"British state remains in complete control"

Not everyone supports the Irish peace process. Liam Mac Uaid spoke to John McAnulty, an activist of thirty years' experience and one of the authors of the new Socialist Democracy book The Real Irish Peace Process.

In the book you argue that Ireland remains a country dominated by imperialism. In what way?

In the North the colonial nature of the state is underlined in the new agreement. The British remain in complete control of the economy and the state forces. The South remains a semi-colony. So how can people who fought for republicanism now see imperialism as a benign and progressive force? The answer is that they have been defeated - defeated so comprehensively that they have internalised the defeat and they now parrot the sayings of their enemies. In the North the republican argument is now remarkably similar to the position of the bourgeois nationalists and the British - that the British are honest brokers and the real difficulty is intercommunal. In the South we have had years of social partnership where the trade union leadership has policed wage restraint. Every major party has taken its turn in government, all with identical pro-capitalist policies. We're looking for a conscious anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist opposition.

The book seeks to give a political focus to those who reject both armed struggle and the new ruling class consensus. Has it found an audience?

One of the most striking things about this process is the extent to which both the republican leadership and their supporters have avoided any debate and the endemic political exhaustion which has accompanied the agreement. The book is selling reasonably well but in the context of the massive political change nowhere nearly well enough to signify the beginnings of a new resistance.

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