After the “No” vote – time to fight for a democratic, social and de-militarised Europe
The ISN welcomes the decision of the Irish people to reject the Lisbon Treaty – a document that would have promoted the militarisation of the EU, entrenched Thatcherite principles in European law, and further undermined democracy. After this result, the Lisbon Treaty should be dead and buried. No re-hashed, re-packaged version of the same document should be foisted on the people of Europe. No means no.
The clear “No” vote is a stinging rebuke for the Irish political elite. The main political parties, with over 90% of the seats in the Dáil, called for a “Yes” vote in the referendum. They asked people to trust them and their judgement when they cast their votes. There is one clear message now – the Irish people have no confidence in their political leaders.
The establishment parties may still have a stranglehold over the Dáil, helped by their massive advantages in terms of funding, media coverage and party organisation when it comes to election time. But the consent with which they rule is extremely fragile. Anyone taking a look at the constituency maps can see for themselves – working-class people were most likely to vote “No”. They are the ones with the least reason to trust our political elite, which again and again shows itself to be in the pocket of big business.
What else can we learn from the result? A number of government ministers have claimed that people voted “no” because they wrongly believed that the EU would legalise abortion. But opinion polls showed that abortion was only an issue for a small minority of “No” voters (according to last week’s Irish Times poll, just 5% gave abortion as a reason for voting “No”). The same goes for corporation tax, which was a marginal concern.
It seems clear that the main reason people voted “No” was because they didn’t understand what was in the Lisbon Treaty. Their thinking was sound, because the Treaty was deliberately crafted to be incomprehensible to the average citizen. Many EU figures involved in the drafting process admitted as much – their goal was to conceal the most controversial proposals by surrounding them with jargon and gobbledygook.
The issue of neutrality and militarisation was also very important. Pro-Lisbon campaigners repeatedly claimed that Irish neutrality was safeguarded by the Treaty. It was hard to tell what planet these people were living on – here on Earth, Ireland is already participating in the brutal occupation of Iraq by allowing US troops to pass through Shannon airport. We don’t have any neutrality to safeguard.
If Ireland is going to have a progressive foreign policy that promotes peace and development and opposes military aggression by the big powers, we will have to start again from scratch. The Irish people took a first step along that road by rejecting a Treaty that called for EU states to increase their military spending and embraced the same doctrine of “pre-emptive war” that has led to a bloody catastrophe in Iraq.
Irish workers had good reason to be worried about other clauses of the Lisbon Treaty that promoted the privatisation of public services. These harmful measures led UNITE, Ireland’s second-biggest union, to call for a “No” vote. They were also highlighted by the broad “No” campaign that united the progressive and socialist Left in opposition to Lisbon.
The Irish Socialist Network played a full role in that campaign. Our members distributed tens of thousands of leaflets in working-class areas of Dublin putting across the left-wing case for a “No” vote. In particular, we worked hard to persuade the people of Dublin North West, where there was a 64% majority for the “No” side on polling day.
Government spokesmen have told us we need to consider how we can “move forward” after this result. For once, we agree with them – in Ireland, the Left which opposes militarism and neo-liberal attacks on the working class needs to ask how we can build on this victory. We have to set about constructing a new radical force, broader than any of the existing groups, that can mobilise people in communities and work-places all over Ireland to fight for an alternative to the status quo. The Irish Socialist Network will play its part in building that alternative.
1968 – forty years on
Forty years on from the political struggles of 1968, there's been no shortage of conservative pundits eager to mock the generation of radicals whose actions briefly raised the spectre of revolution from Paris to Mexico City. Often the pundits themselves are renegade members of that generation who have changed sides and made their peace with the establishment in the meantime. They would have us believe that '1968' is a romantic legend, a story of bourgeois students with their brains addled by theory whose dreams of socialist revolution meant nothing to the working classes. No matter how often this line gets repeated, it's complete bull, and falls apart if you take the briefest look at the events of that famous year.
