Socialist Voice - Number 115 July 2014

Socialist Voice

SV

Communist Party of Ireland Páirtí Cumannach na hÉireann Partisan Patriotic Internationalist Number 115 July 2014 €1.5

In this issue Anti-clericalism Page 2 Republican Congress Page 4 Workers in struggle Page 6 Water is a human right Page 8 Gharda Síochána Page 9 Réabhlóid na Fraince Page 10 Economics and the euro Page 12 Jimmy’s House Page 16

Reaction Page 10

HOUSING IS A RIGHT AND NOT A PRIVILEGE T

HERE IS not a town or city in this country that is not experiencing increased homelessness. Walk down any street and you will see at first hand the growing problem of individuals and whole families sleeping rough or wandering around the streets, as they have to leave a hostel or B&B during the day.

“The Germans were down and out, had lost confidence in themselves . . . had no hope of revival. Now all that has disappeared. There is no doubt whatever that Adolph Hitler has done some great things for the German people. Germany was a second, or even third rate power . . . now she is one of the strongest countries in the world.”

Irish Times 6 November 1936.

Homeless families are being placed in Socialist Voice sub-standard accommodation while rent 43 East Essex Street Dublin 2 allowances continue to be cut.

(01) 6708707 Meanwhile rents, particularly in the Dublin region, continue to spiral—up 11 per cent in 2013 alone—beyond the reach of thousands of people seeking a roof over their heads. continued overleaf

Ireland Housing is a basic right for everyone. It cannot and should not be left in the hands of private developers or rackrenting landlords, who are all too willing to get rich on the backs of working people looking for a place to live. Twenty landlords alone receive €5 million a year in rent allowance payments from the state.

A recent report claims that one in five Irish families now live in private rented accommodation, with many of these reporting sub-standard accommodation as a major problem.

At any given time there were 75,000 to 77,000 people receiving rent supplement, about 30,000 of these in the greater Dublin area.

There are about 100,000 people on the housing list at present, meaning that 5,000 houses or flats would have to be built every year for the next twenty years. In fact Dublin City Council built a grand total of 29 houses in 2013.

If we look at the figures for home ownership in 1961 we see that only 25 per cent of the population in urban areas lived in private housing; by 1986 this figure had trebled to 75 per cent.

This has been a deliberate policy by the state to force people into private home ownership, thereby shackling them with massive lifelong debt, but is also a source of massive and steady profits, enriching the banks and finance houses.

The talk about building more “social housing” misses the essential point that under the existing economic system, basic human needs—for shelter, food, water, and medical services—are being and will continue to be commodified and privatised.

Housing is a right, and it is the responsibility of the state to provide decent housing for everyone. It is not acceptable that homes are reduced to a commodity that only those who can afford it can avail of.

The state will take notice of the housing crisis only when we stop reducing the crisis to a demand for social housing and instead claim housing as a right, not as some economic privilege.

[EMC]

Socialist Voice page 2

The anti-clericalism of the chattering classes

T

HE RECENT revelations regarding the finding of up to eight hundred infant bodies buried in what were the grounds of a children’s home in Co. Galway hit the headlines and led to much ill-informed speculation, spurring renewed anti-clericalism by the establishment media.

While the numbers and the causes of death are still not clear, this has not prevented the state-controlled RTE and the corporate media from engaging in wild speculation.

The churches, both Catholic and Protestant, certainly have much to be held accountable for over the decades, including the protection of childabusing clerics and others in authority, the savage abuse meted out daily in industrial schools, and their control of children’s homes, such as the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam and Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast.

But what is missing is any criticism of the ideological and political role allocated to the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, north and south, by the Free State government in the South and by the Orange state in the North.

The Free State government instituted a policy—carried on by

Fianna Fáil and all other governments—of handing over complete control of education, health and social services to religious institutions. This control spread beyond these central areas into culture, sports, and practically every other aspect of people’s lives.

They adopted the instruments of control established by the British state to control the people. For centuries the British government in Ireland used religious tensions to sow division and prevent the emergence of a united opposition to occupation and colonialism.

The Catholic seminary at Maynooth was established by the British state in 1795 to ensure that Catholic priests would be trained under their influence and control, rather than in Spain or France, Britain’s traditional enemies— particularly France after the Revolution, where democratic ideas had developed and had become a powerful force. This ensured that by the mid-1800s British-approved Catholic clergy and hierarchy had secured a firm grip. After the Great Famine of 1845–1852 this grip was tightened even further.

Mainly, though not exclusively, operating in the north of the country, the Orange Order was established in 1795 and encouraged by the British so as to shackle the Protestant people

St. Patrick’s Seminary, Maynooth, Co. Kildare Designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin

and to secure the domination of the established church, allowing them to whip into line all dissenting congregations and winning the allegiance of sections of the Protestant people with beneficial contracts for supplying the burgeoning British empire.

Orangeism was not just for oppressing Catholics but also for controlling the Protestant people. All local lodges had to have the Protestant clergy as part of their management structures. At the annual 12th of July celebrations the platforms were dominated by the local clerics, rubbing shoulders with Stormont politicians and Orange bosses. When the Northern statelet was established in 1921 all social, cultural and sports events had to conform to the Protestant and Orange ethos.

Unionism was happy to see education under the control of the Catholic Church in the North, as it knew that the church was only interested in producing conforming Catholics—as it did under direct British rule: it was not going to turn out republicans for the educational system. The Catholic Church did little if anything about the repression and discrimination against Catholics, as this reinforced its grip on the Catholic community. That is why the Catholic hierarchy had little interest in, and did not support, the civil rights movement.

When the British state formally withdrew from Ireland in 1922 it left behind a network of control, which was easily modified and adapted by both political entities.

The Irish Free State was politically and economically weak, while the Northern statelet, though economically stronger, was also politically weak and was shaped by what it considered the Catholic “enemy within.”

The Free State used the Catholic Church to batter down all and every expression of opposition and dissent.

Anti-communism took the form of clerical reaction, and the people’s religious beliefs were exploited for crude anti-communism. Under this ideological onslaught and the consolidation of partition, many ran for cover, including almost all trade unions, the Labour Party, and the overwhelming majority of republicans.

For decades the Communist Party bore the brunt of these attacks and the resulting marginalisation. Then, as now, anti-communism was not just for isolating communists but for isolating all the left.

The scandals that have emerged,

and will continue to emerge, about the industrial schools and mother-andbaby homes are a product of the class nature of the two political institutions that the British state imposed on our people.

The industrial schools were prisons for the children of the poor, established to oppress, subdue and discipline the working class. The mother-and-baby homes were internment camps for the daughters of the working class and the rural poor, many of whose pregnancies were the result of rape or domestic abuse, when thousands of young women could find work only as domestic servants in the homes of wealthy business people or were exploited day and night by big farmers who saw them as of less value than their livestock.

These institutions also had the political purpose of beating women back. Women had played an important role in the struggle for national independence; many understood that their liberation was linked to the achievement of national freedom.

The Irish capitalist class, both nationalist and unionist, treated working people with contempt. The mass media, which have suddenly discovered clerical abuse, were cheerleaders for past and present economic and social policies; they were promoters of the ideology that poverty and inequality were and are the natural order. None raised their voices, as it was not in their class interests to do so, when the Catholic Church was a real power in the land, when it was central to the needs of the ruling class.

And all this new-found anticlericalism is just an attempt to cover their own complicity in the reign of terror that had its roots in partition: as James Connolly put it, the partition of Ireland would lead to a “carnival of reaction,” north and south.

No, the Irish Times, Irish Independent, RTE and the rest of the establishment media can keep their crocodile tears.

If instead you look through the papers published by Irish communists since 1921 you will find many articles about the industrial schools, the baby homes and orphanages; you can read the sharp words, the passion and the anger against these institutions and their paymasters. You will not find crude anti-clericalism but instead the defence of the working class and opposition to the class war waged, then and now, against the Irish working class, north and south. [EMC]

140 Reasons to Feel Better Is this paradise by the DUP’s dashboard light, as we look in the rear-view mirror, are we one occasional explosion away from bombing ourselves back to the Stone Age? Your next-door Neolithic neighbour beaten to a pulp, the chip shop robbed with one confident gulp, Britain and Ireland are open for business, and capitalism never stops, While I’ve moved into the local charity shops, it’s time to turn off Hailo, Your World of Warcraft, and realise the lies, to wake up and see the sky, What’s been done, in your name. Take back the streets, play a new game.

The world will for ever be the same the same when we’re always content with the illusion of change.

We’re told it’s better so that it must be, Martin tweets for everyone to see.

One hundred and forty reasons for you to feel better Aren’t you glad you weren’t in the Everglades lobby reading a letter?

