Earlier in the week Woodvale asked whether the CLR would have coverage of the strike on Tuesday. Got to admit first off I was thinking… hmmm… now how would that work. But, it’s actually a great idea. So on Tuesday I’ll just leave an open thread so that anyone who is picketing (I’ll be doing so in the mid-morning to early afternoon) or indeed not picketing can make comments on the progress of the day, the events, the response and so on. If you have images and you want to post them up I’m sure that can be accommodated somehow, I guess by sending them to the email. No doubt Indymedia and others will be doing something similar, but no harm in many voices…

The Horrors? Why yes, let’s for a change look at something contemporary. I missed their first album, bar Sheena is A Parasite – guest stars and suchlike not withstanding, writing them off as a sort of one trick pony band, a bit like The Hives of yesteryear.

That’s not entirely unreasonable, their carcrash sound of punk/garage/goth – ish was cartoon like writ large.

So it wasn’t with any great appetite that I managed to get Primary Colours, their latest magnum opus. And nor was I aware of the hoopla surrounding it suggesting that it was a modern masterpiece.

But I was a bit surprised listening to it to discover that somehow they’d morphed from garage punk goth to… er… krautrock and er… shoegaze. So much so that I had to stop the album and check the sleeve art on the iPod. Which is nice. And curiously they sound like nothing so much as a cross between My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division and… and this is central to their sound… The Chameleons (and in a more direct way than Interpol’s approach). Which is all for the good as well. Every once in a while one hears them welcome Nick Cave and the Wedding Present and Dave Gedge to the feast. Eclectic, in a narrow sort of a way. For some reason John Cooper Clarke comes to mind, but that could be the suit.

Now, the album is no masterpiece, although it may be as close as we get to such in this decadent age where every key change and most chords have been heard before, at least once twice or a near infinite number of times. And maybe that’s no small achievement in its own way.

Are they on tracks like I only think of you taking the piss? Well, maybe. But that’s fair enough.

Check out first single, The Sea Within A Sea which starts off as an homage to Neu and then half way through turns major key, sounding like a warmer Gary Numan crossed with first album Chameleons. And that sound in the background? Perhaps a section of their fan-base detaching as their heroes grow a little older and become a little experimental. I hope they don’t lose them entirely.

You’ll gather I like this one. A lot.

WHo Can Say

The Sea Within A Sea

The New Ice Age

I only think of you

Scarlet Fields

Figures, released today from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), reveal…

…hourly earnings including irregular bonuses rose 4.2 per cent from €20.35 to €21.20 per hour in the second quarter of this year.
Hourly earnings including irregular bonuses in the financial sector fell by 11.9 per cent, from €32.96 to €29.03 per hour during the same period.
The drop was due mainly to a fall of 69 per cent in irregular earnings which fell from €5.90 per hour in second quarter of 2008 to €1.83 in 2009.
Average hourly earnings including irregular bonuses and payments for managers, professionals and associated professionals in the industrial sector rose by 0.4 per cent over the year from €30.88 to €31.01.
Earnings increased by 1.8 per cent, from €20.41 to €20.78 per hour, over the same period for clerical, sales and service employees. They rose 3.7 per cent from €16.53 to €17.14 per hour for the production, transport, craft and other manual workers.

Depressingly…

More than 21,000 people working in the industrial sector lost their jobs in the 12 months to June of this year, according to the official data.
The figures, released today from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), reveals the numbers employed in the sector fell from 232,600 to 211,300 during the 12 month period.
The decrease was primarily among the production, craft and manual workers, which saw a fall of 17,700, while clerical, sales and service employees dropped by 2,900.

On wages a similar phenomenon was experienced earlier in the Summer to the consternation of some.

Okay, time for some solipsistic reflection so apologies in advance.

On the other hand for those who post and comment or just visit here and for whom it provides a bit of entertainment or even better some utility perhaps it’s good every once in a while to explain what’s going on and why.

The discussion on the MOPE post by Garibaldy is fascinating and one that I think is very important. I have to state that I don’t have a problem with Garibaldy’s contribution and I should also say it’s not ‘my’ blog either even if by dint of circumstance I tend to write a fair bit of the text. It is and remains a group blog.

Firstly it’s important to note that CLR tries not to have too heavy a hand on its contributors or those who comment and within the guidelines that we do have his post is fine. Indeed we’d be a useless forum if we only had material that we all agree with uniformly. Those who bother to read my thoughts on the public sector will know that while broadly supportive of the sector I diverge from some tropes quite radically, usually I hope in a left way, but not exclusively. That, I think is both an honest reflection of my views and makes discussion and debate centred around such matters better. And the point being that it is possible to be of Republicanism or socialism while at the same time willing to provide critiques of aspects of it.

