The crisis of capitalism since 2008 has sharpened the class struggle across the globe, nowhere more so than in Greece. Ultán Gillen looks at the role of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in the current struggle.

“We feel bold and beautiful”. So said Greek Communist MP Liana Kanelli when Jon Snow of Channel 4 News asked her how the Greek people felt when the governments of other countries accused them of threatening the world economy.

She went on to ask why it was that these governments were so frightened by the prospect of democratic elections in Greece. The interview was itself recognition of the KKE’s leading role in resisting austerity policies designed to make workers pay for the crisis of capi- talism. While other parties have surrendered to the demands of finance capital, the KKE has consistently defended the democratic rights of the Greek people and the interests of the working class.

The KKE has been able to play this leading role because of its deep roots within the Greek working class. It is the third largest party in parliament, is represented in the European Parliament, its tens of thousands of party members are enormously active in trade unions and local communities. The party’s ability to mobilise massive numbers of working people has been demonstrated dozens of times in mass strikes over recent years. The basis of its leading role in articulating the democratic and socialist alternative is its history, class-conscious membership and coherent ideology.

The KKE was founded in November 1918 to effect the transition from capitalism to socialism in Greece. Its founding members, like today’s activists, saw themselves as the heirs to Greece’s democratic and radical tradition. Illegal for much of the period between 1918 and 1974, fascist oppression did not stop the KKE playing a central role in the resistance to Nazi occupation.

In the aftermath of the occupation, the KKE military force, the Democratic Army of Greece (which was made up of fighters from both sexes), fought an ultimately unsuccessful civil war against a British and American backed anti-communist government. The KKE continued its work in the decades after the civil war, opposing Greek involvement in NATO and providing leadership in the struggle for democracy against the US-backed junta of the colonels from 1967 to 1974.

Since 1974, the party has pushed for a socialist Greece independent of NATO, and has been a strong critic of the opportunities for increased exploitation of workers inherent in the European project.

Internationalism has remained at the core of its activities, with the KKE promoting dialogue over conflict as a way of resolving the long standing antagonism between Greece and Turkey.

The KKE has also overcome several attempts to dilute the party’s ideology and, despite a number of splits, has maintained its position as a dynamic force in Greek politics. An instructive comparison might be drawn with the Italian Communist Party, which also enjoyed mass support after World War II, but later watered down its ideology and ultimately disbanded in the early 1990s. Italy, unlike Greece, now lacks a well-organised and militant party of the working class.

“This is Greece, not Ireland. We, the workers, will resist!”

The above slogan, chanted during marches in Greece last year, reflects both the determination and the political understanding of the KKE and its associated trade union activists of PAME (the All-Workers Militant Front). The KKE has consistently pointed out that the so-called bailouts and rescue packages are not in the people’s interest; their real purpose is to protect the interests represented by the troika – the IMF, European Central Bank and EU – and the domestic bourgeois parties.

Since the onset of the current crisis the KKE has consistently pointed out that the real division in Greek political life is now between those prepared to implement the troika’s policies and those who will resist. The creation of a government of national unity in November that included such different forces as social democrats and fascists has proven it correct.

Now the leading opposition inside, as well as outside, parliament, the KKE is proposing an alternative – a social alliance. In the words of KKE General Secretary, Aleka Papariga:

“The front we need today must not be simply an ‘anti’ front. It must say where the people should go. And this determines its “anti” character. We are talking about a social popular front for the over-throw of the power of the monopolies, for their socialization, for the workers’ and people’s control, for the disengagement of Greece from the EU and NATO, and of course all these entail the cancellation of the debt.”

In other words, the KKE is not simply offering resistance to the anti-working class cuts. It is offering an alternative vision of a government based not on capital but on the working class, through a programme of democratisation, nationalisation, and liberation from the institutions of finance capitalism and aggressive imperialism.

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.9

Comrades and friends,

We are gathered here today to commemorate the Easter Rising of 1916 and the vision of a democratic, independent and progressive Republic, espoused by the leaders of the Rising and set out in the Proclamation, declaring “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” and “equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens”.

It is clear that Ireland today, North and South, is a long way from realising the democratic and egalitarian and intent of the leaders of 1916. The Easter Proclamation is clear in content and sentiment. It declared for an Irish Republic, where the social, political and economic destiny of its people lay in the hands of the people free from outside interference and the future was to be built in the interests of all its citizens, guaranteeing not only political but social and economic freedom as well.

How far removed is that vision of Ireland from what we experience today?

The Fine Gael/Labour Coalition have surrendered our economic destiny to the diktats of the EU/IMF/ECB troika, imposing a vicious austerity programme which forces the working class to pay for the failures of capitalism. The bank bailouts which rescued greedy speculators and their political cronies are to be paid for by imposing job losses, cuts in wages, the privatisation of our valuable and profitable state companies, the giving away of our natural resources, by slashing the education and health services, and penalising even further those on social welfare. Thousands of our young people are once again driven to emigrate, forcibly scattered across the globe because this state cannot afford them the most basic of human rights, the right to a job, the right to a home.

Successive Governments, particularly but not exclusively those led by Fianna Fáil have besmirched and betrayed the democratic principles and ideals of the Easter Proclamation. No more so than in the manner in which they have conducted political life and public affairs. The recently published Mahon Tribunal Report found that fraud and corruption were at the heart of developer, banking and government practices in relation to planning. Many people believed that developers had bribed councillors and public officials in order to get the decisions they wanted. The tribunal found that,

“It is clear that these concerns were well founded…corruption in Irish political life was both endemic and systemic. It affected every level of government from some holders of top Ministerial offices to some local councillors and its existence was widely known and widely tolerated.”

Northern Ireland today, in spite of the welcome ending of violence and the improvements in people’s lives that that has brought, remains a deeply divided, segregated and sectarian society. The Republican ideal of the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter remains a long way off and is still opposed by the same reactionary practices of unionism and nationalism, even if they are described as new unionism and new nationalism.

In short the ideal, the vision of the Republic is still something we in The Workers Party must strive for and struggle to achieve. There may have been many changes and social advances since 1916 but in many ways the same reactionary elements remain in control.

