AT long last, it seems that the wretched grip in which the Tories have held British society is about to be undone. For 18 years they have ruled. And for 18 years the poor, the underprivileged and the unemployed in Britain have suffered as a direct consequence. During that period, the Tory party have waged a relentless campaign against the underclass. In a time of plenty, poverty has intensified, and with it the sense of hopelessness and despair which takes root among the disadvantaged on the margins of an affluent society.
Under the Tories, the market became God and the cult of selfishness and greed was elevated to the status of a national religion. The high priests of profit wanted to be able to make more, and the Tories facilitated them by cutting taxes. But when you cut taxes you have to cut budgets. Not the defence budget of course that had to be increased to ensure that the cronies of the Tories in the arms manufacturing industries would also make more. But the health budget could be cut. And the education budget. And the social welfare budget.
There was a time when Britain set the standards for the rest of Europe for the rest of the world in these areas. But no more. Instead, an outsider looking at Britain now would observe a crumbling society, verging on the brink of total collapse. Under the Tories the rich have indisputably got richer but British society has become increasingly inward-looking, divided and confused. There has been little sign of confidence. There has been scant evidence of renewal. Public life has become increasingly contaminated with cynicism and corruption. So too has the press. The vision of an equitable, cohesive society has all but been abandoned and, in general, people have been reduced to the basest of motivations: pure, naked self-interest.
On Thursday May 1st, however, it is almost certain that the tide will turn. A Tory rout seems inevitable. That much is good. But significant questions remain as to how radical the new Prime Minister Tony Blair and his colleagues in new Labour intend to be. Cynics argue that Blair is all style and no substance. Supporters insist that he will be far more innovative in office than he has been able to reveal in the carefully orchestrated run-up to the election. The truth may lie somewhere in between but at the very least he should be given an opportunity to prove his mettle.
The election may be a crucial one for Northern Ireland. In particular, it will be interesting to see if there is any shift among first-time voters away from hardline traditional allegiances. If there is, then the possibility of people reaching across the sectarian divide to settle their old historical differences, in the long run, becomes slightly more realistic. The problem is that there are not many attractive alternatives on offer but there are some, and they should be supported.
It is one of the problems of the British first-past-the-post system that a vote for a minority candidate is effectively a dead vote. In the context of the North, this tends to push people away from the alternatives and towards candidates from the major parties who may end up competing for the seat. In this way, the system has frustrated political initiative and stifled the possibility of change in the North, as well as in Britain generally but with far more immediately dangerous consequences, on this island.
It is quite clear that reform of this patently unjust system should be at the top of the new British government s list of priorities. Labour must not be seduced by the prospect of spending 18 years in power now, themselves. Some form of proportional representation is evidently desirable, so that supporters of minority parties like the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalist Party, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fiin, the Alliance Party, the Progressive Unionist Party and the Women s Coalition to name just some of those against whom the system conspires can see their political choices reflected in parliamentary representation.
Another priority for the new administration must be to get some meaningful form of dialogue going in the North. In the short term, the admission of Sinn Fiin to talks would be a small price to pay for a renewed IRA ceasefire. The absence of war is a desirable end in itself, which should become an immediate objective for everyone involved in the political process in the North.
Only a fool would suggest that making substantive progress beyond that point will be easy but it will at least be possible to ask the same fundamental question of everyone. What compromises are you willing to make in order to achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict which has blighted everyone in Britain and Ireland s lives to some degree in the past, and which has caused immeasurable grief and suffering for tens of thousands of people on your own home turf?
There are ways in which the conflicting aspirations and identities of people on both sides of the cultural and political divide in Northern Ireland can be recognised and accommodated. It will require imagination, courage and generosity to discover what those ways are and the British government may need to act as persuaders to get the antagonists on either side to the point where they recognise this. But the important thing is to ensure that the process gets underway and for that the onus will almost certainly fall on Tony Blair and on Mo Mowlam.
Britain as a whole is suffering from a surfeit of woes, but it is absolutely critical even in that context, that the Northern Ireland issue must be treated as the highest priority.
Anything less and we ll be baying for Tony Blair s (metaphorical) blood in no time.

Niall Stokes
Editor