Amid scenes of confusion embattled
Taoiseach Brian Cowen finally has finally hauled up the white flag and
announced the General Election date for March 11th. His intention to get the finance bill passed through the Dáil was in serious trouble this morning after his attempt to organise
a cabinet reshuffle threatened to be the final straw for the Green
Party who despite supporting the government through thick and thin over
the past period have suddenly developed a survival instinct.
Amid scenes of confusion embattled
Taoiseach Brian Cowen finally has finally hauled up the white flag and
announced the General Election date for March 11th. His intention to get the finance bill passed through the Dáil was in serious trouble this morning after his attempt to organise
a cabinet reshuffle threatened to be the final straw for the Green
Party who despite supporting the government through thick and thin over
the past period have suddenly developed a survival instinct.
The road to the polls will doubtless be strewn with Fianna Fáil
ministers and leadership hopefuls falling over themselves to say that
they were merely following orders or that they had harboured grave
concerns over government policy. But not that will wash in the tens of
thousands of households in Ireland where families are struggling to get
by on the dole, neither will it be much comfort to those packing their
things and trying to find somewhere to emigrate to with more prospects
than at home.
Brian Cowen and his party have been on borrowed
time ever since the crash in the economy and the beginning of their
austerity programme. Pension levies, budget cuts and attacks on public
sector workers have been a constant theme of the last period and the
“Soldiers of Desiny” have rightly got the blame.
The debacle over the EU/IMF bailout was more or
less the final nail in the coffin for the party. But while the issue of
sovereignty was highlighted at the time, it revealed the government as
completely at the mercy of the international speculators and the banks.
Connolly wrote prophetically that:
“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist
the Green Flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation
of the socialist republic, your efforts would be in vain. England would
still rule you. She would rule through her capitalists, her landlords,
financiers, and through the whole array of commercial and industrial
institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears
of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule
you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at
the shrine of that freedom whose cause you betrayed.”
It would be hard to find another quotation that
sums up the weakness of the Irish bourgeois. In modern times you could
add US Imperialism and the speculators to the list of capitalists,
landlords and financiers, But the point Connolly makes is still utterly
valid. Irish capitalism and its representatives in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have no answers for working people.
The election should see the Fianna Fáil
wiped out in large areas of the country. It should also see a big
increase in support for Labour. But that’s not an automatic process.
Over the last period the anger of working class people seemed to be
being translated into a big surge in support for Labour, but recently
support for Fine Gael has increased making a Fine Gael/Labour Coalition
the most likely winners of the ballot. A few months ago there was a
possibility that Labour might have been able to form a coalition with SF
and some independent support.
Eamon Gilmore has consistently received high levels
of support in the polls as Labour leader. But personal popularity is
not enough to be decisive in a general election. Gilmore has
consistently side stepped big issues like the Croke Park agreement, the
scale of the cuts in the public sector and the question of
nationalisation of the banks among others. The net result of this is
that Labour has failed to give express clearly the scale of the problems
and the anger experienced by workers in the state.
Armed with a clear socialist programme, such as
Connolly and Larkin advocated, Labour could easily sweep to power with a
clear majority and a mandate for decisive socialist measures. Coalition
with Fine Gael will not solve the problems that workers face in fact
the new government will experience contradictory pressures, on the one
hand from the bosses and on the other from working people demanding a
solution to their problems.
The current examples of Venezuela and Bolivia in
Latin America and historic examples like the British Labour government
of 1945 demonstrate that workers will support a radical programme if
they are confident that the leadership are prepared to carry it through.
The scale of the crisis in Ireland requires a bold socialist policy
including nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions, the
land and the big industries.
Labour must fight for a socialist programme and to
sweep away the utterly discredited government of Cowen and Lenihan. The
next few years will see huge pressures on all classes in Irish society.
It’s never been easier to argue for socialist ideas. The fight will go
on under a Fine Gael/Labour coalition also. Gilmore and the Labour
leadership must represent the working class in the same way that the
leaders of FF and FG represent the bosses.
The election will also see a variety of candidates
standing to the left of Labour. While it’s possible that one or more
candidates might be elected to the Dáil the priority has to be to maximise the vote against both Fianna Fáil
and Fine Gael, who represent the two right wing parties of the Irish
bosses. We would argue that the most important task has to be to arm the
Labour Party and the unions with a clear socialist programme. There are
no short cuts to winning the mass of working people to the ideas of
socialism. As such we urge our readers to Vote Labour, but to fight for socialist policies also.
