Over the past year there has been a noticeable silence from progressives about events in Ireland. One would think that when Western Europe's most active guerilla army unilaterally declares its intention to cease hostilities people on the left--Marxists in particular--would have something valuable to say on the matter. So what I propose to do is to outline the current situation and provide an interpretation of the events and conditions leading up to it. This analysis will, I hope, identify and correct some long standing mistakes in judgement.

After one year of peace little or no headway has been made towards a long term peaceful and democratic solution. The reasons for this are as follows. With the beginning of the peace process Sinn F‚in and the IRA hoped that the British would follow in the steps of other recent transitions to democratic resolutions e.g., South Africa. In such cases the ruling power has proceeded by releasing political prisoners from jail, revoking exceptional powers to police and judiciary, and engaging in all-party peace talks. In the case of Ireland, the British have refused to comply with any of these standard practices. Instead they have refused to release any prisoners prior to the completion of sentences, re-instated the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and refused to deal with Sinn F‚in. The reason they give is that until the IRA hand over their weapons there will be no movement towards a settlement. But, as former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds has stated, such a precondition was never set by the British and Irish Governments.

The IRA has no categorical objection to turning in its guns. In fact, they believe that demilitarization would help foster peaceful forms of government and dialogue. What the British refuse to accept is that the removal of weapons from Irish politics includes those of the British army. This is, of course, an unreasonable demand for the British to make. Although British troops are now off the street, the British army is re-enforcing its presence in areas where it would have been impossible up until now.

Why did the IRA and the British government embark on the road of negotiations? One of the main reasons, as noted earlier in the case of South Africa's move toward bourgeois democracy, is that recent trends in world politics has sided with peaceful, internationally mediated settlements. Likewise recent international media presentations of the situation in the North of Ireland have moved away from the portrayal of the IRA as a ruthless band of murders (as the ANC were depicted in the Cold War era). Instead, the object of criticism finally came to be the Unionist para-militaries and the British Security Forces. The reason for this change was the recent increase in indiscriminate murders by Unionist forces of Catholics and Republicans. Since the start of the "troubles" casualties in the war had been, more or less, equally divided. From the early 1990s on this equilibrium shifted drastically to the detriment of the Nationalist Community.

This shift had two main causes. The first was that Unionist para-militaries became more aggressive in their tactics, killing politically neutral members of the Irish Community. The second reason was the IRA's movement away from military actions that proved "embarrassing" given the death and injury to non-combatants. Together these led to a dramatic shift in the demographics of political violence in the space of a few years.

However, it was the latter which led directly to the more recent movement towards peace. The IRA turned away from a military plan of action that targeted the six British controlled counties of Ulster and focused instead on economic and political institutions on the British Mainland. The cause for this was a concurrent shift in the policy of the British ruling class away from the colonial past to a future of an integrated European economy; a future which the British elite envisioned having London as the banking capital.

The problem with this dream was that it could only be a dream as long as a guerilla army was destroying millions of dollars of property in your financial district and closing down your airports with mortar attacks. The initial result of the IRA's new military plan was hesitancy on the part of European capital to locate in London. The end result was British finance telling the Conservative Government of John Major to stop talking tough and to start talking with the IRA. So the British Government turned their back on their traditional allies in the Unionist community and began negotiations with the Republicans. The IRA for their part were more than willing to talk given their recent image change in fortunes.

So stands the current situation.

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Where should Marxists stand on these issues? In the past, the situation was often written off as the outcome of religious intolerance. Not that such an opinion is invalid, but that there is far more beneath the surface: viewing the conflict as sectarian is to view the conflict as the bourgeois media would have us do.

The history of the struggle in the North of Ireland has been a picture of British interference in Irish political life. The means used was the privileging of one section (Protestant Ulster-Irish) over another (Catholic Irish) to guarantee a working class that was mainly loyal and completely divided. And it worked incredibly well for over fifty years. What undermined the entire "apartheid" system of the six counties was the fact that the British ruling class no longer had the same interest in the industrial heartland of Ireland that it did at the beginning of the century. Now all that is left "holding the fort" is the petty bourgeoisie of the North, realizing that they have the most to lose from change. One of the most staggering changes in the past few years--and one that casts serious doubt on the sectarianism thesis--is the growing class stratification in the six counties. Gone are the days when your religion determined your politics. Now Catholic middle-class politicians speak of maintaining the Union; their reason, their social standing. No longer do Unionist parties ban Catholics; now they often openly court them. The fact is that as Britain begins to move away from Ireland the middle classes, who have always depended on the British for their social stature, realize that there is a strong likelihood of their buoyed status quickly being reduced.

And in some ways it is the same story in the South of Ireland. Here the bourgeoisie is looking with scepticism at the prospects of re-unification. One reason is that industrialized Ulster is no longer the jewel that it once was. Moreover, this would be the first time in the history of the Irish State they would have to contend with a militant industrial working class. And the ruling elite in the South also perceives that the inclusion of the North would jeopardize the hold of the church and the rural and urban bourgeoisie on the people of Ireland. In 1914 James Connolly rightly predicted that partition "would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South"1 and to this day a divided Ireland has been an Ireland hostile to labour. Now, throughout Ireland--North and South--the middle class is becoming weary of any form of political movement. Surprisingly the British seem to have the ruling class with the most resolve towards some definitive action.

The oddest piece in the puzzle is the Protestant working class. For the first time since partition it is beginning to sense that it might very well have been duped all along. The signs are not clear, but they are emerging. The question is how will their disappointment be focused: in direct attack against the Nationalist community, or by turning on the ruling class that has led them along? In many cases pro-British Unionism (as a broader political entity) is changing radically by dropping the nationalist rhetoric that has characterized it, and beginning to argue for the Union on solely economic grounds. The problem is that the economic goals of the Ulster Unionist leadership is not that of the Protestant working class.

As for the Catholic working class, they stand alone in many ways; neither close to their class neighbours in the North, nor their national brethren in the South. After twenty-five years of open conflict the militant nature of the Republican movement has developed a mixture of socialist and nationalist ideals with a strong tradition of civil and cultural rights. The tie to Catholicism, but not necessarily the Catholic Church itself, remains strong. For unlike the South, the Catholic Church in the North is seen as a political symbol more than an institution of political power.

The Republican movement has been strengthened in many ways by a lack of middle class politicians who--as history has shown in Ireland--have all too often sided with the British when the price of freedom or justice is extracted from them. It is this that makes the Catholic working class "dangerous" for Irish bourgeois politics.

The key test for the Republican community comes when the Unionist working class begins to wake from its slumber. Even now Republicans are beginning to talk with representatives of the Unionist working class who--unlike their middle class brethren--believe that dialogue between communities is the only way to solve the difficulties of the past and those that lie ahead.