An Ode to Uncertainty Richard B Strabane I sing of uncertainty, of constant questioning, the physical embrace of doubt, a rejection of surety, and to condemn the fools who’ve figured life out.

I sing not of walking in my shoes, but going barefoot each day, I choose life without knowing the certain place, from where might arrive my saving grace, will there be money for water or coal to burn?

Who could help you in the economic downturn?

Each day on the telly, I’m told things are better, but up to now, I have yet to receive my upturn letter.

Am I blind and dumb to the world’s unfolding collage, the shuttered textile factory next door is surely a mirage.

For nothing is as it seems, in the land of the Queen, Cameron, and Coronation Street in the year 2014.

Venezuela: What’s really happening A talk followed by Q&A with Alvaro Sanchez Charge d’Affaires Venezuelan embassy to Ireland and the UK Introduced by Jack O’Connor General President SIPTU 14 July 2014 7pm

Liberty Hall, Dublin page 3 Socialist Voice

Our history

C

ONTRARY TO the common perception, history rarely repeats itself, and never in exactly the same fashion as before. Conditions and circumstances change constantly, and so therefore does the story.

Nevertheless, certain episodes from the past provide valuable lessons, offering important ideas or crucial insights.

Eighty years ago the brief but significant flourishing of a Republican Congress afforded us one such happening. Perhaps because of its brevity and an understandable but distracting emphasis on some of its more romantic moments, the efforts of hard-headed and pragmatic republicans and left-wing activists to build a radical, anti-imperialist working-class movement in Ireland have all too often been misunderstood and the reasons for the Congress’s failure misinterpreted.

Southern Ireland of the early 1930s was a volatile and precarious state.

During the previous two decades the country had experienced extensive trade union activity, divisive participation in a world war, Black and Tan outrages, and a bitter civil war. Many veterans of these campaigns were still energetic men and women in the prime of their lives, with recent experience of having witnessed and participated in the changing of history. Against this social backdrop, three important factors emerged to cause the organising of a Republican Congress.

The Great Depression, precipitated by the Wall Street crash of 1929, had exacerbated the already dire plight of Ireland’s poor and less well off. To leftleaning republicans and communists of the time, this made the case for building a workers’ republic not just correct but an urgent requirement.

Closely linked to economic depression was the threat of fascism then engulfing Europe and stretching its tentacles to Ireland through Eoin O’Duffy and his Blueshirts. As a former head of the Garda Síochána, and with contacts among the wealthiest in the country, O’Duffy and his supporters constituted a real threat to democracy and to working-class organisations.

The most decisive factor, however, was the rise of Fianna Fáil as a political force content to co-exist with capitalism and, by extension, with British imperialism. For a few years after the Civil War the IRA had acted as a common meeting-ground for antiimperialist activists. This began to change, though, with the founding and growth of Fianna Fail, particularly after it Socialist Voice page 4

Lessons of the Republican Congress

gained governmental power. Fearing de Valera’s influence over its members, the IRA leadership curtailed any form of social or economic agitation that might embarrass Fianna Fáil. By preventing IRA participation in economic struggle, the organisation effectually became, by default, fellow-travellers with the “Long Fellow’s” programme.

In an attempt to prevent Fianna Fáil colonising the high ground of Irish politics and defining the narrative around republican principles, leading left-wing republicans and others involved in organised labour issued a call in April

1934 to form a Republican Congress.

History tells us that the meeting convened in September 1934 to arrange the format of the Congress ended in a debilitating split. The slightly smaller faction walked out as a result of disagreements over organisational rather than policy matters.

The weakened Congress that emerged limped along for another few years, but in spite of displaying potential it never gained sufficient momentum to become a significant political force.

When many of its better-known and most energetic members went to

Top Shankill contingent at Bodenstown 1934 Above Boycott British picket

defend the Spanish Republic, the movement petered out, and by the beginning of the Second World War it had ceased to operate.

If the story of the Republican Congress were only of academic interest, or a source of inspiration for bringing a contingent from the Shankill Road in Belfast to a Wolfe Tone commemoration, then we might finish here and end with a salute to the past.

That, however, is very much not the case; because while times have changed, important questions faced then are still relevant.

The Republican Congress was confronted initially with two challenges.

On the one hand it had to define the stage and nature of the struggle it faced, and thereafter it had identify appropriate organisational structures for dealing with those issues. These are universal tasks confronting political activists in any era and are certainly pertinent today.

Defining the problem we now face is a critical step towards finding a solution; and pretending that Irish working people are not victims of imperialism (financial and colonial) is either naïve or duplicitous, or both.

When, in 2010, the European Central Bank blocked Ireland from imposing losses on senior bondholders of its bust banks, so as to protect the wider European Union banking system, de Valera’s political creation, Fianna Fáil, capitulated. In doing so it reduced Dáil Éireann to the status of debt-collector for absentee bondholders.

Furthermore, Michael Noonan’s boast last December that Ireland had regained its economic sovereignty was simply untrue. Noonan’s state will still be subject to two surveillance visits by the troika each year, along with regular inspection by the EU Commission to check on its finances. Dublin will also have to submit its annual budget to Brussels for scrutiny and approval.

Therefore, any analysis that attempts to interpret these problems as merely those of mismanagement, as distinct from a fundamentally flawed system, is consigning the people to something worse than failure, because it will simply prolong this failed state and its calamitous practices.

Significantly, recent election results show evidence of a growing realisation among working people of a need for deep-running change. No matter how one cares to interpret the large vote for Sinn Féin and independent candidates, the political landscape of Southern Ireland is no longer set in Civil War political permafrost. Fianna Fáil is a

shadow of its former self, the Labour Party is in disarray, and Fine Gael is leaking members to its rival, the Reform Alliance.

There is, nevertheless, no broadly based and coherent movement working for the type of radical transformation of society that is required; instead we have single-issue campaigns, radical independents, small left-wing groups, and the overwhelming presence of Sinn Féin. These groups draw the bulk of their support from working-class communities, and all meet a need in one fashion or other. Yet single-issue campaigns can be isolated, independents and small groups have limited impact at best, and Sinn Féin, if given the field, is vulnerable to making the mistake of believing that being in office is equal to the working class winning state power.

It is obvious that there is a need for a confluence of radical forces dedicated to the creation of a new and better society. Yet it would be wrong to call mechanically for a republican congress and possibly risk dong more harm than good. Time has moved on, and the very title may no longer even be appropriate.

A major lesson from 1934 is that good intentions are of little use in the absence of adequate preparation and consensus. A second lesson is that clarity on the nature of struggle is essential, and agreement on organisational structures is a prerequisite.

George Gilmore, secretary to the Republican Congress, wrote towards the end of his life: It was an attempt to gather together in action the forces necessary, in the situation that then existed, to create a movement capable of winning and maintaining the independence of Ireland as a republic. Like so many other efforts that have been made towards that end the Republican Congress was a failure. After a hopeful start it split in two and floundered, and still it may be that the theory upon which it was founded is worthy of some study by those among us who are still hopeful of achieving that objective.

Eighty years have passed since the Republican Congress was launched, and undoubtedly commemorative events will be organised to mark the anniversary.

Looking back with pride is good, but what is really necessary is that we take to heart the words of the veteran Gilmore and study the theory upon which it was founded and learn the lessons of its collapse. [TMK]

“Fearing de Valera’s influence over its members, the IRA leadership curtailed any form of social or economic agitation that might embarrass Fianna Fáil’

Appearances by Alexander Suárez Méndez, Cuban piper Many thanks to all the people who supported the fund-raising concert for pipers in Cuba at the Grand Social on 1 May. The support of artists who performed, the owners of the venue and staff and those who made donations is greatly appreciated. There was a second concert in Tramore, which was of great assistance also. The great news is that passport, visa, flights and all the other arrangements are now complete, and Alexander will arrive in Ireland on Thursday 3 July. For those who are interested in meeting Alexander, hearing him play and having a few tunes with him, he will be attending at the following venues and dates: Wednesday 9 July Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy, Milltown Malbay, Co. Clare Wednesday 16 July Clé Club, Liberty Hall, Dublin Friday 18 July (session): the Cobblestone, North King Street, Dublin Saturday 19 July (session): Hughes’s Bar, Chancery Street, Dublin Friday 25 July Joe Mooney Festival, Drumshanbo, Co. Leitrim Saturday 26 July Port Laoise, Co. Laois Sunday 27 July Canon Goodman Festival, Skibbereen, Co. Cork Monday 28 July (session): Kinvarra, Co. Galway Tuesday 29 July Scoil Acla, Achill, Co. Mayo Friday 1 August An Droichead, Cooke Street, Belfast Tuesday 5 August (session): the Cobblestone, North King Street, Dublin

page 5 Socialist Voice

Workers in struggle

Block a return to slave wages and conditions

T

HE PRIVATISATION of the collection of household refuse has led not just to chaos in housing estates with the duplication of collection services but to ever-increasing charges on working people for the collection of their black, green and brown bins.

