Northern Ireland

The Saville report into the events of Bloody Sunday has been widely praised for its findings. The report cost nearly £200 million and took 12 years to complete. David Cameron's apology has led to calls for him to be given the freedom of Derry. Has the world been turned upside down or is there something more cynical going on?

The killing of two soldiers and a policeman in Northern Ireland in early March was only news to the extent that the shootings were ‘successful'.

Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sat down together for the first time at the end of March and agreed to share power. Sinn Fein has given its support to the police service in Northern Ireland while the Democratic Unionist Party looks forward to leading the Assembly in May. The number of violent deaths has declined, city centres are being revamped and nightlife is thriving... What do these developments mean? Why have they happened and how real are they? To answer these questions it is necessary to look back over the years and also to look outside Northern Ireland.

In April 1998, following the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA were insistent: “Let us make it clear that there will be no decommissioning by the IRA”. Yet the process of putting weapons ‘beyond use’ started in October 2001. In July this year, the IRA ordered...

In 1867 in the preface to the first edition of his famous work Capital Karl Marx observed that the economic conditions of England, the first industrialised country, were the model of future capitalist development in other lands. England was then the “locus classicus” of capitalist relations of production. From here ascendant capitalism would come to dominate the world.

Never exactly popular in the British media, the IRA and Sinn Féin have complained of a “sustained campaign” being waged against them. The IRA was blamed for the £26.5m Northern Bank raid. Members of the IRA/SF were accused of killing Robert McCartney, as well as removing evidence in a cover-up and intimidating witnesses...

In the nineteenth century, when capitalism was still developing, creating the basis for a world economy and the possibility of communism, there were instances when revolutionaries such as Marx supported national struggles. For example, the struggle for an independent Poland was backed as a way of creating a check on Russian tsarist reaction. The struggle for German unificationtruggle for German unification and against the domination of Prussian militarism was also supported by marxists. Marx and Engels also supported the movement for Irish independence, seeing it as a way of weakening the power of what was then the dominant capitalist nation, Britain, and its use of the Irish question as a means of controlling its own proletariat.

After investigating four controversial killings in Northern Ireland, retired Canadian judge Peter Cory concluded that agents of the security forces were allowed to set up murders, which the army (especially its Force Research Unit), MI5 and special branch were aware of, encouraged and assisted with. As he made his recommendations for full public inquiries there were press reports that the Ministry of Defence was concerned that "further light would be shed on the undercover operations of the FRU after embarrassing disclosures by an ex-soldier under the pseudonym Martin Ingram" (Guardian, 2/4/04).