Secondly I’m not a fan of the MOPE theory myself, I have to say that outright, but I think that what Garibaldy described was fair game, and not least because he acknowledged Adams speech was excellent. There is a problem about transmitting the detail of the conflict particularly abroad. This is a contested history. It’s probably best to acknowledge that. Certainly Dawn Purvis’ comments on unionism and its past are a welcome break with a facade of denial that refuses not merely to engage with that history but also with the living legacy of that period. As Left Republicans – and I count G as one, however we define the term Republican – it’s particularly important to face up to the dangers of a mythos evolving, or being perpetuated, that does us not service if it opens us to others criticisms for being factually inaccurate.

Thirdly we’ve had people from all strands of the left write here, including Sinn Féin and the sadly long departed Frank Little who posted for over a year and is a sore loss in terms of the breadth of analysis he gave us (particularly from a EU sceptical position). I’d be disturbed if this was seen as sticky central. I’ve been accused to my face of being a crypto-Provo or Stick. I don’t think that either charge is entirely true – given that my own ideal political home would probably have been something like OSF in the 1970 to 1973 period, a movement big enough to accommodate people like Jim Monaghan (PD) and Sean Garland and Tony Gregory. That the different tendencies they represent went their different ways subsequently is one of the great tragedies of Irish left politics.

Being sympathetic to pretty much all currents of leftism and Republicanism on the island, and where not sympathetic at least willing to engage in a constructive and courteous way the idea that it would be reducible to one viewpoint is something I’d hope to avoid. I can understand given the concentration on The Lost Revolution this year due to its publication that there might be the impression sometimes that that was a major concern of the CLR, but since contributors are posting about all manner of subjects – with the most recent addition of Tombuktu to the fold whose pieces have without doubt extended the range and scope of our interests for the better – I hope in general terms it is only one amongst many concerns. Yep, the Lost Revolution and the debates around it have been very important to me personally, but mostly because I hope these debates offer an opportunity to revitalise the left on the island and perhaps mend some of the damage inflicted by time and circumstance. The range of people present at the launch from SF, the WP, the SP and other formations at the launch of the book was an heartening development and an indication that much of the past while never forgotten can at least be put aside in order to deal with our current problems.

Finally, and all that said, there is a dearth of contributions from SF and indeed Labour, the SP and other formations. So it’s a narrow slice of you who’re making yourselves known at the moment. There have been a number of people who I’ve asked to contribute from various parties of the left (you know who you are) the occasional piece, but they’ve been understandably unable to spare the time, although I should add many of those people have given huge support behind the scenes in terms of forwarding ideas for posts, documents and just general chat.

So that said, more guest posts would be very welcome, from any left source, and if people want to send stuff in, they are very welcome to do so, on topics that take their fancy from any left perspective. We’ll try to put them up if they dovetail with the general approach of the CLR. And we’ll see how it goes from there. The email is… on the er…right. I’ve really got to do something about that.

Thanks again to AK for the following:

For me [writes AK] two entries in particular stand out

A Socialist Labour Party Recruitment Leaflet which I’m sure will be of interest to many.

“Politicians on the Fiddle:Vote Them Out.” from the ‘Campaign for Honesty in Politics’ 1991 local elections.
It gives a nice summation of the planning corruption on Dublin County Council at the time.
It also asks voters to vote for the smaller parties. I would love to know who was behind the leaflet.

Aside from those…

Some Democratic Left
Tony Wright hands over to Fiachra O’Ceilleachair Waterford 1997

Eric Byrne ‘Jobs’ Leaflet

Some Green Party
Ciaran Cuffe 1997 Dublin Central looking ‘To clean up this dirty old town’

Also Dublin Central this time, Tony Ryan from the 1983 by-election

And a letter from Dan Boyle to Constituents from 1992 ..

And Finally….
to depress us even more after the game in Paris….

Another and very welcome addition to the world of Irish political ephemera is the Roscommon Historical Research website available here :

Liam Byrne the webmaster has amassed a range of materials not merely political but more broadly about Roscommon and its history. It’s another resource. There are posters, information on elections and all manner of donations from various individuals. With luck more of the materials will be fully scanned, but there’s sufficient to be getting on with for the moment.

I think, and I know I’ve said this in relation to the Irish Election Literature Blog amongst others, that this is an excellent time for this sort of material. The ubiquitous nature of digital technologies has allowed for the presentation of materials that previously would only be available to professional historians or archivists. Now anyone with a scanner and a fair bit of free time can make a start on putting documents that would otherwise be lost to history into the public domain.

