The Six Counties: Britain's wasteland

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CARRICKFERGUS is a town of 30,000 people not far from Belfast. It is mainly Protestant, and in the past has been one of the islands in the Protestant archipelago of industr and comparative prosperity dotted around the long depressed economy of Northern Ireland. But in the last three years it has been devastated by the slump.

Synthetic fibre plants owned by Courtaulds and ICI have closed, wiping out 5,000 jobs. Last Monday's excellent Panorama report (by Peter Taylor) showed vast areas of empty tactory space, unused, and under the capitalist system, unusable. There were shots of plant being dismantled - to be taken across the border and used in the 20 Counties. A bored-ooking Orange band, the 'Carrick Defenders', practised playing the Orange triumphalist anthem, The Sash• 75% of them are unemployed.

Shots of lan Paisley speaking in Carrickfergus: "All the jobs are gone." The centre of gravity had shifted to some as yet undefined part of Europe, away from London. North. ern Ireland was now the periphery of the periphery, he added, with unmistakable implic In parts of Derry unemployment among heads of households is 70%. Derry's shin factories for long employed women and girls, and produced a substantial social role reversal, with many more men than women unemployed and looking after the house anc kids. Now even the shirt factories have closed. Courtaulds abandoned Derry in 1981 Shots of a literacy class for Catholic teenagers, with the diary of hunger-strike!

Carrickfergus and Derry are typical. Unemployment in Northern Ireland has doubler in the last five years, to over 20 per cent. 70,000 industrial jobs have been lost in the las decade. There are now only 77,000 left - 15,000 less than the number of unemployed It is estimated that only 25,000 of the jobs lost have gone as a result of "The Troubles' and the rest is the bombless work of the slump and of the policies of the Tory govern The state is now the biggest employer in Northern Ireland. 67,000 public sector job: have been created since 1969 - almost the same as the number left in industry. Sever per cent of the population are in government training and employment schemes. Socia security in Northern Ireland costs £l billion per year, almost equal to the Westminste:

The Industrial Development Board created in 1980 has a target of creating 60,00l jobs in the next five years - by 'attracting investment'. But the tax concessions anc grants available to the enterprising or social asset stripping capitalist in the 26 Countie: are far more attractive than anything available in Northern Ireland. In fact the N.l. Deve lopment Board is not very ambitious: by creating 10,000 new jobs a year it would jus Inevitably, as industry drains away, the pressure to push wages down bełow the cust omary UK-linked level is having an effect, and Northern Ireland is being turned into : low-wage economy - what both an ICTU official and a university economist called ", Hong Kong economy", the one with indignation, the other with Thatcherite relish.

Peter Taylor presented the case of Hyster, the fork-lift truck manufacturers. They pay £95 on average in Northern Ireland. They used to pay £118 in Scotland - befor they recently forced the Scottish workers to accept a cut, to take them almost to thi The average gross weekly wage of men in Northern Ireland is £10 below that in Eng land, £9 below Scotland, and £7 below Wales. Wages are lower than anywhere else in th UK, and, as Hyster's Scottish workers found out, can be used to lever wages in slump-hi The economic devastation has of course made things worse for Catholics in, for ex ample, Derry, than for 50 years. But things were never very good for the Catholics. Fo political reasons, during the boom industry was shifted to the Protestant areas. It is thos There is continuing job discrimination by Protestant councils, but there is now ni Protestant Stormont government to take special care of the Protestants. There is nor Protestant emigration where before it was mainly Catholics who got out.

Twenty years ago the average standard of living in the Six Counties was twice that o the South. It was the industrial part of Ireland, with a distinct economic identity. Th economic transformation of the South since 1958 (when they began to dismantle protec tionism and opened the country to international capital) has changed all that.

The slump is scouring and levelling by way of impartial devastation, inflicted on Prot estant and Catholic communities alike. It is difficult to avoid the image of a societ being pounded and made malleable in the crucible. Much of the economic differentiatio Could some sort of - even minimal - inter-communal working class unity to figh back arise out of this common affliction, where there is now little possibility of majo Protestant advantages being seized or offered? Panorama reporter Taylor interviewe Paddy Devlin, who thought that it might be possible. (Devlin was a power-sharing execu tive minister in 1974. With Gerry Fitt he was the 'social democratic' part of the leader ship of the now largely nationalist SDLP, before they left it).

He recalled, with fascinating newsreel shots, the famous events of 1932, when th unemployment level was 100,000, about what it is now. British government cuts r welfare ('outdoor reliet) hit impartially at Catholics and Protestants, and led to unite protests and barricades against a common enemy being erected in both the Protestan Shankill and the Catholic Falls Road. Bands dropped their sectarian anthems and instea played a 1932 hit tune: 'Yes, we have no bananas'. The Stormont state forces used gun against the Catholics (killing two and injuring 15), but batons against the Protestant:

The same basic conditions certainly exist - Protestant and Catholic workers in rough ly the same situation. And there is even a more recent Protestant tradition of struggl against unemployment. At the beginning of the 1960s there were mass demonstrations -one of 20,000 in 1962 - mainly Protestant, against unemployment... The fact is that we have imposed the problem on the Irish..." same sort of security as a mass ding the Tartan Army in Scotland and murderer). the Welsh arsonists and the Angry BrigI think it is wrong in principle. The ade, are soldiers. We give them political only justification for it would be under status, do we? What sort of status would the Geneva Convention on prisoners of you give them, and why treat them war, in which case you have got to have better? two states that have, declared war on JO'M: I think you are using the whole each other, both sides wearing recognis- business about penal refarm to obscure able uniforms. the qualitative difference. For example, One of the most dangerous things the Catholics in 1969 did not have guns. about political status for nationalists is The IRA offensive prew out of the. civil that you also give it to Loyalists. If you rights movement in reaction to the Protdo that, and you then have a united Ireestant backlash and the pogroms. Your land, you hand over a large number of bicture about how the armed conflict Loyalist prisoners of war to the new developed is somewhat askew, because state, which is the surest way I know of one of the earliest events was the British saying to the Loyalist people — you have curfew in the Falls just after the Heath a legitimate fight, you are entitled to government was elected, in July 1970it, and make sure you keep it. prisoner of war status too, you have got before the IRA offensive got under way.

The whole chronology of how it developI know that the unionists will be prepared to fight and kill and die themselv- ed shows that the IRA began as the defensive militia of the Catholic es for their cause, as are the nationalists community. at present. CS: I think that people who pursue this JO'M: But you accept that the Catholics line are, not intentionally, betraying have been oppressed terribly for 60 socialist values. There is no reason to years at least. On what definition are the argue that people who are less articuIRA straightforward criminals? late - the vast majority in your prisons are working elass people — don't in fact CS: They're not. Of course they're. polihave political motives for what they do. tical, I'm not disputing that for a moment. But if we lock them up, that Some of them act as organised groups like the Provisionals do. Obviously there doesn't mean they should be treated is a qualitative difference. But that does differently.

You are saying that an ordinary crim- not justify unequal treatment. If you want specific prisoner of war status, then inal should be treated worse. As a penal reformer I reject that strongly. There is two things follow: one, you must accept no reason why a so-called common crim- prisoner of war rules and regulations, inal - personally I find the phrase very under the Geneva Convention; two, to offensive - should be treated worse my mind more importantly, you must give PoW status to Loyalists too. You than you who committed your act for must take on board that you will hand political reasons.

Secondly, what's political? If you are a over to a united Ireland political prisonyoung black in this country, you feel the ers of war, and you are virtually saying police don't defend you, and you take out to the rest of the unionist population that a brick in your pocket to defend your- this legitimises their fight against the self — is that politica! or not? I would new Irish state. argue it is political. JO'M: Isn't that the distant, or midJO'M: Sowould I.

CS: Someone who goes shoplifting and says, 'I don't like the present structure of society in capitalism', is political.

JO'M: You're mixing up two questions, though. I'd be in favour of penal reform, and of recognising the political dimension in the case of the young black or the unemployed person shoplifting. But there is a qualitativé difference between the political element in these things and the political army of an admittedly oppressed community, with grievances which - you admit — pose a united Ireland as the only solution, even if you disagree with their methods.

CS: That's not a reason for treating them differently. And certainly no reason for treating them better — which is the request.

JO'M: They are soldiers.

CS: If they are soldiers, then prisoner-of war status comes from a very specific agreement. It is the Geneva agreement, which corers iwo states at war, and wearing a uniform when you are in combat. It's a dangerous policy because at the end of the day you'll wind up with a Loyalist prisoner-of-war camp in a united Ireland. If you want thar, OK. But it's dangerous.

JO'M: The Geneva convention in its details is a product of established gouernments. We are talking about an oppressed people and their guerilla army, which does not wear a uniform because it is outnumbered and so on.

But they are soldiers.

CS: By that definition, anyone who is fighting the British state as such, incluPoWs' argument and the political element in ordinary so-called criminal activity to obscure the actual problem, JOHN O'MAHONY reviews Panorama's feature that the Provisional IRA is an army of an oppressed people. economy (Monday March 14). CS: I've been working for good treatment in prisons for donkey's years — but I want it for "everyone, not just one group.

JO'M: So you're in favour of a blanket reform in prisons.

CS: Yes. One of my positions from early on in the hunger and dirty protests was that if we had made such reforms, we would have had no problem — the five demands would have been met.

JO'M: So your policy in Northern Ire- ations of Protestant Ulster nationalism'. land will be to bring in a complete prison reform to include all sorts of rights for political and other prisoners?

CS: In fact Northern Ireland prisons are better than the ones here, which are wiping out 1000 jobs. appalling. If we could do more to liberalise prisons, l'd be very happy. Bobby Sands as text: their choice. JO'M: You will in effect grant political status to all 'ordinary criminals' in Northern Ireland?

CS: No. You are twisting my words. I'm ment. saying I want good conditions for prisoners, and I'm not prepared to distinguish as to why a person committed an offense or not. subsidy to Northern Ireland. JO'M: You are evading the actual point.

CS: I don't think so, but we'll have leave it there.

JH: Thank you very much.

keep unemployment at its present level.

N.I. level - which they are trying to make the norm.

Britain down too.

areas that are experiencing something new.

Protestant unemployment is now as high as Catholic.

SINNAL is being eradicated between Catholics and Protestants.

Soon they had fomented sectarian rioting again.

Let-us at least dare te hope..*