First, a brief recap. The first key development of 1968 didn't take place in the lecture halls of the West, but on the battlefields of Vietnam, where the National Liberation Front launched a surprise offensive against the US occupation forces and their puppet regime in Saigon. The Tet Offensive shattered the propaganda of the US government and greatly strengthened anti-war feeling. Later that year, America was rocked by the assassination of Martin Luther King. The legendary civil rights leader had spoken out against the war and begun leading campaigns for economic justice - when King was shot, he was organising support for striking workers in Memphis. Urban ghettoes across the country erupted in response. Most of the rioters had never gone near a university: their radicalism was inspired by everyday reality, not radical pamphlets and sloganeering.
In Europe, the most dramatic political confrontation of the year took place in France. When the authorities at a Paris university called in the police to repress student protests, thousands of students fought back against the violence of the French state. Their call for solidarity was taken up by the trade union movement, and within a couple of weeks the biggest general strike in French history had swept through the work-force. So much for the supposed gulf between radical students and the working class. The strike didn't achieve as much as it could have, but French workers still made big gains and a decade of social struggle and progress was launched.
In Italy, the wave of working-class protest and militancy sparked off by student demonstrations was even bigger. Radical leftists in Britain and West Germany weren't as successful, but they could boast real achievements - the German students helped shatter the conspiracy of silence about their country's Nazi past. East of the Iron Curtain, the Czech reform communists led by Alexander Dubcek launched an experiment in democratic socialism with the memorable slogan 'socialism with a human face'. Their new course energised the Czech people and excited the whole continent, but it was crushed by the tanks of the Red Army.
Probably the most important thing to remember about the drama of 1968 is that it didn't come out of nowhere, and neither did it fizzle out by the end of the year. There was a whole era of political conflict from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s - 1968 was a crucial year in that period, amplifying what had come before and setting the stage for the next decade. That's a valuable lesson for today's generation of radicals: you reap what you sow, every major political event is the product of years of patient work on the ground. But at the same time, things can suddenly change, raising new possibilities that seemed out of reach shortly before.
The most ambitious goals of 1968 were never realised. There was a repeated pattern - the old parties of the Left, social-democratic or communist, were incapable of channelling the energy of the new movements. They reacted with bafflement or hostility, always presenting an obstacle to progress. But they were still powerful enough to block the growth of the New Left, which was crowded out by the organisational strength of the existing parties. After May '68, the French journal Modern Times remarked 'we knew we could not make a revolution without the Communists; now we know we cannot make a revolution with them'. The same lesson could be drawn from what happened in Portugal or Italy.
Now that the Communist movement has collapsed and social democracy has abandoned any ambition to transform society, the challenge is to reconstruct the Left around a project of radical change. The world has changed enormously since 1968, but many of the ideas and concerns of that generation are still highly relevant. The need to expand democracy beyond its current narrow limits is more pressing than ever. Imperialism is alive and well, as the people of Iraq can testify. The mockery of the 1968 generation is meant to discourage people from re-discovering the fact that collective action can change the world for the better.
Red Banner #32, Out Now.
The long Good Friday
Ten years after the Good Friday Agreement, Maeve Connaughton argues for a socialist approach to northern politics
Socialist classics James Connolly, Labour Nationality and Religion
A critical look by Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh at one of the pioneering pamphlets of Irish socialism
Showing the other America
Ed Walsh celebrates US television drama The Wire, a biting critique of American society
Buaileann Bertie bóthar
Léann Colm de Faoite marbhna neamh-mholtach os cionn uaigh pholaitiúil Bertie Ahern
An Brat Dearg
An chéad leagan iomlán i nGaeilge den mhóramhrán sóisialach le Jim O’Connell
The Hidden Connolly
Published for the first time since his execution, a selection of speeches from James Connolly’s years in Belfast
Poetry of our own
Joe Conroy welcomes a collection of poetry of and for the left
The tears of Pablo Neruda
A poem by Mike Jenkins
€2 / £1.50 from Red Banner sellers, good bookshops or Red Banner, PO Box 6587, Dublin 6
www.redbannermagazine.com
Vote No to the Lisbon Treaty
By Fintan Lane (ISN)
On 12 June, you are expected to endorse a treaty that you probably haven’t read or, if you did, probably couldn’t decipher. The Lisbon Treaty, in the words of the Belgian Foreign Minister (23 October 2007), was designed to be ‘unreadable’ and ‘unclear’ in order to slip it past a bewildered public. It reads like legalistic gobbledygook. In fact, the Lisbon Treaty is a very carefully crafted redraft of the EU constitution that was rejected by the electorates of France and the Netherlands in 2005. According to Bertie Ahern, 90% of the EU constitution has been retained.
