CPIR Statement: There is no Peace in Ireland

national | anti-capitalism | press release

Sunday November 04, 2012 17:49

by CPIR - Páirtí Cummanach na Poblachta

Statement of the Communist Party of the Irish Republic on the conjurer's trick of a "peace process" in Ireland.

There is no Peace in Ireland

Politicians talk as if the killing of a prison officer in Armagh has shattered some mythical peace.

Of course when Hilary Clinton talks of peace she talk abouts the kind of peace that US foreign policy has brought to Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.

When Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness talk of peace they talk about the peace to continue administering the sectarian division of Ireland in the North. The peace that allows them to sit in Stormont and oversee cuts imposed by Westminster and in which internment and the brutalisation of prisoners continues unabated.

When Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore talk of peace they talk about the peace which allows them to sit in Leinster House and oversee cuts imposed by the IMF and the EU. Peace and quiet to allow them to hand over Ireland's wealth to banks, and to impose cuts against education, health and the most vulnerable in society.

Of course, when the British government talk about peace, everyone in Ireland knows to start worrying!

The people of Ireland know that there is no peace. Tell the hundreds of thousands of unemployed left without any means of providing for their families that there is peace. Tell those who face Social Welfare cuts by Stormont or Leinster House that there is peace. Tell those living in communities devastated by drugs that there is peace. Tell those interned by the British Secretary of State or on the word of a Garda Superintendent or those brutalised in Maghaberry Gaol that there is peace. Tell Colin Duffy who after three acquittals and so many years of his life in jail, has again been violently torn from his family and placed in a British cell. This kind of relentless peace, we could all do without!

The politicians try to play on a fear of going back to the "dark old days". But there are few who can remember when the days were darker for Ireland's working class.

They remain as divided as ever by sectarian partition. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to get wider and wider. Emigration and unemployment are rampant. The only way that these days are going to get any darker is if the rich are allowed to continue to plunder the poor.

They claim that there has been an end to the war. But there has only been an end on one side. The rich continue their war of plunder. The sectarian division of our country remains. And they call it a peace process.

People are right to reject such a process. Many of those who have rejected it have been interned or otherwise imprisoned. They have, despite the odds, fought the efforts to criminalise them. Like prisoners before them, they fought long and hard to be treated as political prisoners, they continue to fight against routine and brutal strip searching.

The real criminals sit in Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster plotting the next tranche of wealth to give to the banks, the next wave of job losses and wage cuts, the next series of privatisations, from waste collection to the very water that we drink. The wealth of Ireland is being stolen and given to vested interests to make a profit. And they call those who resist this criminals?

The peace we want is social justice, where everyone has access to the means to make a living, to feed our families, to heat our homes, to decent healthcare, education and the other basic human needs. The peace we want is a real democratic system which allows people to meaningfully participate in decision-making that effects them, not in a system where a highly paid political elite take all decisions and claim to represent people through an election every five years.

The peace that we want is an end to sectarian partition and for Ireland to be given the opportunity to finally break free from foreign economic and political domination and become an independent nation rather than the colonised, divided and undeveloped economy that it remains today.

Of course, when people set out to attain the peace that we want, the peace that the people deserve, the politicians call it war. But really it is politicians who have shattered the peace, it is they who are dragging the working class of Ireland to days which are darker than anyone can remember. And lest we forget, when capitalism was faced with such dark days before and ran out of markets to plunder, they dragged the whole world into a global war.

Communist Party of the Irish Republic
4th November 2012

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