Fightback

Nollaig Shona agus Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Daoibh

We would like to wish all of our readers supporters and comrades all the best for the festive season. 2011 has been an important year for the working class on the island of Ireland and internationally.

The pace of events has been astonishing in 2011. It seems like merely a few weeks ago that the revolutionary wave in the Middle East and North Africa began. Mass movements of workers and youth challenged the old order across the whole region and the old rulers began to fall like ninepins. As Marxista and internationalists we were anxious to show our support for the Arab workers and to support the revolutionary movement. During the early months of the year we received a large number of hits from throughout the arab world. We received hits from 16 cities and towns in Egypt including 200 from Cairo, nine in Morocco, four in Algeria, hits from Tunis (100) and Gabes in Tunisia. We received hits from Tripoli, Khartoum, seven towns and cities in Saudi Arabia, as well as hits from Oman, Djibouti, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, Iraq and six cities and towns in Iran.

In total we have received around 170,000 hits on our website from every continent in the world.

We are proud to be part of a genuine international movement, the International Marxist Tendency. In the modern world the internet gives an opportunity to spread socialist ideas on a much larger scale than was the case in the past. No doubt James Connolly would have been in his element and Larkin also. The task of Marxism is to give a clear perspective and a political programme to the best of the youth and the active layers of the trade union and Labour movement. The internet eases the process, but it can only be an aid in building a revolutionary tendency.

The backdrop to events in Ireland and the North no less so, has been the on going world capitalist crisis and the special crisis of the eurozone. All of the old certainties have been shaken. The contradictions within europe are on a higher level than at any time since the 1930s. While Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan seem intent on trying to reduce the interest rate on the bailout, the truth is that the ECB and the German and French bourgeois have bigger fish to fry. Ireland's economic fate is completely tied in to the euro, for the good or more likely for the bad. Kenny has been a mere extra in the eurozone drama.

The big news in the first part of the year was the obliteration of the Fianna Fáil. The collapse of the dominant party in the state is a direct result of the biggest slump in the capitalist system for decades. The Labour Party leaders offered the workers a shield against the crisis. But instead they have become completely tied in to the austerity programme. We explained at the time of the Special Party Conference in March that given the economic crisis the only way to defend the working class would be for Labour to defend a socialist programme and oppose the austerity whether delivered by ine Gael, FF or a combination of the two. We explained also that the Labour Party would come under contradictory class pressures. Its clear where the bourgeois pressure comes from, the Taoiseach, the Fine Gael, the press and big business, But we also explained that pressure would come from below, from the working class, the trade union activists and increasingly from within the party itself.

The working class inevitably expresses itself politically through the traditional organisations, but that doesn't mean that the aspirations of the workers are guaranteed to be met, they have to be fought for. The best activists within the Labour movement express and generalise that pressure from below. TD's Tommy Broughan and Patrick Nulty have both lost the Labour whip over the past weeks. The pressure on Labour TD's to toe the line is enormous and any Labour TD "worth crossing the street for" would be appalled by the austerity. It is entirely understandable that  Patrick Nulty found it impossible to vote for the budget. But an important question to ask has to be, why put yourself in that place? There is no place in the Labour movement for "Independents", opportunists like the horrible Healy Raes. The working class deserve far better than that. The next step must be to build an opposition to the austerity. That opposition needs to be built around a Socialist programme.

Whose line is it that Labour TDs were expected to toe anyway? Not what Labour voters voted for for sure. There is a tendency in Ireland for TD's and councillors to split from various and quite diverse parties, the Progressive Democrats, the Democratic Left split from established parties and more recently SF have suffered a number of defections. This reflects the impasse within Irish society. The national bourgeois is very weak and dominated by the multinationals, the Labour Party is relatively weak compared to other Social Democratic parties in Europe. Ireland is no more independent than any other small country in Europe, as James Connolly explained many years ago:

"If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.

England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs."

The only difference now is that Ireland is far more closely tied into the world market than ever before. The list of creditors is ever longer, as is the list of debtors. The tensions within the working class are growing and the opportunity to buld a genuine Marxist movement is never far beneath the surface. The response we have had for this website reflects that also. We have had hits workers in more than 50 towns on both sides of the border.

As the economic situation in the North deteriorates and the cuts bite the toothless Stormont Assembly will be further exposed. As the huge strikes on October 5th and November 30th demonstrate the working class is prepared to struggle, what's needed is genuine socialist leadership in the trade unions and a mass political party of the working class.

Thank you for your support comrades and much better than that, help us build the International Marxist Tendency here and internationally. After all we have a world to win and nothing at all to lose, but our chains.

Last Thursday’s by election in Dublin West came down to a three horse race between Councillor Patrick Nulty of Labour who won and Councillor Ruth Coppinger of the Socialist Party who came third, while Fianna Fáil (FF) squeezed into second place after a tie for second and third place – on the basis that they had more first preference votes.

8 months ago Labour entered coalition; we have received this interesting contribution from Cian O'Callaghan a leading left councillor who led the opposition to that move which we also opposed.

The Germans, the Greeks and the other European powers are tussling in Brussels over the Greek crisis and the future of the euro, but what does it mean for Ireland?