Here’s how democracy works in the EU. Shaken by the democratic defeats at the ballot box in 2005, a group of eurocrats set to work on finding their way around public scepticism and the widespread opposition to the drift towards a European superstate. How could democracy be thwarted? How could the people be circumvented? The result was the Lisbon Treaty, the beauty of which is that, by removing references to flags, emblems, constitutions, etc., the eurocrats were able to avoid having it voted on by the peoples of Europe – everywhere except Ireland, that is. In the Irish Republic, due to a legal case taken many years ago, the government is obliged to submit such major treaties to a referendum.
So, the eurocrats are almost home. All they need now is your acquiescence. They have undermined democracy, they have the establishment parties in Ireland in their pocket and they have a cleverly constructed treaty that could be bottled and sold as a sedative. The voters’ role, apparently, is to do as we are told. Like ‘good Europeans’.
Mmm, yeah, right…well, let’s hope that that’s where this con job finally runs aground.
Like many on the left, the ISN is campaigning for a ‘no’ vote and is affiliated to the Campaign Against the EU Constitution (CAEUC). We are asking people to reject the cynical anti-democratic maneuverings of the eurocrats and their allies in Ireland. How can one possibly trust people who so openly dismiss the expressed will of the people of France and the Netherlands? Despite their rhetoric, these people are not democrats.
Of course, as an advocate of participatory democracy, the ISN is hardly likely to smile on the institutions of the EU. To be frank, we see the EU as primarily an economic power bloc rather than, as we’re repetitively and yawningly asked to believe, an entity constructed to ensure ‘peace’ in Europe. In reality, economics, and the self-interest of the European business elite, have always been at the heart of this project. It is not focused on the needs of the working people. For that reason, the ISN is no friend of the EU. However, we believe there are also two very specific reasons why this particular treaty should be rejected.
* It will undermine workers’ rights and assist privatisation
Trade unions such as the TEEU and Unite (ATGWU) have called for a ‘no’ vote because they believe that this treaty would endanger workers’ rights and could add momentum to the drive to privatise key areas of the public sector. These trade unionists are right to be fearful.
Neo-liberalism is currently the dominant political ideology in the corridors of European power; it is an ideology that Fianna Fáil and the PDs happily adhere to. The neo-liberals argue for a ‘free market’ economy without ‘distortions’. In other words, the market rules and everything should be open to competition, including hospitals, transport, schools, and other social services. It is this regressive, right-wing ideology that is behind the Europe-wide drive to privatise large swathes of the public sector.
The dirty paw marks of neo-liberalism can be seen all over the Lisbon Treaty, which is why groups such as the Irish employers’ federation, IBEC, are vigorously in favour. Indeed, in one of its less guarded moments, IBEC admitted in April, in its submission to the National Forum on Europe, that it supports a ‘yes’ vote because ‘the Lisbon Reform Treaty creates the legal basis for the liberalisation of services of general economic interest (Art. 106). A yes vote for the Lisbon Treaty creates the potential for increased opportunities for Irish business, particularly in areas subject to increasing liberalisation, such as Health, Education, Transport, Energy and the Environment.’ Indeed. Plenty of muck once they get their snouts in the trough. By ‘liberalisation’, of course, they are referring to ‘privatisation’.
