Billy Wright, it is the epicentre of support for his Loyalist Volunteer Force, which has condemned the peace process. It is also the venue for the most contentious parade in the Orange marching season, down the nationalists' Garvachy Road to Drumcree church. Around here, people feel they owe the peace process nothing, and the republicans even less.

Already there are plans: for marches and rallies, coordinated by Mr Young's Concerned Protestant Committee. "What they have all done up at Stormont doesn't matter a bit," he said. 

"Ninety-nine per cent of the people around here will never let Dublin run our country. Nothing can happen without our support and we're going to make sure they don't get it."

These views are echoed, around the town; true loyalists would never sell out Ulster, true loyalists would never sit down with the IRA, true loyalists will never roll over and take this.

The finger of blame has been pointed at Mr Trimble. "The people here are sickened by what they have heard." said Mark Proctor, a Protestant community worker. "It's no big surprise they sold us out because we always knew that Trimble would be weak. He's finished here because he didn't listen to the people who elected him. They will never trust him again."

And even though Paisley, the absolute epitome of 'No Surrender' Ulster Unionism, may be played down as 'past it' (although he got the biggest UU vote of all at last May's general election), the official UUP's embarrassment at their defeat is harder to conceal. The attempt to present Trimble as the brave 'winner' of the peace, with 'the union still safe', etc, and the 'principle of consent still guaranteed', etc, is undermined by the reported reality.

What emerges is that Trimble & Co, facing certain defeat whatever they did, opted to put the best spin possible on the least immediately painful deal possible, and then nervously hoped for the best, Blair & Co likewise.

But the strain of the humiliation of all past arrogant bombast now destroyed – ("we will NEVER sit down to negotiate with representatives of armed terrorism until every last weapon and ounce of semtex has been destroyed", etc, etc) – has split the Ulster Unionists all ends up:

Mr Trimble, who has put his career on the line, is trying to contain a growing revolt among his parliamentary colleagues. Six of his fellow nine Ulster Unionist MPs are opposed to the deal.

They include four long-time opponents of the peace process,  along with Martin Smyth, MP for South Belfast, who is due back from Australia tomorrow. But the real threat to Mr Trimble comes from Jeffrey Donaldson, the 35-year-old MP for Lagan Valley.

Mr Donaldson, seen as a future leader, stormed out of Castle Buildings on Friday as Mr Trimble led his delegation into the conference room to deliver his agreement. He voted against it at an Ulster Unionist executive meeting on Saturday.

Mr Trimble carried the day, after a tetchy four-hour meeting at party headquarters, by 55 to 23. 

But the real crunch comes on Saturday, when his 800-strong ruling council delivers its verdict. Defeat for Mr Trimble would scupper the deal. It would also finish him as leader, a fate that befell his predecessor Brian Faulkner when he signed the ill-fated Sunningdale agreement in 1973.

William Thompson, MP for West Tyrone, who will campaign for a No vote in the referendum, predicted Mr Trimble's demise. "I don't really see in the end how he will survive because he will have split the party. I can't see people buying this agreement, and his position will be untenable."

Unionists are uneasy over proposals for cross-bonder institutions, an accelerated programme to release convicted terrorists, and fears that Sinn Féin members could be part of a new assembly without any IRA guns being handed over.

And uneasy about a lot more besides, and that is putting it very mildly indeed in bourgeois news-speak written by utterly unimaginative hacks who haven't the faintest grasp of history being made.

For this is not just the end of this illegitimate dictatorial colonial paradise for the gerrymandering Orange bourgeoisie who will now have far less guaranteed protection for the unchallengeable permanent rule which they relied upon previously (see below). This is also the shattering of the ages-old British imperialist mythology and dreams. 

British imperialism has been soundly routed yet again. Not only does the sun now no longer 'never set' on the British Empire. With the dismantling of this final internally-contested colony in Ireland, it can now be stated that the sun no longer ever even rises on the British Empire any more, – anywhere (meaning the bully-boy Empire where the natives required periodically repressing to 'let them know their place'. Not in the Occupied Zone of Ireland any more.)

Trimble can boast all he likes about 'the Union being preserved', but it isn't so. Temporarily, 'Northern Ireland' was always going to continue for a while as transitional new arrangements for Ireland get under way, but British citizenship is all that is being preserved (for those that want it),  – which was always guaranteed anyway. "The territory of Northern Ireland as an inalienable part of Britain" is no more.

The six counties ripped out of Ireland at bayonet point in 1921 and run thereafter by an Orange-colonial dictatorship will now increasingly come under joint rule by Unionists and Irish in the local assembly, by Belfast and Dublin as far as the extensive new cross-border developments are concerned, and by Dublin and London on all matters of supreme legislative authority, – as the Agreement itself makes abundantly clear:

Democratic institutions in Northern Ireland
A democratically elected assembly in Northern Ireland capable of exercising executive and legislative authority. It will be subject to checks and balances to ensure unionists cannot dominate nationalists, as they did in the previous Stormont parliament until it was abolished in 1972.

A 108-member assembly will be elected by PR (STV) from existing Westminster constituencies. The assembly will exercise full legislative and executive authority in those matters currently under the remit of the six departments of the Northern Ireland Office. Operating where appropriate on a cross-community basis, it will be the prime source of authority in respect of all devolved responsibilities. There will be safeguards to ensure that all sections of the community share power.

