THE ‘Home Coming’ British Army ‘welcome home’ parade being mounted in the centre of Belfast this Sunday, in which a number of British army regiments are due to take part, complete with a fly past, is a massive and consciously prepared provocation designed to sharpen the antagonisms between the different communities in the north, for the benefit of British imperialism.
The Labour government, and the military and police establishment of the UK capitalist state, know full well that such a demonstration of imperialist arrogance, in a country that has been fighting for 800 years to get rid of the British yoke, can only result in tens of thousands of nationalists mobilising in the spirit of ‘they shall not pass’.
What is happening is that in a reflex action to the growing capitalist crisis, and its impact on the UK and Ireland, the British ruling class senses danger, and is playing the ‘Orange card’.
As is well known, capitalist Britain is on its knees, with the whole nation in bondage to the banks. The people are being told that they must all suffer so that a gang of parasites in the city of London can remain rich and powerful, on the ruins of their collapsed system.
There is naturally a great resentment, even fury building up, against this diktat from the Brown government.
In the Irish Republic, whose banks are just as bankrupt as the UK’s, the ruling class and the ruling coalition have just delivered a savage blow to the working class in their crisis budget, complete with attempts to end free medical care for the over 70s, crisis levies on wages, and slashing attacks on healthcare and education.
A ruling class that doesn’t pay any taxes and has all of its wealth stashed in offshore islands, has descended like a wolf onto the backs of the working class and the poor.
In the north, huge cuts in healthcare are on hand, along with a privatisation programme of state-owned industries and a heavy growth of unemployment, along with a massive growth in the cost of living.
The island is clearly heading for revolutionary convulsions as the working class and the lower sections of the middle class start insisting that they have the right to live as well.
The danger to the ruling class in the Republic is that in this situation the revolutionary unity of the masses of the people, the great goal of all truly progressive and revolutionary movements since 1798, will take place.
This is why the British military are attempting to shoulder their way into Belfast this Sunday, causing the maximum antagonism possible.
They are once again seeking to divide and rule, and if the power sharing regime cannot stand the strains of a crisis-ridden capitalism that has to cut the throats of the masses of the people economically and politically, then they will put an end to it.
And behind the scenes in the Republic the message of the ruling powers to the British imperialists will be, ‘If you are going to do it, then make sure that you do it properly’.
So Sunday’s intervention by the UK armed forces, if they go through with it, and there are no signs that they are not going to do so, will mark a turning point, a qualitative change, and will be the beginning of the end for power sharing in the north, which could only seem to work while there were the funds available to satisfy some of the requirements of the different parties that were involved.
The period that has opened up with the collapse of the world’s banking system is one where the working class of Ireland has to be united behind a revolutionary party to complete the eviction of the British imperialists and their bourgeois allies who run the south, to bring in a secular, socialist Ireland, based on a publicly owned and planned economy.
In this struggle the Irish workers are in the same trench as the British workers, who have now been given an alternative. This is, either overthrow the British ruling class and bring in socialism, or else be driven back to a period which will make the hungry 1930s seem like an era of peace and plenty.
Capitalism is going down. Now is the time for the the organisation of the socialist revolution in Ireland and Britain.