The Easter proclamation was printed in Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday 1916. The influence of James Connolly in its content is clear. Connolly wounded in the rebellion was executed amid growing political pressure for clemency. On May 10th, 11th and 12th the Irish Independent ran editorials strongly urging the execution of the remaining leaders, MacDiarmada and Connolly.

Connolly, a union organiser and a leader of the 1913 lockout, was a hated figure of the-then owner of the Independent and employers’ leader William Martin Murphy. This was the ideological battle of the 1900s.

What has changed?

A few weeks ago Taoiseach Enda Kenny stood at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange with Denis O’Brien on one side and Gavin O’Reilly on the other, both co-owners of today’s Irish Independent—and both tax exiles from Ireland. These are the big “Irish” boys of global capitalism encouraging the Taoiseach to sell off anything of value to the highest international capitalist bidder, be they American or Chinese.

It is clear that we live in an era when international capitalism and its native allies are strengthening their hold on life. This is no more evident than in the subservience of the Irish government to the demands of European Capitalism, its slavish implementation of economic measures which punish the most vulnerable and needy and now its willingness to change our constitution to meet the demands of its European masters.

We must be aware of the ideological battle being fought by the forces of capitalism against the public good. It may now be a fairly one sided battle but with Connolly’s formula and one which The Workers Party have put to good use in the past, “agitate, educate, organise” we can begin to draw up our battle lines. The forces of capitalism are clear as to what the battle is all about: our job is to organise our side.

Workers Party members must take up the fight of defending our class interests, those of the working class.

The challenge to 21st century neo liberalism can begin to grow and the future reclaimed for our children and grandchildren. There are people who seem content to wait and hope for a change across Europe to social democracy. They believe conditions for workers will once again improve. This belief is totally misguided and ignores the reality and power of global capitalist forces who have capably adapted to changing situations. Social democratic parties have proved themselves capable of working side by side with these forces and introducing anti-worker and privatisation measures that the most ultra conservative party would be proud of. New Labour is an example. In Connolly’s words they ally themselves to the “master class”.

We call on those social democrats and in particular those in the Irish Labour Party who have expressed opposition to austerity policies, to join with those on the left who recognise that it is the capitalist system that is responsible for the current malaise and to create a socialist and left alternative to the neo liberal model.

The Trade Union Movement too must play its part as the leading organisation of organised workers in promoting and defending the rights and interests of the working class.

Let us be clear about one thing. The opposition to capitalism can only come from socialism…from an aware and class conscious working class who realise how they as a class are being robbed and who want to fight for what is rightfully theirs. In this struggle we ally ourselves as Connolly did with workers internationally. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Greek workers as they set an example to workers across Europe and fight the crippling measures imposed on them by a rapacious imperialist Europe. These measures under the pretext of dealing with public debt in Greece, have in reality the goal of strengthening capitalism in Greece. Just like Ireland’s tax exiled but green shirted heroes of capitalism, the Greek capitalists are equally lacking in a sense of civic duty and patriotism. 600 billion euros, almost double Greece’s public debt can be found deposited by Greek capitalists in Switzerland’s banks alone.

We stand with the Greek Communist Party as they expose the arguments for class “collaboration” and “social cohesion” as farcical in light of the impoverishment of a people. Their struggle is at one with ours that of achieving “the ultimate goal… the abolition of capitalist power and the construction of socialism”.

We could do well here in Ireland North and South to follow their example of resistance.

No issue is too small or unimportant and throughout society on a daily basis we witness the effects of capitalism on people. It must be the task of The Workers Party to lead a fightback on behalf of the working class. In the trade unions, in the communities in which we live, there are no shortages of issues and grievances which adversely impact on the working class.

The Campaign Against the Household Charge has channelled the anger of people against the economic policy of austerity and making those who can least afford to pay pick up the tab whilst the rich carry on getting richer. The huge numbers of people, over 1 million households who have refused to register for this charge, represents a rejection of what the government stands for and who they represent. It is clear that by not registering for the household charge, in spite of a vigorous campaign by the Government to get people to do so, that people are sending a clear message. Enough is enough. People are rightly angry at being asked to pay yet another charge whilst the rich and the tax exiles pay little or nothing. We call on people to stand firm, resist the pressure and intimidation to pay.

If the people have a sent a message to the Government by not registering for the household charge another opportunity to fight back presents itself on May 31st. The Referendum on the European Fiscal Treaty illustrates the total subservience of this government. The Workers Party in alliance with other progressive groups will campaign vigorously for a NO vote. We have demonstrated before by rejecting the Nice and the Lisbon Treaties that a NO vote is achievable. It is an opportunity for the people of the South to reject the austerity policies which make the working class pay for the failure of bankers and the corruption of politicians. It is an opportunity for the Irish working class to strike a blow for all workers throughout Europe, like those in Greece, Portugal, and those who recently staged a general strike in Spain. The treaty is a profoundly ideological statement by the right, placing the economics of the free market centre stage and in fact by writing it into our constitution preventing future governments adopting an interventionist and state led economic policy in the future, regardless of the democratic mandate obtained to do so. Having imposed unelected leaders on the people of Greece and Italy in order to protect their economic interests this is an attempt to subvert the democratic will of the Irish people also.

Comrades this year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most seminal and profound political documents of our recent history. I refer to the Carrickmore speech of July 1972, delivered by our late Comrade Tomás MacGiolla to Republican Club members in County Tyrone. The speech was delivered in one of the most violent years of Northern Ireland’s history in an atmosphere of political confusion, turmoil and when sectarian tensions were at their greatest and militarists of all sides at their most active. At a time of despair and hopelessness the speech stands out for its far reaching analysis of the situation, its foresight and its clarity as to the way ahead. It emphasised the need for Peace and an end to all armed campaigns, the recognition of the need for civil rights and democratic reform, the importance of winning the Protestant working class to our side and explaining the true meaning of the Irish Revolution.
Despite appeals to all armed groups to end their campaigns the words went unheeded and we know only too well the consequences of that. After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement Tomas reflected that if that represented all that happened, then, and I quote, “What a waste of lives, what a waste of years.”

