Contribution of the Workers Party of Ireland

Dear comrades,

The Workers Party of Ireland expresses greetings and fraternal best wishes to the communist and workers’ parties assembled at this 22^nd International Meetingand we thank the Communist Party of Cuba for hosting this important meeting.

Solidarity with Cuba

Our Party expresses its solidarity with the Communist Party of Cuba and the Cuban people and government in the face of continuing provocation and imperialist aggression. There is a long history of imperialist intervention by the US in Cuba. This has involved economic and financial sanctions, sabotage, assassination attempts, slander and misinformation, attempted invasion, covert actions and open criminal acts. The US blockade is the most enduring blockade in history and has cost the Cuban economy dearly.   The US cruelly tightened the blockade even during the global pandemic. The US government spends millions funding anti-Cuban projects designed to undermine the Revolution.

Despite these efforts the Cuban Revolution has survived. It continues to defiantly resist with the mass support of the Cuban people and international solidarity.

Despite decades of a callous US blockade, Revolutionary Cuba has demonstrated its strengths in health, education, gender equality, global humanitarian assistance, employment and labour rights, culture, art and sport. It is a strong defender of efforts to combat climate change.

The WPI condemns the provocations against Cuba, demands an immediate end to the callous blockade and defends the right of the Cuban people to be free from imperialist intervention.

Imperialist War

Expanding and protecting global capitalism requires massive military spending. The sustained development of militarism and increased military capabilities, the maintenance of enormous armed forces and powerful armament industries, the creation of military academies training the elite of client states, the establishment and expansion of permanent military bases across the world, are all manifestations of imperialist aggression. The US presides over a global armed force previously unparalleled in history.

The creation of new political-military blocs, such as AUKUS, and the expansion of existing blocs, such as NATO, together with the imposition of coercive measures against sovereign states represent attacks on the rights of peoples to seek their own development paths. 

The war in Ukraine occurs within the context of a particular social and political framework. It takes place in the context of the results of the counter-revolution in the USSR whereupon the US, the EU and NATO sought to enlarge their influence to the East and to the borders of Russia.

In 2014 the US-backed coup in Ukraine led to a xenophobic regime. Progressive political parties were banned and action was taken to restrict the activities of trade unions and attempts made to impose restrictions on workers’ rights to freedom of association. Russian-speaking citizens were targeted for discrimination with attacks on their language and cultural rights. Right-wing, overtly neo-Nazi, militias were permitted to operate openly and some were formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces. The new government was openly pro-NATO and in favour of nuclear weapons. Ukrainian forces ruthlessly shelled civilians in the Donbas area of Ukraine with massive suffering and loss. The actions of the regime were characterised by anti-worker policies, the banning of parties and trade unions and the arrests of communists.

The actions of the Ukrainian regime did not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin and Zelensky represent their class interests. The peoples of Ukraine and Russia have lived together and struggled together against fascism in the last century. Now, Ukraine and its inhabitants are being destroyed. The working class of Ukraine and Russia are paying the price for the competition between imperialist blocs. There is a serious danger of a more generalized military confrontation given the clamour for escalation by the EU, NATO and the US. 

In a spirit of socialist internationalism, the Workers Party of Ireland calls for an end to this war and supports the efforts of our comrades in Russia and Ukraine combatting reactionary nationalism and oligarchic governments with the weapons of class politics and internationalism to establish workers’ power and socialism as the solution to imperialist war.

While wedemand global peace and disarmament and an end to military blocs, we recognise that for as long as capitalism exists the reality of war is ever present. The struggle against the development and use of weapons of mass destruction remains a vital demand in the struggle for world peace.It is the task of the international communist movement to disengage our countries from imperialist plans and alliances. In Ireland our Party opposes the ongoing attempts to undermine Irish neutrality, including theIrish government’s agreement to the EU Military Assistance Mission to Ukraine and the European Parliament resolution that ratifies and endorses the decision of the EU and member states to “increase military aid to Ukraine”.

Workers’ and people’s rights

The continuing effects of Covid-19, heightened by decades of austerity and during which millions of workers in the capitalist world have been exposed to risk in the pursuit of profit; extreme weather events causing droughts, floods, wildfires and storms which disproportionately impact the poor and marginalised;domestic and global poverty; attacks on the social and economic conditions of workers and their families; high-rents, homelessness and hunger are constant reminders of the problems which continue to confront the working class and the peoples of the world. These are deeply rooted in the continuing encroachment of monopoly capital into all sectors of the economy and social life. 

in Ireland thousands live in poverty and many of those are the so-called “working poor” unable to live and feed their families although in employment. Women, in particular,often have to work in low-paid precarious jobs. Single parents, predominantly women, face some of the highest childcare costs in Europe. Our society is characterised by massive and pervasive social and economic inequality, exploitation and oppression, with massive inequality in wealth between the working class and those who own and control society’s economic resources. 

