Overcoming Sectarianism Through Class Solidarity

Introduction

Sectarianism is often described as ancient, irrational, inevitable. That story is convenient for those who profit from it. When violence erupts along religious or ethnic lines, pundits invoke centuries of grievance, as if history itself were the culprit. But sectarianism is not a storm that blows in from the past. It is a political technology. It is sharpened, funded and deployed to keep working people from recognising their shared power.

If you are organising in a divided society, you already know this in your bones. You see how economic hardship is refracted through identity. You watch as landlords, employers and political elites whisper that your neighbour is your enemy. The tragedy is not that people feel loyalty to culture or faith. The tragedy is that those loyalties are weaponised to defend exploitation.

The central strategic question is not how to preach unity. It is how to design organising actions that make unity materially obvious. How do you demonstrate, in the realm of rent, wages and public services, that the same structures extract from both sides? How do you make class solidarity more tangible than sectarian identity?

The answer is not rhetorical. It is architectural. You must build campaigns that force economic interconnectedness into view, that turn shared exploitation into shared action, and that rehearse a new sovereignty in the shell of the old order. Sectarianism is sustained by ritual and infrastructure. It must be dismantled by better ritual and stronger infrastructure.

Sectarianism as Political Technology

Before you can defeat sectarian division, you must understand its mechanics. Sectarianism is not simply prejudice. It is a governance strategy.

Divide and Conquer as Class Rule

Across history, ruling classes have fractured potential alliances among the oppressed. Colonial administrations perfected the art of categorising populations into manageable blocs. In industrial societies, employers often segmented labour markets along ethnic or religious lines, fostering competition rather than cooperation.

Northern Ireland offers a stark example. Political structures entrenched communal identity, linking housing, employment and representation to religious affiliation. The result was not spontaneous hatred but structured inequality. When working class Catholics and Protestants found common cause, as in the 1932 Outdoor Relief Strike, the response from elites was swift. Concessions were made, but the system recalibrated to restore division.

This is the logic of divide and conquer. If workers see themselves primarily as members of competing communities, they will negotiate within those boundaries. If they see themselves as a class confronting capital, the entire architecture of power trembles.

Your movement must therefore treat sectarianism as a material force. It is embedded in housing allocation, employment networks, party systems and even schooling. It is reproduced through murals, parades and commemorations. It is taught as memory and enforced as fear.

Identity as Shield for Exploitation

The genius of sectarian politics is that it fuses material insecurity with symbolic threat. A job loss becomes evidence that the other community is advancing. A housing shortage is narrated as demographic competition. Structural austerity is reframed as communal encroachment.

In this environment, calls for unity can sound abstract or naive. People defend their identity because it feels like their last line of security. If you do not address the material root, you will not dislodge the identity shield.

That is why moral appeals alone fail. The global anti Iraq War march of 15 February 2003 mobilised millions across 600 cities. It displayed unity of conscience. Yet it did not stop the invasion. Spectacle without leverage rarely bends power. Similarly, interfaith photo opportunities without economic disruption do little to erode the incentives that sustain sectarian elites.

To weaken sectarianism, you must alter the cost benefit calculation. Unity must deliver concrete gains. Division must carry tangible losses. Only then does identity loosen its grip.

Understanding sectarianism as political technology prepares you for the next step: designing actions that reveal shared exploitation in undeniable ways.

Making Interconnectedness Visible Through Economic Campaigns

If sectarianism hides shared interests, your strategy must expose them. The most powerful way to do this is through joint economic struggle.

Map the Shared Exploiters

Begin with research. Identify employers, landlords and service providers operating across communal lines. Which supermarket chains employ workers from both sides? Which property companies own housing in segregated neighbourhoods? Which outsourcing firms supply hospitals, schools and security services in multiple districts?

Publish this map. Create a clear visual ledger showing how the same corporate entity extracts rent or profit from different communities. When workers see their pay slips stamped with the same logo, the narrative shifts. The enemy is no longer abstract. It has a registered office.

This approach mirrors a lesson from the Diebold electronic voting machine email leak in 2003. Students mirrored internal corporate emails across university servers, revealing systemic flaws. Legal threats collapsed when a member of Congress joined the mirroring. The tactic worked because it made hidden infrastructure visible and impossible to suppress.

