(en) Irish Anarchist Review #6 - Brave New North: Neoliberalism in the Six Counties

Guest writer Liam O?Rourke casts his eye over the neo-liberal project of regeneration in 
the six counties. He notes that the elite sections of both communities have no problem 
uniting around what he describes as the ?shared non-sectarian identity of the consumer? 
which reduces shared space to ?commercial shared space?. Yet the fact that working class 
people have seen little of the promised ?peace dividend? has not lead to heightened class 
consciousness so much as it has to increased sectarian division. ---- Today, the core 
assumption of the dominant classes in regards to the six counties of ?Northern Ireland? is 
that economic liberalism goes hand in hand with sustainable peace ? in other words, 
neoliberal social and economic policies plus peace process equals prosperity.

With its ?propaganda of peace?, the media is giving the public an explicit narrative of 
?an end to violence? and of a ?political settlement? having been achieved, as well as an 
implicit narrative according to which Northern Ireland is at present fit ?for integration 
into the consumerist society and the global economic order?. [1]

The image of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley ringing the trading bell of the Nasdaq in 
December 2007 symbolises the idea that if the ?invisible hand? of the market gets its way, 
it will provide lasting peace and reconciliation. Economic development agencies from 
countries like Kosovo and Iraq have even been brought on official visits to the north to 
witness the success of that idea. Under the ?new dispensation?, governance structures have 
been assembled to reconfigure post-conflict economic space.

?The onset of devolution has promoted a mix between ethno-sectarian resource competition 
and a constantly expanding neoliberal model of governance.? All governing parties 
subscribe to the virtues of free market enterprise, austerity finance, urban regeneration, 
public-private partnership, private-finance initiatives, and foreign direct investment by 
global multinationals. Neo liberal principles of privatisation, fiscal conservatism and 
low social welfare are seen as the main engines of social and economic peace dividend. [2] 
Peace has in effect been ?privatised?.

The Mask of Neoliberalism
In opposition to the destructive antagonism be- tween Republicanism and Unionism, the 
neolib- eral project of governing elites promotes the the ?shared non-sectarian identity? 
of the consumer. It seeks to normalise the north by reducing ?shared space? to commercial 
shared space. Critics point that this idea is fundamentally to ?provide a mask or a 
?Potemkin Village? to obscure the poverty and sectarianism hidden behind?. [3] The 
recently opened Titanic Belfast project is a prime example of such a ?Potemkin Village? 
promoted by this ?propaganda of peace?. A lecturer in History of Design at the University 
of Ulster has described the likes of the Titanic Project and the Laganside Development as 
the city?s largest ?normalisation project? and contrasts the ?propaganda drive to make 
Belfast appear as normal? to the fact that at the same time the population has become even 
more divided and segregated. [4]

This project of ?rebranding? the six counties is there to hide the fact that Northern 
Ireland is a failed economic entity. It is fiscally dependent on the rest of the UK ; its 
annual deficit stands at ?9 billion (?10.6 billion) a year, equivalent to ?5,000 a person. 
Public spending accounts to almost 70 percent of its gross domestic product. Economic 
output is 20 percent below the British average, 30 percent of the population is 
economically inactive and it continues to experience the lowest private sector 
productivity of all UK regions. It is the only part of the UK where weekly wages in the 
public sector ?where over 30 percent of the workforce is employed- are on average ?105 
higher than the private sector.

Growth rates have consistently trailed behind the UK average. All this puts in doubt 
whether ?Northern Ireland? can become an attractive option never mind a shining example 
for global capital. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers? Economic Outlook report published 
in August 2012, not only is the north?s economy facing ?very serious problems? and lagging 
behind the rest of the UK, but the prognosis is even worse, with predictions for the 
regional economy to shrink even further. [5] Esmond Birnie, an Ulster Unionist and a 
senior economist at Pricewater- HouseCoopers admitted last year: ?Over three decades, the 
standard of living has remained flat. The reliance on the public sector still remains very 
high. We've had a high decline in manufacturing...and while there has been growth in the 
service sector, these are low wage, low productivity jobs - no compensation for the loss 
of traditional industries. The Northern Ireland economy only grows when there is a massive 
increase in public spending and another increase in public spending is not realistic.?[6] 
So much for Northern Ireland PLC!