Privatisation has also resulted in poor working conditions for the workers hired by the new private companies. Gone are the reasonable working conditions secured by publicsector cleansing workers.

Recently the management of one of the large private waste management companies, Greyhound, arbitrarily issued its workers with a demand for cuts in wages of up to 35 per cent and changes to their conditions of employment.

These are the real reasons behind the drive towards privatisation: increased profits and poor wages and working conditions in order to break workers. More than seventy SIPTU members are now on strike (early July) in defence of their wages and conditions. The company is attempting to break the strike by using scab labour. Messages and actions of solidarity with these workers are urgently needed.

Greyhound Waste is an unlimited company registered in the Isle of Man. Its accounts are not made public. If the owners are resident in the Isle of Man they pay tax on their income there, while under a double-tax agreement that Ireland has with this tax heaven only 12½ per cent is taxed here!

It will be your wages and conditions on the choppingblock next as the bosses drive workers back to accepting precarious employment and existing on starvation wages.

Margaretta D’Arcy sentenced again

M

argaretta D’Arcy and Niall Farrell have been given two-week suspended sentences by Judge Patrick Durcan following their conviction for “interfering with the proper use of an airport.”

In September 2013 both peace activists had carried out a protest by going onto the runway at Shannon Airport wearing bright orange suits resembling those worn by internees at Guantánamo and carrying placards that declared their objection to a prospective invasion of Syria. They were then detained by the Airport Police and handed over to the Gardaí, who charged them under section 4.1 of the Airport By-Laws (1994).

Since the conclusion of the case, Ireland's state broadcaster and our national print media have reported the sentence handed down to the activists and distributed a few selected quotations from the case. No attention has been paid to the highly important evidence presented in Ennis Courtroom of the extreme misuse of Shannon Airport by the US military, facilitated by a series of Irish Governments.

Full details: www.shannonwatch.org/blog.

Socialist Voice page 6

Bausch and Lomb sequel

W

ORKERS At Bausch and Lomb in Waterford voted last month to accept the deal proposed by Valeant Pharmaceuticals. The SIPTU vote was 563 to 107.

Although the union made no recommendation, members were left in no doubt that a “no” vote would close the factory, with the loss of all 1,100 jobs. The same happened at the TEEU ballot, where the vote was 68 to 23 for acceptance. In effect there was no choice: you either accepted or lost your job.

The deal means a cut in pay and the ending of bonus payments and shift allowances as well as two hundred redundancies. The redundancy package is restricted to a maximum of two years’ wages.

Part of the deal is that there will be compensation for the pay cuts, spread over two years, after which the pay cuts will kick in. The Government, through the IDA, has pumped a few million into the company to upgrade the plant. This will inevitably lead to further job losses down the road. In effect, the whole thing has been a win-win situation for Valeant.

The problem with the pay cuts, of course, is that although they are supposed to be 14 per cent, when we take into account the fact that there are many cases where both wage-earners in a family are working for the company, the household income will be cut by 28 per cent.

Likewise, where workers took on borrowings on the understanding that the company was regarded as secure employment (even by banks), given the length of its establishment here, they are now caught in a situation of onerous debt, through no fault of their own.

The capitalist system does not take into account the individual misery it causes: it functions in an inhuman manner and treats workers as no better than the capital assets of the company, such as the plant and machinery; instead of looking at workers as individuals it treats them as an amorphous group—a class.

There have been numerous cases like Bausch and Lomb where there is a company takeover. It won’t be the last. In order to recoup their investment, companies like Valeant operate as vultures. Instead of trying to grow the company and find new markets, it will recoup the cost by savage cuts in the work force and stripping the value the workers put into the company. In this way it will improve the balance sheet and improve the profitability ratios for investors.

“Cutting costs” is bookkeeper jargon for redundancies, pay cuts, and replacing a defined-benefit pension scheme with a defined-contribution scheme. The latter scheme has no implications for the balance sheet, as the liability is transferred to the worker. The character Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street gave a fairly accurate portrayal of how the system operates. Profits and share price take precedence over individual workers, who are treated as assets or liabilities of the company.

The bourgeois press constantly hammers home the message that the capitalist system creates wealth for everyone, and that there is no alternative.

A new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty, a French economist, has exposed this lie. Piketty is not a Marxist and in fact is a supporter of capitalism, but what he did was he took three hundred years of data from the main capitalist countries to see whether capitalism was working for everyone.

What he found was that capitalism is enriching a minority and creating even greater disparities of wealth. In other words, Piketty’s data bears out Marx’s thesis in Capital (1867), with the benefit of an extra 150 years of data.

Piketty’s solution is to tax wealth. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels had already attacked inherited wealth, but Piketty does not acknowledge this. Even capitalists like Warren Buffet are so embarrassed about how little tax they pay that they have resorted to giving money to charities. (This usually earns them tax relief.)

Trying to tax wealth is hardly going to be a runner when the state acts to support the capitalist system through its laws, courts, and state institutions. Looking at Ireland, most of the taxes are from income tax or consumption taxes, such as VAT. There are no taxes on assets, only on the gains from the disposal of assets. A whole industry of tax planners exists to minimise the impact even these meagre taxes have on assets. Trying to reform capitalism through taxation will not be effective.

One of the main pluses of Piketty’s book is that it brings economics back to questions about wealth and equality.

Textbooks on economics had degenerated into obscurantist treatises on the technicalities of economics and had become disconnected from the reality of capitalism as experienced by workers in Bausch and Lomb, where pay is cut just to maximise a balance sheet.

[NOM]

Education under attack

T

HE AUSTERITY attack by this Government and its ally, the European Union, continues to affect the many thousands of our people who are still suffering not only austerity but, equally important, the anxiety and stress that this causes to the general health of our people.

But clear evidence (if ever evidence was needed) has emerged that now our children are being targeted by the troika, and in turn there is a double whammy for their parents, for those that can afford to send their children to third-level education.

The first report on the performance of the higher education system, 2014– 16, reveals the disgraceful statistics emerging that state funding has been slashed by a quarter since 2007/08. At

that time the state’s funding for thirdlevel education was 76 per cent; for 2015/16 it will drop to barely 51 per cent. All of us know that education empowers everyone and gives the working class the means to enrich their lives, be it academically or through sport, music, or the arts.

The present Labour Party’s minister for education speaks with the mantra that they have kept the wolves at bay, be it in funding for education or for social welfare. They have learnt well from the previous Government that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes a fact.

It is well known throughout the education system that the CEOs or presidents of these third-level colleges are also systematically attacking particular fields of education. If they

Books

help young people from working-class communities, then they have no earning value. Take, for example, the social justice courses in UCD: they are constantly being attacked, and the new president would like to see these courses disappear.

These attacks on education will continue unless and until our unions take a stand, not just at their yearly conferences but at the front line.

Unfortunately the unions are not bringing the people along with them in their battle, and they need to look again at their present strategy.

Communication and transparency are vital tools in the struggle to ensure that the continued privatisation of all aspects of the educations system is blocked. [PD]

Inequality to continue?

W

HEN GOVERNMENT ministers wax lyrical these days about “recovery just around the corner,” “green shoots,” and “light at the end of the tunnel”—beware! They are far from talking about a return to the “good old days” of the Celtic Tiger, when the Irish capitalist economy boomed (for some).

What they are talking about is the prolongation, if not intensification, of this era of super-exploitation, when the resulting super-profits are to be divvied out among our rulers’ parasitic sociopathic pals: the super-rich.

As the International Labour Organisation points out in a recent report, never was wealth more unequally distributed. At present 0.5 per cent of the world’s population possess a third of the world’s wealth, they say; and this situation is deteriorating. The ILO warns that we are facing a serious risk of a macro-economic recovery without a recovery of either employment or adequate salaries.

This is the kind of recovery that Kenny, Noonan and Co. are touting. Since 2008 workers know that the international financial collapse has eroded the greater part of the social gains made through generations of working-class struggle.

Our present rulers are far from planning to bring them back in the sort of “recovery” they have in mind.

In fifteen of the economically advanced countries the ILO points to an

increasingly unequal and unfavourable remuneration of labour, in spite of the fact that there was an appreciable margin that could have been used to increase the quality of jobs created in that period and so reduce the gross inequality that has in fact resulted.

