JOHN NEWSINGER .sx Ulster and the downfall of the Labour government 1974-79 .sx The Ulster conflict has presented an intractable problem for Labour governments since the late 1960s , and one that serves to highlight the inadequacy of reformism as a political strategy .sx Faced with a Protestant sectarian state that was confronted by an insurgency supported by a large section of the Catholic working-class population , Labour governments have consistently failed to accomplish any fundamental reform .sx Instead , they have , with grim inevitability , ended up endorsing the state and being a party to the repression of the Catholic minority .sx This failure is rooted in the Labour Party's reformism , in its focus on the capitalist state as the means whereby change can be accomplished - a focus that has always involved Labour politicians taking on the job , when in office , of defending that state against its enemies , both internal and external .sx In Ulster , this focus on the capitalist state has involved the quite utopian expectation that a state whose very foundation was a sectarian act can somehow be reformed and can become something different .sx The limitations of Labour reformism are dramatically exposed by the particularly uncompromising reality of Ulster where , with varying degrees of willingness and enthusiasm , Labour governments and Labour ministers have become the agents of sectarian rule and the architects of repression .sx This article examines the experience of the last Labour government with regard to Ulster and the important part that its performance in this arena played in its downfall .sx In opposition .sx During the period of the Heath government , the Labour opposition pursued a policy of bipartisanship that involved only minor criticism of Tory repression in the province .sx Merlyn Rees , opposition spokesman on Northern Ireland , routinely called for control of security policy to be transferred to Westminster .sx At the time , responsibility for security policy was shared with the Faulkner government at Stormont , and , according to Rees , all would be well if only British politicians , Tory or Labour - it did not really matter which - were put in sole charge .sx There was nothing wrong with the repressive apparatus as such , only with the Unionist politicians and officials who were mishandling it .sx Rees had no serious objection to the British army's performance as an army of occupation in Catholic working-class areas , engaged in routine day-to-day confrontation with the local people , in the 'low level' task of intimidating opposition and suppressing resistance .sx He had every confidence in the army's impartiality and professionalism :sx 'our boys' were beyond reproach and above criticism .sx Predictably , the Labour opposition welcomed the prorogation of the Stormont parliament and gave its full support to the introduction of direct rule in March 1972 .sx When William Whitelaw was appointed secretary of state at the newly established Northern Ireland Office all was well and the policy of bipartisanship could flower as never before .sx Rees , in his Ulster memoir , pays fulsome tribute to Whitelaw's efforts at establishing power-sharing between Protestant and Catholic politicians :sx I congratulated Willie in the House of Commons for his role in bringing about a power-sharing administration .sx He had shown , I said , an understanding of the Irish situation and a realistic flexibility in all the negotiations he undertook .sx This was not parliamentary flannel .sx He is a man of complete integrity .sx .. It was easy to work with Willie .sx .sx As far as Rees was concerned , " policy in Northern Ireland was too important for normal inter-party wrangles " .sx And , of course , Whitelaw reciprocated these sentiments , describing the Labour politician as " a particular friend of mine then and now " .sx After Operation Motorman and the ending of the no-go areas at the end of July 1972 , Whitelaw adopted a policy of limited concessions to the Catholic middle class in an attempt to build up the Social Democratic and Labour Party ( SDLP ) as the dominant force in the Catholic community , so as to marginalise the Provisional IRA .sx This policy had the unfortunate side-effect of further alienating Protestant opinion , already outraged by the ending of Stormont , thereby continuing the break-up of the Official Unionist Party which had controlled Ulster for so many years .sx This locates the central contradiction confronting British politicians in their efforts to defend the Ulster state :sx they try to undermine support for the Provisionals by concessions to the Catholic middle class , only to find that this alienates the Protestants who are the very bedrock on which the Ulster state was founded and without whose support it is not viable .sx Once Protestant hostility reaches a certain level , then the advantages gained through a policy of concessions become outweighed by the disadvantages , and the policy collapses .sx Such a cycle is built into any reformist policy that has as its fundamental premise the defence of the Ulster state .sx It is only the Protestant community that supports the continued existence of the Ulster state and attempts to reform it that alienate them are sooner or later doomed .sx So much was made clear by Whitelaw's Northern Ireland assembly and power-sharing executive initiatives .sx Whitelaw established the Northern Ireland assembly in the summer of 1973 and then proceeded to the more difficult task of establishing a power-sharing executive from among its members .sx Agreement was finally reached at a four-day conference at Sunningdale in Berkshire in December .sx The executive , headed by the leader of the Official Unionists , Brian Faulkner , took office on 1 January 1974 .sx From the very beginning , the executive met with considerable Protestant hostility .sx Even in the assembly itself , Faulkner could only command the support of a minority of the Unionist members , with a significant proportion of his own party aligning with Paisley's Democratic Unionists and Craig's Vanguard Unionists .sx He was reliant for his majority on the support of the Catholic SDLP and the Alliance Party .sx Within a matter of days , the Ulster Unionist Council met to reject the Sunningdale Agreement , whereupon Faulkner resigned as leader of the Official Unionists and formed his own break-away pro-Sunningdale Unionist Party of Northern Ireland .sx He still had his assembly majority , however , which might have allowed him to hold out until fresh assembly elections were held .sx He was not to have even this long .sx At the end of February 1974 , Edward Heath , embroiled in his second miners' strike , called a general election and Faulkner found himself somewhat prematurely compelled to test Protestant support for Sunningdale at the polls .sx He faced the combined and coordinated opposition of all three major Unionist parties , now joined together in the United Ulster Unionist Council ( UUUC) .sx In the general election , the UUUC candidates received 366,703 votes ( 51 per cent ) capturing eleven of the province's twelve Westminster seats .sx The pro-Sunningdale Unionists polled only 94,301 votes ( 13.1 per cent) .sx This was a massive blow to Faulkner , even though he still had his assembly majority and was able , as late as 14 May , comfortably to defeat an anti-Sunningdale resolution by forty-four votes to twenty-eight .sx His Unionist enemies were now confident that they had the necessary support to wreck the executive and their hand was strengthened by the emergence of a new force among the plethora of Protestant political and paramilitary initials , the Ulster Workers' Council ( UWC) .sx They confronted a new Labour government at Westminster , headed by Harold Wilson , and a new secretary of state at Stormont , Merlyn Rees .sx The UWC strike .sx Rees took office pledging full support for Sunningdale and the power-sharing executive , but , in reality , the general election result in Ulster had convinced him that the experiment was doomed .sx Sunningdale was , he admits , " the keystone of our policy in Northern Ireland , but keystone or not .sx .. I soon found that there was little support for Sunningdale in the majority community " .sx What Rees was not prepared to countenance was the unconstitutional manner of its overthrow .sx The UWC called for strike action against the executive on 14 May , the day Faulkner won the Sunningdale vote in the assembly .sx The following day , there were limited strikes in the power stations , cutting output to 60 per cent of normal , and the Protestant paramilitaries began attempting to enforce a stay-at-home , blocking streets , hijacking vehicles and erecting barricades .sx According to the army , there were thirty-seven roadblocks in Belfast and the suburbs by the next day .sx Could the strike have been broken ?sx An unusual question for a marxist sic !sx to ask perhaps , but the UWC strike is very much an instance where the capitalist state adopted the celebrated pose of 'the dog that did not bark in the night' .sx The question requires asking precisely because no attempt was made to defeat it .sx Quite incredibly , neither the RUC nor the army took any steps to put a stop to the intimidatory activities of the Protestant paramilitaries .sx Rees seems to have decided not to confront the UWC and its allies , but to let the strike take its course in the hope that it would run into the ground .sx The security forces were ordered , although not in writing it seems , not to interfere with the barricades , but effectively to surrender the streets to the paramilitaries .sx The failure to intervene immediately and decisively to dismantle the barricades and clear the streets can be seen in retrospect to have been fatal for the Executive .sx As Paddy Devlin , then minister of health and social services , subsequently complained , failure to take action " created the impression in the minds of the loyalists that the police , the military and Merlyn Rees acquiesced in their illegal actions " .sx It was this , he argues , that " caused thousands of law-abiding people who had earlier given support to the Executive to switch loyalties " .sx The UWC was , at the start of the strike , far from confident that it could carry through a full-scale confrontation successfully , and decisive action might well have resulted in the strike assuming a 'token' character .sx The failure of the security forces to intervene gave the UWC increased confidence and indicated that the British intended to let the executive sink or swim unaided .sx On Monday , 20 May , the strike dramatically gathered momentum with nearly 200 barricades being erected unhindered in the Belfast area alone , effectively cutting the city off from the rest of the province .sx Similar action by the republicans would , of course , have brought an immediate forceful response .sx Robert Fisk provides a superb first-hand account of the situation :sx From ten miles away it was possible to see long columns of brown and jet-black smoke twisting wearily into the dawn sky over Belfast as UDA men set fire to stolen lorries , cars and even bicycles on makeshift barricades .sx .. Masked UDA men told the driver of a grain lorry in Great Victoria Street to leave his cab , then they swung the vehicle and its trailer across the road - normally one of the busiest in Belfast - between a motor showroom and the regional office of the AA .sx Beside York Road railway station in north Belfast , where trains normally left for Coleraine , Derry and the towns of western Ulster , Protestants set fire to overturned cars and effectively cut off the Shore Road and part of the docks .sx A gang of youths stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the fires lest anyone should be brave enough to try and make his way past the side of the station .sx Everyone of these incidents was watched , sometimes from only a few yards away , by policemen and soldiers .sx But the people of Belfast found that they did little or nothing to stop the demonstrations of Protestant lawlessness .sx Perhaps worse ( from the government's point of view ) they actually went through the ghostly routine of their ordinary security duties as if nothing untoward was happening or as if they were silently acquiescing with the UWC .sx The army in their dark green landrovers drove slowly through the streets , discreetly avoiding the human barricades and gingerly squeezing through the gaps in the road-blocks .sx Soldiers on foot patrol walked the pavements of east Belfast and Sandy Row but made no attempt to interfere with the uniformed UDA men .sx Sometimes they even stopped and talked to youths on the barricades and on at least two occasions , once in Albion Street in Sandy Row and again in the east of the city near Dee Street , they were seen offering round cigarettes .sx When confrontation seemed almost inevitable , it was the army who withdrew .sx .sx