Ahead of tomorrow’s Westminster elections, Fiona Ferguson, the People Before Profit candidate for North Belfast, explains why we need a radical break from both the Tories and the establishment parties in the North.
People will take to the polls across the North of Ireland tomorrow for a snap Westminster election called by Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The decision to hold the election now is a reflection of the ongoing crisis in the Tory Party. After 14 years of savage austerity, a prolonged assault on the NHS, on workers and on the welfare system, the Tories are at a historic low in the polls and are facing a major defeat. As their economic policies cannot provide for anyone other than the wealthy few, they have desperately tried to escalate their strategy of racist division in a bid to maintain some support. Their policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda is an example of the kind of performative cruelty they are now relying on to whip up racist sentiment, along with their ‘stop the boats’ mantra.
Unfortunately, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party does not offer any kind of alternative. Starmer has broken every pledge he made when he opportunistically feigned support for Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. He is not promising to increase taxes on the wealthy, reverse Tory cuts or stop the attacks on the NHS. He has accused Sunak of having a ‘Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto’ and has trailed the Tory line about stopping the boats, pledging to create a new Border Security Command, with additional powers under the Counter Terrorism Act, to police the Channel.
The neoliberalism of the two establishment parties, along with their racist policies, has meant that there is room for Nigel Farage’s far right Reform Party to grow in popularity. Farage has been gaining audiences of thousands at his election rallies, and worryingly, is gaining more support from young people – young men in particular.
Both establishment parties have also continued to support the settler-colonial Israeli State as it continues its genocide against the Palestinian people, despite widespread opposition from ordinary people on the streets.
The North: Profits, Poverty and Tory Enablers
A decade and a half of Tory rule has resulted in plummeting living standards across the UK. 22% of the population – around 14.4 million people – now live in poverty. The rate is much higher in many working class areas, particularly in areas in the North like West Belfast (28.5%), North Belfast (27.6%) and Foyle (25.3%). Meanwhile, corporations are making obscene profits. Average profit rates are now 30% above pre-pandemic levels and the richest 1% now hold wealth more than the bottom 70%.
Tory austerity policies have cut public services by £500 billion. These cuts have had dire effects across society, particularly when it comes to healthcare. Waiting lists in the NHS are growing and health workers are working longer hours due to underfunding and privatisation supported by both the Tories and Stormont.
The housing crisis in the North has steadily worsened under the Tories, with soaring rents, high mortgage interest rates, growing housing waiting lists and dire conditions in rented accommodation.
Added to this, the climate and biodiversity emergency has intensified under Tory rule. As ordinary people face soaring energy bills, energy companies and major polluting corporations continue to profit from the destruction of our environment. Whatever the issue, workers and the poor are expected to pay the price while the 1% reap the fruits of their exploitation.
The primary architects of these interrelated crises are the Tories, but it must also be said that the big parties in the North have been unable to challenge them or the rule of the wealthy. While they whip up sectarian division and purport to fight for ‘their community’, they join forces to inflict Tory cuts and look after the business interests they represent at home. This has included a push to privatise the Housing Executive, a block on a rent cap proposed by People Before Profit in Belfast City Council, the transformation of Lough Neagh into an ecological dead zone in the services of business interests, and a sustained attack on public sector pay.
Fighting for Radical Change
It is in this context that People Before Profit is standing in three constituencies for the Westminster elections in an effort to provide a real alternative to Tory rule and the sectarian politics that have failed people in the North. People Before Profit are standing candidates in West Belfast, North Belfast and Foyle, who have a long track record of fighting on the ground for those who are struggling under the status quo. Instead of implementing Tory cuts as the DUP, Sinn Féin, Alliance and the SDLP have done, we have opposed them – in Stormont, in local councils, on the streets and alongside workers on picket lines.
A radical break from business as usual has never been more necessary. People Before Profit has put forward a manifesto and a commitment to fight for a major redistribution of wealth and power in the North. Included in this is a wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires, a 45% tax on profits over £125,000 and an end to the £3 billion annual spend on Trident in order to redirect this money toward public services.
