From the General Election Campaign I give you …… July 20, 2011
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Ireland, Irish Politics.Tags: 2011 general election, fine gael, Irish Labour Party, Irish Politics
1 comment so far
Why?…..
Will their Special Needs Assistants be cut?
Opposing the Extradition of Seán Garland July 20, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Seán Garland.29 comments
As people may be aware, the extradition hearing against Seán Garland is being heard in Dublin this week. The campaign against the extradition continues, and support has been continuing to grow. Local government councils have been passing motions opposing the extradition on a regular basis, and at the recent ICTU conference, some of the leading trade unionists in the country voiced their total opposition to the extradition (link includes audio). The above photo is from a press conference held last week by the campaign to stop the extradition of Seán Garland. As can be seen from the photograph, there is a wide range of political opinion opposing the extradition. Over 60 members of the Oireachtas have pledged support to the campaign from every party and none. Ther press conference was addressed by a broad range of political figures, including members of all the left parties in the Dáil. As it stands now, the case is in the hands of the lawyers, but the campaign is not. People can still sign the petition, or contact their local representatives requesting support for the campaign to oppose the extradition.
The new edition of LookLeft also has extensive coverage of the case. I’ve extracted some material from two stories by Kevin Brannigan and Francis Donohoe below. Below, we can see the arrogance of the US authorities in their first attempt to extradite him using the unjust extradition treaty between the US and UK signed in 2003. Clearly they expected to be able to simply snap their fingers and have other governments do their bidding. This has continued to be the case, with them refusing to hand over details of the case against him to the Irish courts or to the defence team.
Garland would spend that night, not for the first time, in a Belfast prison cell. Taken to the court house the next morning Garland’s accusers lay in wait. “The cops kept telling me that the Americans were in the building and wanted to talk to me – I though wouldn’t answer, but it seemed as if the cops were getting all their instructions from these Americans.”
Luckily for Garland the law swung in his favour when the Judge demanded to see documents relating to the case from the United State’s side. “[The Americans] weren’t expecting that at all. They had been over confident telling the Judge the documents would be sent on to him in a few days. The Judge wasn’t impressed stating that they had supposedly been working on this case for over five years and they didn’t even have their documents present…I remember one woman running around, she was the one giving instructions wondering how to deal with this new situation. They hadn’t expected a Judge who would be able to think for himself.”
In 2009, outside the Workers’ Party’s head office,
“I was going into the Workers’ Party officein Mountjoy Square when suddenlyyou had this Starsky and Hutch episodewith cars pulling up and cops excitedlysurrounding myself and my wife. I was arrested and brought to Mountjoy Garda station – a warrant for my arrest had been issued by the High Court.”
“The Americans were asked to provide evidence a number of times and the answer was ‘piss off, the evidence will be presented in a Washington court. Well if someone like myself stands in a Washington court you can kiss me goodbye, this whole grand jury system is so uneven
there is no question of someone getting a fair crack of the whip.” He added; “They just see you as an obstacle and they, the CIA and US security
services, have carte blanche to do what they like.”
It’s worth reminding ourselves, amid the media spin and the smears, of how is behind this extradition request, and of how the Irish establishment responded.
Even more concerning is the nature of the legal machinations behind the threats to Garland. On May 19th 2005, a US grand jury court, based purely on information provided by the US intelligence services, issued the initial secret arrest warrant. This process was overseen
by Kenneth L. Wainstein, then a US Government Attorney, later George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Adviser. The second (2008) US warrant for Garland’s arrest was issued by then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Both these US officials have been strongly criticised for being part of a Government which ordered the invasion of Iraq based on “secret information” that turned out to be a total fabrication.In 2011 a secret US embassy cable published by Wikileak’s revealed contacts between US officials and the then-Justice Minister, Michael McDowell and senior figures in the Department of Justice, during 2005. In one cable McDowell states that the “Irish Government stood by to
do whatever the United States Government might request in terms of pursuing Sean Garland”, seemingly with little concern for the provision of evidence to back these allegations against an Irish citizen.
We must hope that the judge throws out the extradition request, but it is also essential to keep voicing opposition publicly to the extradition.
UPDATE: Jack O’Connor, Jimmy Kelly and Eamon Devoy have sent an open letter outlining their reasons for opposing the extradition available here
Eoghan Harris proposes a programme to help ‘poorly paid private sector workers’? That’d be nice. July 20, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.14 comments
Months back Eoghan Harris, writing in his Sunday Independent column, made the following points:
Finally as Fianna Fail fades away, Sinn Fein is steadily becoming the most formidable opposition force in the Dai and in the media. Anyone who doubts that should look up Mary Lou McDonald’s recent Dail contributions, or check out Pearse Doherty’s commanding performance on Prime Time last week.
