12 IMCWP, Intervention by WP of Ireland

12/9/10 12:15 PM
  • Ireland, Workers' Party of Ireland (Official) Ireland, Workers' Party of Ireland IMCWP
http://www.workerspartyireland.net/ , mailto:wpi@indigo.ie

Contribution by the Workers’ Party of Ireland to the

12th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties

Johannesburg, South Africa, 3 – 5 December 2010

“The deepening systemic crisis of capitalism, the tasks of communists in defence of sovereignty, deepening social alliances, strengthening the anti-imperialist front in the struggle for peace, progress and Socialism”

Delivered by G. Grainger

Dear Comrades,

I wish to convey the best wishes of the Workers’ Party of Ireland to the SACP and fraternal parties and to thank the SACP for the organisation of this meeting and the accommodation and working conditions provided.

Last week, on Saturday, 28 November 2010 more than 100,000 Irish people took to the streets of Dublin in protest against the austerity plan proposed by the Irish Government and imposed by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The economic sovereignty of the Irish state is under open attack.

In July this year the Irish government established the Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities. The purpose of this Group was not to protect the assets of the Irish state or to secure the interests of the Irish working class. This Review had a pre-determined outcome. The sole purpose of the review was to provide a political fig leaf for a policy which had already been decided.

The terms of reference of the review were to “consider the potential for asset disposals in the public sector, including commercial state bodies, [and] to draw up a list of possible asset disposals”.

The terms of reference alone made clear that the Irish government was planning the wholesale privatisation and /or asset stripping of the public resources of Ireland. This was confirmed by the composition of the review body. Colm McCarthy who was nominated as Chair of the Review Group had in 2009 been part of a body, the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes, which published a report on government spending. This Report recommended massive cuts in public service jobs and a 5% decrease in welfare benefits. In a speech in Scotland in January 2010, McCarthy admitted that the purpose of such a body was largely to influence public opinion and he stated that following a budget proposing cuts in October 2008 which were met by public protest and had to be reversed, the Irish Government set up the “arms-length” body in a “highly political exercise which was ‘Bord Snip’ … and nothing wrong with that, with the intention of preparing not just technocratic proposals but also public opinion for a better crafted set of budgetary measures in … 2009”.

The development of state enterprises in Ireland, unlike the situation in Britain, for example, arose out of economic necessity rather than political principle.

In Ireland the decision to create Bord na Móna, Aer Lingus or the ESB arose not out of government ideological conviction but from economic necessity because the private sector either could not or would not take up the challenge. The creation of the ACC and the ICC arose from the same economic imperative. An Bord Gáis and CIE were created specifically to clear up the disasters created by the collapse of the private sector in those fields. There was no private company or consortium in the private sector prepared to take on or take over these sectors and the state was forced to act.

All our publicly owned companies, including those mentioned here, represent a real and long term investment by the Irish people in creating necessary and viable industries and services. The building of these companies took both vision and sacrifice by earlier generations of Irish workers. These national assets are under attack. Neo-liberalism and privatization have failed but still the capitalist class prescribe the same medicine - except, of course, that while previously this class opposed state intervention they now demand that the state bails them out on the backs and labour of the workers.

The current global crisis is not, of course, as the media likes to portray, the result of the actions of a few corrupt individuals. It is a systemic crisis which emerges from the workings of the capitalist system and its internal contradictions. Of course, Ireland’s ruling class was a beneficiary of the rising surpluses being enjoyed by the US ruling class in the 1990s. Ireland represented a good deal for American capital for a number of reasons. It had low corporate taxes (rates of corporation tax were dramatically reduced from 40 percent for the first half of the 1990s to 12.5 percent and lower in some instances), wage control expressed through a partnership process, active state involvement in attracting overseas jobs and was the recipient of EU structural funds.

While the largely unregulated financial economy was booming in the days of the so-called “Celtic Tiger” not everybody in Ireland was living the dream. In fact, the gap between rich and poor widened to one of the worst in the world. As one commentator noted “In the last three years of the boom (2004 to 2007) alone, the richest 400 people in Ireland added €41 billion to their combined personal wealth. Yet, somehow, Irish people went on believing that they lived in a relatively classless society”.

The capitalist class, the government and bourgeois opposition, supported by the commercial media which was a willing participant in spreading the message of neo-liberalism, now promote the myth that that “we’re all in this together” and are attempting to construct an artificial all-class consensus, undermine the fightback and to place worker against worker. The commercial media throughout the crisis has offered an open platform to virulent anti-state, anti-worker ideologues, propagandists and champions of private profit.

Simultaneously, the political sovereignty and independence of the Irish state is being attacked and undermined. The erosion of an independent Irish foreign policy and Irish neutrality takes place daily. The creation of an EU diplomatic service, the decision of the Irish government to permit Shannon Airport to be used by the US in its wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the unlawful “rendition” of prisoners for torture and inhuman treatment are a blatant insult to the Irish people. The US military has a permanent presence in Shannon Airport and it has cost the Irish people approximately 10 million Euro over the last few years to protect it.