It remains to us today to pick up the pieces as it were and return to the central themes of the Carrickmore speech. Tomás described the main thrust of the 1972 speech thus,

“to emphasise the revolutionary effect of the purely reformist demands of the civil rights association when it united the people in mass struggle; to reject as counter revolutionary the imposition of an elitist military force which pushed the civil rights association off the stage , smashed the mass struggle of the people when it was on the point of total victory and by promoting sectarian confrontation and slaughter, set back by 30 years the possibility of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, which should be the bedrock of republicanism.”

The struggle against sectarianism and the division of our people must remain a central priority for our Party. But transforming the struggle for civil rights into a struggle for class rights must now also be a central plank of our political programme in Northern Ireland. The same neo liberal political agenda is pursued by the Stormont Executive. Indeed Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley got to strike the New York Stock Exchange Bell before the present owners of Independent Newspapers who also by the way own some of the biggest newspapers in Northern Ireland.

Unemployment and poverty persist in the most disadvantaged working class areas of Northern Ireland. Youth Unemployment is running at 20% and rising, thousands of working class young people continue to leave school with little or no educational qualifications. The health service is in crisis and it is little surprise that the highest levels of ill health are to be found in the economically deprived working class areas. As in other European countries those on social welfare have been targeted. Wage cuts and reductions in pensions and attacks on the public sector are accompanied by a vicious programme of Stormont Austerity measures. Oh how different Stormont is from the rest!

The politics of unionism and nationalism have failed the working class of Northern Ireland.

It is the task of The Workers Party to present the socialist alternative, to unite the working class around our common interests.

Comrades,

We are a long way from the Republic envisaged in 1916.

We are a longer way still from a democratic socialist republic.

But the events nationally and internationally in the last number of years have demonstrated throughout the world that Capitalism is flawed and will only survive so long as workers and their families tolerate the exploitation of the many by the few.

Socialism is the only alternative to Capitalism.

Class struggle is the means to bring about the realisation of socialism and class consciousness is the most important element of that struggle.

Our task now is the building of a strong, disciplined and class conscious Workers Party so that the ideals and vision of the men and women of Easter 1916 and those after them, our own deceased Comrades among them, who strove for the democratic socialist republic, can be realised in our time.

Thank you for your attention.

It can be hard to get sight of Friedrich Engels as he still remains in the shadow of his great comrade Karl Marx. That’s no great surprise because, after all, that’s one hell of a shadow. But consigning Engels to a mere supporting role is not only unfair on the man himself, but obscures a powerful contribution to socialist theory and practice.

The fact is that, in crucial aspects of what came to be known as Marxism, it was Engels who led the way. “I always follow in your footsteps”, Marx wrote to him in 1864.

Sent from Germany to run his father’s sewing threads mill in Manchester, Engels got to know the new working class created by the industrial revolution. He attended meetings and reported on activities of the Chartists and early socialists, and learned that this class, as well as suffering under capitalism, fought back against it and could replace it with a new society. All this while Marx was still struggling to find a way beyond the injustices he was uncovering.

Marx’s analysis of the capitalist economy was central to his whole politics, but he himself acknowledged that it was a “brilliant sketch” by Engels that set him on that path. While he was later a bit diffident about his youthful venture into economics, Engels’s essay still knocks your average economist into a cocked hat: “So long as you continue with today’s unconscious, thoughtless way of producing, left at the mercy of chance, so long commercial crises will remain; and each succeeding one must become more universal and therefore worse than the one before”.

Engel’s support for Marx down the years is well documented, but went much further than the petty cash he used to pinch from the office for the Marx family in London. Whenever Marx hadn’t the time, knowledge or language skills to write articles Engels regularly obliged, happily leaving Marx to take the credit and the fee, and taking the secret of their authorship to his grave. His personal and political comradeship was invaluable in keeping Marx going through the long years when revolution seemed out of sight.

In a way Engels’s finest hour came after Marx’s death. When he characterised himself as “second violin” to Marx and expressed misgivings at taking over the lead, with genuine humility he also recognised the reality that he could never match the deep philosophical insight his friend had shown. But into his sixties and seventies Engels repeatedly offered advice and analyses that are still compelling.

There’s no doubt that he got carried away with the electoral success of the German social democrats in his last years, when the party’s opportunism had yet to come to the surface. He always insisted, though, that the ballot box only mobilised the forces that would have to face down the enemy in revolution. Party leaders did their best to hush up such a view but, he told them, “no party in any country can condemn me to silence when I am determined to speak”.

Socialists in Ireland should be aware that, in a sense, Engels is one of our own. There is the personal side, the fact that the loves of his life were both Irishwomen, that his favourite dinner was Irish stew, that he gave as his motto in life “take it aisy”. But beyond that, Irish politics and history played a significant role in shaping his view of the world.

In the political landscape of the 1840s, Chartism and workers’ revolts in France and Germany shaped his socialism, but so did movements for national independence in Poland and Ireland. The mass movement to repeal Ireland’s forced union with Britain impressed him might- ily, much as he cursed the conservative leadership of Daniel O’Connell: “Give me two hundred thousand Irishmen and I will cast aside the entire British mon- archy.”

His early classic The Condition of the Working Class in England bears the signs of his relationship with Mary Burns. Engels’s second-generation Irish girlfriend, a former factory worker, brought him to the poorest districts of Manchester where the Irish lived, and his accounts of their poverty are still disturbing. Even one of the book’s weak points, its negative stereotyping of the Irish, may well owe something to Burns’s own jaundiced view after falling out with her father.

On a trip to Ireland in 1856, Engels was shocked by the post-famine poverty of the country, and the profusion of police, soldiers and officials underlined “that the so-called freedom of English citizens rests on the oppression of the colonies”. With the rise of Fenianism in the 1860s he was prominent in winning solidarity among British workers, while privately critical of “the stupidities that happen in every conspiracy”. Returning to Ireland in 1869 he found the country just as militarised, but with a growth in commerce: “The worst with the Irish is that they become corruptible as soon as they stop being peasants and fall into bourgeois ways.”