Key decisions requiring cross-community support will be designated in advance, including election of the chair of the assembly, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, standing orders and budget allocations.

The chair and deputy chair of the assembly will be elected on a cross-community basis. There will be a committee for each of the main executive functions of the Northern Ireland Administration. The chairs and deputy chairs of the assembly committees will be allocated proportionally. Membership of the committees will be in broad proportion to party strengths.

The First Minister and Deputy First Minister shall be jointly elected into office by the assembly voting on a cross-community basis.

Disputes between the committee and assembly over legislative competence will be decided by the courts. The assembly will meet first to decide its standing orders and working practices and prepare for the effective functioning of the assembly, the British-Irish Council and the North/South Ministerial Council.

North/South ministerial council

A forum for ministers from Dublin and Belfast to promote joint policy-making with the assembly. It will develop consultation, co-operation and action within the island of Ireland — including through implementation on an all-island and cross-border basis — on matters of mutual interest.

All Council decisions to be by agreement between the two sides. Northern Ireland to be represented by the First Minister, Deputy First Minister and any relevant ministers, the Irish Government by the Taoiseach and relevant ministers.

The Council to meet in different formats: (i) in plenary format twice a year, with Northern Ireland representation led by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and the Irish Government led by the Taoiseach; (ii) in specific sectoral formats on a regular and frequent basis with each side represented by the appropriate minister, (iii) in an appropriate format to consider institutional or cross-sectoral matters.

As soon as practically possible after elections to the assembly, inaugural meetings will take place of the three strands' new institutions. All three will meet regularly and frequently during the period between the elections to the assembly, and the transfer of powers to the assembly.

British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference

There will be a new British-Irish Agreement dealing with the totality of relationships. It will establish a standing British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which will subsume both the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council and the Intergovernmental Conference established under the 1985 Agreement.

The Conference also will address the areas of rights, justice, prisons and policing in Northern Ireland (unless and until responsibility is devolved to a Northern Ireland administration) and will intensify co-operation between the two governments on the all-island or cross-border aspects of these matters.

In recognition of the Irish government's special interest in Northern Ireland and of the extent to which issues of mutual concern arise in relation to Northern Ireland, there will be regular and frequent meetings of the Conference concerned with non-devolved Northern Ireland matters, on which the Irish Government may put forward views and proposals.

It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements — an assembly in Northern Ireland, a North-South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies, a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland — are interlocking and interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the assembly and the North/South Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the other.

Policing and Justice 

1: The participants recognise that policing is a central issue in any society. They equally recognise that Northern Ireland's history of deep divisions has made it highly emotive, with great hurt suffered and sacrifices made by many individuals and their families, including those in the RUC and other public servants. They believe that the agreement provides the opportunity for a new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland with a police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a whole.

2: They consider that this opportunity should inform and underpin the development of a police service representative in terms of the make-up of the community as a whole and which, in a peaceful environment, should be routinely unarmed.

3: An independent commission will be established to make recommendations for future policing arrangements in Northern Ireland.

Trimble's other boast of establishing the principle of consent is just mischievous nonsense. In the first place, there has never existed any realistic programme for bulldozing the colonist community into the Irish Republic without any consultations and negotiations at all. The idea of paying the Unionists back for their own past tyranny by such ruthlessness might please children's adventure book notions of comeuppance and justice, but more than one million utterly hostile (and armed and dangerous) Unionists in an all-island population of only 4 million would seem like a daft recipe for just more endless aggro, - IF the ending of the British colony could be negotiated in any other way.

Thus the more consent which can be wrung out of the disillusioned and demoralised parts of the Unionist community, the better it will be for the future all-island development of the new Ireland.

Secondly, the Unionist diehards real point about 'consent' was in fact their determination to continue a VETO on any change whatever to the colonial status quo they have enjoyed behind a police-military dictatorship since 1921. If they did not want any change, then there ought not to be any change. That is the foul nonsense the Unionists used to mean by 'consent'. And it has been utterly obliterated.

In fact, the boot is now on the other foot entirely. It is the Irish nationalist interests in the Occupied Zone who now hold the veto. If the Unionists do not cooperate sensibly with the new all-Ireland developments under the North-South ministerial council, then all activities in the assembly (where the Unionists will temporarily hold a majority, albeit only exercisable with at least 40% minority consent), - will come to a complete standstill.

Thus it is the nationalists who have the 'consent' veto, and in fact a double one.

And it is all of this which clearly made Trimble's party the nervous losers throughout the final negotiations, - threatening to walk out, saying they could not touch the Agreement with a barge pole, and finally splitting anyway when no significant changes were made. A lot of lying disinformation has been put out about Trimble's supposedly successful last-ditch intransigence which hack brain-drivel implied had won the Unionists huge last-minute concessions.

A more sober reading of the capitalist-press admissions shows this to be exaggerated nonsense:

EARLY on Friday morning, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists went into a long session to try to resolve their dispute over the nature of the assembly.

They ended with a deal: the North-South body would be enacted by legislation in the Dail and Westminster. Between the time it was elected in June and started to sit, a shadow, assembly in conjunction with the Irish government would agree six areas; where powers could be devolved to the new North-South bodies.

