Budget 2013 breaks commitments given by Social Protection Minister, Joan Burton, in April 2012 when she promised not to go ahead with plans to restrict the One Parent Family Payment to those families with Children under seven unless significant changes in childcare were outlined this year. The payment was made up until the child was 18 when first introduced in 1997. Under government plans, it will fall to 17 next year, 16 in 2014 and seven in 2015.

The one-parent family payment is a means tested payment for men and women who are bringing children up without the support of a partner. The overwhelmingly majority of those in receipt of the payment (98%) are women. The full rate of payment is €188 per week plus €29.80 Child Dependent Allowance, per child.

The restriction on the payment will hit the group in Ireland who are most likely to endure poverty. According to the EU Survey on Income and Living standards 2010, people in lone parent households In Ireland tend to have the lowest disposable income out of all households in the state. Those living in lone parent households continue to experience the highest rates of deprivation with almost 69% of individuals from these households experiencing one or more forms of deprivation.

Start Strong, OPEN, Barnardos and the National Women’s Council of Ireland have slammed the moves in Budget 2013 to pilot specific after-school care arrangements for the children of low income workers.

The organisations said that the “move fell far short of a strategic approach to the development of comprehensive childcare for all children aged 0-12 years in Ireland and created a two tier system that would segregate children based on their family incomes.”

In 2015, according to the Departments of Social Protection, the slashing of the One Parent Family Allowance will save €7.6m when 36,000 working lone parents will lose their reduced one parent family payment.
However, critics say the move is self-defeating. unemployed lone parents will simply switch to Jobseekers Allowance, with no saving to the state whatsoever. The changes restrict access to work, study or training for lone parents as it cuts money otherwise used to pay for childcare. Childcare costs in Ireland are among the highest in Europe. Up to 45% of average income is spent on childcare.

Three out of every five of the recipients of the One-parent Family Payment currently work, many by combining their hours with school, availing of the free, part time pre-school place for a year, or relying on close family members. Lack of access to adequate childcare is a barrier to the labour market.

Speaking in the Dáil on 18th April 2012, the Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton TD, said that she would only proceed with plans to reform the One Parent Family Payment by 2014/15 if she got a “credible and bankable commitment” by the time of this year’s Budget that the Irish Government would put “a system of safe, affordable and accessible child care in place, similar to what is found in the Scandinavian countries to whose systems of social protection we aspire”.

Joan Burton was speaking on the night the Dáil passed the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2012. Section 4 of the bill reduced the eligibility for the one-parent family payment to seven years old for the youngest child in the family.

Joan Burton’s comments were made under pressure from the Save Our Seven Year Olds campaign, a coalition including the One Parent Employment Network, Barnardos, and the National Women’s Council. Burton’s comments were made in the heat off campaign where Barndados had gone as far as to ask Labour TDs to vote down the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill unless the provision on the One Parent Family Payment was removed.

Frances Byrne, CEO of OPEN, the national network of one parent families, told LookLeft that she is “hugely disappointed …this budget gives us nowhere near Scandinavian childcare. We are calling again on the proposed changes to the One Parent Family Payment to be suspended.”

In a joint statement issued today, Start Strong, OPEN, Barndardos and the National Women’s Council said these “moves are a far cry from calls made by the Minister for Social Protection in April for a bankable, credible commitment to a system of Scandinavian style childcare and are a short term measure that will delay real and meaningful progress towards universal, subsidised quality services for children.”

The organisations are seeking an urgent meeting with Minister Burton and Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald to voice their concerns about her failure to fulfill the commitments she made.

The New Frontline - Trade unions are re-forging their links with working class communities and building new alliances in the fight to defend vital local services, Dara McHugh reports

No More Victims – Ireland’s abortion laws have been claiming victims for decades, writes Stephanie Lord

Where’s the left? - The left of centre received its highest vote ever in the Republic in February 2011, but the country has since been run on unwaveringly right-wing lines without the political upheaval evident in other EU States. Kevin Brannigan asks what has happened to the Irish Left.

Beyond the Law: the US Military at Shannon Airport – In opposition, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore repeatedly committed himself to dealing with the US military’s use of Shannon Airport. But in Government what has he done? Paul Dillon reports

The Attack on Public Transport - The push towards privatisation at Dublin Bus is part of a wider strategy of undermining public transport in the name of profits. Harry Stoneman reports.

