Help Needed...Soon
Help Needed...Soon
“Working class Prods in the present day North are no better off than the Blacks during apartheid South Africa – powerless and penniless.”
Thought that sentence would grab the attention.
It’s from Dr John’s Coulter’s latest column in The Blanket. OK, there’s a distinct touch of the hyperbole there, but still as Coulter goes onto explain, the political disenfranchisement of the Unionist working-class is now almost entirely complete:
“While republicanism is striding forward into a movement which could have government ministers in two sovereign parliaments – Stormont and the Dail – within a year, working class Protestantism is rapidly running backwards to the politically meaningless existence which Northern working class Catholics found themselves enduring under the Brookeborough regime from 1946 to 1963.”
Their erstwhile defenders, the DUP, have donned the UUPs’ furcoats and are now the ones supping the Gs & Ts down the golf-club (or in the case of the Fundamentalists, drinking their wee cups of black tea with crustless cucumber sandwiches up in their Cherryvalley detacheds) knowing that they can still rely on the lower orders in places like Ballymacarret and Sandy Row to continue giving them their vote, even as their areas fall further into states of dereliction and despair.
There are two ways out for their present doldrums for the Unionist working-class.
The more unlikely is that Sinn Fein start, (from afar at first obviously) to move out of their own sectarian strait-jacket and work for the benefit of all the working-class, not just the ones who’ve traditionally given them their vote. Given that this is more than likely to seriously piss-off a substantial portion of their own support-base without any real guaranteed increase in vote for SF in areas like the lower Shankill, I think it’s highly unlikely that political republicanism will start to live up to the teachings of Wolfe-Tone or Connolly any time soon.
The alternative is that a positive political leadership starts to emerge from within working-class Unionism. Where this is going to come from and how it manages to steer clear of the corrosive influence of the paramilitaries, I’ve got no idea. It needs civil society; the church-ministers, school teachers, small business-men and youth-workers to start identifying and preparing those of the next generation who may have these leadership qualities required to eventually help their communities become politically and economically empowered.
Unfortunately, if by any small chance, such leadership does emerge then I’ve got to agree with Coulter when he says that:
“The main opposition will stem from religious Puritans who will brand such working class Protestants as Godless communist, and from the snobbish Unionist Fur Coat Brigade who will dismiss them as uneducated and uncouth fascists.”
But time is limited:
“Like it or lump it, this is make or break decade for the Northern Protestant working class. You task is simple – organise or go under it:”
The sad thing is, (and this is where republicans have become as complacent as the Fur Coat Brigade) it hasn’t really sunk in with the wider society that if the Protestant working-class does go under, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll do so without a fight, a fight which will reach far beyond the borders of their own areas and have destructive effects throughout the province.
5:46 PM | Permalink | links to this post
“Working class Prods in the present day North are no better off than the Blacks during apartheid South Africa – powerless and penniless.”
Thought that sentence would grab the attention.
It’s from Dr John’s Coulter’s latest column in The Blanket. OK, there’s a distinct touch of the hyperbole there, but still as Coulter goes onto explain, the political disenfranchisement of the Unionist working-class is now almost entirely complete:
“While republicanism is striding forward into a movement which could have government ministers in two sovereign parliaments – Stormont and the Dail – within a year, working class Protestantism is rapidly running backwards to the politically meaningless existence which Northern working class Catholics found themselves enduring under the Brookeborough regime from 1946 to 1963.”
Their erstwhile defenders, the DUP, have donned the UUPs’ furcoats and are now the ones supping the Gs & Ts down the golf-club (or in the case of the Fundamentalists, drinking their wee cups of black tea with crustless cucumber sandwiches up in their Cherryvalley detacheds) knowing that they can still rely on the lower orders in places like Ballymacarret and Sandy Row to continue giving them their vote, even as their areas fall further into states of dereliction and despair.
There are two ways out for their present doldrums for the Unionist working-class.
The more unlikely is that Sinn Fein start, (from afar at first obviously) to move out of their own sectarian strait-jacket and work for the benefit of all the working-class, not just the ones who’ve traditionally given them their vote. Given that this is more than likely to seriously piss-off a substantial portion of their own support-base without any real guaranteed increase in vote for SF in areas like the lower Shankill, I think it’s highly unlikely that political republicanism will start to live up to the teachings of Wolfe-Tone or Connolly any time soon.
The alternative is that a positive political leadership starts to emerge from within working-class Unionism. Where this is going to come from and how it manages to steer clear of the corrosive influence of the paramilitaries, I’ve got no idea. It needs civil society; the church-ministers, school teachers, small business-men and youth-workers to start identifying and preparing those of the next generation who may have these leadership qualities required to eventually help their communities become politically and economically empowered.
Unfortunately, if by any small chance, such leadership does emerge then I’ve got to agree with Coulter when he says that:
“The main opposition will stem from religious Puritans who will brand such working class Protestants as Godless communist, and from the snobbish Unionist Fur Coat Brigade who will dismiss them as uneducated and uncouth fascists.”
But time is limited:
“Like it or lump it, this is make or break decade for the Northern Protestant working class. You task is simple – organise or go under it:”
The sad thing is, (and this is where republicans have become as complacent as the Fur Coat Brigade) it hasn’t really sunk in with the wider society that if the Protestant working-class does go under, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll do so without a fight, a fight which will reach far beyond the borders of their own areas and have destructive effects throughout the province.
5:46 PM | Permalink | links to this post
