Contrary to all conventional expectations, the DUP has walked away from an agreement to set up a new Northern Executive. But these were based on a misunderstanding of what the DUP is.
The DUP is a deeply right wing and conservative party. Its power base has been built on a reaction against the minority nationalist population getting equal rights. In fact, it is opposed to anyone getting equal right to white male Protestants, which, it pretends, are one community.
Ian Paisley Jr, son of the party’s founder Ian Paisley, has previously called homosexuality “immoral, offensive and obnoxious” and said he was “repulsed” by gays and lesbians. The party championed a campaign called “Save Ulster from Sodomy”.
A major section of the party are fundamentalist Christians who regard Catholics as ignorant and superstitious.
Key figures such as Sammy Wilson are climate change deniers. ‘I don’t care about C02 emission to be truthful… I still think climate change is a man-made con’.
These right wing politicians think that their time has now come. They have seen Trump take office in the White House and they have become kingmakers in propping up the Tory government in Westminister.
This change in the wider political context has emboldened the DUP. They direct rule from Westminister, so that they can return to a semblance of outright Unionist rule.
These basic facts are sometimes lost in a Southern media that has joined with the political establishment in targeting Sinn Fein.
They present conflicts in the North as the outcome of ‘two sides who do not see reason’. They would like Sinn Fein to drop its support for an Irish language act and simply get back into government with the DUP.
But the call for legal rights for Irish language speakers did not come from Sinn Fein – it arose from a grassroots movement that mobilised 10,000 people on the streets of Belfast. They are looking for no more than the same language rights that apply in Wales and Scotland.
Sinn Fein was, in fact, very slow to walk away from the Stormont Executive even when it was revealed that Arlene Foster had presided over Renewable Heating Initiative payments to her own supporters.
The reactionary alliance between the DUP and the British Tories is a threat to anyone who wants to see progress in Ireland.
The only way they can be opposed is through the creation of a new mass civil rights movement that mobilises ‘people power’ to win equality.
That movement needs to embrace supporters of an Irish language act, of marriage equality and a new generation who want abortion rights.
It also needs to embrace those sections of the trade union movement who are break from past habits of refusing to name and shame the DUP, lest it be seen as upsetting a sectarian balance.
The reality is that workers, both Catholic and Protestant, have everything to gain from defeating the Tory-DUP alliance.