The Ideals Remain - Aleida Guevara, a Cuban paediatrician and daughter of revolutionary leader Che, visited Ireland in October and talked to Paul Dillon

A Stranger in Her Own Land – Palestinian politician Haneen Zoabi talks to Francis Donohoe about how Israel’s apartheid policies forced her to take a stand.

Eric Hobsbawm: Revolutionary Historian – Ultán Gillen looks at the life of the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, and how he helped transform our understanding of the history of the working class.

Plus

News:
Unions must lead campaign to repudiate bank debt
Anti-capitalist prank lands Occupy activist in prison
Industrial action low in the Republic
Central Bank wrong on wages
The Waterford Spring
The Household Tax Battle Continues
LookLeft politicians pensions campaign
Only the first steps for children’s rights
IKEA Ireland: No trade unions here
Irish who fought for the Spanish Republic commemorated in Dublin
Irvine Welsh backs bridge for fellow Hibs man Connolly
The Live Register: For Real TV
Charting the Left course for Northern Ireland
Hidden Crackdown in Bahrain

Views:
Gavan Titley explores the politics of the new racism
Michael Taft on Public Enterprises
Tom O’Connor on the economic myths peddled by the Irish establishment.
Conor McCabe on the Irish tax exiles
John Jefferies on development of Primary Health Care centres
Mick Finnegan calls on SIPTU President, Jack O’Connor, to reconsider his support for Labour

Debate:
Are elections a waste of time for the Left? – Alan Myler and Mark Hoskins debate

Reviews:
Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909-1936
Come here to me: Dublin’s other history
Privatisation: Robbing the people’s wealth

Culture:
‘History from Below’ Network launched in Barcelona, Donal Fallon reports
A True Red Rebel – David Lynch on the live and times of Con Lehane
US hip-hop artist Boots Riley of The Coup
Supporters have revived the pride of North Wales, Wrexham Football Club, writes Barry Healy
Plaque to honour Francis Hutcheson
LookLeft Forum: Connolly’s Legacy Debated

LookLeft is published the Citizen Press for more information visit
www.lookleftonline.org or email: lookleftonline@gmail.com

Justin Barrett

The images provided the most surprising twist to the Nice referendum campaign. Martial music boomed out in a hall built by the Nazi regime and home to the first meetings of the Hitler Youth. A line of brown-shirted flag-bearers marched to the stage of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party, or NPD) rally in Passau in May 2000.

Near the front of the hall, Justin Barrett, the diminutive Longford-based representative of the Youth Defence organisation, took his seat among the 30 or so “honoured guests”. Included in their number, according to the official NPD newspaper, were some of the leading lights of the extreme far- right in Europe ‹ neo-fascist icon Florentine Rost van Tonningen from the Netherlands, Udo Voigt, leader of the NPD, and Derek Holland of the International Third Position, listed as the second delegate representing Ireland.

According to Barrett, his lack of language skills prevented him from understanding the bile of racial hate and odes to the former glories of European fascism that pass for political discourse at such gatherings.

However, this was not the only such meeting which Barrett attended. He has confirmed two other engagements to “discuss the abortion issue” at similar meetings in Germany. He continues to insist that he was unaware of the NPD¹s political beliefs, and says he will accept no further invitations from them.

Details of appearances by Barrett at meetings of the extremist Forza Nuova movement in Italy over recent years have also emerged. A Forza Nuova website refers to Barrett’s attendance at conferences in Milan and Bologna. Present at many FN rallies, and a speaker at Passau, was Roberto Fiore, the dapperly-dressed leader of Forza Nuova, and de facto leader of the International Third Position fascist network.

Once convicted of membership of the political wing of a group implicated in one of the worst acts of terrorism the continent has ever seen, Fiore has been the lynchpin that has brought together European neo-fascism for the past two decades.

What brought Irish moral crusaders like Barrett and his comrades into such company?

Youth Defence

The militant anti-abortion group Youth Defence, which provided a core of political activists to the recent “No to Nice” campaign, emerged from the controversy surrounding the X case in early 1992. According to members’ accounts, the organisation’s genesis can be traced to a phone call from a then 20-year-old Niamh Nic Mhathuna to the Fr Michael Cleary radio show in February 1992. The young woman was so enraged by the state allowing the 14-year-old girl at the centre of the X case to travel for an abortion that she phoned the show demanding a further tightening of the abortion laws.

With the help of numerous broadcasts on Fr Cleary’s show, the first of a number of mass protests was organised outside the Dail. According to Youth Defence’s propaganda, it was in this way that “the crusade to bring Ireland’s youth back to the faith of their fathers” began.

The group’s leadership was based around Niamh Nic Mhathuna, her then fiance Peter Scully, her mother Una, and Maurice Colgan. Barrett at this time was on the periphery of the leadership, largely because he lived outside Dublin, where the group was predominantly based.

According to historian Brian Hanley, Youth Defence can be placed in the context of right-wing movements on the fringes of Irish nationalism that have been evident for generations.

“There is a militant Catholic activist tradition stretching back to the 1920s,” he says. “Groups such as An Rioghacht (Catholic Action) and Maria Duce, which was particularly active in the 1950s, combined a fundamentalist approach to Catholic social teaching with often-violent street activity. In the 1930s they were particularly influenced by Salazar’s Portugal and fascist Italy. Later, Franco’s Spain was a source of inspiration.”

The group soon provoked the ire of liberal opponents (an Irish Times editorial drew a comparison with Hitler Youth), traditional pro- life groups and most of the Church establishment, who attempted to distance themselves from Youth Defence’s activities.

A Hot Press exposé in December 1992 made clear that even at this early stage some members felt the attraction of European fascism. At that time, a member of the group was quoted as saying that Franco made the mistake of being “too soft on the liberals” and asserted that the Dail should be replaced by “a Supreme National Council”.

A former member of Youth Defence interviewed by Magill felt that, although such views might have developed “due to the leadership’s abhorrence of liberal values, the only concern of the mainly teenage membership was abortion.”

Niamh Nic Mhathuna, who has held the position of chairwoman of Youth Defence throughout its existence, would, however, seem to have been developing wider visions of the movement’s cause. Her speeches to Youth Defence members at meetings in a room above the Pipers House pub on Dublin’s Thomas Street were wont to begin with sentiments like, “In the past there were Irish ways for Irish people”, before going on to expound the virtues of militant Catholic nationalism.

Justin Barrett seems to have first become involved in Youth Defence’s activities during the 1992 Mastricht referendum; he distributed the group’s leaflets in Athlone, where he was then a student.
Youth Defence has always set its face against greater European integration, sharing with right-wing elements in continental Europe a hatred of the supposedly socialist and liberal aspects of the EU. Barrett did not restrict himself to merely handing out leaflets that year.

The then 21-year-old also ran for an elected position in the Union of Students of Ireland. A political opponent of the time told Magill that he was somewhat disturbed by Barrett’s rigid conservatism, which seemed to take its lead from American Christian fundamentalists.

The source of the funding for Youth Defence’s political campaigns has always been a controversial issue. The organisation claims that the vast majority of its funding is raised through advertisements in Catholic newspapers. In an interview published in the Sunday Business Post on 11 August this year (2002), Barrett stated, ‘Youth Defence receives money from all around the world, but not a huge amount, would we miss foreign money? The bottom line is that we would not.”

The International Third Position

Some of this funding may have come from the European far right as early as 1993. Then, an article appeared in Candour that purported to be written by a Youth Defence member. Candour was founded by AK Chesterton, who also founded the British National Front, to espouse his agenda. It is now supportive of the extreme right International Third Position.

A “Cliona Ni Mhurchu” authored the 1993 article on behalf of the “Dublin-based Youth Defence League”. It not only outlines the development of Youth Defence but also ends with a request for financial aid.

The attitudes expressed in the article would have fitted neatly into the apocalyptic visions of the publication’s readership: “Led astray by the constant saturation of liberal and socialist propaganda in the media, through modern ‘culture’ and even within the Church, we hope by means of this social struggle for the life of Ireland to be able to bring back her young to the Faith of our Fathers,” the article stated.

“We are at a critical stage in the history of the world and our struggle, spiritually and socially, is merely a reflection of a higher struggle, the supernatural combat unleashed by Satan upon God and His Order. It is a long war that seems to be coming to its most crucial stage.”

The two-page article ends with an “appeal to anyone reading this to please give us moral, financial and spiritual help in our struggle for the soul of Ireland.” This is followed by a phone number and address.

The ITP’s moral support for Youth Defence is obvious, the group’s internet publication, Final Conflict, has carried several articles supporting the Irish organisation.