From the ILO’s viewpoint, the prospects for the world’s working class look bleak. According to their data and calculations, in 2012 the number of unemployed was 197 million; now it has risen to 202 million—including 74 million young people—and in 2018, following the present tendency, it will have risen to 221 million. The outlook is clear: existing inequalities will grow and sharpen.

At the same time, more than half the world’s population now has no social protection, and only a fifth of the world’s labour force has adequate cover.

The ILO draws attention to the problem of child labour, an activity that has entrapped 168 million boys and girls around the world. More than half of these, according to ILO data, are employed in dangerous work, in mines, in workshops, or on farms, with ruinous effects on their health and danger to their lives. One out of nine minors in the world is now working.

However, the ILO sees as positive the apparent fact that the number of enslaved youngsters has been decreasing over the last ten years. In 2000 up to 246 million child workers were recorded. The ILO aims to eliminate this practice as

soon as possible; but, given the global reach of an increasingly profit-hungry capitalism, this is more easily said than done.

On the other hand, the ILO report points to the emergence of a generation of youth “marked by a dangerous mixture”: high unemployment, growing idleness and precarious work in the developed economies and an increase in the number of impoverished workers in the so-called developing world.

This is a result of the fact that capitalism in this so-called developed world can only reboot itself by screwing production costs (including wages) downwards to match those of the developing world. North Africa, the Middle East and the European Union (including Ireland) are the areas with the worst prospects in this regard, the ILO says.

These are thoughts to be borne in mind as Kenny, Noonan, Gilmore and Co. try to lull us with promises of pulling out of the recession and with the mantra that with a little patience and sacrifice the good ship Ireland will soon leave the harbour under full sail. Maybe; but the working class won’t be aboard on that journey to the promised land of macroeconomic recovery.

Employment, job security and an equal slice of the social product, rather than this diet of empty promises, is what every worker needs—needs that can only be met by socialism. [TOM]

Madge Davison: Revolutionary Firebrand Lynda Walker (editor), (Belfast: Shanway Press 2011 £6 (including postage) from Unity Press PO Box 85 Belfast BT1 1SR Cheques payable to Northern Area Trading.

The Challenge for Trade Unionism €4 (£3) Postage free within Ireland, from Connolly Books

Forward together Ireland New pamphlet from the Connolly Youth Movement www.cym.ie from Connolly Books

page 7 Socialist Voice

Politics

H2ours Clean water is a human right

W

HAT WILL happen when an unemployed worker, pensioner or single mother is unable to pay a water bill? Will our privatised water and sewage-disposal service, Irish Water, be willing to meet in full its obligations to all citizens? Or will it threaten to cut off the water supply of those who are behind with their bills?

If they do the latter they will be in contravention of a UN human rights directive that dictates that states have the duty under international law to ensure that all citizens, irrespective of their ability to pay providers, have access to clean water and sanitation.

In July 2010 the General Assembly passed Resolution A/HRC/RES/15/9, which recognises that clean drinkingwater and sanitation are essential human rights. Further resolutions call upon states and international organisations to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinkingwater and sanitation for all.

Thence the UN Human Rights Council affirms that the right to water and sanitation are part of existing international law and that these rights are legally binding upon states.

The surge in water privatisations occurring globally is a barbaric social regression that infringes, in practice, the socialist spirit and letter of this binding UN legislation. Remember that publicly controlled water systems began to supplant private ones during the nineteenth century in response to the failure of private water companies to make necessary investments and Socialist Voice page 8

provide services for all citizens.

Sanitary urban conditions and access to water for the mass of urban workers became possible only on the basis of socialised ownership.

However, in these harsh neo-liberal times, as the means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, new forms of private property are created through the transformation of formerly public and small-scale private services and industries into fiefdoms of the corporate sector. Thus, fields formerly excluded from the logic of profit—such as education, health, energy, and of course water supply and disposal—are privatised.

Suddenly, here in the “First World,” the resource war becomes part of the class war.

Since the 1990s, as part of the right-wing policy agenda, privately owned water systems have proliferated. In 1989 Thatcher’s government privatised the public water and sewage systems of England. Paris and Berlin privatised water infrastructure during the 1990s. The neo-liberal Spanish government, strapped for cash, has just announced the privatisation of 104 dams and reservoirs, all at knock-down prices.

The privatisation of water is often a condition of IMF, World Bank and ECB loans. Pressures from this infamous troika led to the establishment of the privatised Irish Water in the Water Services Act (2013). Irish Water has already contracted for the installation of meters and will install an optimal 27,000 of them a month until their

‘The privatisation of water systems typically leads to large price increases and the deterioration of infrastructure’

target of 1 million has been reached.

How does the privatisation of water and sanitation fare in other corners of the neo-liberal “First World”? Let’s go to the United States, where the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department may become the largest water system to be privatised in American history. Privatisation proposals are coming in as this bankrupt city cuts off consumers from water every week, targeting many of the approximately 150,000 residents who are behind with their bills.

To attract investors, almost 4,000 have already been cut off; a further 40,000 have been so threatened.

People hit by the cut-offs were given no warning and had no time to fill buckets, sinks and baths before their water was cut. In some instances the cut-off occurred before the announced deadline. Sick people were left without running water and working toilets.

People recovering from surgery cannot wash and change bandages. Children cannot have a bath, and parents cannot cook. Is this misery an omen of things to come in Ireland?

The privatisation of water systems typically leads to large price increases and the deterioration of infrastructure.

Around the world, transnational corporations seize control of public water resources and give priority to profits for their shareholders and executives over the needs of consumers. Poor and working-class districts in Detroit, where unemployment is almost universal, can expect to lose service if their municipal system is privatised. Waterfor-profit pirates tend to avoid such areas.

Any enactment of a threat by Irish Water to deny a citizen access to clean water and sanitation would be in direct contravention of international law, according to the United Nations.

However, as this UN legislation clearly contradicts the Irish state’s current commercial ethos, it remains to be seen what effect an appeal to binding international legislation would have.

In the meantime, as Irish Water’s metering proceeds, socialists must now press for free access by all individuals to an agreed weekly volume of water, based on reasonable domestic usage. Such a measure would eliminate the trauma of cut-offs and Detroit-like situations and would enable Ireland, unlike the state of Michigan, to meet its obligations under international law to all its citizens. [TMS)

Politics

An Garda Síochána scriosta le polaitíocht

N

í inné ná inniu a tháinig ceisteanna chun cinn faoi fheidhmíocht nó ionracas an Gharda Síochána. I gcónaí riamh ba “phoblacht neamhspleách” é taobh istigh den stát, agus níor leasc le go leor de na baill, an cheannasaíocht san áireamh, gníomhú taobh amuigh den dlí.

Níorbh é Martin Callinan an chéad duine a díbríodh as post an choimisinéara. Briseadh Eoin O’Duffy as oifig i 1933 tar éis do rialtas Fhianna Fáil teacht ar fhianaise go raibh sé tar éis tathant ar cheannairí Chumann na nGaedheal coup d’état a chur ar bun an bhliain roimh ré. Ina dhiaidh sin chuaigh O’Duffy i gceannas ar na Léinte Gorma, agus ba é an t‑uachtarán bunaidh é ar Fhine Gael.

D’eagraigh sé buíon mhíleata a chuaigh go dtí an Spáinn i 1936 le tacú le faisistigh Franco, agus níos deireanaí thairg sé do na Naitsithe go n‑eagródh sé “briogáid Éireannach” le troid in aghaidh na Sóivéadach ar an bhfronta thoir. Go dtí go bhfuair sé bás bhí go leor de bhaill an Gharda Síochána a bhreathnaigh air mar choimisinéir ar deoraíocht.

Ach níorbh aon dóichín é an coimisinéir a tháinig ina dhiaidh, Ned Broy. D’eagraigh seisean díorma ar leith de phóilíní polaitiúla a raibh droch-chlú orthu faoin leasainm “Broy Harriers.”

Earcaíodh iad seo ó lucht tacaíochta de Valera; agus cé gur throid siad na Léinte Gorma ag an tús, dhírigh siad ina dhiaidh sin ar phoblachtaigh agus sóisialaithe a chur faoi chois. Ba iad a chráigh lucht tacaíochta Chomhdháil na Poblachta agus an Pháirtí Chumannaigh sna 1930í.

Ba é Ned eile, Ned Garvey, an coimisinéir ba mhó a chomhoibrigh le fórsaí na Ríona sa Tuaisceart agus thart fán teorainn. Creidtear gur thug sé go

leor eolais agus cúnaimh dóibh i ngan fhios dá rialtas féin. Ba lena linn (agus Paddy Cooney ina aire dlí agus cirt) a tugadh cead a gcinn don “Heavy Gang,” a raibh an cheastóireacht ina huirlis straitéiseach acu. D’athraigh Garvey na rialacha inmheánacha sa chaoi is gur leagadh cúraimí polaitiúla ar na gnáth-aonaid bhleachtaireachta.

