The resurgence and the proliferation of armed bodies among Protestants is well enough known, but we have less knowledge of their politics.

In the process the Orange monolith has fragmented and the Protestant working class now seeks an identity for its interests. (Since April 1973 the Industrial Development Authority in the South has approved yet another £50 million investment in Ireland – see the Financial Times, 15 March 1974). And British capital continues its increasing domination of the Irish economy. In the South the faces have changed, but Cosgrave’s reactionary coalition walks the same path as that selected by the defeated Lynch. At Westminster the Orange fundamentalists are returned, again 11 strong and the man of many parts – ’Catholic spokesman’, ‘Socialist Republican’ and Faulkner’s Deputy – the notorious Gerard Fitt is still there. Presently in Northern Ireland there is a ‘constitutional’ body – the Assembly – attempting to re-sow the seeds of illusion and presiding over the British government’s policy of outright repression. And behind all this conglomeration of institutional rules and constitutional arrangements the control of British capital over the whole of the Irish economy, North and South, continued its apparently irreversible increase. In the South of Ireland there was a government which sought greater alignment with the UK, while at the same time paying lip-service to the Twenty-Six County constitution’s claim on all the territory of Ireland. On this side of the Irish Sea, ‘Ulster’ found its representation in 11 staunch supporters of Unionist/Orange fundamentalism and one so-called Catholic spokesman, Gerard Fitt.

Necessary to the guarantee were all the paraphenalia of anti-Catholic discrimination and the continual oppression of all anti-Unionist forces – notably the (then) remnants of the Irish Republican movement. Before the present crisis in Northern Ireland began six years ago there was a ‘constitutional’ body at Stormont which represented, accurately, the ascendancy of the Protestant Orange bourgeoisie and provided the essential guarantee necessary to keep rank-and-file Unionists, the Protestant working class, in line with their masters.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL. Frank Masterton: You Are Now Entering Free Derry (May 1974)Įncyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archiveįrank Masterton You Are Now Entering Free Derryįrom International Socialism, No.69, May 1974, pp.26-27.

War and an Irish Town by Eamonn McCann