The Irish believe they neutralised a potential unionist veto by the proviso that, if six cross-border bodies were not established, the assembly would not be allowed to function. It seemed like the last stumbling block. Hume returned to the SDLP to be hugged by his comrades, and fell asleep.

There was a mood of celebration. Blair was informed at 5am that the deal was coming together.  President Clinton was kept in touch by Mitchell. Yet by lunchtime on Friday, with the broadcasters predicting a signing ceremony by 7am, the euphoria slid away. The word 'hitch' was heard. John Hunter, a Trimble aide,  emerged from Castle Buildings looking gloomy. "The party is mixed about this document,' he said.

The 30-strong UUP delegation met to look at the final text. They faced the trauma of taking the plunge to end 30 years of conflict. John Taylor, who had his jaw ripped apart by IRA bullets, opened the two-hour meeting by saying he had 16 points of disagreement. Then the Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson weighed in. He did not like the deal on decommissioning of terrorist weapons, or the promise to release IRA prisoners within two years.

Trimble spoke to Blair twice on the phone and took some of his most senior negotiators at 3.20pm to see Blair again. He asked what would happen if any office holder in the assembly had links with a group still indulging in violence. The Prime Minister refused to offer any more amendments. 'This is what is going into the plenary and this is it,' he said. 'If we renegotiate on one front, the nationalists will renegotiate on another.'

Even Alastair Campbell, Blair's press secretary, pleaded with Trimble: 'If you don't accept this document, we will all be crucified. People will not understand.' It was close to a bust-up.

According Reg Empey, one of Trimble's closest confidants, the UUP were five minutes from walking out when Northern Ireland Office officials shoved a copy of a letter from Blair into his hands.

The letter reassured Trimble on two critical points: that politicians connected with paramilitary organisations which refused to hand over weapons would not hold office in any Northern Ireland government; and that, in the British Government's view, the process of decommissioning would have to begin immediately after the assembly came into being in June.

The letter was a tactical triumph for Blair. It enabled Trimble to outflank his opponents. Armed with the letter, he acted decisively and urged his party to accept the deal.

Contrary to media reports, this intervention by Blair saved the day, not the subsequent telephone call by Clinton at about 4.15pm. Blair asked Clinton to make the calls to the key leaders, including Trimble. As Mitchell explained, Clinton is a persuasive guy. He told Trimble: 'From where I am sitting people simply will not understand if this deal does not go through now.' If the unionist leader's backbone needed stiffening, Clinton helped.
     
Inside the plenary session Mitchell asked each of the parties in turn if they agreed with the terms in the document. All but two gave it their full endorsement.

Trimble said the UUP accepted it but he would have to report to his party's executive.

Then the propaganda battle between the parties began in earnest. Trimble, who was flanked by only one MP, Cecil Walker, insisted it had been a good day for the Union, before attacking 'the squalid dirty war of Sinn Féin'.

But Trimble's propaganda antics and the support the capitalist press gave him only fooled the most gullible.

The smaller print of the bourgeois coverage admitted more of the truth, and Trimble's own Unionist constituency is making little secret of how crushed and humiliated it feels:

Mr Trimble is fighting not just an internal party political battle: he is fighting for a deal that will change relationships within Northern Ireland and change fundamentally the nature of Unionism.

For senior Ulster Unionists who gathered at their Belfast headquarters at the weekend there were many reminders of the party's long history. Inside the building, topped with a battered Union Flag, are posters, portraits and leaflets from election campaigns during the Troubles and back to Sir Edward Carson early this century.

The theme has been constant resistance to involvement with the Irish Republic. That looks set to change.

The MP for Lagan Valley, Jeffrey Donaldson, only 35 but tipped as the next leader, is manoeuvring to replace him, distancing himself from the settlement and positioning himself as a bridge between Mr Trimble and the hardliners. Looking distinctly unhappy as Saturday's meeting broke up, the MP said he intended going on holiday for the remainder of the week. Asked if he supported the hardliners, he said: "I am my own man."

Unionist history is full of failed and deposed leaders. Among the more recent Terence O'Neill, James Chichester Clark and Brian Faulkner. Willie Thompson, the hardline MP for West Tyrone, one of those who will work for a No vote in next month's referendum, said Mr Trimble's position was not as strong as it used to be. Willie Ross, the equally hardline MP for Londonderry East, opposed going into the peace talks and has seen nothing emerge to change his opinion.

Other dissident MPs include Roy Beggs, Clifford Forsythe and, possibly, the Rev Martin Smyth.

Mr Paisley and his party, frequently written off but commanding widespread support in the Protestant community in last year's general election, will be appealing to the emotions of Unionists.

Outside the Ulster Unionist Party headquarters on Saturday a small group of protesters, some claiming to be disillusioned Unionists and some DUP sympathisers, shouted "sell-out" as the MPs, councillors and other senior figures left the building, but cheered MPs such as Mr Donaldson, Mr Thompson and Mr Ross.

One of the protesters, Paul Ferguson, aged 25 from Belfast, studying law at King's College, London, insisted he was not a member of any party but felt so strongly about the settlement he had gone along to register his support of the dissident Ulster Unionist MPs.

