Left Archive: Fingal Voice, Socialist Party, c2000

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This local newsletter issued by the Socialist Party in the late 1990s is notable for how prominent both their sole TD at the time, Joe Higgins, and their local Councillor Clare Daly (later to be a Socialist Party TD before becoming an independent and later MEP) are.

The newsletter is a mix of local and national news. Clare Daly’s Fingal Council Column on the second page criticises the then upcoming Partnership deal. Another article argues that the planned minimum wage is an ‘insult to the low paid’. And it notes the Socialist Party’s ‘End Low Pay Campaign’.

The publication also notes local issues such as the Waste Management Strategy agreed by the four Dublin local authorities and how the Socialist Party opposed this, in part due to the acceptance of ‘major additional landfill dump for Dublin’s municipal waste’. The party argue that the ‘only solution to the waste crisis is a policy based on waste reduction and reuse’. Similarly there are pieces on Swords traffic and the then mooted Port Tunnel.

There is also a Joe Higgins Column which in this edition examines ‘one law for the banks and another law for the poor’ noting that ‘with two Tribunals sitting to investigate the corrupt relationship between big business and establishment politicians, that the government might adopt a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ toward anybody else found to be involved in shady off-shore accounts or major tax evasions’.

Other articles consider ‘Shared Ownership’ of housing, Travellers Accommodation Plans and The Planning Bill. There’s also a report on a four day strike at Servisair at Dublin Airport.