Sent in by EWI…

“Do not defer ‘painful’ reform of public finances, warns E&Y”

Of course, the same E&Y:

“Anglo Irish Bank
In January 2009, in the Anglo Irish Bank hidden loans controversy, EY was criticised by politicians[20] and the shareholders of Anglo Irish Bank for failing to detect large loans to Sean FitzPatrick, its Chairman, during its audits. The share price fell by almost 99% and the Irish Government had to subsequently take full ownership of the Bank.[21] The then Chief Executive of the Financial Regulator told a parliamentary committee that “a lay person would expect that issues of this nature and this magnitude would have been picked up” by the external auditors.[22] EY declined to appear before the same committee after receiving legal advice.[23][24] EY subsequently said their non-appearance was due to wanting not to be part of the media debate around the issue.[25] The Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board has initiated an investigation into the “circumstances around the issue of inappropriate directors’ loans at Anglo Irish”[26] and into the performance of EY.[27]“

There’s an enlightening conceptual progression evident in the Back Room column in the Sunday Business Post this last weekend. Under the heading ‘Stark reality requires savage cuts and years of austerity’ it discusses the idea that the government is faced with painful choices, and that this is something that will cause the opposition no end of trouble as they move closer to power. I think most of us on the left have managed to intuit this already, and there’s little doubt that the mismatch between Fine Gael and Labour in policy and outlook terms is quite considerable. I’m hesitant to suggest that this would stymie a deal were the numbers to come right, it never has before.

Still, what of this?

Political insiders are now firmly of the view that only a miracle could cause the reelection of the current FF/ Green government led by Brian Cowen. That means that Enda Kenny looks set to be our next taoiseach, with Eamon Gilmore as his tánaiste.

Now fair enough, that does seem to be the most likely outcome. But it’s not the only one. It’s a brave person who’ll predict the numbers in the next Dáil, but it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that a more rag-tag crew might gain power, say incorporating a seriously depleted Fianna Fáil. Whether Fianna Fáil or indeed other potential partners would actually want to construct such an edifice, particularly in the teeth of a continuing fiscal crisis is a somewhat different question, but if Fine Gael wins big and Labour comes back with a significant cohort of TDs then that could presage political instability.

Back Room is exercised by the nature of Fine Gael and Labour in policy terms.

But what sort of government would a Kenny/Gilmore combination offer? That important question is hard to answer. The two parties appeal to different constituencies and it is unclear how their separate directions would be reconciled in government. Fine Gael’s rural and middleclass roots often point in a different direction to Labour’s metropolitan and public sector instincts.

Under the pressures of the budgetary crisis of the 1980s, the divergent instincts of the two parties initially paralysed Garret FitzGerald’s 1982-1987 government before eventually causing its premature end as Labour walked out in the face of a difficult budget. How would a Kenny/Gilmore combination cope under today’s, much greater, budgetary pressures?

Again, that’s fair enough. They do seem, on the face of it, to be unlikely partners. And perhaps more unlikely today than at any time since the 1980s. It’s often forgotten, or perhaps more accurately ignored, that Fine Gael, whatever about Constitutional Crusades was always a home of a certain form of Irish piety throughout the FitzGerald years. But that face has, at least in its sharpest public manifestation, gone and a somewhat different smorgasbord of cultural and economic conservatism which dovetails nicely with a pre-existing conservatism is now the order of the day. In a way this throws up more intriguing issues for Labour for given that FG and itself now sing more or less entirely with one voice on many social issues it throws into more stark relief what distinctions remain on the economic front – or perhaps brings to the fore the small matter that such do exist and that they should potentially be greater. By the way, instructive that Back Room now makes a distinction between middle class and public sector. I’ve previously noted that I tend to include most of the self-defined middle class in the working class, but it’s also useful to remember that many in the public sector consider themselves resolutely middle class. One wonders whether this line has quite the utility some seem to believe it has. One also could also wonder what the outcome of this latest push to exclude them or rather to present them as a ‘new’ ‘class’ will be in political terms. I can’t see anything but a world of pain for our both our previous catch-all parties if this continues. And it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a good ten or so per cent of former FF support has swung to Labour because of precisely this dynamic. Given that Fine Gael also appeals to the so-called middle classes – yea and verily even those who inconveniently work in the public sector – no wonder they’re playing their cards close to their chest. Call Enda Kenny many things, but he’s far from stupid.

Meanwhile Back Room believes that:

What is clear is that a lot of the two parties’ recent policy stances could not cope with even a glancing meeting with reality.

Recent assertions by FG and Labour that cuts in welfare are off limits, that free medical cards for our elderly are affordable, that the minimum wage should remain untouched, that low and average rates of public sector pay should remain sacrosanct all make for good politics.

They imply that such measures are not needed and are merely a product of FF capriciousness and heavy-handedness. But what may make for good politics ignores economic reality.

Yes and no. But do continue:

That reality is stark: the government plans to spend about €55 billion this year and it looks like the government will take in tax revenues of about €32 billion: an astonishing 40 per cent of total public spending is being borrowed. Put it another way: for every person in employment, the government is borrowing a whopping €12,000 this year.

And next year, with €4bn taken off that we will see that the government is borrowing a whopping… well, you can do the math. But it puts the quantities into some sort of perspective. There’s little point in being terrified about a huge figure when the remedial action will leave us only fractionally less terrified next year, and likewise the year after and so on.

There are three ways we can reduce that horrendous deficit.

Which are?

Firstly, we can grow our way back to higher tax revenues.

But it would be unwise to bet on high growth, given the weakened state of the global economy and Ireland’s lack of cost competitiveness (although that’s improving fast).

As it happen Michael Taft has an instructive post this week on an aspect of that topic.

Secondly, we can tax our way back to higher tax revenues.

But marginal tax rates are already high, and the share of the total tax take paid by high earners is enormous.

Ah, but high in comparison to what or where? Western Europe? Scandinavia? New Zealand? The US? He does not say. And… well, I’m not going to weep at the fact that total tax take of higher earners is enormous… not this side of a property tax and a widening of the tax base.

True, as FitzGerald argues, there is scope for considerable increase in the taxation of average income earners who still pay low rates of income tax compared to our European neighbours. But that would be deeply unpopular.

Well, again, yes and no. If the taxes were accompanied by genuine extension of provision of services I wonder whether people might go for them. And again, an extension of the tax base.

Finally, we can cut spending. But, as the public sector pay bill and welfare payments together account for about 70 per cent of current government spending, that too would be deeply unpopular.

Not to mention far from being a cash cow – people have to be paid. There’s no getting around that. So?

The bottom line is that the Irish state has pretty much run out of low-pain policy options.

Surely… so the solution…

It is left having to implement savage spending cuts, not because it wants to, but because it has to.

Huh? Hold on a second. Have I missed something here? A sentence or two perhaps?

Because how else to explain that although we are presented with three options, two of which are said to be ‘deeply unpopular’, we are then told that we are only ‘left’ with one.

And the debate isn’t shaped?

Book Launch

Spirit of ’68: Beyond the Barricades

VOID, Patrick Street, Wednesday 25th November 2009 7.30 pm

Speaker: Peter Bunting, Assistant General Secretary, Irish Congress of Trade Unions

Supporting Artists: Poetry Chicks, with music by Connor Kelly

The 1960s was a period of rapid economic and social change characterised by the emergence of independence movements in many Third World countries and of new social movements and new forms of cultural and counter-cultural politics, civil unrest and civil disobedience in the more economically developed societies. The issues and struggles that these different movements represented formed the context for the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland and their influence on local politics and social action leading up to and following the 5 October 1968 Civil Rights March in Derry is here examined. But international forces are always mediated through the local context and mediation generates lacunas, contradictions and compromises. How for example did traditional social movements such as the trade unions deal with civil rights demands in a communally divided society? Where were the voices of women and of gay people in the local civil rights discourse? How did the Civil Rights struggle come to be perceived as a campaign for Catholic rights? How did the Protestant population understand and experience it? These issues and others are addressed in the book’s different chapters, as is the legacy of civil rights struggles for working class people today.

Chapter contributors include: Eamonn McCann, Dermie McClenaghan, Goretti Horgan, Emmett O’ Connor, Terry Robson, Bernadette McAliskey, Míchaél Kerrigan and Jeanette. The book is edited by Pauline McClenaghan with a foreword by Peter Bunting.

Just read this report from the Madison Eagle (in New Jersey (thanks Eagle for pointing out the mistake) in the US) via Bobballs via Sluggerotoole.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that the journalist writing the report has a far from in-depth understanding of Irish history and politics, otherwise Adams’ “historical overview” would have met with the contempt and ridicule it deserves. In fairness to Gerry though, I expect that some of the factual errors are the fault of the reporter and not down to Gerry.

Providing a historical overview, Adams said the problems in Northern Ireland can be traced directly to British colonization of the Irish. Ultimately, the nation was partitioned in 1916 into the independent Republic of Ireland, and the six counties of Northern Ireland, which were under direct British rule.

Hard to know where to start deconstructing so many mistakes in a single paragraph made up of two sentences. So best to leave that there.

If Adams can be excused responsibility for that, what follows next is in quotation marks. And is, frankly, jaw-dropping, and reminiscent of Adams claiming during his first trip to the States on Larry King Live I think it was, that Catholics didn’t have the vote in NI.

Spurred on by the American civil rights movement, he became involved in a peaceful movement to end the subjugation of Catholics in Northern Ireland. But the peaceful campaign ended in January 1972 when the British Army opened fire during a march, killing 13 unarmed Catholic men in a day since known as “Bloody Sunday.”
“That was followed with years of increasing persecution, imprisonments without trial, violence by both sides and the largest foreign occupation of any nation since World War II.
“A friend I knew in South Africa said he had never seen such a military concentration as he saw on the streets of Belfast,” Adams said. “You (Catholics) could be arrested, property seized, you could be whipped and flogged with a cat-of-nine-tails.”

I’m not sure what is most outrageous. The bit about the largest foreign occupation of any nation since World War II or the idea that you could be flogged with a cat-of-nine-tails in the years after Bloody Sunday. There is also of course the writing out of the fact that the organisation Adams belonged to was active before Bloody Sunday.

But it seems he topped that, although this is only reported rather than directly quoted.

The British issued shoot-to-kill orders and colluded with the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in a campaign of violence against the IRA. Laws were put in place that were every bit as lethal as those that bolstered apartheid in South Africa, Adams said.

Now we all – or most of us anyway – know the quote from the South African minister for justice in April 1963 saying he would swap his security legislation for one clause of the NI Special Powers Act (See page three of this Campaign for Social Justice pamphlet from 1964). And we all know that comparisons are often made between South Africa and NI. But this is plain stupid, and diminishes the injustices suffered by the people of South Africa. A bit like how saying unionists were the same as nazis diminishes what happened there.

This is especially baffling when Adams included in his talk a sensible reflection of the current reality within NI, and what is in fact the dominant fact behind the strategy he has driven his organisation towards over the last two decades or so.

“Our most compelling challenge is to make peace with ourselves,” said Adams. “We must reflect our needs, our tolerance and our strength as a people with the unionists.”

I know that there must be a temptation to keep things simple for Irish-Americans, and to exaggerate to ensure their continued interest in NI and in giving money to Adams’ party. But when Adams – who has got where he is by dealing with realities of different sorts – comes out with this sort of guff, you do have to wonder. He must know too that this sort of stuff will be picked up back home, and used by unionists to create the kind of artificial row that keeps the politics of confrontation alive. Perhaps that is part of the point. But if we are to get beyond the divisions of the people of Ireland, then telling lies to our constituencies at home and abroad about the reality of life in NI before 1969 is hardly helpful. In a way, I admire the cheek and cynicism involved in this type of then. But on the other hand, I can’t help but find it utterly absurd.

There will be those though who will be pleased to see what Adams has been saying. Ed Moloney’s Secret History of the IRA credited Adams with almost superhuman powers, and argued that he had been planning the peace process since the late 1970s. The Long War, in other words, was in fact The Long Peace Process. The following quote from the article may be misrepresenting what Adams actually said. I think Adams is talking about the 1990s and not the 1970s, and the reporter has run the two together, but if not Moloney’s version has added credibility.

By 1976, the peace process had started, but it would not bear fruit for two more decades, largely because the British demanded the IRA give up its arms before talks could begin.
“The only thing we were sure of was that we needed a dialogue,” Adams said. “The demand that the IRA stop (collecting arms) before the British would start talks seemed ridiculous.”

His former comrades now in opposition to him have made much of Gerry’s rather shaky grasp of history. We know he has “misremembered” what he sang in Long Kesh, while the likes of Marian Price and Brendan Hughes have ridiculed his denials of membership of the Provisionals. More serious though has been the ongoing debate over whether Adams and co have been lying over negotiations with the British during the hunger strikes, and whether they could have called it off earlier but chose not to to facilitate their move into politics. They might take note of the following description of Cage 11, which is a far from accurate description.

Adams was imprisoned from 1973 to 1977 in the notorious “Cage 11” in Maze Prison. More than 600 prisoners were kept in cells the size of bathrooms “with nothing but their self-worth.”

A lot of this is of course nitpicking. But there’s a serious edge to it. Unless we can move beyond the need to spout nonsense about our past, the process of reconciliation will prove much more difficult than it needs to be.