He felt let down by Mr Trimble: "We rejected Sunningdale, the Downing Street declaration, the Framework Document and the Anglo-Irish Agreement and we have ended up with a worse agreement.

"We now have a de facto all-Ireland parliament in which the Unionists are entrenched as a minority." A more extreme, but hardly surprising reaction, came from a flute band, the West Belfast Shankill Protestant Boys' Club, marching only a block away. One of the band members said he would vote No in the referendum. His arms tattooed with "True Blue" and "United We Stand", he said: "The loyalist people have two choices: surrender or fight back." 

He predicted that the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the paramilitary group that has not accepted the ceasefire, "will find quite a lot of support in the Unionist community".

But all such threats of renewed 'loyalist' violence sound mostly like demoralised despair. British imperialist paralysis, stubbornness, and decrepitude has been the key to Unionist intransigence, and that has now been broken for ever by the masterly Sinn Féin political organisation and diplomatic fight, and by the unbeatable armed guerrilla war by the IRA, - in its final years blasting Britain's major cities at a totally unacceptable cost in terms of damage, humiliation, and lost prestige and business confidence. Blair had to agree.

The bourgeois Orange ruling class seem to be taking their cue from London too, leaving the Unionist firebrands, and the shamefaced sour losers alike, out on a limb:

Hardly the stuff of revolt. No shouts of sell-out, no placards accusing David Trimble of betraying the Union, but then that's not their style. This is Northern Ireland's so-called Gold Coast, the leafy wonderland north of Belfast where rich Protestants (and some Catholics) reside, unassailed by decades of sectarian violence.

They have done well out of the Union, some even out of the Troubles. Civil servants, judges, doctors, barristers and business people earn London salaries where the cost of living is among the lowest in the UK.

The deal triggered an emotional rollercoaster of reaction, from euphoria to trepidation and suspicion, but few predicted indifference, boredom even.

But how they react to the agreement is crucial. Despite deriding the Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley as a vulgar redneck, many could vote No in May's referendum, figuring a deal could grease the slope to a united Ireland and offer little in exchange: they have no sons in prison, no army house searches, no fear of gunmen spraying their pub.
 
"You'll make us out to be white South Africans, afraid of losing privileges when the blacks get a look in," said one Cyprus-tanned golf club member, who asked not to be named. "If the referendum was today it would get through 60-40, no problem. But in six weeks it could be different. People will have time to stop and wonder do they really want to go through with a heroic gesture."

Five miles away at Bangor Golf Club, more Argyle than cashmere but definitely Gold Coast, bar conversation turns cynical.

"Once the politicians take their seats [in the new assembly] they'll rake it in. Another 24 grand, easy. Add it all up and Blair wouldn't be getting as much." No one challenges the claims or the tone.

In spite of all this evidence that the old colonial regime is indeed on its way out for good, - quite like Smith's Rhodesian colonial supremacists and De Klerk's South African colonial supremacists beforehand, - some bourgeois ideological idiocy is still trying to insist that it is Sinn Féin/IRA who have given up, and that the nationalists gave way on every contentious issue, such as 'abandoning the Irish constitutional claim to the occupied territory in the north', etc.

This is more academic gibberish, particularly favoured by the Trot petty bourgeoisie.  Every contested negotiating position was a win for the nationalists, since every single change is an advance on the previous colonial-dictatorship status quo which has prevailed since 1921. And the point about the redrafting of the Irish Constitution to include the notion of reunification of Ireland by consent is utterly irrelevant. The Green Tory guardians of the Irish Constitution have done nothing to finally drive out British imperialism and end the colonial status of the north. It has been the entire triumph of Sinn Féin and the IRA. The Irish Constitution has played no part, and rewording it to embrace 'consent reunification' makes no difference to anything. It is purely academic.

Again, the capitalist press's own score of 'points won and lost', - all false because all the changes are solely a victory for nationalism, - nevertheless fails to hide the whole broad picture of British colonial retreat:

Britain has agreed to repeal the Government of Ireland Act 1920. And it has agreed to pass legislation allowing the Secretary of State to be empowered to hold further referendums on Northern Ireland every seven years if it appears likely to him or her that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the UK and form part of a united Ireland'.

Who gave ground? 
• Long-promised pledge by Dublin delivered in concession to unionist demands.

Northern Ireland assembly 
Key points
Elections to a 108-strong assembly will be held in June. Local politicians will exercise executive and legislative powers over matters within the responsibility of the NI government departments (Finance and Personnel, Economic Development, Education, Health and Social Services, Environment and Agriculture). It will not have tax-raising powers. Key decisions to be taken by a majority of both communities in the assembly — so-called 'parallel consent'.

The assembly will be run by a first minister, deputy minister and up to 10 other ministers overseeing departments.

Who gave ground?
• Unionists have won an assembly but ceded ground by agreeing to a power-sharing executive and the system of 'parallel consent', ensuring a nationalist veto. David Trimble, who wanted a more diffuse committee structure, now has to share power with Gerry Adams.

North-South bodies 
Keypoints
A North-South body will be created, bringing together those with executive authority in Belfast and Dublin to exchange information, consult and co-operate. Those attending the council for north and south remain accountable to the assembly and the Irish parliament.

