The Dublin Central Local Elections and byelection Promotional Material – Ruadhán MacAodháin of Sinn Féin… Part 11 of a continuing series. May 25, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Dublin Central Local Election and By-Election Promotional Material.trackback
More from Sinn Féin. A pretty elaborate offering from Ruadhán MacAodháin of Sinn Féin, candidate for the local elections. As the person who very kindly scanned this for me noted, they like the “Dinosaur Developments” line.
As ever I’ll gladly post up any literature from left and center-left candidates/parties as I get it or as it is sent to me… usual address see email on right hand column.
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This leaflet reminded me of something that struck me while watching what I could of the debate with Christy Burke, Malachy Steenson, Maurice Ahern etc on the net. People (especially PSF) have been talking a lot about SMEs, and protecting them. What happened to the idea of the state building big fuck off factories? This seems a better idea to me.
I particularly like the bit about how Ruadhán’s first language is Irish and how he ‘speaks French fluently’ – copying and pasting his CV? what are his hobbies?
Seems like a bright young man with ambitions for a bright young career. Not too much visible in the way of, you know, politics, though.
Interesting that they are calling for “social and affordable” housing rather than council housing.
Mark P
That reminds me of the time the 6 Sinn Fein councilours on the Corpo had ‘personal’ business when service charges were introduced. I would hate to see it but i think the SF leadership might be angling for a ‘historic compromise’ with FF. Hope the membership dont go for this. I might be wrong.
That reminds me of the time the 6 Sinn Fein councilours on the Corpo had ‘personal’ business when service charges were introduced.
This was when?
MarkP: social housing is council housing, as far as I’m aware.
Seems like a bright young man with ambitions for a bright young career. Not too much visible in the way of, you know, politics, though.
Actually, he canvassed me (is canvass a transitive verb?) last week, and he was quite impressive: I hit him with all the reasons why I wouldn’t vote for him and good answers came back. He tried to convince me that if I didn’t give him a preference, an FGer might get the seat…… Didn’t really get started on the troubles, since I worked out he was 13 when the first ceasefire started; I guess at some point, there will be an SF where personal experience of that period will be slight.
Wednesday:
“Social housing” is a term used to include housing associations and similar operations. It’s introduction as a commonly used policy term in Britain coincided pretty much exactly with the end of council housing building and it was later imported into Ireland on much the same basis. Social housing formally includes council housing but is in practice a term used to mask the shift away from actual council housing.
As for the six Provo councillors, Maddog is slightly incorrect. When bin charges were introduced into the Dublin City Council area, two SF councillors were missing. This had been predicted in the Socialist Party newspaper in the run up to the vote as the negotiations that had been going on between the main parties were leaked to the anti-bin tax campaigns. At the time, the main concern of all of the main parties was to get the tax in without handing any of their opponents a campaigning issue to beat them with. No party would adopt the bin tax as its partisan property, and therefore take the blame. So all of the parties had some councillors vote for and some councillors vote against, but with a majority voting for.
SF’s contribution to this arrangement was twofold. Two of their councillors wouldn’t show up, while their other two voted against the tax. The two of the councillors who did show up then also voted against publically recording the votes of all councillors on the issue, a key part of sewing the necessary confusion.
SF of course openly voted for the bin tax in Sligo. And then voted to increase it.
Wednesday
I stand corrected, thanks Mark P, Social Housing is a sort of ‘ New Labour’ term IE we are not really in favour of old style council housing directly owned and built by the council, even less giving the councils powers to borrow money to build them. All a prelude to privatisation of ownership and buiding.
By the way, the Socialist Party paper at the time was called “The Voice” and the issue concerned was from January 2001. It accurately predicts what was going to happen in the Council vote and not because the author had developed psychic powers.
It does always amuse me though when I hear SF apologists deny this particular stunt of theirs, given that they had Councillors openly voting for the bin tax elsewhere in the same period.
No disrespect Mark P, but that sounds highly unlikely as regards the provenance of ‘social housing’. Internationally public housing and social housing are interchangeable and In the relevant literature the term ‘social housing’ very clearly refers to non private housing.
The Irish Council for Social Housing was founded from Irish housing associations in 1982. Doesn’t seem likely that that had anything at all to do with ThatcherismI note that in the UK the term was only introduced to cover council and RSLs in 1996. Again, unlikely to be a product of Thatcherism, and is much more likely to be a product of 1960s and 1970s debates about social policy, particularly from *gasp* left of centre and indeed even Marxist elements of academia.
So to be frank the idea that it’s either Thatcherite or New Labour seems entirely incorrect. It makes for good copy, but it seems completely wrong. As for actual council housing, well, I don’t know. There is plenty of debate, and rightly so, as to the best means of provision of public housing and council houses are only one form. One can see it as left-wing, which I do, but other forms of public housing can be equally progressive (look at this as an example of innovative approaches to social housing http://www.fashionarchitecturetaste.com/2006/11/islington_square_1.html). For example, I live in a house which was private and now has a mortgage through shared ownership with Dublin City Council. I consider that social housing and a step back towards collectivised housing.
And BTW, when pray tell can I expect to see said example of SP literature grace the Archive?
It sounds good…
World is right about the housing issue.The boss class and their pals always seem to be boasting about choice,competition and”shopping around” but when it comes to one of the essentials of life,housing,here’s your choice-privately owned,private tenant or social housing(council,affordable,cooperative).What a choice!
Having grown up in a corpo house I remember people complimentig our estate by saying things like “they don’t look like corporation houses”.What a compliment!
Cooperative housing is probably closer still “towards collectivised housing” and is huge in certain countries like Denmark.A few years back some people in Ringsend set up a cooperative block of flats in the midst of the “tiger”and got beautiful housing at a reasonable price.No landlord(private or state), and jointly-owned housing with an in-built social structure!Sounds left wing to me.
I too live in an affordable house and dream of setting up a cooperative housing block!Any tips?
As Proudhon put it” property is theft”(for exploitative purposes)and “property is freedom”(for personal use)
I think you’re right about cooperative housing. One real problem with affordable housing is that owners/tenants remain isolated, not from the community around, but from a sense of shared ownership with other in the community. It’s a subtle but important distinction. On the other hand affordable housing is a step forward from private housing, at least for me because of the important link to non profit making institutions.
On a more general note, we’ve now been canvassed by every party standing in the local election or the by-election, with the exceptions of the Christian Solidarity Party and the Immigration Control Platform. I suspect in the former case the lack of canvassing reflects a lack of an organisation while in the latter case it reflects both a lack of an organisation and a lack of bottle.
We haven’t been canvassed on behalf of every candidate however. We’ve had Labour to the door twice – both times on behalf of Emer Costello, with no mention made by the canvasser of Bacik or the other local candidate Regan for instance. I note that one because it doesn’t greatly surprise me, but it’s also true of other parties with multiple candidates.
Perhaps surprisingly, given that he’s a small party candidate, the biggest canvassing team I’ve seen around here recently was with Malachy Steenson. The girlfriend nearly caused me to spit out my Club Orange when she announced that she thought he was “a bit of alright”.
I’ve had leaflets from everyone, except Steenson, including CSP and Immigration tosspot – think he was delivering them himself, but by the time i got downstairs, he was disappearing around the corner. Every labour candidate for local and Ivana, all the FFers, , Greens, Paschal, SF – can’t remember my vote ever being so courted.
Wbs:
You may well be right that the term “social housing” predates the death of Council housing, but in Britain it has consistently been used by New Labour, and the Tories, to cover the replacement of Council housing schemes with allegedly “non-profit” privatised schemes, chiefly Housing Associations. The major policy objective of all three big parties in Britain regarding the remaining Council housing stock is to get it off Council books and hand it over to ALMOs, HAs and similar bodies.
This has a number of effects, all of them bad for Council tenants or people who need housing. Firstly, the tenants end up with less secure tenancy agreements. Secondly, they no longer have the same democratic control over their landlords that they were able to exercise over the Council. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, the whole transformation was a way of permanently getting rid of the (much more heavily rooted in Britain) idea of housing as a right and replacing it with essentially charitable provision.
Housing Associations have been growing here and British based ones have been trying to set up here. At the same time, Council house building has been very low for some years. The same process is underway.
I have no particularly strong opinions on the merits of “Housing cooperatives”, except to note that where they become widespread they can have something of the effect on nearby estates that selective schooling can have on neighbouring non-selective schools. In an Irish context though they are small potatoes. The big picture is the defence of Council housing.
