This is a bit of a rant about Sinn Féin’s capitulation to Ian Paisley masquerading as an editorial for the next issue of Socialist Resistance.

Ian Paisley, Europe’s pre-eminent religious bigot and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is to head the new administration in the Stormont parliament in Belfast. During the election campaign one leading member of his party explained that educating Protestant and Catholic children together is “evil”.

The party is committed to retaining the eleven plus exam which allows children to be selected by their secondary schools. Paisley, who headed the “Save Ulster From Sodomy” campaign instils in the DUP a commitment to homophobia that the Polish far right Law and Justice Party might find over-zealous. The new administration has made no secret of the fact that it will massively increase the rates paid by working class home owners. The Water Service will be privatised and there will be large scale cuts of public sector jobs.

What sort of self-described “socialist” would want to enter into coalition with Paisley? Step forward Gerry Adams and the entire leadership of Sinn Féin. The party that was reborn with a mission to destroy the northern Irish state is now aiming to share power with the most resolute defender of loyalist sectarianism and religious backwardness.

In the new government the DUP will have four positions, including the all important control of local finances. Sinn Féin three will have three posts. The remaining three jobs are to be divided between the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists. The positions are shared out on the basis of Assembly seats won and the Ulster Unionists have more seats than the SDLP. The unionist bloc – four DUP ministers and two from the UUP – compares to Sinn Féin’s three and the SDLP one, a total of four.
This is appropriate. The election was fought on the basis of a sectarian headcount and that’s what every important debate in the new parliament will amount to. The parliament’s own rules have been changed to spare the DUP the embarrassment of having to be seen to vote for Sinn Féin ministers and the DUP is promising that life will be “a battle a day”, probably with a view to forcing Sinn Féin out of office.

Irish Republicanism has collapsed ideologically. Generations of activists who endured prison, beatings and shootings in their struggle against British imperialism have allowed the Adams leadership to take them into coalition as Ian Paisley’s junior partners. The resistance to imperialism and sectarianism that the struggle in the north of Ireland represented has been defeated. Loyalist reaction has triumphed for the moment. But the one certainty is that a new resistance will emerge. To succeed it will need to learn the lessons of Sinn Féin’s defeat.