He began writing a history of Ireland, even learning some Irish so he could consult the original sources. (Modern Irish historians, please copy!) After swot- ting up on some grammar, he told Marx that “the thing doesn’t seem to be so difficult”, and was soon correcting the mistakes of Gaelic scholars. England’s attempt to suppress the Irish had failed, he concluded, but “Ireland, through the English invasion, has been deprived of her whole development and thrown back centuries”.

He got as far as the battle of Clontarf before the pressure of other activities intervened, especially his leading role in the International Working Men’s Association. He argued strongly against a proposal that Irish members in Britain should come under the jurisdiction of the International’s British section: “If members of a conquering nation called upon the nation they had conquered and continued to hold down to forget their specific nationality and position, to ‘sink national differences’ and so forth, that was not Internationalism, it was noth- ing but preaching to them submission to the yoke, and attempting to justify and to perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism.”

So whenever the Irish workers’ republic is up and running, we’ll have to find a street somewhere to rename Bóthar Engels. In the meantime, the influence of Ireland on his politics should be all the more reason for us to put his socialism into practice here.

Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh is author of the biography Friedrich Engels: Saothar a shaoil, published by Coiscéim.

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.9

On icy Dublin streets an estimated 100,000 people marched in a mass protest organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) “There is a better, fairer way” campaign in November 2010.

It was a day rich in symbolism. At the GPO, Siobhan O’Donoghue of the Migrant Rights Centre ripped up a copy of the EU-IMF memorandum of understanding with the Irish government. The choice of location for the speeches was significant, with several references to the ending of the Republic’s sovereignty at the site most strongly associated with its birth.

Placards and banners indicated that the marchers concerns went far beyond any attempt to breathe new life into the partnership process between unions, government and employers, which had defined southern trade union strategy for 21 years, until its collapse in February 2010.

With placard slogans which decried a government of “bankers’ puppets” and called for a fight back against “IMF terrorists”, it was clear many in the vast crowd felt it was the duty of the trade union movement to lead a struggle to as- sert working peoples’ economic and political rights.

When singer Christy Moore gruffly shouted from the speakers’ platform “The system doesn’t work”, at the end of a rendition of Ordinary Man, the crowd roared its delight. Despite the protest, the EU-IMF deal was passed by the Oireachtas days later. The march would mark the highpoint of a trade union mobilisation which made little tangible impact on government policy.

This November is set to see public sector workers in Northern Ireland join trade unionists throughout the UK in strike actions whose immediate aim is halting Con-Dem plans to slash the value of workers’ pensions by up to 25%.

The Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA), led by Brian Campfield, has been clear on the scale of the political challenge the trade unions must confront, and what industrial action can achieve.

“This Coalition Government has been forced by public opinion to change the scale and pace of policies for example the privatisation of forests and reform of the NHS. It can also be forced back on cuts to pensions and jobs; it can be forced to retreat from its austerity agenda which is deepening not resolving the country’s economic problems.”

Despite increased threats to the livelihood of working class people in the South and plans for the privatisation of state assets, no such similar industrial action is planned in the republic. In the South, the trade unions, in theory at least, are dealing with friend rather than foe; the February election returned the biggest parliamentary Labour Party in the history of the state.

A 2009 motion at the ICTU conference called for closer relations between trade unions and the Labour Party, with all member unions encouraged to affiliate and take a greater role in promoting that party. Trade Union leaders such as SIPTU’s Jack O’Connor were vocal in their support of Labour in the run up to the election but it is as yet unclear what has been won for working people.

THE IRISH Labour Party, headed by a former trade union official, has now been in office for more than six months, imple- menting IMF and EU diktats alongside the conservative Fine Gael.

For West Belfast native Eugene Mc- Glone, who took over the reins as ICTU president from Jack O’Connor in July, continuing the movement’s support for the Labour party is still the best strategy. For McGlone, tenacity and determination must be the movement’s watchword.

“If the project we are engaged in is unsuccessful for whatever reason, we will go back to change whatever was unsuccessful. I don’t think it is something to give up on. Reverse the equation and look at it from the Labour Party point of view: if it does not have organised labour in its corner, then it won’t achieve anything. Who is their natural constituency if not organised labour, or labour in general, those who work for a living.”

McGlone sees no future in any attempt to revive what he calls the “failed partnership experiment” which saw pay rises for workers but also associated trade unions with Fianna Fail led governments as they set about destroying the Republic’s economy. “I think the problem was that the partnership model that was used was clearly becoming less appropriate as the years went on. If you look at how it eventually collapsed, the unions didn’t leave partnership. The rest of them walked away and left the trade unions behind.”

He added: “There is a need for trade unions to have a method of communication, a method of negotiation with government. Even if the government is a Labour government, you have to have that, that is the major task. Some people hanker back to partnership because they didn’t have to do a lot, it was a big collective, monolithic structure and they fitted neatly in to it. The challenge is to make sense of a new industrial policy, that’s a difficult task.”

For McGlone, the failure to establish collective bargaining rights, which means the south is nearly alone in the EU as a state where workers do not have an automatic right to union representation in the workplace, is the most symbolic failure of over two decades of partnership.

The ICTU President derides the failure to assert this right as “a sham. The unions were sold an illusion on it. They were sold a pup two or three times. That’s the thing that sticks in my craw is that we avoid admitting we were conned.”

On the subject of the fight trade unionists are gearing up for in Northern Ireland, McGlone believes it carries with it great risks but must be fought.

The problem will be that it may be seen as an attack on society. Unfortunately the industrial reality is that if you don’t make your employer pay close attention to your demands by discussion, they leave you with no alternative. The message must be clear that people are being put in harm’s way by the government, not by the trade union movement.”

THE TRADE union leadership’s response to the crisis has provoked strong criticism from many quarters. A southern media, overwhelming controlled by tax exiles, has unsurprisingly proven extremely hostile. Their focus on the wages, living standards and private lives of senior trade unionists and their families has resulted in rebukes from the Press Council of Ireland, but also proved effective in damaging the movement.