Sonofstan:
I’ve actually had leaflets from every single candidate. Canvassers from every party and every independent excluding CSP and ICP, but not from every candidate.
Similarly, when I noticed the ICP leaflet on the floor I immediately opened the door just in case the shitbag who delivered it was still around.
Sorry to post three times in a row, but to be fair to SF it’s possible that they could be using the term “social and affordable” rather than council loosely rather than as a way of avoiding a commitment to council housing. It’s just a usage that annoys me.
Interesting though, that Steenson doesn’t appear to be bothering with this end of the constituency (Phibsboro’/ Cabra)- or is he?
Mark you’re two correct that there were two SF councillors missing for that vote, and they shouldn’t have been, but the rush to assume conspiracy behind an absence always amazes me. (Didn’t Mick Murphy miss a vote on the bin taxes once?) Of course perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised when it’s coming from a party who once accused another council member of faking his daughter’s meningitis scare in order to get out of a vote.
Their absence wasn’t decisive in any case.
As for the Sligo councillors I understand that they voted for bin taxes where the alternative was privatisation. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You’d be posting here about how their vote shows up SF hypocrisy on privatisation if they hadn’t voted the way they did.
Mark P, I don’t really disagree with you, but I think you’re shifting towards eliding cause and effect as regards ‘social housing’. After all, you’d hardly argue against using the term ‘socialist’ simply because James Purnell used it once or twice. I think it is entirely reasonable to argue against a dilution of public/social housing in the various forms without getting into diversionary and energy sapping discussions about such terms being somehow more ideologically loaded than they already or really are. Sure, there’s no doubt that some have run with the term, precisely as others used the term ‘socialist’, but that doesn’t detract from its valuable meanings.
When I see affordable housing, social housing, etc I know, as I think do most, that we’re talking about housing provided by state or semi-state or cooperative institutions. That it’s explicitly not private. Within the left there’s a good debate as to whether council housing per se is the best way forward, but actually I like the term social housing. I think it has a ‘social’ cachet that is a positive.
I’m right down the Glasnevin end and I haven’t spoken to a canvasser yet. It may be that they’ve called and I wasn’t in, though the other 2 voters in the house haven’t mentioned any canvassers calling either. It may be that the doorbell’s iffy! Lots of leaflets. None so far from WP, CSP, ICP or Perry. A lot of posted stuff as well as hand delivered.
Mark,
I think the “big picture(in housing) is the defence” of dweller control.
Wednesday:
Mick Murphy was once late for a vote on the estimates – long after the Bin Tax had been introduced. Of course every Socialist Party councillor has voted on every occasion where the Bin Tax has been proposed against the Bin Tax (unlike Sinn Fein). And Mick Murphy played a leading role in fighting the bin tax in Tallaght, unlike the local SF councillors, none of whom played any significant role in fighting the bin tax and one of whom told people to pay up in the local paper during the height of the struggle.
Nice attempt to throw in a red herring though.
The issue with regard to the two SF absences is not merely that they missed the most important vote of their entire council careers – but that it was predicted in advance that they would do so, in print. Just as the behaviour of the other parties in the vote was predicted in advance. Now you can take the view that the editorial board of the Voice had magic or psychic powers, I suppose. That would at least be amusing and it would be more believable than anything else I’ve heard from SF on the issue.
As for Sligo, I have difficulty working out if you are being disingenuous or if you really are that gullible. Pro-bin tax types used to claim all over the place that it was “bin tax or privatisation”. In fact pretty much everywhere where the bin collection has been privatised, the privatisation followed the bin tax and was not an alternative to it. The bin tax vote in Sligo was not on privatisation or the tax, it was a straightforward vote on the tax. And of course, the service was later privatised anyway.
The local SF Councillors came back just two or three years later and voted to hike the bin tax, to what was then one of the highest levels in the country. Entirely coincidentally they were given a go at the Mayoral chain in Sligo soon after they voted in the tax, the first time SF had a Mayor in the South for some decades and coming in a Dail constituency which at that time was considered a target for them.
Mark P
Re Post 16
I live in London and you have hit the nail right on the head. One of the secondary effects of Tory and New Labour housing policy has been to divide Working Class people on the basis of housing tenure. If you own a property you are a member of the ‘Aspirant Working Class’ and if you live on a’ Sink Estate’ you are part of the ‘Indolent or Undeserving’ poor. Whose kids no doubt have ASBO’s. if you are a tenant of a Housing Association or a private landlord you are somewhere in between.