Who gave ground?
• The Unionists claim victory since the body is accountable to the assembly, but the nationalists say it has an executive, and therefore has independent powers. Any attempt to frustrate the North-South body will lead to the assembly being prevented from functioning by the British Government.

Human Rights
Key points
The British Government will incorporate the European Convention ' on Human Rights, set up a new Human Rights Commission and a powerful Equality Commission replacing the current disparate equality bodies in Northern Ireland. A separate Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland will be considered.
The British Government will also encourage the use of Gaelic where there is demand. The use of Orange symbols in public institutions, such as the RUC, will be ended, replaced by symbols that promote mutual respect.

The Government will scale down security as appropriate whilst an independent Commission with foreign representation will report by next summer on a new police structure. Finally, the British Government intends that all prisoners linked to an organisation on ceasefire will be released within two years of a scheme being enacted at Westminster by June this year.

Who gave ground?
• A huge victory for the nationalist equality agenda, although unionist paramilitaries will benefit.

Decommissioning
Keypoints
All participants reaffirm their commitment to 'use their influence' to achieve total decommissioning within two years of the agreement being accepted in referendums. Decommissioning schemes will be available from June.

Who gave ground
• Sinn Féin will be able to take seats in the Assembly without decommissioning occurring. Previously the British Government had insisted on decommissioning before and during the talks process itself.

Unabashed, Trot defeatism relentlessly ploughs on insisting that 'all-powerful' imperialism has forced IRA/Sinn Féin to give up the fight. The CPGB Weekly Worker report presents the entire historic change as just the achievement of Mitchell, Clinton, Blair, and Ahern. Sinn Féin and the IRA apparently have had nothing to do with it, incredibly enough:

For anyone who doubts the imperialist sincerity of the British government, just take a stroll around the castle buildings at Stormont or the government quarters in Dublin. British and Irish officials are burning the midnight oil. The current level of diplomatic activity has been described as "feverish".  

"More work has been done in the past week than in the previous umpteen months." Tony Blair is now in Belfast to help the final push for 'peace'.

It has not been an easy ride for Mitchell or the forces of imperialism. The 'peace' process is inherently volatile. Crisis, setbacks and delays can surface at any time. This is clear. Hardly surprisingly, the US senator has been less than happy with the conduct over recent days of Blair and Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister. It requires some very deft manoeuvring on behalf of the British and Irish governments. Just one clumsy move there, one awkward or badly formulated phrase here, and perhaps.

But bit by bit, talk by talk, deal by deal, the forces of revolutionary nationalism - and those of counter-revolutionary loyalism - are being drawn into the diplomatic net. After years of hardship and frustration, the carrot being dangled by Mitchell and his backers might prove too hard to refuse. Lord Alderdice of the 'nonsectarian', pro-union Alliance Party summed up the collective desires of the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie in Northern Ireland: "Not only are most of the outline agreed, most of the detail is too. We are looking to get there. It's looking good". Even David Trimble sounded upbeat and positive.

Many are dubbing the current negotiations 'Sunningdale II'.

However, the differences far outnumber the similarities. The general world situation has changed out of virtually all recognition. The ignoble collapse of the 'socialist bloc' left only one superpower on the map - US imperialism. Naturally, the vastly increased clout of American imperialism narrowed the scope for manoeuvre for national liberation movements. Hence the defeat or - usually - the integration of revolutionary nationalist organisations (ANC, PLO, etc) into the imperialist framework. Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat are now loyal accomplices to the imperialists’ plans and schemes.

Crucially, at Sunningdale the paramilitary forces were on the outside, frowning and scowling in. Now they are talking from the inside.

Sinn Féin/IRA might well acquiesce to an imperialist-driven deal. The pressure is immense.

As a petty bourgeois nationalist movement it is inevitably pulled between the rock of guerillaism and the hard place of secretive, back-handed diplomacy with the imperialists - with the oppressed masses acting as pawns.

As part of the overall imperialist package, a snap referendum will be held on April 23 both north and south, with elections to the assembly this summer. The Blairite passion for rule by referendum - i.e., from above - continues.

This is all the most insulting counter-revolutionary idiocy, sneered out by cringing petty-bourgeois anti-communists, whose purely academic 'revolutionary' posturing only gets its own conceited satisfaction out of carping at all serious anti-imperialist struggles in the world, past and present.

The imperialist input has been solely to authorise acknowledgement of the national-liberation victory and put as much propaganda spin as possible on the developments to play down the revolutionary defeat of British colonialism, especially its armed guerrilla-war aspects by a determined theoretically-astute minority movement.

The long-drawn-out decline of British imperialism, - self-deluding, sclerotic, and paralysed, - has caused a huge embarrassing problem for world monopoly-capitalism by getting embroiled in a brutal but failed colonial war against the Irish national-liberation movement. Having accepted defeat finally, world imperialism was on hand to help Britain quieten the outraged colonial die-hards, and cover up the message of the armed revolutionary 'terrorist' triumph as best possible, - for the sake of what little of the tottering 'New World Order' is still in place, besieged by uncontrollable world imperialist economic crisis and potentially catastrophic inter-imperialist trade-war, upheavals, to be followed for certain by devastating slump and massive revolutionary unrest everywhere.

