The Belfast Rape Crisis Centre may be closed because the British government is withholding its £60 000 grant citing the volunteer run centre’s failure to comply with accounting procedures. On the other hand it is throwing money at UDA gangsters as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Just how transparent are the UDA’s financial records of its income raised through drug dealing, extortion and pimping is something of which I lnow little.

South east Antrim UDA is based in Carrickfergus, a town with a terrific medieval castle that few fenians get to see. The have renamed themselves “Beyond Conflict” and have come up with a scheme to create 74 jobs. That’s 74. Not 740 or 7400. They reckon they can do this on a shoestring budget of £8.5 million. This is what is called “community development” in the north of Ireland. In return they will gave up criminal behaviour within five years. They have also decided that they are socialist, at least as regards redistributing wealth to Protestants who prererably have a history which involves drug dealing and sectarian murder.

The Carrickfergus gangsters are a split from the UDA faction led by Jackie Mc Donald. Because they are the “nice” UDA they are in the running for £70 million of government funds. Compared to this the £200 000 that Paisley’s DUP are getting to set up a visitors’ centre to promote tourism on the Shankill Road is small change. I have walked the streets of Caracas at midnight but I wouldn’t dream of setting foot on the Shankill Road in broad daylight. It’s just about the ugliest, most intimidating place you can imagine and knowing the history doesn’t put your mind at ease.

Yes this is the economics of the imperialist “peace process”. The Republicans were bought off years ago. Running after grants and government handouts is presented as “getting one over on the Brits” but it’s really just the worst sort of sellout reformism. Here’s a quote from Andrew Johnson’s piece on the Socialist Democracy site from which I read about this. “The institutional sectarian corruption of the Good Friday process is reduced to an almost chemically pure form of bribing paramilitary groups to keep quiet. Meanwhile, for those members of the working class who aren’t in the UDA, we get water charges, the Review of Public Administration, public sector pay freezes and the running down of services that help ordinary people, as opposed to lining pockets. If proof was needed that the North was irreformable, this goes a fair way to making the case.“
http://members.lycos.co.uk/socialistdemocracyie/Homepage.htm