Workers Solidarity Movement

As temperatures drop and household energy bills soar again this autumn, the PR battle to privatise our energy infrastructure is just heating up. The IMF/EU claim that competition, the favourite euphemism for privatisation, will lower costs for consumers. The Government claims, as usual, that it has no choice but to do what its overlords instruct. So now seems like a good time to observe how that privatisation has been working out for our nearest neighbours in the UK.

Months of intense resistance by ordinary people in Greece appear to have resulted in a partial victory. The EU crisis summit conceded that bond holders be forced to shoulder 50% of their losses. This did not come easy, Greek workers have staged several general strikes and Athens has seen day after day of large scale rioting.

The contrast with Ireland is clear. Here the union leadership called off token resistance in the first months of the crisis and workers passively marched, shrugged their shoulders and went home. As a result the ordinary Irish worker alone, the majority of 'the 99%', have shouldered all the costs. Bond holders will scontinue to have their failed gambles covered. Next week alone another 700 million will be handed over to the Irish & global 1% to cover their losses in Anglo. This is our ‘thanks’ for being the poster boys for austerity across Europe.

Today Irish citizens go to the polls. Some are complaining that the election has been reduced to a glorified X-Factor.  We disagree, X-Factor is clearly better and here is why. People will vote in two referendums which threaten to change a lot and to select between 7 chancers for President who have between them offered much drama and little substance over the last weeks.  

(Image: wikipedia commons)

With Al Jazerra reporting that Gaddafi has been killed during or after the closing phase of the battle of Sitre Andrew look's back at the rebellion in Libya and the decade of co-operation with imperialism that preceeded it.

The sudden end of the Gaddafi regime some 6 months after the start of the Libyan revolt leaves some difficult questions unanswered for the left. Gaddafi’s determination to physically crush the revolt quickly transformed it into a civil war, a civil war that saw considerable imperialist intervention on the rebel side, intervention that was essential to their eventual victory. This and Gaddafi’s historic record led to some on the left taking his side in the civil war while other organisations tried to balance support for the ‘Arab spring’s’ arrival in Libya with opposition to imperialism. This question of where the balance lies between international solidarity with pro-democracy movements and opposition to imperialism could well rapidly return to the top of the agenda in a very much bigger way as the regime in Syria continues its months long military suppression of the democracy movement there.

(Image from B.R.Q. via Flickr under Creative Commons )

Anyone who has been active on the left and broader labour movement will have faced the 'million dollar question from republicans on the 'national question'. The question of opposition or indifference to the partition of the island is often thrown by republicans like a dagger in the direction of the existing left. In responnse many become either wedded to the romantic idea of the flag removing all our sins or face the jibe of being a ‘gas and water socialist’ or at worst a sop to unionism. It’s the type of choice you get at Stormont every four years where you get to choose between Coca Cola and Pepsi. Equally it’s the type of approach of the PSNI press statement that presents every ’dissenter’ from the status-quo as being wedded to physical force republicanism. But of course its much more complicated than this….

What are we to make of the global 'Occupy X' movement which has exploded onto the streets of cities across the world, turning public spaces into campsites of opposition? Certain things are obvious: Firstly, the fact that there are thousands of people across the world taking over public spaces to express their anger at the financial system is undeniably a good thing. Having camped out outside the Central Bank on Dame Street on Saturday night, I can also say that these protests exude a positivity and hopefulness that is so often lacking from the ritualistic parades of anger that make up most protest marches. But there are also, in my view, serious political problems that prevent the movement from moving beyond a 'radical sleepover' and becoming a genuine anti-austerity grassroots resistance movement.

Plans by the PSNI to visit catholic schools as part of a recruitment drive is a cynical cosmetic exercise designed to a camouflage a paramilitary police that has abandoned working class communities and continues to aggressively intimidate and criminalise any dissenters from the status-quo.

How can you expect growth without investment or stimulus packages?  This is question that is screaming to be asked from the European leaders and the ECB who serve up the same policy: menu du jour, austerity slop/soup.   

The policy in poetic form reads thus,
Austerity, Austerity, and not a recovery in sight.

Look at the growth figures, or should I say non-growth figures of the Gross Domestic Product for various economies in the second quarter and they only serve to prove this point. The UK 0.2% growth, the USA 0.3% growth, Germany 0.1% growth, the eurozone average is an anaemic 0.2%.   Top of the eurozone charts with growth rate of three times the zone average is Belgium.  Belgium has been without a Government now for 15 months. 1

Dale Farm is a halting site  which is also the largest concentration of Irish Travellers in Britain, being home to over 1000 people (about 100 families), many of whom are said to have their cultural roots in Rathkeale in Limerick.  It was started in the 1960s when a number of families bought the former scrapyard site and Basildon council granted planning permission for 40 houses. This happened in the context of broad progress in race relations and a brief breeze of relative official tolerance for Travellers, epitomised in  the liberal-sponsored 1968 Caravan Sites Act.  Basildon Council have put aside an £18 million budget to bulldoze the site and forcefully evict the families (a staggering figure when you consider that in 2010 the total UK budget for providing Travellers with halting facilities was less than 30 million).

Here we are at the end of the Summer and it’s time for the politicians and bureaucrats of the Eurozone to come back to the office and take a look at what’s lurking in their in-trays. By the same token, it’s also time for all of us interested in fighting back against a Europe of Austerity, to take stock of the lie of the land.