Northern Ireland debate: Good Friday Agreement is a task this is unfinished. We need to finish that task - Peter Bunting tells ICTU In introducing the Northern Ireland section of the Executive Council Report, it is a most appropriate time to bring to your attention how Northern Ireland stands 15 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and its acceptance by democratic vote in both jurisdictions on the island. We should be a society at ease with itself, at peace with its neighbours and sharing the benefits of the peace dividend. We should be more equal, respectful of the diversity of our cultures, with a strong Bill of Rights offering comprehensive protections and rights for all of our citizens. We should have an education system dedicated to the formation of independent minded and active citizenship, respectful of difference and possessed of the necessary skills for productive work in a modern global economy. We should have sustainable public services essential for the full development of all people, regardless of their age, or gender, or ethnicity, or perceived ability or background. The quality of those services should be accountable to the public which use them and deliver them. The politicians we elect to the Northern Ireland Assembly are ultimately responsible for the quality and retention of those services in the public sector But, fifteen years on from that Good Friday in 1998, we sit in a fine building in the middle of Belfast where a short walk in any direction will, within minutes, remind us of the wasted potential of that hopeful dawn – the new day which offered so much hope but in the end, it has failed to deliver. The progressive promises of the Agreement have instead turned regressive is too many ways. Sectarianism is worse than ever. Segregation is not challenged where neutral space is the buzzword instead of shared spaces. The sarcastically entitled peace walls are higher and multiplying, where rows persist on an annual basis for who has the right to march and to protest. Youth unemployment is higher than at the time of the signing of the Agreement. Public services are under threat of privatisation. The vulnerable are having their essential benefits removed. Residents of Care Homes are facing eviction. The promise of delivering a comprehensive Bill of Rights has been reneged upon. The securocrats are still utilising repression as a vehicle for defeating dissident activity – Both r are strongly opposed by this movement. Repression in the context of administrative detention always has and always will, act as a recruitment tool for those blinkered enough to pursue the idiocy of violent means for political ends. The recent arrest of John Downey also falls into this category and inhibits those of us working at the coalface for peace and reconciliation. We deserve better than this. This movement was in the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 60s, and if its policies then had been implemented, we may have escaped 40 years of butchery and mayhem. Our movement supported the Agreement which came after years of campaigning from the unions and other people and organisations who argued that the political demands of the main parties were unrealistic and the methods advocated and used to further the aims of those parties were irresponsible, undemocratic and, all too often, lethal. This movement consistently argued that peace and political stability were the priority, but not the end point. We made the case that human rights were a benefit for all citizens, and that discrimination not only blighted the lives of its direct victims, but poisoned the well from which we all drank. We lobbied and we campaigned, we marched and we rallied and we stood in silence to remember the fallen, as we did, yet again, for Prison Officer David Black. The talks which led to the Agreement included more than the big four political parties – there were ten parties in that room. Central to the talks, trade unions and civil society were advocating the kind of agreement which emerged – an Agreement fit for all the people premised on rights and equality The referendum was unequivocally supported and activelty promoted in every workplace by the trade union movement. When the political class let us down – repeatedly – we regrouped and called for the restoration of our devolved and accountable government. We did so the last time this Bienniel Delegate Conference met in this city, in 2005. One year later, we issued a statement saying: “We in the trade union movement sincerely believe that the people that we have democratically elected are individually and collectively capable of addressing the challenges of government. We contend that the wish of the people of Northern Ireland is to be governed fairly by politicians who are accountable to the electorate which they serve. "The future shape of the economy and our society is currently being decided by direct rule ministers and the turbulence of our globalised environment. It is right and proper that we too have our say in our present and our future.” Let me make this clear. We are not knocking devolution and we acknowledge that things could have been far worse under direct rule. We certainly would have had household water charges funding a privatised Water Service, for example. Let us not kid ourselves about how working families would have fared under direct rule under Cameron and Osborne, who could have treated us as a social experiment with no electoral consequences for the Tories, just as Thatcher’s government imposed the Poll Tax on Scotland before its failed implementation in England. But the fact remains that the devolved government in Stormont has not worked for working people as well as it could have and should have. You will hear at this conference about the impact of the cuts coming from Her Majesty’s Treasury – more announced last week affecting the pay of thousands of public servants. The next blow on the horizon for public sector workers is the ‘reform’ of their pensions, ensuring that they will pay more, work longer and receive less. The welfare state is in the middle of an enormous upheaval, causing great distress to the poorest and most vulnerable, again in the name of ‘reform’. By the way, isn’t is funny how ‘reform’ of powerful