Eddie Conlon, a member of the ex- ecutive of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) and a United Left Alliance (ULA) activist, believes that while the media is selective about who it attacks, trade union leaders are overpaid and this is part of the problem.“They get out of touch. They should be paid the same as the people whom they represent. There is support for that.”

Conlon believes the union leader- ship are seeking to revive partnership and that their support for the Labour Party is a “demobilising factor.”

“Union leaders put a lot of faith in getting the Labour Party back into government. They don’t want conflict with a party they support.”

He points to what he sees as Labour failures in defending the Joint Labour Committee system, which protects the wages of low paid workers, as evidence of the failure of the strategy of supporting that party in government. Conlon believes the trade unions have also been left with a legitimacy issue by a partnership process which has implicated them in the crisis.

“A strategy of trading pay increases for tax decreases has also contributed to the problem,” he adds.

At the ICTU conference in July, a Commission on the future of the Irish Trade Union movement delivered its report. The report’s recommendations are due to be debated at a special conference next year, a process which is expected to lead to the reconstitution of Congress.

A section of the report deals with “The Political and Social agenda” and recommends that ICTU produces a short statement that would “set out a vision of society based on social solidarity and fairness and not simply accepting the dominance of the free market.”

The report also recommends that Congress set up a strategic organising group to examine the organisation of un-organised workers North and South. The group will be tasked with setting overall targets and timelines for increased union membership. This is seen as key to reversing a process which has seen union mem- bership as a percentage of the overall workforce decline from around 50% in the mid-1980s in the Republic to around 33% now, and from over 50% to around 40% in Northern Ireland over the same period.

Eira Gallagher, a trade union official in the SIPTU Organising Department and a Workers’ Party activist, believes whatev- er economic and political strategy trade unions decide to pursue it must be built a return to grassroots organising.

“Organising is identifying and bringing in membership. The resources trade unions are investing in organising departments are more than justified. The proof of that is in the new cadre of activists that are coming through. “

Eira Gallagher sees, in the service and hospitality sectors, a huge potential for trade union growth.

“Since the start of the SIPTU Fair Deal for Cleaners Campaign, we have 19 new workers committees, across five or six employments in Dublin. Organising is building workers’ power. When you couple organising with campaigning, then that’s where the avenue for political campaigning opens up.”

“Collective bargaining rights would improve the situation but access to workers, getting to speak to workers is a key.”

Eddie Conlon cautions that the problem faced by the movement cannot be over- come by organising campaigns alone. “Unions need to prove that they can fight. Without that, what’s the point in joining a union?”

BY THE close of 2011 it should be clearer how well trade unions can fight. As the public sector unions in the North prepare for their planned day of action on 30th November, Eugene McGlone sees the key challenge as securing support of both members and the wider public against both the London and Stormont governments.

“The Stormont Assembly are very willingly setting about making the cuts. The movement in the North will be reacting to this with a show of force.” In the long run, McGlone has spoken of the need for a new political force in Northern Ireland telling the July ICTU conference “we can encourage our members and their friends and families to work and act for a party, a left of centre party of labour for the north that can begin to fulfill the political aspirations and needs of our members and class.” In the South, the first major effort by the new government to sell off a public util- ity looms, with the proposal for the part privatisation of the ESB. McGlone says the trade union argument in defence of the ESB must be heard.

“The problem with part privatization is that the board will no longer solely be responsible to the government, but will be responsible to private individual shareholders and will have a legal obligation to maximise profits for them. That need and obligation may run contrary to the needs and aspirations of society in general.”

It is this idea of a common good which lies beyond, and most often opposed to, the mere accumulation of profit which the trade union movement must once more champion; the debate on the most effective way of doing this is on-going.

Article published in LookLeft vol.2 no.8

Highlights include:

* Ireland’s poll tax – building a mass non-payment campaign against the household charge

* Class Dismissed – Conor McCabe on the need for class to become a central part of political and social debate in Ireland

* Whose Decade is it Anyway? – Donal Fallon on the forthcoming centenary commemorations

* Street Wars – Fergus Whelan on family history and ideological battles on the streets of 1930s Dublin

*Victory for Sean Garland – international campaign to halt extradition of former WP President is successful

* Making the Future Work – Alan Myler on workplace democracy and economic recovery

* Football and Revolution – David Lynch on Egyptian Ultras and political struggle

* Feminism’s New Dawn? – Leah Culhane on Irish feminist debates on the Slutwalk phenomenon

* Rebel with a Cause? – Interview with Patrick Nulty TD

* Not Even Our Rivers Run Free – Padraig Mannion on the water privatisation agenda north and south

And much more including – news from working class struggles and around the Left.

By the end of 2013 the Irish state and the EU will have closed 130 bogs across Ireland designating these raised bogs as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs). In effect they will prevent families and domestic turf cutters from cutting turf as they have done for hundreds of years.

The EU Habitats Directive was introduced fourteen years ago; yet the Irish Government’s inaction has been palpable with little or no consultation by the previous government with those affected. The belated action has been the introduction of a scheme for affected landowners and people with turbary rights, offering compensation of €1,000 a year for up to 15 years or, if possible, the transfer of their cutting to other bogs which are not SACs. The compensation seems grossly unfair considering it more than likely won’t cover the annual cost of another fuel, let alone the installation of a new central heating system, so fuel poverty is a reality.

Across the areas affected turf cutters have come together to oppose this ban, with groups springing up in Laois, Sligo, Kerry, Galway, Roscommon, Mayo, and Kildare, under the umbrella of The Turf Cutters & Contractors Association (TCCA). The latter has seen a ground swell of support for the Kildare Turf Cutters Association, one of the most affected areas.

Supporters of the directive are keen to emphasise the environmental preservation nature of the ban yet bizarrely it doesn’t apply to State owned bogs (92% of all bogs in Ireland) which is, and will continue to be operated commercially by Bord na Móna. Meanwhile the KTCA is stressing it wishes to find “an acceptable solution” to be put in place “so that domestic turf cutting can continue in a conservation friendly way” and believe “a compromise can be reached to suit our needs and the aims of the authorities”.

This is likely to remain a burning issue in Kildare and beyond if we consider KTCA spokesperson John Dore’s at a meeting in Camross outlining “We have plenty of people prepared to go to jail next year if we don’t get our way. Either we take this lying down or we stand up and be counted.”

