But the bosses' trick worked and economic unity crumbled, to be replaced by a vicious pogrom and the expulsion of Catholics and left-wing Protestants from the shipyards in 1919 and sectarian rioting in 1933. For this reason, the idea we can wish the division of the working class in the north away by simply talking about wages and living conditions is a fantasy. More recently there has been unity in support of the nurses' pay claim, against health service cuts and against sectarian intimidation in Housing Executive and Dept. of Social Security offices. All of these instances are heartening. Unfortunately little permanent unity has been built upon these successes because of a failure to confront 'communal politics'.
Protestant workers have to reject loyalism and unionism as ruling class ideologies.
They have to see their allies as being workers who happen to be Catholic, north and south, and their enemies as the loyalist bosses and the British state. No to the bosses Orange or Green Catholic workers have a similar break to make. Many workers in the South have spent a good part of the last decade fighting the power of the Catholic church, from its influence on the legal system to its covering up of child abusing priests and enslavement of unmarried mothers in the Magdalen laundries. Apart from that, the recent Dunnes Stores strike demonstrates that the gobshite Southern bosses are every bit as mean as their northern equivalents. It also demonstrates they can be beaten, if workers stand together.