Housing, health, education and social services are under attack.Work is low paid, precarious and casualised.Wages are in decline. The cost-of-living crisis continues to escalate.The gains and achievements fought for and attained by workers over generations are being undermined and reversed.

The capitalist class continues to pursue its relentless agenda of privatisation. Increasingly, important sectors of the economy: education, healthcare, energy, transport, communications, water and state infrastructure are targeted for transfer from state ownership to private control. The vitally important health and social care sectors are under-funded and under persistent attack. 

In Northern Ireland sectarianism runs deep though public and private life. It is institutionalised in the apparatus of government. It can only be tackled by a comprehensive campaign against sectarianism on all fronts. The various nationalist forces, orange and green, are determined to press forward with their divisive agendas and are prepared to sacrifice the principle of workers’ unity and class struggle to serve their communal ends.

While workers in Ireland are taking to the streets in huge numbers to protest against the current cost-of-living crisis, a large section of the bourgeoisie and its allies are engaged in the promotion of divisive and sectarian bourgeois nationalist agendas (British and Irish) in an attempt to divert workers from the class struggle.  

The contradictions of capitalism are aggravated to an extreme at the highest stage of its development.  The response of the bourgeoisie, compelled to take measures to reinforce its threatened positions, has been to impose savage austerity measures, attack labour, social and democratic rights, undermine the living standards of working people,dismantle and privatise public services, increasing exploitation and deepening inequality. 

These policies which impact on virtually every area of life - employment; social protection; health; education; and the provision of public services have dealt a vicious blow to working people.  But the world has witnessed mobilisation and resistance in the form of strikes, occupations, mass rallies and protests, often in the face of state violence and repression.

Fascism

The growing threat of fascism requires a response. Fascism does not exist in isolation from capitalism, it is a particular manifestation of modern monopoly capitalism under certain conditions. It is created by and is a product of capitalism. It does not aim at replacing capitalism but seeks to preserve the social order based on exploitation. It can only be resisted and defeated by the united actions of a strong proletarian class force.

Anti-communism

Simultaneously there is a growing ideological attack encompassing a vicious anti-communist campaign designed to rewrite history and obliterate the achievements of the socialist project. The ideological struggle is sharpening and current developments bring yet new conditions for building class consciousness and preparing workers for struggle.

Our Party stands in firm opposition to those forces, including the European Union, which seek to undermine, distort or diminish the many achievements and gains of workers under socialism, which seek to destroy the symbols and parties of socialism, which promote the poison of anti-communism and which seek to deny the revolutionary force of scientific socialism and class struggle. The Soviet Union and the Socialist countries organised society for the advancement of the proletariat, not for private enrichment or capital gain. The means of production were publicly owned and citizens assured education, employment, housing and medical assistance. These achievements must be acknowledged and defended.

The environment

The urgent demands for change to confront the existential threats facing the planet can only be delivered through a change in the system. Even as the overaccumulation arising from profit maximization is increasing CO2 production, species extinction, deforestation, ocean acidification, and the chances of future global pandemics, so-called “Green Growth” makes no attempt to question the socio-economic system responsible. Climate change requires system change and only a planned, socialist economy free from the distortions of the market, and which prioritises the needs of people and eco-systems, can lead to real environmental sustainability.

Solidarity

In recent weeks Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank have been facing an onslaught of armed settler attacks, military invasions and lockdowns. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their just demands, including an end to the cruel siege and blockade of Gaza,the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army and settlers from Palestinian territory, the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, the release of Palestinian political prisoners and the recognition of a Palestinian state.  

We stand in solidarity with the Iranian people who are currently engaged in their courageous struggle against the ruling theocratic dictatorship; with the people of Venezuela in the face of the aggression and sanctions illegally imposed by U.S. and European imperialism and with the struggles and demands of the Venezuelan class-conscious labour and trade union movement. We support the just struggles of our fellow workers across the world against imperialism, exploitation and oppression.

Socialism is the future

The Workers Party of Ireland faces the future, reinforced by the principles of Marxism-Leninism, committed to turning the principle of socialist internationalism into concrete acts of solidarity and articulating the case for socialism and workers’ power as the only rational and humane alternative to the barbaric system of capitalism. 

The Workers Party of Ireland greets the parties present in Havana, recognising the continuing necessity of the class struggle and a united working class in the fight for fundamental change and socialist transformation which remains an urgent necessity, for a rupture with the present political, economic and social capitalist order and the construction of a socialist world where the working class controls its own future.

Solidarity with struggling peoples.

Long live socialist internationalism!

Gerry Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland