WRITING in the Irish Worker in March 1914 about the partition of Ireland, James Connolly stated that “such a scheme ... the betrayal of the national democracy of industrial Ulster, would mean a carnival of reaction both north and south, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it lasted.”

Connolly’s prescient analysis has been borne out by more than a century of division and neo-colonialism, not only in Ireland’s relations with Britain but also for the past 50 years with the European Union (EU).

The latest manifestation of reaction is Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s much-trailed negotiation with the EU to reopen the 2020 Brexit deal that left Northern Ireland in the European single market. In trading terms, this uncoupled the six-county statelet from Britain in order to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland. 

The so-called Northern Ireland Protocol has been strongly opposed by the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party which has created political gridlock by boycotting the Northern Ireland Assembly, conveniently vetoing Sinn Fein — now the largest party in Stormont — from taking on the first minister role.

However, this situation is far from unique, the devolved assembly having been in suspension for more than a quarter of its almost 25-year existence. 

Sunak is facing resistance from within his Cabinet to the likely abandonment of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill — initiated by Boris Johnson’s government to override the Brexit Treaty negotiated on his own watch.

In the event of a Tory rebellion on any agreement reached with the EU, Sunak can count on His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (the Parliamentary Labour Party) to get his deal over the line.

As Tommy McKearney writes in the Communist Party of Ireland's paper, Socialist Voice: “That partition and the union are running out of road is hardly surprising.

“Since its foundation, the northern Six Counties has ever been a dysfunctional political entity. Northern Irish unionism, though often refusing to recognise this reality, is in retreat. Over decades its one-time position of absolute power and authority has been steadily eroded.”

Secret 'Brexit' summit

Three years on from Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, Brexit remains a sharply contested question with the well-funded European Movement resurgent and the liberal media full of articles bemoaning Brexit’s failures. 

On February 12, the Observer reported on a “secret cross-party summit held to confront failings of Brexit.”

The two-day event at Ditchley Park country house, Oxfordshire, was attended by a cross-party elite including Tory government ministers, Labour shadow cabinet members, corporate representatives and a Nato assistant secretary-general. 

The fact that it was chaired by former EU functionary Peter Mandelson, a prime mover in the anti-democratic campaign to overturn the 2016 referendum result, speaks volumes about the aims of the event.

Its introductory statement asserted that “the UK has not yet found its way forward outside the EU” and that Brexit is “acting as a drag on our growth and inhibiting the UK’s potential.”

While the organisers stated that Britain re-joining the EU was not on the agenda, the declaration that “there is also clear European as well as British strategic interest in a productive and closer relationship” makes clear the intended direction of travel. 

As in 1972, the engagement of the Tory Party in that project will be a prerequisite to its success. The presence of Michael Gove, David Liddington and others at the secret summit should serve as a warning to all those looking to build a progressive future on the national sovereignty restored by the Brexit vote.

War in Ukraine

A carnival of reaction aptly describes events which have unfolded in the past year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 2022.

This was a major escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine which commenced in 2014 following the Maidan coup d’état and the ousting of Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych.

The geopolitical consequences have been immense — a strengthening of the US grip on its Western allies; fast-tracking of EU militarisation; the rearmament of former World War II Axis powers (and initial signatories to the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact) Germany and Japan; the decision of Finland and Sweden to seek formal membership of Nato; the military-industrial complex with record order books and Ukraine a testing ground for its new warfare technology; widespread damage to civilian infrastructure; state terrorism to destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipelines; the ratcheting up of the new cold war against China; and the threat of escalation into a global conflict. 

The human cost — besides displacement of over 16 million Ukrainians (half of whom have left the country as refugees of war) — is estimated at more than 150,000 deaths due to the barbarism of war.

The initial respite which Russian intervention brought for the long-suffering people of eastern Donbass was short-lived, and they now face a daily barrage from Nato-supplied long-range artillery. 

Prospects for peace seem remote after the US-British scuppering of late March 2022 peace talks in Istanbul — at the time Western warmongers asserted that a “bad peace” was to be avoided — instead pursuing a zero-sum game of Russia’s total military defeat.

Almost daily, the EU’s Borrell, Nato’s Stoltenberg and the Zelensky government are upping the ante with tanks, fighter jets and so on. On Monday (February 20), the cross-party armchair generals in the British Parliament were competing in their militaristic exhortations. 

All of this brinkmanship and military hubris goes unchallenged, as Western media ignore the steady Russian military advance across the 800 mile contact line in the war.

This militaristic, pro-war position has been supported wholeheartedly by some elements in the labour movement, including leading individuals from the Corbyn era. This signifies the decomposition of the Labour left coalition built in the halcyon days of 2016-19. 

Early warning signs of collusion with ruling-class attempts to sabotage Britain’s exit from the EU, and outright class collaboration during the political crisis following the proroguing of Parliament in 2019, were ignored or played down in the interests of maintaining the unity of the Corbyn coalition ahead of the last general election.

A realignment of the left is surely required in response to current events and the unprincipled embrace of Nato’s proxy war by supposed socialists.