INLA prisoners were kept next to the LVF, and used the roof of their building to carry out the assassination. A prison officer was ordered down from the observation post overlooking the INLA and LVF blocks on the morning of the shooting. The Ulster Defence Association appears to have been involved in two of the LVF killings. Their political representatives in the Ulster Democratic Party have agreed to temporarily leave the talks to avoid the embarrassment this involvement in terrorism could cause the government. None of the proposed peace measures will bring long-term stability or overcome the sectarian divisions, the origins of which lie in the profit system and centuries of British rule.
Global capitalism can only give rise to greater divisions between rich and poor.
The wealth which investment has created in the Irish Republic has only benefited a tiny section of the population. On the basis of the agreement proposed by the Labour government, demagogic politicians and paramilitary thugs in northern Ireland will continue to rule over the different sections of the community, competing for whatever advantages they may get from corporate investment in their regions and acting as the political proxies of competing imperialist powers. In the near future, moreover, the Celtic Tiger will follow the path of the other Tiger economies. The drying up of US and other foreign investments will inevitably provoke an attempt by the various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois cliques to renew sectarian conflicts in order to divide and disorientate the working class. The WSWS invites your comments.