The Spoils of Peace
There were hopes that the cessation of violence would be followed by a ?peace dividend?. A 
detailed study of the evolution of the northern economy in the ten years since following 
the Belfast Agreement seriously questions the degree to which the peace process has 
engendered a general and sustainable ?peace dividend?, especially for the marginalized 
populations who suffered most during the conflict. [7] Even Ian Coulter, the chairman of 
the Confederation of British Industry, stated earlier this year that despite the political 
peace dividend in the last 14 years, there has been no real economic dividend and the 
north?s economy has not moved on since 1998. [8] Her Majesty?s Treasury provided this 
assessment in a paper published last year: ?Peace has not in itself been sufficient to 
raise Northern Ireland prosperity to the UK average or even to the UK average excluding 
South East England. Northern Ireland still has one of the weakest economies in the UK.? 
[9] And since the start of the great recession ?the much-heralded prospects of a peace 
dividend have simply evap- orated following the meltdown of global financial markets. 
Negative equity, job fears and the cost of living dominate the domestic economic horizon.? 
[10]

The working class has seen little improvement of their condition. The Wall Street Journal 
notes that: ?In the decade following the official end of ?the Troubles,? levels of poverty 
in both communities has not been reduced. Any peace dividend Northern Ireland received has 
failed to reach those that most needed to see economic improvement. Indeed, working class 
communities, which were heavily subsidised by the British state during the Troubles, have 
actually seen their economic position decline in recent years.? [11] In a 2011 report, the 
Northern Ireland Assembly's Research and Library Service studied deprivation and social 
disadvantage since 1998. It found little evidence of 'peace dividend' and that the gap 
between the well-off and the disadvantaged ?persisted and in some cases increased since 
the signing of the Good Friday Agreement?. Of the 56 wards ranked as the most deprived ten 
percent in 2001, the researchers found that only 14 areas had climbed out of deprivation 
by last year. In some cases this had been achieved only because of boundary changes. [12] 
It is thus hardly surprising that there were recent criticisms of the fact that working 
class communities have missed out on the dividend from development at Titanic Quarter. [13]

???Divide and Re-Conquer
Behind the facade of regeneration, ?peace? is at best what has been described as ?benign 
apartheid?. Segregation and divisions have significantly increased since 1998. Neoliberal 
peace has failed to normalise the six counties. Four- teen years after the Belfast 
Agreement Northern Ireland remains a very divided society. The indicators show that in 
some areas the divisions have increased: most obviously, the number of interface walls has 
increased from twenty two at the time the Agreement was signed to forty eight today 
according to the Department of Justice, or eighty eight according to the last count taken 
by the Institute of Conflict Research. There is evidence of continuing deep division in 
housing and education. [14] With its failure to bring peace dividend or develop 
reconciliation, the ?re- branding? of the six counties is a case of ?putting lipstick on a 
gorilla.? [15]

The idea that the free market can generate social and economic prosperity and lasting 
peace can thus be seriously questioned. The current economic crisis makes things even more 
difficult. Objective circumstances certainly have weakened the neoliberal project but 
whether an alternative political project of the subordinated classes will emerge remains 
very uncertain. The establishment is particularly concerned that the economic crisis 
provides an opportunity for so- called ?dissident? republicans.

The Financial Times for example noted that in the Creggan estate in Derry, six out of ten 
people are were classed as ?economically inactive? and in a sign of the deepening 
recession over two thousand three hundred people applied for 14 jobs on offer at a new DFS 
furniture store. The paper concluded that ?this climate has presented opportunities for 
hard line groups of dissident Republicans, who oppose the peace process?. [16]

Former T?naiste and attorney general Michael McDowell predicted earlier this year that the 
peace process will survive the economic downturn on both sides of the border. Politics in 
the north could become more divisive in the absence of economic progress, but he said he 
didn?t believe there was a fundamental risk that it would slip back into conflict. [17] 
This raises the important question of the political effects of the economic crisis. There 
is no automatic connection between an economic and a political crisis. There is an 
economic crisis, but it has not yet reached the stage of an organic crisis ? where the 
very legitimacy of the system itself is questioned. Instead, in the north the crisis has 
led to calls to lower corporation taxes. There was a substantial one day strike on 30 
November 2011 over public sector pensions but it seems to have had little political 
effects. Such protests remain limited to 'economic-corporate' interests and are 
unconnected to the question of winning political power and the transformation of the state.

