A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #182: Towards little Brittany (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Two years after the elections, won by Sinn Fein, the pro-independence 
and republican party, Ulster is about to have a government which should 
be presided over by Michelle O'Neill, vice-president of Sinn Fein in 
Northern Ireland, for the first time in history of the region. Next to 
her, on every occasion, Mary Lou McDonald, President of Sinn Fein of the 
Irish Republic and winner of the elections held in 2022 in her country. 
---- The crisis occurred in the aftermath of the 2022 elections when the 
unionists of the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), a right-wing party, 
decided to leave Parliament (Stormont) and the Belfast Executive to 
protest against the trade agreements signed by Great Britain with the 
European Union after Brexit.
The participation of the DUP in the formation of the government in 
Northern Ireland is required by the Good Friday Agreement, which put an 
end to thirty years of conflict between Catholics and Protestants in 
1998. The compromise between republican nationalists and unionists was 
reached with the "sharing of power": The Agreement establishes that the 
Ulster government must see the presence of both sides: therefore the 
winning party in the elections would go to the presidency and the 
minority one the vice presidency, with substantially equal powers.
The political paralysis has produced the inaction of Parliament and the 
executive, so many dossiers that concern daily life, such as education 
and health, have remained unanswered, creating serious inefficiencies in 
the province. The consequence has been that tens of thousands of 
Northern Irish public employees are on strike to demand wage increases, 
as has happened throughout the United Kingdom.
The details of the agreement reached between unionists and London have 
not yet been disclosed, but it is hypothesized that they contain 
clarifications and reassurances on the post-Brexit trade rules that 
worry DUP representatives. The very fascist English Prime Minister Rishi 
Sunak worked to overcome the crisis. concerned that the continuation of 
the crisis would accelerate the exit of Northern Ireland from the United 
Kingdom and the reunification of Ulster with the Irish Republic.
The British government was under stress from growing discontent, due to 
the fact that a loan of 3.3 billion pounds (3.84 billion euros), 
intended to satisfy requests for increase in wages in the public sector, 
was not paid into the The absence of a Northern Irish institutional 
interlocutor, due to the lack of a
government. This dispute is part of the context of a social crisis that 
is engulfing the country which is shaken by an unprecedented wave of 
strikes, which began at the end of 2022 and continued throughout 2023. 
These strikes involved hundreds of thousands of people belonging to 
different working categories, such as teachers and public transport 
drivers, and despite the specificities linked to each sector they have 
all concerned the cuts to public services in recent years and the 
failure to adjust salaries to the cost of living. The strikes in the 
healthcare sector were particularly harsh. Since March 2023, junior 
doctors have gone on strike for 28 days, for a maximum of four days in a 
row each time. The reasons are the failure to adjust the salaries of 
medical specialists to the cost of living, the cuts in public health 
spending by the last four Conservative governments and the increase in 
inflation, whereby the real value of their salaries has fallen by 26%. 
between 2008 and 2022. However, the reasons for the strike also mention 
the increasingly long shifts and the increase in episodes of burnout 
among staff, the syndrome of psychophysical and emotional exhaustion in 
the workplace. The result is the postponement of 1,200,000 operations.

Reunification and the need for a referendum

The political situation in Northern Ireland is particularly delicate due 
to the fact that in recent years the Catholic component has grown from a 
demographic point of view compared to the unionist one. In this sense, 
the electoral result certifies when it is happening and signals a growth 
in consensus towards the unification of the country. It is quite clear 
that Brexit has contributed to changing the orientation of Ulster 
citizens since the difficulties relating to the double customs regime 
for goods coming from the continent destined for Northern Ireland and 
the rest of the territory of the United Kingdom which the situation 
produced put the Northern Irish economy in difficulty, proving to be a 
damage both for the unionists and the Catholics.

There is a way to achieve the separation of Ulster from Great Britain 
and it is that of a referendum which should involve the inhabitants of 
Northern Ireland, which is now possible when the two political entities 
of the island are both governed by Sinn Fein. The leaders of the two 
countries are part of the same party which decides its political lines 
in Dublin and not in Belfast.
In light of what is happening, we are confident that we will soon 
finally see the conclusion of a process of national unity and 
independence, the Irish one, which has involved Europe for two 
centuries. The transformation of Great Britain into Little Britain, even 
smaller if we look at Scotland's independence aspirations, would finally 
remove from the European political landscape the weight and influence of 
a nation that has always carried out a divisive work between the states 
of the continent, identifying in its political unity a threat to its 
independence and its hegemonic and imperial objectives.

G.L.

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/02/17/verso-la-piccola-bretagna/
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