The ITP itself had developed out of a split in the British National Front in the late 1980s, though the organisation was originally the brainchild of the Italian exile and future leader of the Forza Nuova, Roberto Fiore.

Fiore had gone to England after the Bologna railway station bombing of 1980, in which 85 people were killed when a device exploded in the station’s waiting room. In 1985 he was found guilty in absentia of membership of the political wing – the Terza Posizione (Third Position)- of Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, a terrorist group implicated in the atrocity.

The ITP was also the initial training ground for a number of future notables of the UK far right, including Nick Griffin (now leader of the British National Party) and Derek Holland.

According to Gerry Gable, publisher of Searchlight magazine and an expert on the activities of the ITP, “the organisation formed around a cohort of university-educated members of the National Front who called themselves the Political Soldiers, after a pamphlet of the same name written by Holland.

Fiore and Holland developed beliefs which involved a form of what they call ultra-Catholicism. This led to a further split in 1990, which saw Griffin leave to join the British National Party and Patrick Harrington form the Third Way, whose Ulster branch is known as Ulster Nation.

“The ITP claims to present a third way between capitalism and communism, but in any objective sense is completely fascist in its outlook,” says Gerry Gable.

In the mid-90s, the ITP began further development of its international links. It is not known whether it was members of Youth Defence or the ITP who initially attempted to make contact between the two groups.

However, connections may have been cemented by some members of Youth Defence’s involvement with the Catholic sect, the Society of Saint Pius X. Holland is a communicant of the sect and the ITP is supportive of it. It was at one of the group’s churches in Ireland that James Kopp, the pro-lifer accused of murdering an American abortion doctor, worshipped while on the run from the US authorities in Europe.

Derek Holland, who is believed to have based himself in Ireland from around 1997, has been in regular contact with the German NPD since 1996.

So too, it would seem, has Youth Defence. The NPD’s deputy leader, Holger Apfel, told the Irish Times that, “We have been in contact with his [Barrett¹s] group since 1996. We are friendly with his Youth Defence organisation.”

Sascha Rossmuller, leader of the NPD’s youth wing, told the same newspaper that he considered Youth Defence “an important part of our international network.”

Barrett also attended events in Italy hosted by Forza Nuova, which was established by Fiore on his return to Italy in 1997.

Asked if he had ever met Fiore, Barrett has stated that “if he is the leader of that party [Forza Nuova] then I suppose I must have.” He has denied any knowledge of the fascist nature of Forza Nuova. Fiore’s fascism is well known. Forza Nuova members have also been implicated in a number of violent incidents, including the bombing of a left-wing Italian newspaper, Il Manifesto.

Contact with Forza Nuova would seem to not have been all one way. Reports in the Italian media in 2001 stated that 24-year-old Marco Gladi, Forza Nuova’s organiser in the Falconara-Ancora region, planned to visit Youth Defence in Ireland with a delegation of Forza Nuova students.

Abortion and the Extreme Right

Throughout Europe, extreme right-wing parties have attempted to push the abortion issue to the fore. The most militant of them often raise concerns about the maintenance of the white race in the face of foreign immigration.

A further ideologically-loaded assertion is that abortion has claimed more than six million lives and is carried out by a clique of Jewish doctors. The NPD and Forza Nuova are both stridently anti-abortion. In addition, right-wing elements in England were involved in the establishment of The Crusaders for the Unborn Child in 1997. This extreme anti-abortion group promised to “take the fight against abortion to the abortionists.”

The group picketed family planning centres and abortion clinics. One of its first actions was to picket the Irish embassy in London to protest at the treatment of Youth Defence by the Irish government.

The Crusaders’ attachment to the extreme right was both overt, in Yorkshire a Crusaders’ organiser was also an activist in the local BNP, and covert. The Sunday Mirror exposed the group as a front organisation for the International Third Position in 2000.

Youth Defence has expanded its international network over time. The organisation took the grandiose title ‘Youth Defence International’ in 1998. It has held three international conferences, two in Dublin’s RDS and one in Rome in August 2000. Anti-abortion activists from around the globe were invited, including those of new Youth Defence groups organised in Spain and Italy.

Also present were members of the militant Precious Life organisation based in Scotland and Northern Ireland, whose establishment was both inspired and partly-funded by Youth Defence.

