Northern Ireland on brink amid megastrikes

(CN) — Northern Ireland is in the midst of its first mass strike in more than 50 years with 20% of the territory’s workforce — more than 170,000 people — having walked out of their workplaces, leading to the closure of schools, public transport, and even some health care services.

Public sector workers are taking action against a failure to deliver on promised pay increases, in the wider context of a crippling government stalemate that has paralyzed the divided region of the U.K.

“This is a campaign we will continue and this is a campaign we will win” said Gerry Murphy of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions at a rally outside Belfast City Hall. Murphy slammed the British government for their failure to restore Northern Ireland’s governance, arguing that people were abandoning the public sector for better paid jobs, leaving services unable to cope with demand.

The inability of politicians to form an executive in Northern Ireland has left civil servants in charge of administering the territory, but without any powers to make political decisions on financial or budgetary issues. Along with a failure to deliver on pay deals, public services are being left on the brink of collapse amid real-terms funding cuts triggered by inflationary pressure.

The government stalemate is the result of the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, refusing to participate in Northern Ireland’s unique power sharing institutions, resulting in their collapse two years ago. Party leaders argue the outcome of Brexit negotiations creates economic barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. that are unacceptable to the British unionist community, and has been boycotting the territory's governance ever since.

The British government have offered an additional 3.3 billion pounds ($4.18 billion) in funding to the beleaguered region — including 600 million pounds ($760 million) to raise public sector pay – on the condition that governance is restored. However, this appears to have backfired, with the DUP decrying the offer as “blackmail.” Trade unions have also demanded the immediate release of the money to increase worker’s pay, regardless of the executive’s reformation.

Brexit has created a quagmire for Northern Ireland, given that it has established a border on the island of Ireland has between the EU member state Republic of Ireland and the non-EU United Kingdom. The Belfast peace agreement which ended war in Northern Ireland states that there must be no border infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic — a key demand of Irish nationalists. But EU rules require customs checks on any such border between EU and non-EU states.

To resolve this tension, the U.K. and EU agreed to perform customs checks in the Irish Sea instead of on land. In February 2023 this arrangement was further refined to permit certain goods to travel across the Irish Sea without undergoing any customs checks.

The new deal was designed to get the DUP onboard and restore governance but, after much deliberation, the unionist party decided to continue its boycott, which remains in place to this day.

However, opponents argue the DUP’s boycott is unrelated to Brexit, and is fundamentally a political stunt designed to maintain the DUP’s grassroots support, anxious that any compromise on its maximalist position will be seen as a capitulation to Irish nationalists. Unionists are particularly concerned that a softening of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom could make Irish reunification more likely.

Critics also accuse the DUP of acting in an anti-democratic manner by blocking any government formation that is led by nationalists. The results of the 2022 Assembly elections saw pro-Irish unification party Sinn Féin top the polls — a historic result as the first time an Irish nationalist party has had the most representatives in Northern Ireland’s 103 years of existence.

The boycott has prevented Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, Michelle O’Neill, from taking her position as the first nationalist leader of Northern Ireland. O’Neill has dismissed the DUP’s complaint about Brexit, stating that the “only remaining explanation” for the boycott “is the refusal to accept a nationalist first minister.”

"There is a dangerous attempt under way to discard the democratic outcome of the assembly election, and this threatens our democratic governance, public administration, reconciliation, and the fabric of this society," she said Friday.

Leader of cross-community party Alliance concurred with O’Neill, stating: "The only conceivable reason any party would want to retain the power to collapse these institutions is if they intend to use it or the threat of it to subvert normal democratic process."

The DUP are concerned about losing support to the even more hardline Traditional Unionist Voice party, which refuses to work with Sinn Féin under any circumstances.

Northern Ireland’s unique power-sharing governance structures were painstakingly negotiated in the 1990s, with additional changes made in 2006. They require the territory’s governance to be comprised of the largest political parties from both the nationalist and unionist communities, in order to ensure cross-community support.

This form of governance has enabled previously unthinkable cross-community cooperation, and helped to establish relative normality in the once war-stricken society. However, they have also been volatile institutions, with disagreements leading to the collapse of governance on several occasions, and frequent intervention required from the British government.

While the U.K. remains committed to restoring the peacetime institutions once again, politicians on the ground in Northern Ireland are less optimistic.

Speaking in an emergency session of the Northern Ireland Assembly on Friday, Ulster Unionist Party deputy leader Robbie Butler said he "may not get a chance to speak in this chamber again". This view was shared by politicians across the political spectrum, with Sinn Féin's O’Neill describing Northern Ireland’s democratic institutions as being in “freefall” and starkly agreeing that “this sitting may well be the final one of this assembly.”

With the British government currently ruling out a return to direct rule from London over Northern Ireland, it is not clear what happens next. Whilst the current lack of governance seems unsustainable, the DUP has little appetite to renegotiate the present power sharing institutions.

With Sinn Féin becoming the largest party in Northern Ireland, and comfortably leading the polls in the Irish Republic, the question of Irish reunification looms large in the background of these discussions. But for the workers on strike in Northern Ireland, the divisive age-old question of their statehood comes second to the desire to simply live in a functional and predictable polity.

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