Barry Healy

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.9

Billy Hutchinson is a complex individual. At the age of 16 he joined the youth wing of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to, as he says, “fight against the IRA bombing us into a united Ireland”, yet he wants a united Ireland, as long as it is one within the British Commonwealth. Hutchinson describes himself as a Carsonite, after the famous Ulster leader Edward Carson, – “culturally Irish but politically British”. He maintains that he is left of centre, but, despite being readily able to quote from a range of socialists he refuses to label himself as one. “I’m well read in Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism and all the rest of it but they’re not my politics…”

He jokingly describes himself as the product of a “mixed marriage”, not in a religious manner but a political one. His father was a Labour supporting socialist while his mother was an ardent Unionist. You can see how the genes intertwined to produce the PUP leader.

The former UVF prisoner, who served 15 years for his part in a sectarian murder, is proud of graffiti recently daubed on a Belfast wall that read ‘Polish Unionist Party.’ The slogan, meant as a slur on his party, he believes affirms that the PUP is doing all they can to try and fight racism and sectarianism in their areas.

With such political complexity Hutchinson, who took over the PUP leadership in October, is far removed from the tabloid stereotype of reactionary Loyalism – firing semi-automatics into the air whilst surrounded by bull dogs and cheering crowds, to the strains of Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’. Hutchinson seeks to represent another side of loyalism, a progressive side that wants to contribute to society and in the PUP leader’s words “help pull working class communities up by their boot straps rather than contribute to keeping them down.”

Referring to an episode of Danny Dyer’s Britain’s Hardest Men, which featured former rival Loyalist leader Johnny Adair, who fled Northern Ireland after several bloody feuds, Hutchinson acknowledges that his community has often been its own worst enemy in fueling these negative stereotypes.

“We allowed the media to portray us like that. If Danny Dyer wanted to meet a hard man he should come and talk to me. Hard man doesn’t necessarily mean you go about and do those sort of bullish tactics of behaviour. It’s like being a school bully, it’s dead easy if a crowd get around some young lad and bully him, that’s not being hard, that’s a coward’s way. For me, Adair and people like that, that’s why they run, they run because they couldn’t stand and fight their ground because they were cowards.”

“The positive contribution from Loyalists tends to be cut out and then we get the Johnny Adairs, the bald heads and muscles and that’s what the media want to portray, whereas with Republicans they’re all lovely in their suits, good looking women, handsome men and that’s how it’s portrayed. But when it’s us, the media don’t want to do that. They never wanted to do that.”

Hutchinson also theorises that the Loyalist stereotype was manufactured by the British State for a reason. “In my view the British security services created those people. Those people were created for a reason, they were created to fracture Loyalism and why is that? Because Loyalism is a big threat to this society, not a military threat, it was at one particular time, but it became a threat to actually uniting this island and that’s what they didn’t like.” he says.

Without representation in Stormont the PUP leader feels that his party, and its former leading figures such as the late David Ervine and Gusty Spence, are gradually being written out of both the current narrative of the North and also the history of how the troubles and peace process evolved.

“There has been a lot of revisionism that’s gone on and Loyalists have been written out of the story. I find myself as someone who was involved very heavily in the whole political process and I’ve been written out of it. There’s no mention of me being involved in that sort of stuff. I feel a bit like Trotsky, I just keep waiting for the ice-pick in the back of the head.”

For all of his talk of perceptions and negative imagery, it is not difficult to know when you have entered Hutchinson’s heartland of Loyalist North Belfast. As the taxi edges further from Belfast City centre, past Crusaders Football Ground, the bright orange UVF flags become more prominent before they finally engulf every lamp-post. The hall in the Mount Vernon estate (an estate free of banners or flags) in which I meet Billy has a UVF mural painted on the gable wall. They’re still, it seems ‘Prepared for Peace, but Ready for War.’

A Belfast Telegraph columnist once labelled the PUP the “UVF’s thinktank”, a remark Hutchinson labels as disparaging, though it would seem he has assumed power to bring the paramilitaries and PUP closer together. Hutchinson insists that he and his party are doing everything they can to bring about the ‘civilianisation’ of the UVF and Red Hand Commando (RHC), but others are placing roadblocks
in their way.

“I think the reason that the UVF and RHC are still here is because we have had people who have worked against them being where they should have been by now. We have been working with this for four years. We should have had it completed in two but the reason why it wasn’t is because we have had the security services interfering, and now we have the PSNI who have been interfering with the Historic Enquires Team and supergrass trials.”

“We’ve also had the media who have in many ways been wrongly demonising the organisation because they continually talk as if this organisation is against the peace process, which it’s not. They have always been on board with the peace process and they support the political one.”

“From that point of view we have been held back. What I have said as PUP leader is that our focus will not be distracted no matter what the PSNI do, or what politicians or the Northern Ireland Office do to distract us.”

Hutchinson isn’t intentionally trying to build up a sense of Loyalist communities being under siege from a state they once regarded as theirs, but it is a picture his words begin to paint, especially when talking about the police.

“The difficulty, particularly in this community, with the police is the police have been involved in creating agents for supergrasses and what that causes is a legacy of policing which means that people then find it very hard to report anything to the police because what they’re saying is, if we report this to the police who are they going to tell?”

“Two mile up the road [from Mount Vernon] we had a very strong Republican community were six people had been killed by the British Army…in that community they did a survey and overwhelmingly people were saying that they needed to work with the PSNI. So things are starting to change, but the difficulty with that is that if we don’t get the community policing right then the whole thing will just collapse and that’s the point of this, we need to define what community policing is and how that community policing works, and it needs to work right across the community, not just in one community or another. It needs to work in both.”

In Hutchinson’s view the new Northern Ireland promised in the Good Friday Agreement hasn’t come to fruition. “I would be very supportive of the peace process and supportive of the political dispensation that we have in Stormont and I think that’s what we need to keep and we need to argue for it, but our difficulty is that it looks like we have elected orange and green Tories…They’re interested in creating a shared-out future, not a shared future. In other words, they’ll share it out and they’ll give the Prods a bit and they’ll give the Catholics a bit. You can’t do that, because that will continually lead to what we’ve already got and that is; we’ll look over each other’s wall, well we don’t look over each other’s wall because the [Peace] wall’s too high, but what we think is the grass is greener on the other side and they get everything and we get nothing.”