The head of Precious Life Northern Ireland, Bernadette Smyth, expressed some intriguing views on abortion to the Glasgow Herald in November 1999. She spoke of “the Holocaust that has been happening since 1967” and, on the subject of abortion in the US, asked rhetorically, “You know who runs the American abortion industry? The Mafia and the Jews!”

Precious Life’s Scottish branch was aided by approximately stg£50,000 from Youth Defence in 1999. The group’s leader, Jim Dowson, and Niamh Nic Mhathuna led joint pickets which brought about the closure of the Edinburgh Brook advisory clinic. The Youth Defence leadership expressed shock when the Scottish media then revealed that Dowson had a past awash with far-right, loyalist connections.

Dowson said in one interview: “Youth Defence is our sister group, no, our mother group. That’s a better word.”

The National Way Forward

The issue which has most recently brought the ideological links between Youth Defence and the extreme right into the spotlight is the strange case of Justin Barrett’s elusive book. Entitled The National Way Forward, it seems to have been reviewed mainly on extreme right-wing websites.

The most authorative of these is on the site of the Ulster Nation magazine run by ex-Belfast National Front member David Kerr. Kerr is another former ‘Political Soldier’ and is now a supporter of the Third Way, which split from the ITP in 1990. The review, by Greg Cumming, maintains that the book is “an interesting read”. His review focuses on the fact that the book is informed by theories “which are common to nationalists throughout Europe, and advances ‘third positionist’ concepts of opposition to international finance, capitalism and atheistic Marxism, Ireland¹s EU membership and liberalism in the guise of homosexuality, abortion, divorce and naked materialism. He also examines the links between the New York financial empire and the Soviet revolution”.

The only other site where a review of the book seems to have appeared (and from where it could also be ordered) is that of the ITP’s Final Conflict magazine.

When Final Conflict was asked recently to supply a copy, the people behind the website stated that the main distributor had requested sales to be postponed until after the Nice Referendum. The National Way Forward’s only distributor is thought to be Barrett himself. He maintains he has no contact with the ITP, although he has since requested the removal of the book from their site.

Barrett has so far not relaunched the book, despite having promised to do so in an interview with RTE shortly before the Nice Referendum. This reporter is still waiting for his copy of the tome, which was requested from Barrett over two months ago.

When questioned about the fact that it seemed to be only sites run by ex-members of the British National Front which drew favourable attention to the book, Barrett’s response was simple, if vague. It had, he said, “gotten into the strangest of hands.”

Jim Larkin's call for union recognition is still unanswered

Next year will mark the centenary of the 1913 Lockout. The Irish labour movement will rightly celebrate the great strike and lockout as a heroic example of worker resistance and solidarity. However, it would be mistaken to view 1913 as an example of long-ago battles that have been triumphantly transcended.

At the heart of the great struggle of 1913 was the workers’ demand for recognition of a union of their choice. Although the dispute would eventually involve tens of thousands of workers it was initially sparked by the lockout of ITGWU members employed by the Dublin tram company owned by Irish Independent tycoon William Martin Murphy. The struggle would eventually end in heroic defeat and even a century later for Irish workers union recognition remains extremely problematic.

Prior to 2001, two courses of action were open to union members who desired their employer to recognise their unions’ right to negotiate for them. They could strike, and force their employer to negotiate with the union, or refer the matter to the Labour Court. Unions who referred a recognition dispute to the Labour Court were bound by its recommendation. However, if the Court found in favour of recognition the employer was not legally obliged to accept it.

Over one six year period the Court issued 67 recommendations on recognition. Of these recommendations 59 or 88% were in favour of recognition but only 16 of the firms involved granted recognition. This gave a success rate of 27%.

Growing employer resistance to recognition, the ineffectiveness of the Labour Court and the failure to secure recognition for the Ryanair baggage handlers prompted the Irish trade union movement to seek some form of state support. However the Industrial Development Authority, Government and the employers argued that statutory recognition might adversely affect inward investment. Even though most developed states, including the US, do protect union recognition, the Irish union leaders seem to have allowed the inward investment agreement stand and the result was the Industrial Act 2001.

From the outset the Act was muddled. Though it owed its existence to difficulties in securing recognition it was precluded from dealing directly with this question.

Workers seeking recognition for their union were advised to add specific claims of pay, conditions of employment or procedures in relation to grievance and discipline which were firstly brought before the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) and, if not resolved, then the Labour Court.