institutions, such as casino banks or the corporate media, can be put off for years, but ‘reform’ of the unemployed and the working poor must happen urgently. In response, defenders of the record of the NI Executive will say that they have no choice, as all of the fiscal levers are in London and the Treasury will take the money away if we fail to do their bidding. Besides, they will say, the Stormont administration is mitigating the worst of the bad ideas coming from Conservative Central Office, such as water charges, and the bedroom tax. To which we can only reply: what are you doing to challenge the Tories and their dangerous agenda of reversing five decades of progressive legislation and especially workers’ rights which our Assembly has autonomy to change and improve? Why are the First Minister and Deputy First Minister not continuing to work with the devolved administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff as they did for a brief moment in 2010 when they all condemned the Austerity policies of the Westminster government? Why are they not implementing vital parts of the Equality Agenda which will not cost anything in budgetary terms but would make real fundamental changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state? Why are we still tolerating the scandal of schools in which children are segregated by faith at the age of 4 and by social class at the age of 11? They abolished the state-run 11-plus but tolerate two privatised versions in order to propagate the myth of Grammar school superiority, while one child in five leaves the education system functionally illiterate. There are not enough third level places in Northern Ireland, so thousands of our brightest are exported at 18, most never to return. For those who stay, and graduate here, there are not enough jobs fit for their qualifications, so we export thousands more each year. We look at Stormont, and we watch the NI Executive, and we observe, from our firm status as outsiders, what resembles a series of power grabs and cartel-like deals, in which power is shared – out. On planning, on community relations, on economic policy, on education, on employment rights, even on the freedom of the press, it is unclear whose side the Executive is on. It gives me no pleasure to state this, but decisions are being made in Stormont which are not being imposed from Westminster, and which are not in the best interests of working people and their families. It appears that the Northern Ireland Executive can only agree on a system of managed apartheid. And so it places us in a certain political role, this trade union movement and our allies and friends who we have campaigned alongside in recent years on education cuts, and welfare cuts, and human rights, and social justice, and environmental protection, and Dealing with the Past and other real issues that affect thousands of ordinary lives. We ARE the opposition. In Stormont, we do not have the structures to accommodate opposition as known in every parliament in the free world. As a result, the trade union movement has led the opposition to bad ideas with an enforced consensus, such as Water Charges, the Bedroom Tax and treating the G8 circus as a marketing opportunity for Fermanagh tourism – instead, we organised protests, and also debates and venues for the real issues of global injustice enshrined and reinforced by gatherings such as the G8. We should remember that there are arguments that we do win, few with more significance than our principled opposition to cutting Corporation Tax and making the case for targeted investment rather than the blunderbuss tactic of a tax cut. We can utilise European Social Funding to offset the huge cost of youth unemployment and guarantee a productive position for each young person, giving them the skills, the confidence and the experience they need to play a full role is building our prosperity. To do that, and to attract investment, the last thing we need is a pointless and xenophobic referendum on EU membership. We have public sector assets we can utilise to leverage investment in a Green New Deal which serves the construction and manufacturing sectors and contribute to our part in combating climate change. Over £3 Billion of housing stock which should remain the property of the public – Don’t privatise the NI Housing Executive! We can use social clauses and community benefit to ensure that the proceeds of over £3 billion of annual public procurement supports the local private sector and is not siphoned to tax havens by private equity funds and PFI merchants. We can also ensure that every worker employed by a contractor funded by public money is paid the living wage. Low pay is a scandal and the consequence is visible with empty and abandoned shops – even those with freshly painted frontages, like dolls houses in grim streets. All of these proposals have been studied, costed and advocated by our allies in the Nevin Economic Research Institute and they make more sense than grandiose scams like trimming corporation tax. All of the above are predicated on our Assembly and Executive delivering a progressive future for all. One based on the realisation of the fundamentals of the Good Friday Agreement - peace, justice, stability, equality. It is only through this realisation can our society move into the 21 century. To this end, the signatories to the Agreement, the US, British government, Irish government and European Union, need to fulfil their obligations and ensure that those who wish to hold back Northern Ireland do not prevail The experience of recent years has demonstrated that the political class which has developed in Stormont require regular auditing by the co-signatories to this international agreement. This must ensure that when we reach the next milestone anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in five years’ time we can have something worthy of celebrating. Our roles is to ensure completion and implementation of the Agreement Fairness, equality, prosperity, opportunity and justice were hallmarks of the Agreement, in words and in spirit. Our business is the unfinished business of 1998. Let us complete that task.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:35:52 +0000
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