Workers Solidarity Movement

Fine Gael and the Labour party are engaged in a desperate attempt to pass the Fianna Fail/Green party budget into law. A budget containing billions in cuts attacking the poorest sections of Irish society. A budget they loudly opposed only a few weeks ago.

The unseemly rush to have it made law before any election is held is because thay do not wish to be the ones seen to be framing this budget. The Irish media has broadly played along with the nonsense that the world will end if the finance bill is not made law. The reason is simple in the political, media and financial establishment there is unanimous agreemant that the working class must be made to pay for the crisis and that there can be no question of challenging the status quo.

Fine Gael and Labour want this particular piece of dirty work done before they come to power so that they don't have to feel the fallback from the unpopular measures, and can present themselves as the "clean slate" and somehow different from what has come before for longer. They also wish to reassure the EU , the IMF, IBEC and the capitalist class in general that they are up to the job of running Ireland in the interest of capital and that they are not to be feared.

This of course should not be news to us, but what is depressing is that sections of the left can still urge people to participate in that system. A system designed to facilitate capital, enforce its laws and defend its interests.  The government, the state and all its various arms; Gardaí, Judiciary, Department of Finance etc. are there to protect and promote the interests of capital and they cannot be used to replace that with socialism. 

WORDS: James McBarron

Background articles on Anarchism & parliamentary elections