In divided societies, transparency is revolutionary. A shared exploitation map undercuts myths of communal self sufficiency. It demonstrates that economic fate is braided together.

Synchronised Disruption

Visibility is not enough. You must translate shared exploitation into shared leverage.

Design synchronised actions that occur in different neighbourhoods at the same time against the same target. Imagine a one day rent strike against a landlord who owns properties in both Protestant and Catholic estates. Tenants withhold payment simultaneously, issuing a joint statement naming the landlord as the common adversary.

Or consider paired workplace stoppages. Warehouse workers in one district halt loading at dawn while cleaners in another district walk out at midday, both employed by the same multinational contractor. The disruption multiplies pressure and signals coordination.

This tactic exploits what might be called speed gaps. Institutions are often slow to coordinate responses across departments or locations. If your actions crest and vanish within a tight timeframe, you can extract concessions before repression consolidates.

Synchronisation also carries symbolic weight. When actions unfold in parallel, they dramatise interconnectedness. The message is not delivered in a speech. It is enacted in real time.

Shared Infrastructure of Solidarity

Campaigns must also build durable bonds, not just episodic cooperation. Consider creating a cross community strike fund financed by small, equal contributions from workers in different areas. Funds are used to support any participant facing retaliation.

Money crossing sectarian lines daily does quiet ideological work. It normalises mutual aid. It establishes practical trust. When a family in one neighbourhood receives financial support from contributors in another, the story of separation weakens.

The Québec casseroles of 2012 offer a lesson. Nightly pot and pan marches diffused block by block, transforming private kitchens into public protest. The sound itself linked households into a collective rhythm. In a similar way, a shared solidarity fund or cooperative buying scheme can become a rhythmic practice that reinforces unity.

Through mapping, synchronised disruption and shared infrastructure, you begin to demonstrate that economic struggles are not parallel but intertwined. Yet visibility and leverage are only half the battle. You must also reshape narrative and ritual.

Rewriting Rituals and Public Memory

Sectarianism survives through story and ceremony. Parades, anniversaries and memorials encode division into public space. To counter this, you must invent rituals that honour shared class history.

Reclaim Buried Moments of Unity

Every divided society contains suppressed episodes of cross communal struggle. Excavating these moments is strategic. The 1932 Outdoor Relief Strike, when unemployed Catholics and Protestants united for better conditions, stands as proof that solidarity is not fantasy.

Commemorate such events through joint marches that traverse symbolic boundaries. Begin in one community and end in another. Carry a single, unifying banner that foregrounds economic demands rather than communal identity.

Ritual is not decorative. It is a ritual engine that transforms participants. When people march together across contested space, they rehearse a different map of the city. The act imprints possibility onto memory.

Occupy Wall Street in 2011 demonstrated how new ritual can reframe discourse. Encampments in 82 countries shifted the narrative toward inequality, even without formal demands. The occupation was a lived metaphor of the 99 percent. It created a temporary commons where strangers deliberated as equals.

Your task is similar but more delicate. You must craft rituals that neither erase identity nor allow it to dominate. Class becomes the shared horizon.

Symbolic Convergence

Visual symbols can accelerate this shift. Develop a simple emblem that blends elements from different traditions into a new icon of labour solidarity. Ensure it is reproducible by hand. Encourage workers to display it during actions, on paydays, or in windows.

Symbols travel faster than policy documents. They operate in the subjective realm, reshaping emotion and perception. ACT UP’s Silence equals Death triangle did not just communicate a message. It generated a mood of defiance and clarity. In divided societies, a unifying labour symbol can serve a similar function, quietly undermining sectarian insignia.

Narrative Discipline

Every campaign communicates an implicit theory of change. Make yours explicit. Repeat the frame that economic exploitation is the common thread linking communities. Publish regular bulletins documenting wins, setbacks and retaliation across districts.

Distribute these physically, not only online. Paper passed hand to hand carries a weight that digital posts lack. It becomes an artefact of shared struggle.

Narrative discipline prevents drift. Without it, sectarian incidents can derail economic campaigns. When tensions flare, return to the material question: who benefits from this division? Name the employers, landlords or political actors who gain from renewed hostility.