Bourgeois nationalist achievements are obviously not the final solution against imperialist crisis, - neither in Palestine, South Africa, or Ireland. But no one ever said they were, - merely an inevitable stage in those cases on the way towards a proletarian socialist revolutionary ultimate settlement of accounts with decaying imperialist domination and economic exploitation, - everywhere.

But only posturing counter-revolutionaries could fail to honour the tremendous achievements of national-liberation struggles when they occur, as in Ireland now. And the greatest value of all from this long-inevitable victory (as the EPS Review has explained and chronicled for 18 years) is the emancipation at last of the British working class from being corrupted partners in ongoing colonial repression of Ireland, which would have guaranteed for eternity their own continued repression and exploitation. Socialism can now move forward in Ireland and Britain. Build Leninism. Royston Bull

'N0' to Labour's 'elected mayor' stunt. Use every election to OPPOSE and EXPOSE the Blair government's ENTIRE programme, - all pro-capitalist, and all leading the working-class towards the worst slump disaster in history, and all complete treachery to what an 'anti-Tory' party is supposed to represent. The boycott tactic is a feeble nonsense, dreamed up by posturing Trot academics. Their influence is making a fool of the London SLP. The London working class, and the serious-minded SLP comrades, deserve better. New Labour's whole 'devolution' game is a vicious fraud on workers.

Blair's diversionary 'constitutional reforms', - including the gimmick of a 'big city boss' elected mayor for London, - ALL need exposing, and ALL need thoroughly opposing.

The fake-'left' proposal for a boycott of the May 7 referendum in London is a hopelessly inadequate and inappropriate response to New Labour's monstrous deception of the British public, and it will leave workers cold.

Government office was captured 12 months ago because fat-cat Tory sleaze, coupled with exploitation speed-up and increasingly unstable economic perspectives, had so totally alienated the electorate.

Planned stability and sweeping measures for restored social justice, - 'New Labour, New Britain', won a huge Commons majority for the Blairites, (but without a massive popular vote.) 

Sound-bite propaganda and vague empty stunts were the main ingredients of Labour's 'programme' which made the Blairites slightly less distrusted than the Tories.

The government's performance since has been even more abysmal than the very worst expectations which Leninism accurately outlined before the vote for this new phase of imperialist crisis.

NOTHING has even been attempted for changing the way that the racketeering capitalist system is run. Just the opposite. Blair & Co have forced the country to become even more subservient to the dictates and values of anarchic and irrational 'market forces' than ever before.

Worse than that, this New Labour hierarchy has brazenly taken its chance to actively JOIN IN this fat-cat sleaze and corruption, openly spending small fortunes on its own ministerial accommodation and office comforts, and immediately being caught out selling influence in return for financial favours.

Blair's barmy Christian moralising hypocrites are as big a bunch of crooks and opportunists as could ever have been imagined in anyone's wildest anti-reformist dreams. It is ludicrous to wait for ALL public opinion to catch up with what a sordid fraud this New Labour regime really is.

Workers deserve and need a strong lead NOW for saying how completely intolerable is this pro-capitalist FARCE that is going on in government, which is merely lining Britain up for maximum devastation from the international trade-war crisis currently bringing bankruptcy chaos to the Far East with sudden mass unemployment, food riots, and revolutionary agitation already.

What has idiotic tinkering with demagogic electoral structures for big-city local government got to do with these deadly serious world-capitalist economic problems now threatening the whole way of life of people in Britain?

It is just a stunt to divert people's attention from what is going on in the real world, or is possibly even a fascist-demagogue preparation precisely to help cope with the massive unrest which the authorities already know is going to be unleashed by the market crashes on the way.

Either road, Blair's insulting 'constitutional reform' nonsense needs blasting aside with contempt with the hugest 'NO' vote possible. "Deal with the real issues of capitalist crisis. Stop playing irrelevant constitutional games. No to Blair's worthless referendum. No to big-city bossism. Abolish capitalism instead." 

The boycott tactic is ludicrously feeble as a way of denouncing Blairism at this first great hustings opportunity to expose the utter worthlessness and irrelevance of Labour's entire programme in such a high-profile campaign.

'NO' to Blair's side-tracking constitutional fiddling, which in any case would be incapable of changing things much either way in the midst of the greatest imperialist economic crisis in all history, is the answer.

The Blairites have a huge majority in Parliament, in theory well capable of tackling the capitalist crisis via immediate closure of the anarchic private markets and instituting a planned socialist economy and planned social justice immediately.

So why let Blair get away with this rotten conning gimmick of possibly having a Tory reactionary like Jeffrey Archer elected as London supremo in order only to help further confuse the working class about digging out the real culprits for their growing difficulties, - namely the capitalist crisis and its facilitators with central government power who refuse to do anything about it.

'NO' to all gimmicks and to all further confusion. Increasingly, all local government elections provide just one overwhelming opportunity, - the chance to say 'NO' to the capitalist way of doing things and to the current regime of mismanagement.

Boycott abstentions are a feeble way of saying 'NO'. An active revolutionary boycott, in revolutionary circumstances, might be a possible tactic in certain conditions, but mostly in Bolshevik and Communist history, the boycott tactic has been considered inappropriate. The general policy has been to take part in all bourgeois hustings in order to denounce the system that is running them, - and better done by standing candidates rather than by calling for abstentions.