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.9

Supporters Direct are a not-for-profit organisation who promote the benefits of sustainability, community ownership and supporter involvement in the running of sporting organisations, mainly football clubs. Andrew Donlan met up with Kevin Rye of Supporters Direct to find out how their various Irish interests are coming along.

As of this week, the three League of Ireland clubs/supporters groups Kevin Rye advises – Cork City (FORAS), Galway United (GUST) and Bohemians (GST) – are differing in fortunes.

FORAS are readying themselves for their first season in the top flight having won the First Division. Bohemians have a massive seven figure debt hanging over their head and are now preparing for life in the Premier Division with one of the lowest playing budgets of the 12 participant clubs, while in Galway the GUST look down and out.

Having run Galway United on behalf of the board of directors last season, GUST withdrew their support and announced plans to set up a new club playing out of Terryland Park, the current home of Galway United. Their plans though now look in tatters, as it’s believed the FAI has rejected their licence application to play in next season’s first division.

Report Card

Cork City

When I put it to him that Cork City’s grandstand finish, swiping the first division trophy from under the noses of Shelbourne was a major success story, he agrees that it gave everyone “a nice lift.” However, he stressed, “That sort of story never fully justifies what we do; we must never say that (success) just because someone gets promotion. It doesn’t justify everything we do because we are not purely about results.”

He is passionate and assertive on that point, although the football fan in him – the one that stands on the terraces at Kingsmeadow watching AFC Wimbledon – eventually comes out. “The way it happened for Cork, the last kick of the last game, that’s why we love the game so much.”

Bohemians

When Bohemians come up for discussion – the reason he is visiting Dublin (while simultaneously advising his office on the developing crisis at Darlington FC) – he reveals.

“The situation was so terrible; I don’t need to explain how bad it was at Bohemians and how bad it still is in fact. But there was a desire from that group of fans (GST) and from individual members of the club and most definitely there were directors of the club at the time, who were trying their best to keep the thing afloat.”

What of the future of Bohemians?

“The aim is, I think there are other things that we need to do there, I think there’s a different legal model that we need to look at, that’s more akin to the Cork City model, which is more akin to what we have in England and Scotland, like an IPS (similar to a co-operative society). It would mean it’s a not for profit model that’s a bit more protective and it’s a bit more difficult to do things than with what they have at the moment, which is a company limited by guarantee. We believe it would provide greater protection.”

He also spoke about the courage shown by the often maligned Bohemians fans, or notorious boo-boys as one broad sheet newspaper once referred to them as. “When I went to Bohemians for the first time back in November, I got the sense of what a football club was. It was those people who were gathered there who cared, not only those people, but that was the very essence of the club.” And if worse comes to worst, he isn’t too down beat either. “It’s about giving it a damn good go and if you can’t do it with what you’ve got at the moment, you recreate it. Like what we did back home with Wimbledon. That’s really why Bohemians still exists as a club; the fans have the force of will.”

Galway

The situation in Galway is more precarious. The GUST are currently believed to be locked in talks with Galway’s two other League of Ireland clubs, Mervue United and Salthill Devon. The talks centre around a possible merger, with the FAI acting as intermediaries. But as a Kevin outlines, the GUST were in fact the model pupils in Ireland. “For that club to have continued over last season was a remarkable feat. They did things in the right way, they behaved in the right way, the way they acted towards their local community was absolutely spot on and they pulled people together behind them. This has shown in everything they’ve done over the last couple of months in pursuit of a licence, they embody the sort of spirit of what we do.”

Not mincing his words, he reveals, “Even under at times the most severe of attack from people who know who they are, who were in positions of authority at the football club, who arguably have brought it to the brink – will have no doubt they brought it to the brink in their decision making – under serve attack at times from those people, they still managed to do things the right way. To have dignity about the way they did things and sometimes had to argue their case very strongly and stick up for their football club, if they get their wish and if they compete next season they’ll be a model football club, I have no doubt. What they have done there is something that’s very important for the future of football in that area, whatever the football club happens to be called.” Talks regarding the future of the GUST in the League of Ireland are still on-going.

An extended piece on the work Supporters Direct do across Europe will feature in the next issue of LookLeft – out in mid February.

For more information on the Gypsies Supporters trust, visit their website

Just over a year ago one of the weirdest chapters in recent Irish life drew to a close. Following protests, pickets, criticism and moral outrage, legislation was eventually introduced in the Dáil criminalising the so-called ‘legal highs’ sold in the infamous head Shops. One year on and the question is how successful has it been in tackling drug use? Barry Healy reports.

Fr Peter McVerry, founder of the Peter McVerry Trust, has been providing services to young homeless people in Dublin for over 25 years. In his experience the closer of the shops has “driven it underground. There is still a huge demand for these substances” which are now bought from dealers. A new trend has emerged with users gravitating toward these substances “instead of crack cocaine or in addition to crack cocaine”.

Fr McVerry is adamant the shops were open too long and should have been shut straightaway. “Head shop stuff was dynamite. It made people psychotic and the damage was far worse [than previously illegal drugs]. People were committing crimes they wouldn’t normally commit”.

The problem seems set to get worse as services battle against cuts and drug use and addiction gets pushed down the list of national priorities. Finding a solution seems a long way off.

Treatment on demand is top of Fr McVerry list, “help should be available within days at least. There are currently waiting lists of at least a month” adding “very little can be done to stop the supply of drugs but the demand can be tackled”. He is supportive of drug abuse being dealt with as a health issue rather than a criminal justice one. In this country “Alcohol causes much more damage” yet it is dealt with as a health problem, “we need to adopt the same approach with drug addiction”.