Fós féin ní fios go poiblí cén ceangal go díreach a bhí aige le lucht faisnéise Londan; ach bhraith an Rialtas gurbh éigean é a bhriseadh i 1978.

Agus, ar ndóigh, briseadh an té a tháinig i gcomharbacht air, Patrick McLaughlin, as a pháirt i gcúléisteacht le gutháin iriseoirí. Duine dá choimisinéirí cúnta, “Two Guns” Ainsworth, a d’eagraigh é sin i gcomhar leis an aire dlí agus cirt, Seán Doherty, iar-bhall den Bhrainse Speisialta. (Bhí sé sin suimiúil ó bhí na Gardaí ag cúléisteacht go mídhleathach le gutháin saoránach ó thús chomh maith le litreacha a léamh agus, na laethanta seo, téacsanna agus ríomhphost a scrúdú.)

Ar ndóigh, is í an fhoinse éillitheachta is measa sa Gharda Síochána an Brainse Speisialta. Bíonn tuiscint ann i mórán gach stát go n‑oibríonn póilíní polaitiúla ar imeall an dlí, agus nuair a théann siad taobh amuigh de dúnann lucht polaitíochta agus na meáin na súile.

Níl Éire difriúil sa mhéid sin. Is club iad baill agus iar-bhaill an Bhrainse taobh istigh den Gharda Síochána, agus tugann siad aire do dhroma a chéile. Is acusan is fearr a bhíonn na teagmhálacha polaitiúla nuair a bhíonn ardú céime ar íor na spéire. Ní bheidh an Garda Síochána saor ó éilitheacht fad is a bhíonn an Brainse Speisialta ann. Tá an mí-iompar ar fad atá faoi chaibidil leis na blianta fada anuas bunaithe ar chleachtais atá seanbhunaithe sa Bhrainse céanna. [CDF]

Dundalk study circle In recent months the CPI has held three talks for activists in Dundalk and the surrounding area covering class, imperialism and the state. Those attending agreed that maintaining and developing political education in the Oriel region was essential to building up the communist and left forces in the area.

It was agreed to establish the Connolly Study Circle and begin a systematic study of the writings of James Connolly, beginning with Labour In Irish History, followed by important works of Connolly; then the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin as study materials and guides to action.

To get involved e-mail studygroupd@outlook.ie. It is planned to meet at least monthly in Dundalk. page 9 Socialist Voice

Politics

Réabhlóid na Fraince agus a polasaithe eacnamaíocha a í Réabhlóid na Fraince an tréimhse staire ba mhó tionchar ar pholaitíocht agus idé-eolaíocht na hEorpa sna trí haois dheireanacha.

Leath tionchar na réabhlóide go dtí gach críoch ar domhan, agus roghnaíodh trídhathacha mar shuaitheantas beagnach gach náisiún a lorg neamhspleáchas, múnlaithe ar an mbun-leagan Francach. D’iompair Réabhlóid na Fraince an caipitleachas mar chóras eacnamaíoch go hilchríoch na hEorpa céad agus ceathracha bliain tar éis gur thosaigh an próiseas céanna ar an taobh eile de Mhuir nIocht le tús Cogadh Cathartha Shasana sa bhliain 1642.

Scaip lucht leanúna na réabhlóide teagasc an daonlathais, ach bunaíodh impireacht Francach in 1804 agus tharla athghairm in 1814. Ní mór anailís a dhéanamh ar na hathruithe bhuana a tharla do shochaí na Fraince

B

Socialist Voice page 10

agus sochaí na hEorpa chun iarmhairtí na tréimhse sin a mheas.

Bhí córas feodach talmhaíochta fós i bhfeidhm sa Fhrainc ó thús an ochtú haois déag, agus bhí dhá thriain den talamh arúil roinnte idir an Eaglais, an uasaicme, agus roinnt ceannaithe saibhre. Faraor, thosaigh córas caipitleach talmhaíochta ag teacht ar an bhfód taobh leis an gcóras feodach i dtuaisceart na Fraince amháin.

Chuaigh líon na “grandes fermes” i méid, agus bhí saothraithe á bhfostú ar na feirmeacha móra sin.

D’fhás aicme d’fheirmeoirí saibhre, an bourgeoisie tuaithe, a d’éiligh saorthrádáil i gcás gráin, rud a mhéadódh a mbrabús mar gheall ar a modhanna nua-aimseartha ach a dhéanfadh dochar d’ioncaim an uasaicme.

Chothaigh an aicme seo athchorraíl i measc na saothraithe agus na dtuathánach le linn na réabhlóide.

Faraor, bhí an iomarca tuathánaigh

s Maximilien Robespierre agus roinnt dá lucht tacaíochta á gcur chun báis, 28 Iúil 1794. Tá Robespierre le feiceáil ina shuí ar an gcairt, i gcóta donn, hata á chaitheamh aige, agus ciarsúr á choinneáil ag a bhéal.

[Bibliothèque Nationale de France]

sa tír fós ag cleachtadh feirmeoireacht leorchothaitheach, rud a chuir bac ar thráchtálú na talmhaíochta.

Theastaigh ón bourgeoisie uirbeach agus tuaithe go rachadh na tuathánaigh ar imirce go dtí na bailte móra chun soláthar saothair a chur ar fáil don tionsclaíocht, agus margadh a chur ar fáil don táirgíocht talmhaíochta.

Ba í an bourgeoisie uirbeach (lucht na ngairmeacha, tionsclaithe, ceardaithe saibhre agus úinéirí talún) a d’imir an pháirt ba mhó le linn na réabhlóide. Mhéadaigh líon na trádála eachtraí faoi thrí idir 1716 agus 1770 mar thoradh ar easpórtálacha go dtí na coilíneachtaí. Tháinig borradh faoi chalafoirt ar an gcósta Atlantach, ar nós Bordeaux. Dhúbail méid geilleagair na Fraince laistigh de sheachtó bliain san ochtú haois déag.

In 1786 síníodh Conradh Eden, conradh saorthrádála idir an Fhrainc

s Scigphictiúr le James Gillray ag súil le coimhlint i bParlaimint Shasana faoi Chonradh Eden, a nglaoitear Conradh Tráchtála na Fraince air anseo.

agus an Bhreatain, chun trádáil a spreagadh trí taraifí a laghdú. Bhí iarmhairtí uafásacha ag an gconradh don Fhrainc, toisc go raibh easpa éilimh sa mhargadh náisiúnta, agus thosaigh tíortha eile ag dul i dtreo an chosantaíochais. Ní raibh sé ar chumas na dtionsclaithe Francacha teicneolaíocht nua a fhorbairt chun dul in iomaíocht leis an mBreatain.

Sa bhliain 1789 bhí inneall gaile ag cuideachta amháin sa Fhrainc uile, rud a léiríonn an easpa teicneolaíochta sa tír. Chuir an mhonarcacht agus an córas feodach constaicí ar dhul chun cinn an bourgeoisie.

Léiríonn Bunreacht 1791 dúinn go soiléir gur réabhlóid bourgeois í Réabhlóid na Fraince go dtí sin. In ainneoin gur socraíodh toghcháin don Chomhthionóil Náisiúnta, roinneadh na saoránaigh ina dhá n aicme: gníomhach agus neamhghníomhach.

Tugadh “saoránaigh ghníomhacha” orthu siúd a raibh cáilíochtaí measartha maoine acu nó a d’íoc ráta ard cánach don rialtas, agus tugadh an vóta dóibhsean amháin.

Feictear tionscnaimh an Chomhthionóil chun tionsclaíocht a spreagadh trí shaorthrádáil a bhunú sa mhargadh náisiúnta, a thosaigh in 1789. Cuireadh córas caighdeánach meáchan i bhfeidhm, cuireadh deireadh leis na dolaí arda, agus díbríodh na smachta a bhíodh i bhfeidhm ar tháirgeacht ábhair monaraithe. Socraíodh na beartais

seo chun an bourgeoisie a shásamh.

Spreagadh indibhidiúlacht eacnamaíoch le Dlí Allaire, a chur deireadh leis na cuideachtaí móra a chur i gcoinne an iomaíochta. Bhí an ceart ag cách gnó a bhunú.

Bhain na Jacobins cumhacht amach sa Chomhdháil Náisiúnta in 1793.