It seeks to represent the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of workers who have been fighting back in recent months, with a commitment to end Margaret Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws, introduce a £15/h minimum wage, ban zero hours contracts and nationalise key industries.
To deal with the housing crisis, it pledges to stop the transfer of public land to private developers and mandate the Housing Executive to blanket build homes in order to deal with the housing waiting list. It also pledges to ban evictions, cut rents and cap them at 20% of a tenants’ income, and enforce penalties on landlords who rent out substandard housing.
It puts forward demands for genuine action on climate and to protect the environment, including a total ban on fossil fuel extraction, public ownership of energy companies, the introduction of free public transport and stronger sanctions for major polluters like those responsible for the ecocide in Lough Neagh.
Palestine: A litmus test
For many people who have taken to the streets in protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza over the past 9 months, the key issue in the election will be the question of Palestine and Palestinian liberation. The military and political support of the Tories and the Labour Party for Israel’s genocide has been sickening, if not surprising. Similarly, at home, the DUP has continued to back Israel. DUP Ian Paisley described the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Green Party Government’s recognition of a Palestinian state – itself a cynical, symbolic action without substance – as ‘atrocious’. Again, though sickening, this kind of support for imperialism and settler colonialism from the DUP will shock nobody.
Within the pro-Palestine movement, key questions around imperialism and what constitutes true solidarity with Palestine have arisen, however. Palestine is a litmus test for anyone who claims to be on the Left. The Palestinian resistance and the explosion of popular support for Palestine around the world has posed a major challenge to US imperialism and its backers over the past 9 months.
In this context, Sinn Féin have attempted to paint themselves as staunch supporters of the Palestinian movement, but have not matched their rhetoric with action. Early on, when a key demand of the movement was to expel the Israeli Ambassadors, Sinn Féin refused to support this. In doing this, they initially gave cover to the Government in the South, before ultimately caving into the movement and supporting the demands.
In March, despite massive pressure from the movement, Sinn Féin went to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden, who along with Benjamin Netanyahu, is the chief architect of the genocide in Gaza. The US provides $4 billion in military aid every year to Israel. At the beginning of Israel’s genocidal assault, it announced a further $14 billion. For months, Biden made it clear that there was no red line that Israel could cross that could cause the US to temper its support. It is only in recent weeks that Biden has tried to reign in Netanyahu – although the flow of arms continues.
Sinn Féin’s strategy of cosying up to the US is summed up by Gerry Adams’ defence of the White House visit:
“Serious people involved in struggle, particularly people involved in national liberation struggles, understand that your own struggle has to be your primary focus. They would not expect us to do anything, any more than we would expect them to do anything, which would set back our own struggle.”
Declan Kearney’s arrogant recommendation in Mondoweiss that Palestinians should follow Sinn Féin strategy of ‘greening the White House’ and Pat Sheehan’s open dismissal of BDS shows their distance from the solidarity movement.
A strategy that focuses on making deals with US imperialism in the hopes of winning support for a United Ireland is first and foremost a clear indication that Palestinians facing settler colonial violence, dispossession and genocide can be thrown under the bus. Secondly, it calls into question what kind of United Ireland Sinn Féin wants to deliver. In Washington, Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill and DUP Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly declared that Northern Ireland is ‘open for business’.
The same corporations who are soaked in the blood of Palestinians are to be invited into Ireland to exploit workers, extract rents, avoid taxes and reap massive profits. This is precisely the kind of political orientation that creates the misery of poverty and gross inequality that hundreds of thousands of people are experiencing now under the thumb of the Tories. It is the same orientation pushed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in the South, to similar effect.
There has to be an alternative – and there is. It is to stand in the tradition of James Connolly in opposing imperialism and sectarianism, and to seek to unify working class people in a fight for a 32-county socialist Ireland. These are the politics that People Before Profit have put forward in this election and what we will continue to fight for, whatever the result this weekend.