The driving force behind these wars is the US/EU/NATO military industrial complex and the Irish bourgeois parties are determined that Ireland should play a role in these imperial ambitions which are a disaster for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and which impoverish the people of Ireland, Europe and the US. NATO is an aggressive military alliance representing the extension of US military power and acting exclusively in the interests of imperialism. The history of NATO cannot be separated from the history of imperialism and war. During the Cold War NATO was a military instrument of imperialism amounting to a permanent threat to the peoples of the world who were building socialism. NATO promotes the militarisation of Europe, the continuation of the arms race and increases the threat of war and nuclear terror. NATO, throughout its history, and today, has been responsible for war, terror, death and destruction, most recently in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Ireland the pro-imperialist bourgeois parties desire the integration of Ireland into US/EU/NATO structures. In 1999 the Helsinki European Council agreed “Headline Goals” requiring Member States to contribute to an EU military capability to deploy a Rapid Reaction Force outside the EU. By 2003 the EU Battle Groups’ concept was launched to speed up delivery of the larger Rapid Reaction Force and the EU also decided in 2003 to launch a new Headline Goal for 2010 which proposed that member states “be able by 2010 to respond with rapid and decisive action applying a fully coherent approach to the whole spectrum of crisis management operations covered by the Treaty of the European Union”.

The European Council has also demanded that the member states’ military forces have a high degree of inter-operability at “technical, procedural and conceptual levels” and that a “commonality of security culture should also be promoted” and favours EU-NATO permanent arrangements which “enhance the operational capability of the EU and provide the framework for the strategic partnership between the EU and NATO in crisis management” stating that the operational doctrines of the EU’s military forces will be “in coherence with NATO”. Given the sheer number of EU member states that are members of NATO, Ireland, a country which is theoretically neutral, is bound closer into a military alliance which has a huge nuclear arsenal.

Irish soldiers and police must be withdrawn from Afghanistan or anywhere they are placed under these procedures. Irish involvement with the EU Battle Groups and the European Defence Agency must cease. The US military must be removed from Shannon Airport with immediate effect.

Imperialism continues to pose a danger to peace, freedom, the independence and territorial sovereignty of nations and the rights of peoples to freely decide their future. Direct imperialist intervention remains a hostile reality. The coup d’etat organised in Honduras with the active participation of powerful forces in the US, the staging of a coup d’etat in Ecuador against the legitimate and constitutional government of President Correa, the threats against Venezuela, the continued hostilities against Cuba and the provocations against the DPRK are clear evidence of this.

The goals of international solidarity, peace and friendship remain of fundamental importance. We congratulate and applaud the initiatives of the World Peace Council in its consistent and unrelenting endeavours for world peace. World peace, social and economic justice and the well-being of present and future generations will only be secured when imperialism is defeated.

Socialism is alive and creative. It is the rational social organisation of society for the benefit of the people. Socialism means peace, equality, a revolution in social relations, international solidarity, and a new international order. It means no less than the transformation of the world.

The October Revolution invested the workers’ movement with a revolutionary consciousness and objective, the function of educating, organising and mobilising the mass of the working people in the struggle against capital and the task of building a new society. It placed workers at the centre of political change.

It is the task of the Communist and Workers’ Parties to continue to assert the dynamic of socialism as a viable alternative world vision. It is necessary to develop working class consciousness and organisation on a mass basis.

It remains the task of the revolutionary parties to preserve the core values and principles of Marxism and Leninism, to apply those principles to present conditions in a creative manner, preserving but also encompassing the peoples’ struggles around issues such as gender, race, the environment, peace and democracy. Our parties must be centrally involved in the progressive struggles of workers, urban and rural, women, youth and students.

We must challenge the prevailing ascendancy of bourgeois ideology at all levels of political, economic, social and cultural life. We must confront and defeat hostile anti-communist propaganda from whatever source it emanates and to stand in solidarity with Communist and Workers’ parties under attack. We must actively defend the socialist project and mount a co-ordinated ideological counter-attack.

The fightback is possible. We need only look to the recent successes and victories of our comrades in the Communist Party of Greece. The workers of Ireland and the workers of the world have not abandoned their aspiration for a better life, for a world free from exploitation, inequality, injustice and war. Workers retain the hope for a society which meets their material needs but which is constructed on principles of fairness and equality. It is the task of the Communist and Workers’ Parties to ensure that in the course of the class struggle the working class movement goes beyond trade union consciousness demanding improved conditions within the existing capitalist system and demands the abolition of the capitalist system itself.

In Ireland the struggle for peace, progress and socialism will continue. We will continue to expose the interests of the capitalist class, to defend and expand workers’ rights, to resist the so-called “austerity” measures, to attack the increasing intervention of the EU and IMF in Irish life, to assert our rights to political and economic sovereignty and independence. James Connolly, the great Socialist leader and hero of the Irish working class, stated:

“The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. They cannot be dissevered. Ireland seeks freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland free should be the sole mistress of her own destiny, supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil …”

This is a struggle we have in common with our comrades throughout Europe and the world.

END