D’fhabhraigh na Jacobins rialtas láraithe, agus cuireadh an cosantaíochas i bhfeidhm go forleathan sa gheilleagar. Theastaigh ó na Jacobins tionscal na Fraince a chur faoi smacht iomlán an rialtais agus é a chosaint ar iomaíocht eachtrach.

Thug an tAcht Loingseoireachta monaplacht iomlán don rialtas ar an earnáil seo. Rinneadh an rud céanna le tráchtáil iasachtach uile in 1794.

Bhí géarghá le soláthraí don arm, agus fógraíodh “slógadh náisiúnta” tar éis gur tháinig na Jacobins i gcumhacht. Ba bheartas lárnach de chuid na Jacobins é an maximum général nó uasluach ginearálta, a cuireadh i bhfeidhm ar an 29ú lá de Mheán Fómhair. Léiríonn an cinneadh seo tionchar na n aicmí oibrithe i gceantair uirbeacha, grúpaí ar bhraith na Jacobins orthu i gcomhair tacaíochta. Ba bheartas nua eacnamaíoch é seo chun bac a chur leis an bhforbhoilsciú.

Tugadh “Éirí Amach Thermidor” ar eachtraí an 28ú Iúil 1794. D’fhógair ceannairí an éirí amach “Poblacht na nDílseánach,” ach tugtar an Direachtóireacht ar an réim seo idir 1794 agus 1799. Dhaingnigh an

Direachtóireacht dul chun cinn an bourgeoisie, agus mhair sí le tacaíocht na dtuathánach saibhir agus an bourgeoisie uirbeach. Laghdaíodh ar bheartais chonsantaíochais na Jacobins; ní raibh saorthrádáil ag cur as do chách. Cruthaíodh monaplachtaí príobháideacha, a mhair ar chonarthaí stáit agus a raibh tionchar orthu ar bheartas eacnamaíoch an stáit.

Díoladh talamh a náisiúnaíodh faoi na Jacobins do na haicmí ba shaibhre.

Socraíodh córas indíreach toghcháin a láraigh an chumhacht i láimhe thart fá 30,000 úinéir maoine mhóra.

Ba thréimhse míshocair eacnamaíoch í an Direachtóireacht.

Bhí teannas idir na monarcaithe agus an eite chlé (na Jacobins agus na sans-culottes), agus bhuail géarchéim an tír in 1799: meascán de chogadh, spealadh tionsclaíoch, agus easpa bia.

Ghlaoigh an Direachtóireacht ar an arm chun cur i gcoinne na bagartha réabhlóidí, agus bhain Napoléon Bonaparte cumhacht amach tar éis coup an 18 Brumaire in 1799. ”Bunaítear an Réabhlóid ar na prionsabail a chur tús léi: tá sé críochnaithe,” a d’fhógair bunreacht Caesarach Napoléon. Bhí deireadh tagtha leis an tréimhse réabhlóideach.

Dhaingnigh riail Napoléon an chaipitleachais sa Fhrainc, agus scaipeadh ar fud na hEorpa é chomh maith. Bunaíodh Banc na Fraince in 1800 chun creidmheas a chur ar fáil d’fhiontraithe. D’fhorbair tionsclaíocht sa tuaisceart, agus cruthaíodh margaí olla agus cadáis. Bhunaigh Napoléon an “Córas Ilchríochach,” rud a chruthaigh éileamh ar tháirgí Francacha i measc na himpireachta agus a chur deireadh le himeachtaí Shasana ar an Ilchríoch.

D’ardaigh praghsanna, tuarastail agus rátaí brabúis dá bharr; agus cé gur bhain bourgeoisie na Fraince an méid is mó leas as, d’fhorbair tionsclaíocht sa Bheilg, sa Sacsain, san Eilbhéis agus i nDúiche na Réine i ngeall an chosantaíochais a cuireadh i bhfeidhm leis an “gCóras Ilchríochach.” Chuimsigh na tosca seo iarmhairtí eacnamaíocha na Réabhlóide ar fud na hilchríche.

[SOD] Foinsí Kenneth Neil Cameron, Humanity and Society.

Henry Heller, The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789–1815.

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848.

George Rudé, The French Revolution.

page 11 Socialist Voice

Economics

The economic philosophy behind the euro

I

N 1979 Margaret Thatcher was the first European prime minister to introduce the neoliberal agenda. She was soon followed by Ronald Reagan in the United States, and the European Union formally adopted the neo-liberal ideology in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

The agenda emphasised the free-market monetarist policies espoused by right-wing think-tanks such as the Libertas in Ireland, the Cato Institute in America, the Adam Smith Institute in Britain, and the Copenhagen Institute in Denmark. These are all funded by millionaires to promote the interests of rich people. The Republican Party in the United States and the Tea Party (where the Taoiseach attended a fund-raising function during his visit for St Patrick’s Day) also support these policies.

Milton Friedman implemented these policies in Chile when the dictator Pinochet was in power, arguing that inflation is always linked with excessive monetary policies.

To offset this he advocated cutting public expenditure and privatising public utilities.

These policies became known as the Washington Consensus in 1990, from the multilateral agencies based in Washington. Robert Gwynne, cited by Peadar Kirby in his book Introduction to Latin America (2003), described these objectives as follows: . . . trade liberalisation and easier foreign direct investment . . . Reduce direct government intervention in the economy through privatisation, introducing fiscal discipline, balanced budgets, and tax reform . . .

Increase the significance of the market in the allocation of resources and make the private sector the main instrument of economic growth through deregulation, secure property rights and financial liberalisation.

The agenda advocates free trade, and the euro is an extension of free trade. But free trade, or the euro, gives access for transnationals from the larger states to the markets of the smaller states. For example, Lidl and Aldi are grabbing a growing share of the Irish grocery market, and they are doing the same throughout the euro area.

The underlying assumption of this economic ideology (an assertion that is more like a mantra than reality) is that the public sector is inefficient and the private sector (the market sector) is more efficient. It is argued by the proponents of these policies that the state sector should be reduced. Yet the state-controlled French railway system SNCF is far more efficient than the privatised British railway system.

With the reduction in the role of the state, more of the economy would be controlled by monopoly capital.

Nowadays most branches of the economy are controlled by a small number of firms (oligopolies), which make excess profits for their rich shareholders by charging high prices.

These firms do not compete on price, because it would reduce their profits and consumers would be the winner: they use advertising and other non-price competition to gain a larger share of the market. They act, to all intents and purposes, as monopolies.

This ideology was written into the Maastricht Treaty in the form of the “fiscal rules”: 1 The excessive government deficit (excess of government spending over revenue) should not exceed 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Socialist Voice page 12

2 Government debt should not exceed 60 per cent of GDP. These rules were reinforced by a change in the German constitution that made it compulsory to balance the state budget. Germany got the other countries that use the euro to adopt the Fiscal Stability Treaty. Under these new rules (1) the deficit has to be reduced to 0.5 per cent of structural GDP (i.e., the budget must be balanced); (2) if the ratio of debt to GDP exceeds 60 per cent it must be reduced to 60 per cent over twenty years.

These rules were set up to protect the interests of investors who buy government bonds. These people are shareholders in banks that hold bonds—very wealthy people and hedge funds that manage the funds of wealthy people. The last thing the neo-liberals want is for a government in the euro zone to default.

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, formerly worked as an economist for Goldman Sachs. This is a bank that looks after the interests of wealthy people. Draghi is independent of national governments but is not independent of the ideology of his former employer.

Over time, these rules will reduce taxes and the role of government. The rich pay less tax so they will be better off, while the less well off, who use government services, will be worse off. This will cause a transfer from the poor to the rich.

The fiscal deficits, 2009–15 Following the worldwide recession that occurred in 2008, caused by the failure of an American bank, Lehman Brothers, all twelve countries that we are analysing had a fiscal deficit in 2009.

The roots of the collapse of this bank go back to 1985, when Margaret Thatcher deregulated the banking system.

The chancellor of the exchequer (minister for finance), Nigel Lawson, who introduced deregulation (the “big bang”), put forward the view that this was the cause of the crash in 2008.

The EU followed suit and deregulated the banks as part of the Single European Act in 1987, and the United States deregulated in early 2000s. The American deregulation was to lead to a massive expansion of mortgage credit, which was used to finance speculative house-buying and “subprime” (more risky) lending. This ended in a housing bubble that collapsed and caused the great recession. A similar bubble happened in Ireland and Spain.

We divide the countries into three groups, but this time the debtor-countries are taken first.

Fiscal deficits, 2009 and 2015 (forecast) In a recession such as the one that began in 2008, output falls; then spending, incomes and employment fall.

As a consequence, unemployment increases, so government spending on the unemployed increases, and tax revenue decreases. This increases the fiscal deficit.

Before the Maastricht Treaty (1992), European governments would increase their spending and cut taxes.

The tax cuts would increase take-home pay, and this would increase consumer spending, so leading to increased output (growth) and lower unemployment. This would counteract some of the effects of the deficit; but it would lead to an increase in the deficit.

The neo-liberals at the heart of the IMF, the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and Germany are horrified by this, as it might put the funds of lenders (rich people) in danger. Mario Draghi, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal (24 February 2012), “warned beleaguered euro-zone countries that there is no escape from tough austerity measures and that the Continent’s traditional social contract is obsolete.” The social contract means full-time jobs, which he wants to be replaced with part-time, temporary and contract jobs. This is the agenda of Merkel and of ISME and IBEC.

France will have reduced its deficit by 4½ per cent of GDP by 2015. It will have to reduce government spending or increase taxes. Its deficit will have fallen nearly as much as the debtor-countries: 4.5 per cent, compared with 5.2 per cent between 2009 and 2015. This has a major effect (reduction) on growth and on unemployment (increase) over the period.

In table 1 the deficits of the debtor-countries are shown.

Table 1: Debtor-countries Fiscal deficit as % of GDP, 2009 Italy Spain* Greece† Portugal† Ireland†(1) Average population weights, 2012

–2.5% –6.6% –1.1% –2.5% –3% –3.8%

Forecast fiscal Change as % of deficit as % of GDP GDP 2015 –5.5% 3% –11.1% 4.5% –15.7% 14.6% –10.2% 7.7% –13.7% 10.7% –9% 5.2%

*The EU Commission has given Spain an extension to 2016 to meet its deficit target. †Programme (1) Includes interest (about €2.7 billion) on the €64 billion bank debt foisted on Ireland by the Troika.

The EU Commission forced these governments to reduce their deficit towards 3 per cent of GDP (output) by 2015, causing austerity. Ireland, Portugal and Greece were put into “bail-out” schemes, and the Troika (ECB, EU Commission and IMF) took over their budgets and cut the deficit year by year to reach 3 per cent. The other countries operated under country-specific recommendations made by the EU Commission.

The achievement of the 3 per cent ratio took precedence over any services provided by governments. This forced them to increase taxes. Expenditure on health, education and social welfare was cut. This reduced spending in the economies, reduced growth, and increased unemployment.

In Ireland’s case, tax increases and cuts in expenditure of $31 billion were taken out of the economy in budget cuts between July 2008 and 2014. The cuts in expenditure hit low and middle-income earners most, and the increases in taxes were regressive, again hitting those on low and middle incomes. The rich got away unscathed.

Each of the countries had a massive increase in unemployment and a substantial fall in their standard of living. All this was to keep the “markets”—the seriously rich people—happy.

Table 2: France Deficit as percentage of GDP, 2009 –7.5%

Forecast deficit as percentage of GDP, 2015 –3%*

Change as percentage of GDP 4.5%

*Revised according to information from EU Commission, March 2014.

Creditor-countries Half the creditor-countries—the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria—had a deficit of more than 3 per cent in 2009; the rest were at or below 3 per cent. (Germany was at 3.1 per cent.) Yet the governments in most of these countries introduced “austerity” under the neo-liberal agenda of the EU Commission. The average drop in the deficit would be 2.6 per cent of GDP if the forecasts are correct. These governments, especially Germany, either cut spending or increased taxes when there was no need to do so; and Germany went so far as to amend its constitution to make it compulsory that it balance the state budget.

The debtor-countries suffered twice as much austerity as the creditor-countries, because 5.2 per cent on average is being taken out of their economies, compared with 2.6 per cent in the creditor-countries. So Draghi intended that his medicine was mainly for the peripheral (debtor) countries; but it also affected the core (creditor) countries, because they had right-wing governments.

Table 3: Creditor-countries

Forecast deficit as Deficit as percentage of GDP, percentage of GDP, 2015 2009 Germany –0.2% –3.1% Netherlands –3% –5.1% Belgium –2.5% –5.6% Austria –1.5% –4.1% Finland –2% –2.5% Luxembourg –2.7% –0.7% Average population –3.6% –1% weights, 2012

Change

2.9% 2.1% 3.1% 2.6% 0.5% –2% 2.6%

Growth in the euro area The twelve countries of the euro area had two periods of recession between 2008 and 2013. The first was caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, when output in these countries fell by 4.4 per cent (Eurostat calculation).

A second recession occurred in 2012 with a fall of 0.7 per cent and in 2013 with a fall of 0.4 per cent. This was caused by the policy of reducing the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP adopted by the Troika in the programme countries and by the country-specific recommendations coming from the EU Commission. The Commission showed at this point that the only thing that was important was adherence to the Maastricht rules. Growth in GDP and employment are no longer a priority. Now 2 per cent inflation is at the top of the agenda.

These policies caused a double-dip recession in the euro countries in 2012 and 2013. Altogether, GDP in the area fell by 1.9 per cent between 2008 and 3013.

Growth, debtor-countries The debtor-countries experienced a fall in output in most of the years between 2008 and 2013. Italy had a drop in output in four of the six years. Spain’s and Portugal’s page 13 Socialist Voice

Economics Growth in output (percentage of GDP), creditorcountries Table 6: Annual change in output (GDP), creditorcountries

experiences were similar.

Greece experienced a fall in each of the years, and Ireland experienced a fall in three years. Between 2008 and 2013 output fell by 8.6 per cent in Italy, 3.7 per cent in Spain, 23.2 per cent in Greece, 7.2 per cent in Portugal, and 9.2 per cent in Ireland.

The decrease of 23.4 per cent in Greece between 2008 and 2013 was the highest in living memory in western Europe. The average fall in this period for the debtorcountries, 8 per cent, was more than four times the average fall for the twelve countries of the euro area (1.9 per cent), as calculated by Eurostat. In the same period the economies of the creditor-countries grew by 2.7 per cent.

Each of these countries, except Ireland, suffered a double-dip recession in 2012 and 2013. (See note with table.)

Germany Netherlands Belgium Austria Finland Luxembourg Average population weights, 2012 Average growth for debtorcountries

Table 4: Annual change in output (GDP), debtorcountries

Italy Spain Greece Portugal Ireland* Average growth weighted by population, 2012

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2008– 2013

–1.2% 2.9% –0.2% 0 –5.5% 0.6%

–5.5% –3.5% –3.1% –2.9% –5.4% –4.4%

1.7% –0.2% –4.9% 1.9% –1.1% 0.4%

0.5% 0.1% –7.1% –1.3% 2.2% –0.4%

–2.5% –1.6% –6.4% –3.2% 0.2% –5.5%

–1.8% –1.3% –4.0% –1.8% 0.3% –1.7%

–8.6% –3.7% – 23.2% –7.2% –9.2%

Falls in GDP are highlighted. *Growth in Ireland is measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), which includes the profits of transnational corporations. The size of GDP goes up and down as profits are moved into and through Ireland for tax purposes. This makes the GDP figures unreliable as a measure of Ireland’s output.

France The French economy experienced only two years of falls in GDP and grew by 1.6 per cent over the period 2008–13.

France’s experience was more like that of the creditorcountries, but there was slow growth in the years in which it had growth.

Table 5: Annual change in output (GDP), France 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Change –0.1% -3.1% 1.7% 2.0% 0.7% in GDP Creditor-countries The creditor-countries only experienced on average a fall in GDP in one year: 2009. Germany and Austria had a fall only in 2009. Belgium and Luxembourg had a fall in two years: 2009 and 2012. The Netherlands and Finland had a fall in three years: 2009, 2012, and 2013.

In the debtor-countries GDP fell in more years than in the creditor-countries. Germany’s GDP grew by 4.1 per cent between 2009 and 2012 on the back of massive trade surpluses. This growth was greater than all the other countries in the euro area. These surpluses and exports give rise to increased output and lower unemployment in Germany; but they cause lower growth and higher unemployment in the countries that import from Germany.

Socialist Voice page 14

2008

2009

2010

2011

0.9% 1.8% 1.0% 1.4% 0.3% –0.7% 1.0%

-5.1% –3.7% –2.8% –3.8% –8.5% –5.5% –4.8%

4% 1.5% 2.3% 1.8% 3.4% 3.1% 3.3%

3.3% 0.9% 1.8% 2.8% 2.7% 1.9% 2.8%

0.6%

–4.4% 0.4%

2008– 13 0.7% 0.5% 4.1% –1.2% –1.0% –1.8% –0.1% 0.1% 2.2% 0.9% 0.4% 3.4% –0.8% –0.6% –3.9% –0.2% 1.9% 0.3% 0.3% 0.2% 2.7% 2012

2013

–0.4% –5.5% –1.7% –8.0%

Unemployment rate, debtor-countries In table 7 the unemployment rates of the debtorcountries are shown. The average unemployment rate increased from 7.2 per cent to 18.9 per cent between 2007 and 2013.