Let me make a further prediction. Sinn Fein will soon import some of the pluralist rhetoric it uses in Northern Ireland, stop old-style Provo posturing on the Queen’s visit, take up the cause of poorly paid private sector workers, eat into Fine Gael and Labour’s vote, and finish off Fianna Fail. That’s one of the problematical legacies of having a Government with such a large majority.
For some reason that has stuck with me, you could almost say that a spectre of EH is haunting WBS. Well, let’s hope not. But anyhow, it’s worth briefly parsing out.
Let’s pass over the seeming inability of the Sunday Independent typesetting system to use fada’s and consider something interesting in his – no doubt intentionally – provocative statements above.
Consider a key line: take up the cause of poorly paid private sector workers.
This is one that resonates particularly strongly with me.
Harris has become very adept at telling people what’s wrong, but he seems curiously incapable of working out a solution. Or rather, one suspects, that the solution wouldn’t be at all to his liking, because for all the rhetoric there are a few easy steps that would rectify at least part of the situation of us poorly paid private sector workers.
Here’s one or two. Or five.
- Increase the provision of public holidays for all workers and incorporate some of the public sector holidays into them. So instead of having the European average, or there or there abouts, argue for 25 days ex public holidays as the base line for workers holidays. All workers. Everywhere.
Codify the Christmas holidays, and Easter. For those enterprises that can’t do without them at those two periods allow their workers the time off elsewhere in the year.And bump up those public holidays from 9 to… well, say 10 at the moment with a programme to boost that up to 15 by the end of the decade. Why not? Austria manages fine on 22 days paid annual leave and 13 paid holidays. Finland and Denmark have 25 paid days annual leave while they both have 9 paid holidays. Sweden only allocates 25 days paid holiday but across the year are other ‘de facto’ holiday days which are analogous to our public holidays.
And put in some sort of bar on those in the private sector taking more. Tax ‘em until they extend greater numbers of holidays to their workers at which point all can benefit. Because why should a boss get more holidays than their workforce? C’mon, we’re talking equity here.
As a tangent there’s an excellent report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, ‘No-Vacation Nation’ by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt from 2007 which examines the situation in the United States where, alone of ‘advanced economies’ employers aren’t legally mandated to give any paid vacation at all and where consequently up to 22 million workers have no provision for vacations, while a further cohort in the labour force where nominally there is vacation provision won’t or can’t take it because it is frowned upon, if not actively discouraged. Given the stats on productivity there’s no evidence that this has improved the US economic ranking as against other countries. It surely puts the more Boston than Berlin rhetoric into a new light when you consider the holiday allocation of those using it…
- Argue for a genuine universal health service. It’s not difficult. Let’s go for increased taxation so that all workers can have access to a high quality health service, free at point of access etc.
- Argue for a universal pension provision for all workers, public or private with a top up scheme for those as want it. But tax the top up scheme and remove tax breaks to workers who engage with it. So that at the end of working lives the vast majority of us wind up with reasonable, no – better than reasonable – pension provision but pensions that are broadly speaking similar to each other.
- Support the rights of all workers in the private sector, whatever the commercial entity they work for, whether Irish or other, to unionize and underscore the idea that unions once established acquire rights to representation right up to board level. Simple one that, but as we know there are swathes of the workforce who find themselves in companies that don’t allow that, and there’s the worrying trend of companies which arrive on our shores not having to engage with unions.
- Raise the minimum wage and extend and expand the range of JLCs to ultimately incorporate all working areas in the economy. Why not? We hear on a continual basis how public sector workers work can be codified in such a way. So let’s apply that to the private sector and ensure that no worker public or private is paid less than they should be and start to work for seeing that they’re paid more.
Those five issues alone would change the lives of many working people today. For the better.
Utopian? Well, hardly. Most of those measures are either in place in other states or are extensions of what we already have. Intrusive to the free market? They surely are. But given how intrusive the free market has been to the rest of us as citizens of this state lets start to push back. Are these measures enough for me? Of course not, but a start…
But of course to do that would require the EH’s of this world moving away from the comfort zone of his usual manichaen world view to something constructive, engaged, progressive. Oh, sure, it’d demand taking on some vested interests. Possibly public sector unions, whatever they may be given that my membership is of a union that encompasses both public and private sector workers. But more obviously private sector employers.
And pointing up some of the contradictions of the present period, most obviously the one being that while we hear no end of chat about inequities, real or imagined, between public and private sector we almost never hear about inequities within the private sector or between the middle to higher reaches of the latter and the vast majority of private (and indeed public) sector workers.
That’s why, for all the rhetoric, we’ll never hear the man actually do that.
And proof of that is that for almost four years he had a political platform denied to the vast majority of his fellow citizens in this state on being appointed to the Seanad which he used not once to articulate a programme as set out above.
That’s also why we also never hear him address the point that for all the complaints about he public sector from him and holidays and such like he never once references the fact that there are large number of those in the private sector who while imposing the minimum holidays allowable under labour law on their legions of workers gift themselves extravagant holidays.
One is left with the suspicion that in truth he’s really not that interested in working people, otherwise he’d be positing something like the above.
For him they’re merely a handy tool to use to attack the public sector, and nothing more. A backdrop upon which he can project his own thoughts.
For all the teary eyed laments the fact that he’s not once articulated an actual programme for his supposedly beloved private sector workers – and by the way, I’m one, and this applies directly to me – demonstrates the hollowness of his rhetoric.
Rupert Murdoch Attacked in Parliament (literally) July 19, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in media.10 comments
Wasn’t watching it, but the Guardian is reporting someone struck Murdoch (or sprayed shaving foam on him), before being slapped by Murdoch’s wife and scooped by the cops. Thus ended the meeting ended it seems. No press or no public allowed when it reconvenes, and unsure if tv cameras will be allowed in. Thus the debate shifts to this and away from the issues. Supposedly a comedian called Johnnie Marbles.
Stockholm Syndrome… just why are private sector workplaces so difficult to organise in? July 19, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, The Left.125 comments
Anyone who has worked in the private sector will know the difficulties facing those who seek to organise unions there. This isn’t an absolute. There are areas, sometimes surprising ones, where unions are if not exactly welcome at the very least a facet of working life. But one doesn’t have to go far to find companies where the very idea is anathema.
And while that’s understandable in the sense that one rarely expects employers to approach the topic with a cheery whistle on their lips and a spring in their step it is less so when one considers the aversion amongst workers to such matters.
When I was co-organising in the early to mid 2000s a union in a group of companies what was remarkable was the inertia and on occasion hostility to the very concept of unions.
But I can’t help but feel that this is like a very specific form of Stockholm Syndrome, a sort of belief on the part of many workers, particularly those who we could lightly term ‘middle class’ – though by no means restricted to them, that by going along with their employers in all matters somehow redundancy or whatever will be averted. That this is classic ‘magical thinking’, in the psychological sense, almost never occurs to them.
But it really is fascinating how much trust they place in those whose interests are often diametrically opposed to theirs.
And in fairness it’s also very understandable. Companies are, for the most part, run along the lines of the most rigid command and control economy. You can see that perfectly exposed in the appetite so prominent now amongst certain commentators for the public sector to be able to ‘hire and fire’. That the reality of private sector workplaces is that the latter is significantly more difficult than the former doesn’t in any way modify the nature of the relationships at work.
I could even go so far as to propose that workplaces tend in many instances to be amazingly bullying. Actually that’s no great stretch – now is it? And all of this is remarkably unreflected upon which, as I’ve noted previously, is strange if one considers the centrality to work to our lives.
Granted with a certain loosening of the society and a greater awareness of a degree of personal rights that’s not quite as naked as it was in many workplaces – but note too the utter aversion that the political and economic right have to the Equality Agency et al… But it exists nonetheless.
A friend of mine in recent years was very dismissive of unions. They’d never join one… and from their perspective they were right. They worked in admin/company secretarial on a contract basis, often working or not when they chose. They’d never have to join a union because their relationships with employers were such that their age, skills and experience were readily transferable and reasonably well paid… And indeed so they were until the recession hit and suddenly, and I take zero pleasure in relating this, they was out of work not for a week or two but for months on end.
Proximity to employers was hugely deceptive for them and their self-perception of their position in the pecking order, and once recession came and shook that particular tree so that relationship changed radically.
But for those in more mundane this is probably less of a surprise even if their activism is limited. Another friend of mine joined, after long persuasion, a union because their workplace was particularly appalling and the prospect of redundancy loomed. When he contacted the union on a fairly minor matter he was met with snarky jibes by the person he was talking to ‘typical, blow-ins who only join when thing go sour’.
Yes, well. I wouldn’t sneer at anyone who joined a union in those circumstances. The current period should be a revelation to many workers as to the realities of their employment situation and how fragile that can be and how easily they can be manipulated. And the point is that for a worker who joins a union and sees the direct benefit of same in a redundancy situation the chances are very high that first they’ll have a more positive view of unions and that they’ll be willing to retain their membership even if their activity level is low. Sure, that then means that many workers will regard them as a form of insurance, but I don’t see that as a problem in itself given the negative perceptions and even hostility on the part of so many workers towards them.
As for my friend, almost inevitably he was made redundant. But what was striking was that he was waiting on the union to ensure that his rights were upheld in the redundancy process – and it was already clear that the company was trying to pull a fast one on various issues – so in other words he now regarded the union as a voice which would speak on his behalf.
We all know how unions dropped the ball when it came to extending and expanding throughout the private sector during the boom years. That was a strategic error of significant proportions and during a time when they had a real opportunity.
Unfortunately, given the impacts of unemployment on workers, this period is also one of real opportunity when unions should be making every effort to demonstrate their utility for workers. That these aren’t great political steps is in a sense irrelevant. While well aware of the power of labour, one also has to be cogniscent of how the factors raised above, in terms of the working environment predicate against that power being utilised politically, except in extremis. And to be honest I’m dubious given the perceptions also referenced above that in extremis we’d necessarily see any great shift to more left wing approaches on the part of workers. So that means that we must depend on education, education, education and the demonstrative effect of unions. Small steps first, big steps later.
Arigna Mines …. July 18, 2011
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Ireland.11 comments
The was an interesting documentary on RTE radio a while back on The Strike at Arigna Mines…..
part of the blurb about the documentary
This programme tells the story of a strike in the coal mines in Arigna, on the Roscommon-Leitrim border forty years ago. From November 1968 to late February 1969 the 230 miners or ‘pit men’ as they were known locally, went on strike for better pay, a five-day week and improved working conditions. The unofficial strike began shortly before an official strike was due to start; a small number of miners walked out of one mine and all the men stopped work in support of them.
As a result of the strike being unofficial the striking workers had little or no means of support through the four months of the dispute. Fund raising functions and collections were organised on their behalf and many of the local shopkeepers extended credit and often provided food for the miners’ families…….
I Recently visited The Arigna Mining Experience, which is in Roscommon, whilst staying up in Leitrim for a weekend.
I knew little or nothing about coal mining, especially in Ireland. Where most mines in the UK had large seems of coal the Arigna mines had seams maybe two foot high and had to be dug by hand.
So a miner dug 5 or 6 yards into the seam spending most of his time lying on his side either drilling, picking or shoveling out what he had mined … Often enough he’d be doing this in puddles or streams of water.
An example below…
It was to my eyes incredible hardship. Boys left primary school and went straight to work in the mines, often working with their fathers pushing the hutches of coal dug by their fathers.
There were no masks or earmuffs so many went deaf and there were many workers that died in their forties from the dust inhaled. The guide , an ex miner, wheezed his way through the tour.
The visit was an Education and I’d recommend it…
Left Archive: An tOglach – Offical Organ of the Irish Republican Army, No.1 c.1967 July 18, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive, Irish Republican Army [pre-1970], Sinn Féin.1 comment so far
To download this document please click on following link: An TO No1
This document should be seen as a companion piece with the third issue of An t-Oglac posted up a month or two ago. This was the first issue and clearly demonstrates the changing perspectives of the Republican movement during this period.
It argues in the introductory piece that the Irish nation has ‘used tactics which were sometimes military, sometimes political to achieve their ends’. It continues:
We must not confine or bind ourselves to one particular form of action. We must keep learning from new experiences and new situations. We must devise new tactics and means – and be prepared to use them – which will bring us nearer our goal. We must get down to the business of knowing and understanding fully the need for flexibility of action, then, this generation will succeed in winning Freedom.
And it continues:
The immediate task of the movement is not to summon all available forces to attack right now, but to form a working Revolutionary Organisation, capable of uniting all forces and guiding the movement in actual practice and not in a name alone, that is, an organization ready at any time to support every protest and every outbreak and use it it to build up and consolidate the fighting forces suitable for the decisive struggle.
There are short pieces on Liam Mellowes and James Connolly and an interesting outline in ‘Notes on Intelligence’ of what is expected of Volunteers in relation to gathering intelligence.
New LookLeft Out Now July 17, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in media, Workers' Party.8 comments
The new edition of LookLeft is out now, and contains the usual mix of progressive politics, culture, sport and history. Feature articles include Conor McCabe on Gombeen, Spivs and Bankers, an interview with Bob Crow of the RMT, the UK’s leading militant trade unionist, Fergus Whelan on the United Irishman Jemmy Hope, and John Jefferies asks those on the left of the Labour Party which side they are on. There are also several pages devoted to the case of Seán Garland, who is due in court this week for the hearing on the absurd US allegations against him.
From the editorial:
We are beginning to see a concerted workers response to the on-going attacks on our living standards. In the North the Con-Dem cutbacks have provoked strike action by public servants and delivered a clear mes- sage to Dave Cameron and his Tory boys that their agenda of increasing profits by striping communities of services will be opposed. In the south the establishment’s wage cutting onslaught is also summing up a reaction as anger turns into organised action.
The trade union movement is catching up with the feelings of its members. At its recent conference the ICTU committed to coordinating action by those who the system has attempted to condemn to a live time of slavery to the banks by forcing people into massive mortgage debt for daring to aspire to the basic human right of a family home.
Politically progressive forces are awakening, with a packed United Left Alliance forum in Liberty Hall during June pointing to the numbers seeking a new form of politics. While July saw the country’s major trade union leaders rally in defence of Sean Garland, with the leaders of SIPTU, UNITE and the TEEU all publicly speaking out in support of the veteran socialist who faces the threat of extradition after decades of progressive political struggle.
On the intellectual front encouragement must also be drawn from the positive reaction to Conor McCabe’s book Sins of the Father – the first de- tailed examination of the structural causes of southern economic collapse from a progressive perspective. This work helps activists understand how those in power have achieved their position and the damage they have done to Ireland’s social and economic progress.
LookLeft remains committed to assisting this building of a principled Left unity which must begin with an understanding of our shared radical traditions and joint progressive goals.
LookLeft is available now from every Easons in Ireland, as well as numerous other shops, or from Workers’ Party offices and members.
Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week July 17, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.22 comments
Bang on the front page comes Brendan O’Connor, standing up – like his editor – for the little man in the face of the arrogant, overbearing and hostile liberal elite.
And then we saw this old man, jostled and harangued by the very media we are told he had an unhealthy grip over and maybe, just maybe, we realised that he is a human being.
Aengus Fanning predicted on Friday that Rupert could yet become the flawed father of the world and that ordinary people will cop on to this much faster than the media do. So maybe I’m not telling you anything you don’t know already.
Rupert Murdoch. Innocent victim of a media witchunt. Not only that, but we are offered elsewhere Bertie Ahern, constitutional genius.
While we are in the realms of this fantasy world, step forward Eoghan Harris, pushing his passion for objective history that deals with all the facts about Irish history, and doesn’t provide a politically-inspured morality tale.
Clearly O’Callaghan can hardly wait to say sorry to the victims before rushing on to defend the bishop. As a former academic, he reminds me of the tenured species who barely register their regrets to Protestant victims in the period 1920-22 before rushing on to challenge the credentials of critics who put the Old IRA on the spot.
Just as O’Callaghan’s first duty was to protect the children of the diocese who could not speak for themselves, so the first duty of academic historians is to protect past victims of the IRA who no longer have a voice. Like O’Callaghan, however, many of them look first to their tribal loyalties.
Accordingly, many academics keep collegial silence in support of colleagues who should have been called on to clarify their position on IRA atrocities such as the Bandon Valley massacre, the murders at Coolacrease, and the burning of Clifden Orphanage — not to mention their failure to challenge the disgraceful forgery called the Dunmanway dossier, still used by ultra-nationalists to blacken innocent Protestants as spies.
These collegial collusions will be familiar to readers of Victor Klemperer’s I Will Bear Witness: 1933-1941, A Diary of the Nazi Years. One of his most heartfelt entries, for August 16, 1936, is aimed at a fellow academic who lent support to the Nazi party. “I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the intellectuals three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lampposts as long as was compatible with hygiene.
To conclude, not a stupid statement but something that bears some relation to reality. Shane Ross must be having palpitations at seeing evil beard in chief, Jack O’Connor sullying the pages of his beloved rag newspaper.
In A characteristically vitriolic attack on the trade union movement, laced with sarcasm and personalised abuse as usual, your columnist Shane Ross TD grossly misrepresented my address to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in last Sunday’s edition of the Sunday Independent. Character assassination is no substitute for democratic debate, and it says more about the perpetrator than those against whom it is directed.
Sunday Independent? Character assassination? Who’d have thunk it?
Anti-punk, 1978 July 16, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.12 comments
Many thanks to Joe Mooney for the following, taken from an East Wall festival bulletin from 1978. It gives a certain sense of the time and the attitude towards punk. I wonder what the anonymous contributor would have made of Durutti Column (see today’s This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening To…)…