As Honorary President of Europe Against Drugs (EURAD), Grainne Kenny was a key campaigner against the head shops. Speaking to LookLeft she was keen to emphasise the successes of the closers. “100 head shops were operating at the beginning of last summer and now there are only ten”, these are confined to selling pipes, seeds and other paraphernalia.
She stresses how the “nuisance on the streets has stopped. Queues outside shops at night are gone, the same with kids queuing after school” adding “not everyone will go to dealers so in that sense it has cut out one avenue [of access]”. She also feels “not as many people are taking them [head shop substances] as it is not as socially acceptable now”.

She agrees with Fr McVerry’s assumption that the head shops should have been closed straightaway as “there is now an appetite for these substances”. She is adamant it’s a good thing the former ‘legal highs’ are now harder to get but that there is a need for educational programs to be introduced.

This issue looks set to run and run, here and elsewhere. Recently the ‘Global Commission on Drug Policy’, a group of prominent former world leaders, has said the war on drugs has failed, ‘with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world’. The report urged ‘experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs (especially cannabis) to undermine the power of organised crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens’.

In the UK the ‘Release’ campaign has been launched. It includes film director Mike Leigh, former drugs Minster Bob Ainsworth and three former chief constables in calling for the decriminalisation of possession of drugs. They believe present policy and legislation isn’t working.

Tackling the drug issue will take more than the closer of shops and enacting stiffer laws. There is no easy answer. Fresh thinking and debate is needed if we can ever hope find ways of dealing with it. It isn’t going away and it looks certain to get worse.

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.7

The creation of the National Assets Management Agency in 2009 was an exercise in power. It was done in the face of vocal opposition, and its role in merging bank debt with sovereign debt played no small part in the arrival of the ECB/IMF in November 2010 and the decimation of Fianna Fáil as a political force in Ireland. The new government’s maintenance of NAMA underlines the assertion that the present economic crisis has revealed a deeper truth, that Ireland harbours more powerful forces than Fianna Fáil. These economic and social forces have greatly undermined the real economy in Ireland, and have at present, through the bank guarantee and NAMA, a drowning man’s grip on the future direction of this country.

On 18 February 2009 the National Treasury Management Agency appointed the economist Dr. Peter Bacon as a special advisor reporting directly to the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan. Bacon was given a three-month contract and according to the Irish Times he was hired in order to ‘‘enhance the agency’s team during the recapitalisation process.’’ His remit was to ‘‘access the possibility of creating a “bad bank” or risk insurance scheme to take so-called toxic debts off the banks balance sheets in a bid to “free up new lending.’’

The government wanted a solution which was unique to Ireland, one that would involve moving impaired property loans, as well as the properties used to secure those loans, into a new property company, which would be capitalised and would seek to attract investment on the back of its ‘assets’. It was in order to explore the practicalities of this idea – a toxic property company rather than a bad bank – that the minister hired Dr. Bacon. On 8 April 2009 a press conference took place in Dublin where the result of these efforts, Nama, was presented to the people, Brian Lenihan told the assembled press that the creation of NAMA would ensure that ‘‘optimal value for money is obtained for the taxpayer’’. It would purchase property portfolios from the banks at a discount, and these portfolios would consist of both good and bad loans. The minister reckoned that ‘‘among the loans to be transferred are about €60 billion of land and property loans. The remaining €20 to €30 billion of loans is secured on investment properties – office blocks, shops and hotels – which have been provided as security for the speculative loans drawn by developers.’’

The purpose of NAMA was to inject liquidity into the Irish banking system, to get the economy moving again. It did nothing of the sort. The proposal – to buy loans at a discounted price as a means of recapitalising the banks – carried an inherent contradiction. The larger the discount on the loans, the greater the need to recapitalise the banks. Every cent it saved on the loans was simply one more cent to inject into the banks via State (rather than NAMA) recapitalisation.

This was pointed out in a letter to the Irish Times on 17 April 2009 which was signed by twenty economists. ‘‘Rather than create fully healthy banks capable of functioning without help from the State’’ they wrote, ‘‘the process may continue to leave us with zombie banks that still require the state-sponsored life-support machine that is the liability guarantee.’’ This, of course, is what took place.

Towards the end of the letter, the economists touched upon what they probably believed to be the real reason behind NAMA, but were too cautious to explicitly state out loud. ‘‘The Government’s plans seem likely to keep in place the current management at our biggest banks’’, they said. ‘‘It would be difficult to avoid claims of crony capitalism and golden circles were billions of State monies to be placed into the banks with minimal changes in their governance structure.’’

The Fianna Fáil/Green coalition had hoped that the cost of buying Irish bank developers loans could be placed ‘‘off-books’ and so not counted as part of the national debt. The rating agencies thought otherwise and told the Department of Finance that it treats “off-balance-sheet arrangements [such as NAMA] as direct obligations of the government.’’ As a result, NAMA severely affected Ireland’s credit rating in the months leading up to the momentous events in November 2010.

In July 2011 it was revealed that the loan book of €65 billion which had been bought by NAMA was the result of the failed speculative purchases of just 180 individuals. The agency’s top three ‘clients’ have debts totaling €8.3 billion. Just over one-third of the loans bought by NAMA relate to land – that is, empty green fields which were bought on the expectation of development, but to which nothing had been done. Another 36% of the loans are associated loans – that is, loans backed by commercial investment properties. The remaining 28% are development loans. The figures show that the equation of ghost estates with NAMA is grossly misleading. If you are looking at an empty field on the outskirts of Dublin, Cork or Galway, chances are you’re looking at a failed NAMA investment.

Overall, NAMA has saddled the Irish taxpayer with a loan book which equates to nearly 50% of the country’s GDP. It is an impossible burden to bear. The original suppliers of the debt – the banks – know this, and that is why it has been dumped onto the shoulders of the State.

Irish private bank debt has to be decoupled from sovereign debt if there is to be any chance of growth in the economy. It is a dead weight, and a strong factor in the decision of the international rating agencies to downgrade Ireland’s credit rating. They watched for two years while the Irish government took billions out of the real economy and used that money as an IOU for the betting slips of property speculators.

The fact NAMA continues to exist is testimony to the power of those it is designed to protect. And whoever that is, one thing is certain: it is not us.

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.8