While in 2007 all the countries were close to the average, by 2013 there were massive variations between the countries. Spain and Greece have more than a quarter of their work force unemployed. Italy’s and Portugal’s rates doubled, to 12.2 per cent and 17.4 per cent, respectively.

Ireland’s rate trebled, despite the fact that about 100,000 people have emigrated since the crisis, and the Government has more than six schemes, including Job Bridge, for getting people off the dole and so reducing unemployment figures artificially.

But the real sufferers in this crisis are young people, as a consequence of the policies adopted by the Troika in Ireland, Portugal and Greece and those adopted by the EU Commission in Italy and Spain. In 2012 nearly half of all young people in the EU (45 per cent) were unemployed. Of these, Spain and Greece had over 50 per cent, Italy and Portugal had over 35 per cent, and Ireland had nearly 30 per cent.

Table 7: Unemployment rate, debtor-countries 2007 2013

2013 0.5%

2008/13 1.6%

Italy Spain Greece Portugal Ireland* Average rate population weights, 2012

6.1% 8.3% 8.3% 8.9% 4.7% 7.2%

12.2% 26.6% 27.0% 17.4% 13.3% 18.9%

Youth unemployment rate, fourth quarter 2012* 36.9% 55.2% 57.9% 38.4% 29.4% 44.9%

*Source: Eurostat.

France Unemployment in France rose from 8.4 per cent in 2007 to 11 per cent in 2013, but youth unemployment in 2012 rose to 26.4 per cent in 2012. This increase in youth unemployment is a damning indictment of EU policies.

Table 8: unemployment rate, France 2007

2013

8.4%

11%

Youth unemployment rate, fourth quarter 2012 26.4%

Creditor-countries Average unemployment in the creditor-countries actually fell over the period. Average youth unemployment was 10 per cent; in Germany it was 7.9 per cent, and only Belgium, at 22 per cent, exceeded 20 per cent.

Table 9: Unemployment rate, creditor-countries Unemployment Unemployment Youth unemployment rate, 2013 rate, 2007 rate, fourth quarter 2012 7.9% 5.4% 8.7% Germany 9.8% 7.0% Netherlands 3.6% 22.0% 8.6% 7.5% Belgium 8.7% 5.1% 4.4% Austria 19.3% 8.2% 6.9% Finland 18.5% 5.7% Luxembourg 4.2%

Table 10: Average rates of unemployment (using 2012 weights) Creditor-countries Euro-area average weights (Eurostat) Debtor-countries

7.5% 7.6%

6.0% 12.3%

10.0% 27.2%

7.2%

18.9%

44.9%

CONNOLLY HBOOKS Dublin’s oldest radical bookshop is named after James Connolly, Ireland’s socialist pioneer and martyr The place for H Irish history Hpolitics H philosophy H Marxist classics H feminism H trade union affairs H environmental issues H progressive literature H radical periodicals

Summary of unemployment data Unemployment rates were around 7½ per cent in the twelve countries of the euro zone in 2007, but there was a massive divergence by 2012 and 2013. The average total unemployment rate in the debtor-countries was three times the rate in the creditor-countries in 2013, while youth unemployment in the debtor-countries was more than four times the rate in the creditor-countries. This is a scandal.

Conclusion This article shows that ordinary people in the peripheral countries had to endure massive hardship in recent years.

In Ireland there were cuts to government services, such as education, health, and social welfare, and increased taxes, such as the universal social charge, property tax, and water tax. Workers’ wages were cut throughout the periphery.

Output fell and unemployment rose dramatically, especially for young people. At this point the EU Commission is offering a “youth guarantee” of training, whereas it was responsible for destroying millions of jobs in Europe since 2007.

The crisis in 2008 was a crisis of financial capital, which occurred because of the deregulation of banks in Britain in 1985, followed by the deregulation of banks in Europe under the Single European Act and then in the United States in the early 2000s. Deregulation meant that retail banks became casino banks, and this led to the crash.

The EU was partly responsible for the crisis in 2008. It imposed “austerity” after 2008, and ordinary people have had to bear the burden of its mistakes.

And the crisis is not over in Ireland, as the Government still has to reduce the deficit by approximately €4 billion between 2016 and 2018. So austerity will continue until then.[KC]

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page 15 Socialist Voice

Politics

Cinema

The Hall that Jimmy built

J

Deported Jimmy Gralton An Undesirable Alien

by Des Guckian, first published in 1986, has been re-printed by the Communist Party of Ireland and is available from Connolly Books, 43 East Essex Street Dublin 2 01-6708707 connollybooks @eircom.net

AMES GRALTON was the only Irish person (so far) to be deported from the country of his birth as an undesirable alien.

The deportation was ordered on the grounds of dubious logic and equally dubious legality, which claimed that because he had adopted American citizenship he was a foreigner.

Gralton’s story is told in Ken Loach’s film Jimmy’s Hall, with many vignettes of life in 1930s Ireland. In the 1920s and early 30s the counter-revolution of 1922 was enforced by the guns of the Free State army, the batons of the Garda Síochána, the excommunication threats of the Catholic Church, the credit control of the gombeen-men, and later the knuckledusters of the Blueshirts.

Republicans were forced to emigrate in their thousands to avoid repression and planned discrimination in employment. It was a period of utter confusion in the republican movement, and of Fianna Fáil opportunism, which eventually led down the slippery slope to full collaboration with imperialism.

The film touches on many aspects of life at the time, such as the lack of recreation facilities as well as unemployment and the puritanism of the time (which, let us not forget, permeated all of society, including the working class). Dancing at crossroads, a traditional communal pastime, was liable to be broken up by moralityenforcers armed with nasty clubs, on the grounds that such events were “occasions of sin.”

The Catholic Church had played a leading part in the destruction of the incipient republic in 1922 and had strengthened its position in 1929 with

Socialist Voice page 16

huge ceremonies celebrating the centenary of Catholic Emancipation.

Then came the Eucharistic Congress of 1932, a display of ecclesiastical triumphalism that exploited the religious beliefs of the majority to fortify the established social order. Indeed it was believed by some that religion and nationality were coterminous, or ought to be.

There were, of course, such priests as Father Michael O’Flanagan, who supported republicanism in Ireland and in Spain, but they were a small minority.

Some aspects of the period will appear both funny and scary to the present generation, such as the campaign against jazz. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in that campaign, although most of them probably had never heard jazz.

Other events are recalled in the film, such as the “outdoor relief riots” of 1932 in Belfast. This was a campaign for an increase in the dole, in which communists played a leading role and which united Catholic and Protestant workers—something that terrified the Orange oligarchy. It is suggested that the exclusion of the English communist trade union leader Tom Mann from Northern Ireland and his “extradition” to Britain put the idea of expelling Gralton from Ireland into the minds of his enemies.

The question arises, Why was James Gralton (1886–1945) such a hate figure for the powers that be? Fianna Fáil could handle radicals; de Valera had a few around him (mainly female), for a while at least. Gralton was a communist, in ideology and affiliation, and a communist known, liked and respected in his own community of

small farmers and agricultural labourers. Worse, he had renovated the Pearse-Connolly Hall in Effrinagh, five miles from Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, not merely as a meeting-place or a recreation hall but as a centre for adult education. Now, that was really dangerous. (At about the same time the communist professor of Greek at University College, Galway, George Thomson, pioneered extra-mural courses open to all in Irish towns. That scheme too came under suspicion and was eventually terminated, and a sigh of relief no doubt went up from supporters of the ruling class when he returned to his native England in 1934.)

This is one of Ken Loach’s best films.

He is a brilliant film-maker, though his brilliance is sometimes dimmed by his ultra-leftist prejudice against organised communism. This film is free of that.

Even his distinctive discussion scenes in Jimmy’s Hall are, for once, realistic and untiring.

On his return to Ireland in 1932 Gralton joined the Leitrim Revolutionary Workers’ Group. These groups were the successors of the first Communist Party of Ireland of 1921–23 and became the core of the Communist Party refounded in 1933 under the leadership of Young Jim Larkin and Seán Murray. From his deportation to his 1945 death from cancer in New York, Gralton was an active member of the Communist Party of the USA. He became a trade union organiser and was involved in fundraising for the International Brigades in Spain.

Irish communists and the left in general belong to a great native tradition, in which Jim Gralton is a shining light. [CDF]