Workers will see the point of voting 'NO' to Blair's rotten gimmick-ridden regime, fronting for the capitalist dictatorship, in whatever it does. Just keep on voting 'NO' to Blairism in ALL that it does. Workers will be less clear about what "DON'T VOTE" is telling them.

The rationalisation for the boycott is the weakest part of it of all, claiming that voting 'NO' means 'supporting the status quo'. What utter childish nonsense. This is the 'logic' of the madhouse.

Blair is in office supposedly to create a completely 'New Britain'. To do that, he must abolish all capitalist anarchy and corruption, i.e. abolish all capitalism. His government does nothing of the sort. Instead it asks Londoners in a total diversion: 'Would you like a directly-elected mayor?'

The answer is obvious. 'NO'. 'Do something about the capitalist crisis instead'. Only in academic armchair-socialist fantasy land does that indicate that voting 'NO' means satisfaction with the current capitalist status quo.

If anything, the boycott would be far more likely to convey to workers that those agitating for it are not too bothered about the existing capitalist order since the argument for a boycott runs "No to big bossism. Give us a 'real council' instead" -  which would mean London being run by capitalism just the same.

What 'proper choice' could the capitalist system offer workers anyway? To boycott the referendum so as to agitate for a referendum with a 'wider choice', but still set up by Blair's totally pro-capitalist regime, could not be more calculated to create illusions in workers' minds.

What is supposed to be so 'democratic' or marvellous about capitalism run by a parliamentary (or council) capitalist 'democratic' regime as opposed to a presidential (or city boss) capitalist 'democratic' regime?

Exaggerating any differences all the way to agitating for a boycott of a referendum (to introduce elected mayoralties) so as to insist on a non-elected council-leader regime, - can sow nothing but the most idiotic illusions in the entire capitalist 'democratic' racket.

A proposed London SLP leaflet calling for a boycott makes matters even worse by implying that a 'real choice' on these constitutional diversions could "put power in the hands of the people". This is lunacy. It puts the cart before the horse in such a naïve way that it is almost imbecile.

NO constitutional permutations in the world will put "power in the hands of the people" under a capitalist system. And until a recruiting box at the bottom, this London SLP leaflet makes no mention of the SLP programme to abolish capitalism at all.

Even in this recruiting box, the main SLP activity is said to be "our campaign for a democratic republic", which elsewhere is described as "the only way in which power can be returned to the people". This is gibberish. The SLP will make a laughing stock of itself with serious-minded people in London with this sort of rubbish.

"Go to the polling booth and spoil your ballot paper", it declares. Most workers will just scratch their heads.

But the SLP has set itself up for this problem by its equally naïve line on the other bourgeois-democracy diversions of devolution for Scotland and Wales.

Certainly the RIGHT to self-determination can be acknowledged for almost any national or cultural entity, but in real life conditions, nothing is ever so simple. With all of the constitutional gimmickry now being played around such questions of Scots and Welsh independence and English regional autonomy, the SLP itself needs to take a class-war attitude towards various imperialist or bourgeois diversionary stunts and state its view on what would be the best policy on these matters IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING CLASS AS A WHOLE, AS PRESENTLY CONSTITUTED UNDER A CENTRALISED IMPERIALIST 'DEMOCRACY'.

Just doing 'what the local comrades want' could be the worst mistake possible for the SLP's national image, as could arise from this presumably 'autonomous' London fiasco.

A firm policy is needed against Blair's utterly fraudulent 'devolution' gimmick on Scotland and Wales. A firm policy is equally needed against the SNP's disgustingly chauvinist blather which can only make the imperialist-system control over Scotland HARDER to shift, - and HARDER to shift therefore in a 'devolved' or separated England. 

Capitalism in Britain has been run by a multi-national bourgeois ruling class for at least 300 years. The working-class struggle to overthrow it has been integrated for nearly 200 years. History is now coming towards the climax of long-running catastrophic inter-imperialist crisis epoch. A united working class in this fight is the greatest prize. Is the SLP so naïve that it cannot grasp the decadent 1998 British imperialist government's interest in the 'devolution' gimmick to SPLIT the potentially powerfully-united working class? Are people still so naïve as to believe that a totally pro-capitalist corrupted 'reformist' government of sick British imperialism in 1998 is seriously concerned about the ethnic sensitivities of ANY workers, even if they are not Black or Asian workers that New Labour still allows to be booted around by the police, the courts, and by racism and exploitation generally?

Blair & Co could not give a damn about Scots or Welsh workers (any more than Labour could about Irish people suffering under the temporary continuation of colonial tyranny in the Occupied Zone of Ireland, - now at last to be dismantled but for entirely other reasons than the wellbeing and nationalist sensitivities of the Irish who were monstrously trapped at bayonet point in 1921 behind the infamously artificial 'Northern Ireland' colonial border (see separate story)).

These Blairite stooges for ailing British imperialism need to run an entire government programme by empty propaganda stunts because NOTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE IMPERIALIST ECONOMIC CRISIS which is going to screw everybody shortly. Diversions and stunts of all kinds are desperately needed.