In Economic terms the end result of 12 years of New Labour is 300,000 people on the waiting lists in London alone, thousands being repossesed and mass unemployment in the building industry.
Surely whatever your Ideology it is obvious that a way out of this is a return to mass house building by councils, who because of their huge property assets could borrow more cheaply than other bodies?
Mark P
Re Post 14
Dont let Doroty B know she might get all jealous.
MarkP:
The fact that something was predicted in print – so what? Plenty of things both right and wrong have been predicted in print about SF. As I recall you predicted here that the SF TDs would pass the CPSU picket at Leinster House. Even a stopped clock etc. The point about Mick Murphy is that councillors do miss votes from time to time, even important ones, and there’s nothing necessarily sinister about it. Incidentally, if it had been an SF councillor who missed an estimate “after the Bin Tax had been introduced” I’m inclined to doubt you would be playing down its importance in this way.
Mark Daly’s comments were made off his own bat and caused murder internally, though I’m sure you’re thinking they were some sort of conspiratorial kite-flying attempt.
whoops left out this part
you predicted here that the SF TDs would pass the CPSU picket at Leinster House which they didn’t
Is it not that traditional directly built state council housing is illegal under EU law? Thus, it’s state funded ‘social housing’ of which you speak of? Not really the Shinners fault, eh?
Wednesday:
1) The Voice predicted, in detail that:
(a) Some people from Lab, FF and FG would vote for the bin tax.
(b) Some people from each of those parties would vote against.
(c) Some people from SF wouldn’t show up.
(d) In the confusion a majority would vote the tax through.
All of this happened. This wasn’t some random guess. There was a leak to the anti-bin tax campaigns of the frantic negotiations which were going on amongst the main parties to make sure that the tax would come in but that no party would end up with the blame. Are you seriously telling us that you think that the Voice editor just had some kind of prophetic vision and coincidentally got all of this right?
2) I note that no explanation, at least to my knowledge, has ever been given by SF for the absence of its councillors, bar the meaningless phrase personal issues.
3) I note also that the two SF councillors who did show up voted against recording the votes of councillors on the bin tax issue, which was an important part of sowing confusion amongst the public on the issue. What possible reason could they have had for doing that?
4) I have no doubt that Mark Daly’s attempt to undermine the bin tax struggle was made off his own bat. SF are customarily a bit brighter than that in their cynicism and his open betrayal of the anti-bin tax campaign did SF no favours. Still, as far as I’m aware no statement was ever put out criticising his comments and the record of other SF representatives in the struggle is almost as dismal.
5) I note that you seem to have given up defending the shitbags you have representing your party in Sligo. Unfortunately, An Phoblacht has continued to defend them and Gerry Adams referred to their sell out approvingly during his cosy little “Business Breakfast” with the Dublin Chamber of Commerce when he was telling the assembled capitalists of Dublin that SF was a party committed to “pragmatic politics”.
You see, Wednesday, for those of us who aren’t busy deluding ourselves that SF is something it clearly is not and never will be, there’s no shortage of evidence we can base our assessment of the party on. Its actual record when it has had any influence has been one of bringing privatisation into schools and hospitals, fighting bitterly against low paid workers, bringing the bin tax into Sligo and begging the Chamber of Commerce for a pat on the head.
You have put forward absolutely no evidence to suggest that SF somehow, on principle, wouldn’t pull a fast one on the bin tax in Dublin City Council. I’ve put forward a lot of evidence that they would do just that – starting with the detailed predictions made in print stemming from leaks to the campaign.
Are you seriously telling us that you think that the Voice editor just had some kind of prophetic vision and coincidentally got all of this right?
Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard predictions of this sort from people claiming to have “inside knowledge” or “leaks”?. Often they get them completely wrong and they’re quietly forgotten. Occasionally they get them right. It’s statistically bound to happen once in a while so no I don’t find anything prophetic about it.
I note that no explanation, at least to my knowledge, has ever been given by SF for the absence of its councillors, bar the meaningless phrase personal issues.
LOL. And that’s not good enough for you, because you think you’re entitled to know what those personal issues are, apparently. You’re not.
