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Autumn 1990
Monetarist Minford

Professor Patrick Minford is a senior economic advisor to the English Prime Minister. His comments ought to be taken very seriously as what he says today could quite possibly become Mrs Thatcher's policy tomorrow. He has some disturbing ideas about Ulster.

Professor Minford told a meeting of the British Institute of Management in Belfast that, "Northern Ireland has been mollycoddled too long," Enough says Minford, "Let market forces prevail." The Poll Tax should be introduced as it. is, "a very good discipline to keep down local authority spending," Housing Executive rents are "too low," encouraging people to stay here in Ulster rather than emigrating to places where they can find work. He says that rents, "should be more economic; that. would encourage people to move. "While rents are cheap, people will stay put," The professor, seemingly unaware that the Executive do so already, called upon it to sell its houses to its tenants. As he put it, "It is important that the unemployed are mobile, going where the .jobs are, not waiting for jobs to cone to them, Public sector housing discourages people from being mobile. It is much easier to leave when you simply sell your home."

This is capitalism with the mask off and it is not a pretty sight. Patrick Minford doesn't. give a damn about Ulster and the intense suffering here over the past twenty-one years, No! According to the good professor our folk are all 'mollycoddled', Capitalism does not. believe in nationhood, patriotism, love, or sense of community. People are just individual units of production and consumption to be moved about the globe like pawns on a chessboard at the bosses' whim. So what it you love your country, your street, your town? So what if you don't want to part from friends and relations? Tough! Minford wants to make it impossible for you to stay, You'll lave to leave them all behind and get.on your bike as a rootless wage slave, competing with millions more like you,

Ulster, in capitalist Britain will always be a backwater in danger of being laid waste. The only solution is to create a new, caring community benefit Ulster state based on the Third Way.

A THIRD WAY FOR ULSTER