This bogus 'devolution' and 'constitutional change' programme is a perfect cover for the Blair government to do absolutely NOTHING about the inter-imperialist trade-war crisis other than to prepare the whole working class to bear ALL its coming burdens, but to be disarmed meanwhile by entirely cosmetic 'constitutional' gimmickry.

To allow the entire SLP to fall into this trap without a voice, - via allowing local Scots or Welsh or London SLP members naïvely to swallow this completely bogus 'devolution' red herring, - is sad indeed.

The abstract absolute 'right' to self-determination remains. But the concrete reality of imperialism, on the run and needing gimmicks to survive with by disarming and diverting workers towards empty devolutionary chauvinism, needs to be met with a firm SLP policy LEAD.

The working class in Glasgow virtually boycotted spontaneously this Blairite fraudulent referendum, in spite of most of the Trots (and the SLP sadly) being 'for' this joke devolution, (and unconnected with a tiny minority Trot position for an 'active boycott').

With a decent LEAD from a serious-minded workers party, this spontaneous working-class boycott could have produced a Glasgow majority AGAINST Blair's rotten gimmick.

As it is, this bogus 'devolution' nonsense is now hurtling firmly into the bog from whence it originated, - the deluded 'nationalist solution' to the increasingly intolerable imperialist crisis (in Scotland's case, an entirely different matter from Occupied Ireland in that the integrated British ruling class, British working class, and British economy has been freely accepted in Scotland for more than 200 years, with the Scots ruling class and political leaders, and trade-union leaders, usually outperforming the English in personal terms). 

What would any amount of 'devolution' or even full 'independence' give a capitalist Scotland that it has not got already? Virtually nothing. The same Scots ruling class would be in charge as now, the same Scots political leaders, the same Scots trade-union leaders. AND THE SAME INTERNATIONAL INTER-IMPERIALIST TRADE-WAR CRISIS would rule too, - only this time under the useful confusing cover of mounds of utterly useless Scots 'devolutionary' nonsense (in the light of Blairite and SNP determination to be relentlessly pro-capitalist, and of Trot and other 'left' naïveness about how to fight the imperialist crisis.)

Many of the Trot petty-bourgeois are now going openly Scots Nationalist in their shallow opportunist politics (Militant, for example), and other sects have been totally disoriented by confused dallying with nationalist opportunism (CPGB for example), - just as the EPS Review explained would happen ages ago. There is now no socialist-Marxist party giving Scottish workers a lead out of this reactionary chauvinist swamp of trivial confusion called 'devolution'. 

Imperialist crisis will continue whatever happens. And the socialist revolution will remain the only possible answer to imperialist crisis. And in a temporarily continuing 'imperialist world', a British socialist revolution would have far better chances of surviving international imperialist intervention and sabotage than a Scottish socialist revolution on its own would have (assuming Scots workers, independently, could even overcome all the devolutionary chauvinist nonsense now being piled on their heads).

The SLP's constitutional confusion would seem to owe much to these sick and confused Trot influences, especially in London where the committee is still strongly CPGB-influenced.

This 'constitutional republicanism' is an obscure fetish with this Weekly Worker sect, arising from a completely academic fixation on 'programmatic unity' as opposed to real-life class-political unity on current international anti-imperialist issues.
These sterile weirdos believe that once a detailed 'programme' has been adopted, then fundamentally opposed class-revolutionary positions on Cuba, say, or China, or what the Soviet Union meant historically, etc, no longer matter. Thus, the Trot nonsense about a 'political revolution' to overthrow Castro (a counter-revolution in Cuba, in other words) is compatible (within the same party) with an attitude that Cuba is a revolutionary workers state which should be UNCONDITIONALLY supported in all its dealings with imperialism and that all counter-revolutionary agitation against Castro's regime should be drummed completely out of workers political circles in Britain, or anywhere else, according to these 'programme' fetishists.

And once abstractions rule about a 'perfect programme', then a federal republican constitution can be dreamed up in no time as the 'perfect' constitutional aim of the 'perfect' programme.

As with all subjective idealism (the philosophy of the petty bourgeoisie), agitation for these 'perfect' formulas squeezes out all living, changing materialist experience of actual political class war. Thus, the opportunity and need to blast Blair's insulting and treacherous gimmickry with a resounding 'NO' on May 7 is completely unnoticed by these dilettante academics in favour of peddling their fondest (and frequently book-published) obsessions (the money always comes in handy, and any fame or notoriety is absolute lifeblood to such gurus).

Boycotting Blair's London referendum is a particularly favourite fetish at the moment with those CPGB activists who have stayed on inside the SLP. The Weekly Worker is currently swanking about how its 'boycott' posturing has now won over the London SLP, and also the London Socialist Alliance where "a comrade from the SLP, there as an unofficial observer, reinforced the view that a boycott campaign could help to unite the left".

The posturing confusion of this middle-class dilettantes 'left' swamp was summed up by ex-SLP Ian Driver's keynote contribution and summing up to the Socialist Alliance gathering (which adopted the boycott because "'no' might be seen as support for the present system" in the swamp's make-believe logic.) 

"The old GLC, for all its faults, did act as a redistributive mechanism," declared Driver. A plainer nostalgia for 'left' reformist delusions could not be imagined. No wonder this swamp cannot grasp the need to say 'NO' to all Blair's deceitful gimmickry as loudly as possible. Adam Carr