FWIW the matter was dealt with internally and I know for a fact that at least one of the people appointed to the panel went in there not ready to accept anything short of an exceptionally compelling reason for their absence. He came away satisfied that this was provided, and also that the reasons were personal enough to warrant confidentiality. I’m sure you’ll assume he merely colluded in a whitewash and in all honesty there are Shinners whom I wouldn’t fully trust not to do so, but this particular person isn’t one of them.
as far as I’m aware no statement was ever put out criticising his comments
As far as I’m aware no statement was ever put out by the SP criticising Murphy for not turning up for a vote. Most parties don’t put out statements criticising their own representatives, do they?
I note also that the two SF councillors who did show up voted against recording the votes of councillors on the bin tax issue, which was an important part of sowing confusion amongst the public on the issue. What possible reason could they have had for doing that?
I can’t imagine and you certainly haven’t offered a reason. There would be nothing in it for them to allow their No votes to go unrecorded. I suspect there is more to the story than this, just as there was the last time it was put about that SF councilllors voted against a roll call.
I note that you seem to have given up defending the shitbags you have representing your party in Sligo.
As I said, I was repeating what is only my understanding. I don’t actually find your argument inconsistent with theirs, but I’m not going to waste time debating a vote that I don’t have enough details about.
I’ve put forward a lot of evidence that they would do just that
You really haven’t, you know. But dream on.
Hilarious. Your last post adds absolutely nothing to the discussion bar a claim that someone you trust believes that your councillors had good reasons for missing the most important vote of their career. God bless your gullibility.
By the way, if any Socialist Party representative had voted for the bin tax or didn’t show up for the vote bringing in the bin tax as part of a deal with the other parties, I can guarantee that there would be a statement issued criticising them. More to the point, and despite the fact that the Socialist Party hasn’t kicked anybody out in decades, I can also guarantee that our rather dusty disciplinary machinery would be cranked up and they’d be booted out in short order.
For all my many criticisms of various other socialist organisations in this country, I can honestly say that I can pretty much guarantee that the same would be true of the SWP or the Workers Party or the ISN. In fact I believe the WP has already lost a councillor over this issue in Waterford. Some organisations have principles. I realise that must be an odd concept for an SF supporter to deal with, given that your own leadership never met a principle, or had a grandmother, they wouldn’t sell.
Sinn Fein’s record on the bin tax is one of shame. Some of your councillors voted to introduce it. Some of your councillors voted to increase it. Some of your councillors failed to show up for the vote introducing it. When the bin tax struggle was being waged one of your councillors told his local paper that people should just pay up.
Of course, after McGuinness and DeBruin’s crash course in privatising schools and hospitals and fighting against low paid striking workers, SF’s main achievements in government to date, the bin tax is a relatively minor issue.
Your last post adds absolutely nothing to the discussion bar a claim that someone you trust believes that your councillors had good reasons for missing the most important vote of their career.
Look Mark, given that neither of us were on that investigative panel, you have no more grounds for assuming the reasons they gave were invalid than you think I have for accepting them. In fact you have less grounds because you aren’t even in a position to gauge the integrity of the individuals on the panel. Of course if the vile behaviour of one your Fingal councillors is anything to go on there’s probably no excuse good enough for you anyway.
As to it being “the most important vote of their career” that would be questionable in any case but particularly in a case where their votes had no bearing on the outcome. I’m aware of no evidence that anyone other than people who were already political opponents of ours attached such importance to it.
The northern “government” as you well know operates under the rather severe restriction of having no powers to raise public moneys for public spending. I’m genuinely curious as to how the far left thinks it should fund public services under those conditions. Whenever this has been raised with one of you the response comes back that we shouldn’t be involved in such a “government” in the first place (an argument I have some sympathy with) but no real answer to the question.
Isn’t this all a bit pointless. SF has never professed ideological purity, but instead a pragmatic broadly leftwing approach to each situation it is in. Obviously it is going to do things, or be forced to do things that are contradictory – that is the nature of having to engage with complex systems. Given that is its stance I think berating it for not being something that it never pretended to be is somewhat futile. Also I think it’s bad politics to assume everyone acts in bad faith. Sometimes its true they do, but more often humans being humans will make questionable decisions, etc.
I’d also echo Wednesday’s final point. If the solution to all these Gordian knots is simply to stand aside I don’t think that’s much of a solution (particularly in the context of the North).