Good Friday Agreement still requires unsentimental analysis says Cllr Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig

Independent Republican socialist councillor, Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig, has claimed the Good Friday Agreement, should still be open to scrutiny and in his opinion, still has a lot to deliver.

"Wherever Britain and the United States come together to oversee and deliver a political arrangement, it is best to be cautious rather than uncritical. 

Twenty-five years from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), the nature and ramifications of the deal require unsentimental analysis.

"Yes, the GFA facilitated an end to years of bloody conflict, nevertheless, the outcome has been more satisfactory for British and US imperialism - and their Irish lackeys - than for the working people of Ireland, north or south.

"Indeed, the underlying rational and subsequent outworking of the Belfast Agreement are best understood in the context of imperialism, the old and decaying variety transforming itself into the new and demanding imperialism.

Cllr Mac Giolla Easbuig said that throughout the second half of the 20th century, the UK has been engaged in a managed retreat from what was the British Empire.

"No longer able to physically and militarily subjugate and dominate so much of the globe, London embarked on a different but equally greed-driven strategy.

"In the absence of its military and colonial governance, it sought to determine the make-up and nature of countries that it was formally granting self-government. 

"Invariably this meant Britain ensuring that in spite of having the appearance of being independent, the new regimes would remain firmly within economic, political and military boundaries set by Britain and or the United States. In other words; neo-imperialism.

"Unsure of the long-term prospect of successfully subduing radical Irish republicanism, Britain with the assistance of the Dublin and US governments set about neutralising the challenge to its interests.

"The result was the delivery of the Good Friday Agreement. An agreement that, while undoubtedly ending years of conflict, de-radicalized a majority of the ‘unmanageable Irishry’.

"What once had threatened to replace the states, north and south, with a unitary socialist entity were thereafter committed to managing the status quo.

He added that should partition eventually end, the course is now set for a 32-county version of what he called 'the current Free State'.

"Homelessness, private healthcare, NATO subservient, a tax haven for global capital and everywhere… gross inequality.

"However, it is important to see it for what it is, a greater asset to capitalism and imperialism than to Irish working people," he added.