Different Class
While working class people in the six counties are overwhelmingly aware of the material 
inequalities that mark the social order under which they live, this seems to have little 
effect upon the political culture of the province. The ideological formations that are 
prevalent within the six counties would appear to arise not out of class consciousness but 
rather out of national and sectarian identity. Over two hundred thousand people are 
members of a trade union, but class politics are absent and the left is largely 
irrelevant. [18] Many writers in the socialist and labour traditions have pointed to 
episodes of working-class unity in the past - notably the 1907 and 1919 strikes and the 
1932 unemployed workers' movement as the way forward but have failed to analyse the 
relative weight of class issues and national or sectarian divisions.

Class and 'religion? have together shaped the structure and consciousness of the modern 
working class in the north of Ireland A purely class-based focus - or rather one based on 
a narrow economic definition of class - leads to a misinterpretation of such key events. 
Working class unity can be fragile if based solely on economic interests, as in 1907, 1919 
and 1932.
It is unlikely to crystallise into full unity embracing political and ideological 
elements, given the irreconcilable differences between the Unionist and Nationalist 
components. [19] The left and other oppositional forces such as dissenting republicans are 
also all emerging from a period of defeat and the general climate is one of 
depoliticisation and demobilisation.?Ours is the age more of the general shrug than the 
general strike? as Mick Hume put it. [20]

The key question is whether these are structural tendencies or a conjunctural phenomenon. 
From a longue dur?e perspective - an approach which gives priority to long-term 
historical structures over the histoire ?v?nementielle or short term ?eventual history? ? 
it would be premature to conclude that the working class movement in the north is dead, it 
is possibly more accurate to characterise it as being in a process between decomposition 
and recomposition. Key to that recomposition are international factors. Given the 
dependence of the six counties on external forces (political and economic) the internal 
balance of forces is unlikely to change in the north until they begin to change elsewhere 
in the British Isles and in Western Europe. Until then the left will have to prepare for a 
long 'war of position' and get ready to battle for political leadership.

WORDS : LIAM O? ROURKE

???NOTES
[1] Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker (2010). The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media 
and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, Bristol: Intellect, 87ff
[13] Lesley-Anne McKeown, Working-class com- munities ?missed out on Titanic Quarter divi- 
dend?, The Belfast Telegraph, 3 May 2012
[14] Paul Nolan (2012) Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report (Number One ? February 
2012), Belfast : Community Relations Council [15] William J.V. Neill (2006) : Return to 
Titanic and lost in the maze : The search for represen- tation of ?post-conflict? 
Belfast,Space and Polity, 10 :2, 119
[16] Jamie Smyth, Northern Ireland: A peace to protect, The Financial Times, 14 August 
2012 [17] Paul Cullen, Peace process will survive de- spite downturn, says McDowell, The 
Irish Times, 25 February 2012
[18] Colin Coulter (1999). The absence of class politics in Northern Ireland. Capital and 
Class, Issue 69, 77-100
[19] Ronald Munck (1985). Class and Religion in Belfast - A Historical Perspective. 
Journal of Contemporary History, 20:2, 241-259
[20] Mick Hume, British Trade Unions: General Shrug Now!, Spiked Online, June 2011
[2] Brendan Murtagh and Peter Shirlow (2012). Devolution and the politics of development 
in Northern Ireland.Environment and Planning C : Government and Policy, 30 :1, 46-61
[3] John Nagle (2009). Potemkin Village : Neo- liberalism and Peace-building in Northern 
Ire- land ? Ethnopolitics : Formerly Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 8 :2, 187
[4] David Brett. (2004) Geologies of site and settlement, in : Nicholas Allen and Aaron 
Kelly (eds), The Cities of Belfast, Dublin : Four Courts Press, 25-26
[5] Una Bradley, North's economy facing 'serious problems', The Irish Times, 8 August 2012
[6] Clare Weir, Province no longer ?a special case? for cuts, The Belfast Telegraph, 13 
January 2011 [7] Denis O?Hearn (2008). How has Peace Changed the Northern Irish Political 
Economy ? Ethnopolitics : Formerly Global Review of Eth- nopolitics, 7 :1, 101-118
[8] Francess McDonnell, Sectarianism in work- place dampens jubilee cheer, The Irish 
Times, 22 May 2012
[9] HM Treasury (2011), Rebalancing the North- ern Ireland Economy, London : HM Treasury, 
3 [10] Francess McDonnell, Homegrown talent stands high in otherwise difficult year, The 
Irish Times, 27 December 2011
[11] Neill Lochery, There May Be Trouble Ahead in Northern Ireland, The Wall Street 
Journal, 14 September 2011
[12] Diana Rusk, Quality of life in north's de- prived areas worsens, The Irish News, 24 
March 2011