By reshaping ritual and story, you erode the cultural scaffolding of sectarianism. But unity cannot remain reactive. It must evolve toward a positive project of shared sovereignty.

From Joint Struggle to Shared Sovereignty

Challenging sectarianism is not only about resisting exploitation. It is about constructing an alternative basis for authority.

Workers Councils as Parallel Power

Consider forming cross community workers councils with equal representation. These councils need not wait for formal recognition. They can begin by coordinating campaigns, resolving disputes and drafting policy proposals.

Draft an alternative municipal budget prioritising housing, wages and public services. Publish it as a concrete demonstration of how resources could be allocated differently. Governing together in imagination prepares governing in reality.

History shows that revolutions often incubate shadow institutions before formal rupture. The Paris Commune of 1871, though brief, emerged from networks of workers and neighbourhood committees that had already been experimenting with new forms of governance. Every protest should hide a shadow government waiting to emerge.

Measure Sovereignty, Not Just Mobilisation

Movements often count success by turnout. How many marched? How many signed? In divided societies, headcounts can reinforce communal competition.

Instead, measure sovereignty gained. Did tenants secure collective bargaining rights? Did workers win control over scheduling? Did communities establish cooperative enterprises independent of sectarian patronage networks?

Mass size alone no longer compels power. The Women’s March in the United States in 2017 mobilised around 1.5 percent of the population in a single day. The scale was historic. Yet without structural leverage and enduring institutions, policy impact remained limited.

Sovereignty metrics shift focus from spectacle to control. Each small gain in self rule chips away at the structures that sustain sectarian elites.

Innovate or Evaporate

Finally, remember that tactics decay. Once authorities recognise your pattern, they adapt. If rent strikes become predictable, legal countermeasures will follow. If joint marches become routine, media interest will wane.

Cycle your campaigns in deliberate waves. Crest, secure gains, then pivot. Protect the psychological health of participants through decompression rituals after intense periods. Burnout feeds cynicism, and cynicism is fertile ground for sectarian relapse.

Originality is not aesthetic vanity. It is strategic necessity. The more predictable your protest, the easier it is to crush.

From mapping shared exploitation to building councils of shared governance, you move from reactive unity to proactive transformation. The final question is how to translate these principles into daily organising practice.

Putting Theory Into Practice

To operationalise this strategy, focus on concrete steps that weave economic struggle across divisions.

• Conduct a Cross Community Power Audit
  Map major employers, landlords and contractors operating in multiple districts. Publish a simple visual report showing shared ownership and profit flows.

• Launch a Joint Economic Campaign
  Select one target with cross community reach. Plan synchronised actions such as a one day rent strike or coordinated workplace stoppage. Issue all communications as a unified coalition.

• Create a Shared Solidarity Fund
  Establish a transparent fund with equal representation in its management. Use it to support any participant facing retaliation, reinforcing material interdependence.

• Institutionalise Rotating Assemblies
  Hold regular mass meetings alternating between different neighbourhood venues. Provide childcare and food to lower barriers to participation.

• Develop a Unifying Symbol and Bulletin
  Circulate a simple emblem and a weekly printed update documenting shared wins and challenges. Make narrative consistency a discipline.

Each of these steps transforms abstract unity into lived experience. They convert rhetoric into routine.

Conclusion

Sectarianism endures because it is useful to those in power. It fragments potential majorities into manageable minorities. It turns economic injustice into cultural rivalry. If you confront it only at the level of identity, you will fight on terrain chosen by your opponents.

The alternative is to design campaigns that make economic interconnectedness undeniable. Map shared exploiters. Coordinate disruption across boundaries. Build material infrastructure of solidarity. Rewrite rituals to honour moments of unity. And most crucially, construct parallel institutions that prefigure shared sovereignty.

When workers experience tangible victories won together, the story of inevitable division begins to crack. Class solidarity ceases to be a slogan. It becomes a memory, then a habit, then an institution.

The ruling class depends on your fear of each other. What would happen if your next campaign made cooperation feel safer, more rewarding and more powerful than suspicion? Which shared struggle will you choose to transform from a local grievance into the seed of a new, united future?