Where a Labour Court recommendation fails to resolve a dispute it can then make a determination which is legally binding on both parties. The determination only applies to pay, conditions or procedures union recognition is outside its scope.

This imperfect truce between employers and trade unions was broken in 2004 when a dispute arose between Ryanair, a litigious and aggressive anti-union employer, and its pilots who were seeking union representation.

Under the terms of the Industrial Relations Act 2001 the Labour Court can only intervene after it has been established that workers in an employment cannot avail of collective bargaining, where they negotiate as groups with their employer. As far as Ryanair was concerned this seemed to be an open and shut case as the company had never recognised unions, making collective bargaining impossible. But such a common sense conclusion was about to be overturned by the highest court in the land.

Citing the Trade Union Act 1941, Ryanair argued that it already carried on collective bargaining through its company established employee representative council or ‘excepted body’, thus excluding a Labour Court investigation. The 1941 Act defines an ‘excepted body’ as “a body, all the members of which are employed by the same employer and which carries on negotiations for the fixing of wages or other conditions of employment of its own members.”

Ryanair’s argument that it carried on collective bargaining through its employee representative council was rejected by the High Court. Indeed the judge went on to describe the conduct of employee relations in Ryanair as tyrannical, bearing all the hallmarks of oppression. Undaunted, Ryanair appealed its case to the Supreme Court.

In 2007 the Supreme Court found in favour of the company that collective bargaining was carried on in Ryanair and consequently the Labour Court had no right to adjudicate in the company’s dispute with its pilots.

Among the Supreme Court’s highly controversial findings was that an excepted body could:

• Only be established at the behest of the employer.
• Does not require a negotiation licence.
• Did not require the consent or participation of the company’s employees.
• Employee withdrawal is of no consequence with regard to its continuing existence.

So an excepted body is one established, dominated and controlled by the employer. It is in short the employer’s creature. The excepted body is essentially a company or house union with the consequent disparities of power and employee dependence.

In both Canada and the United States employer-dominated bodies, or house unions, have been declared illegal since 1935. Convention 98 of the International Labour Organiation (ILO) – the international body which brings together representatives of governments, union and employers – categorises any workers’ organisation established under the control and domination of the employer as an interference with the right of freedom of association. In addition the ILO definitively dismisses the possibility that negotiation between an employer and employees within a house union or excepted body could ever be considered as collective bargaining. Officially the Irish State endorses Convention 98.

The 2007 Supreme Court judgement seems to even rule out the possibility that a law might be enacted to facilitate union recognition. Generally in countries where such laws are in force they operate on democratic principles. If a majority of employees either within the enterprise or a particular bargaining unit express a clear wish for union recognition then the employer is legally obliged to comply.

However the Supreme Court judges found that “Ryanair is perfectly entitled not to deal with trade unions,” and further “nor can a law be passed compelling it to do so”. The Supreme Court seems to claim that such statutory union recognition would be unconstitutional.

If statutory union recognition cannot be introduced, then Ireland would occupy a relatively unique position among the western democracies. For example, in the Scandinavian countries employers are legally obliged to recognise trade unions. In the UK, there is a statutory mechanism in place to facilitate union recognition. Since 1935 employers in Canada and the United States are legally obliged to recognise and negotiate with trade unions if that is the democratic choice of their employees.

Since the Supreme Court judgement the Irish trade union movement has claimed that one of its central aims is to achieve some form of statutory recognition. What is certain is that something has to be done to reverse or neutralise the Supreme Court judgement. As it stands any employer can claim to carry on collective bargaining through an ‘excepted body’. It severely limits the scope of the Labour Court and provides a legal basis for employer dominated company unions which makes union recognition and growth even more difficult to achieve.

After nearly twenty five years of social partnership, the Irish trade union movement finds itself in a parlous position. All the utopian talk of a new relationship between labour and capital and the transcendence of adversarial relations has ended with the union movement weaker than at any time since the 1950s.

Some enthusiasts for partnership failed to recognise that it is difficult to be partners with someone who would prefer that you did not exist. With regard to relations between labour and capital, 1913 does not seem that remote or far away.

Finally an anecdote – the employees of William Martin Murphy’s tramway company were obliged to pay for their uniforms from their wages. Ryanair has gone one further cabin crew are obliged to pay for their uniforms and training from their wage.

Article published in LookLeft Vol.2 No.12