In short, IBEC believes its members will gain from the further privatisation of the public sector across Europe and it is certain that this treaty facilitates such a development. And, of course, IBEC is correct. Key articles in the Lisbon Treaty are all about enshrining neo-liberal principles within the legal framework of the EU. Article 3, for example, would give the EU ‘exclusive competence’ in ‘the establishment of the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the internal market’. As UCD sociologist Kieran Allen has pointed out, ‘This means that they can override national governments who take measures to “distort” the internal market.’
Public services would be at risk all over Europe, including in Ireland. Do you really want Ryanair running your local hospital?
In addition, the Lisbon Treaty supports the ‘right’ of big business to use cheap labour, driving down wages in states such as Ireland. Competition is king as far as the eurocrats are concerned. A recent European Court of Justice ruling in favour of a company called Laval allowed them to employ Latvian workers in Sweden at rates below the established Swedish standards. This encourages a race to the bottom in terms of pay and conditions.
* It will lead to the further militarisation of Europe
There can be little doubt at this stage that, unless checked, the EU is incrementally moving towards the creation of a federalised superstate. This won’t happen tomorrow and it is not the central objective of the Lisbon Treaty. However, the inclination in this treaty is towards greater centralisation, less democracy, and the enhancement of the EU’s military capabilities.
The Lisbon Treaty includes an explicit call on member states to increase their military spending (Article 27). It makes this call in the context of seeking greater cooperation with NATO, a nuclear-endowed, aggressive military alliance, backed by George W. Bush and other war-mongering reprobates. Protocol 4 of the treaty insists that ‘a more assertive [European] Union role in security and defence matters will contribute to the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance.’
A more ‘assertive’ role in ‘security and defence matters’? What are they on about? Well, a clue can be found in the development of EU Battle Groups, which the Irish Republic is already supporting. An EU Security Strategy has indicated where this might be leading: ‘Our traditional concept of self-defence…was based on the threat of invasion. With…new threats, the first line of defence will often be abroad…we should be ready to act before a crisis occurs.’
Sound familiar? Yes, this could have come directly from the Pentagon. It is a doctrine of pre-emptive war of the type that has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this a direction in which we want to see the EU go? Clearly not.
The Lisbon Treaty, if passed, would encourage and facilitate the growth of militarism in Europe. Anybody looking back at the horrors of war and genocide in twentieth-century Europe should recoil at such a development – and should vote ‘no’ to this regressive treaty.
The ISN is asking voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty, but we are also encouraging people to go beyond that. The ‘no’ campaign needs all the help it can get! If you can lend a hand, whether to give out a few leaflets or whatever, then please contact the Campaign Against the EU Constitution (CAEUC) via the website www.sayno.ie
May Day Events 2008
Belfast: Saturday, 3rd May. Assemble Belfast Art College 11.30am with march to Georges Market.
Cork: Thursday, 1st May. Assemble Connolly Hall 7.00pm with march to Daunt's Square.
Dublin: Thursday, 1st May. Assemble Parnell Square 7.30pm with march to Liberty Hall.
National Demonstration, Sat April 12th 2008 @ 2PM, Central Bank, Dublin.
Voice your opposition to the brutal and racist policies of the Israeli State over the past six decades and show your solidarity with the besieged and occupied people of Palestine, come along to the demonstration and make some noise!
There will also be a public meeting afterwards in Wynn’s Hotel, Abbey St starting at 4pm.
From Deir Yassin to Gaza - The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
60 years ago in Palestine, newly-arrived European Jewish settlers drove their long established Palestinian neighbours out of most of Palestine, which then became Israel. They did this through a combination of terror and massacre. Once again Israel is terrorising and massacring Palestinians – this time in Gaza – prompting fears of renewed mass ethnic cleansing.
Deir Yassin was a small village next to Jerusalem. Although its inhabitants hadn't taken part in the fighting to defend Palestine, it was here that the most infamous massacre took place 60 years ago. On the morning of April 9th 1948, Zionist forces drove into the village, rounded up the men, women and children and coldbloodedly massacred them. The massacre was pre-planned and designed to terrorise other Palestinians into fleeing.
Afterwards, twenty five of the survivors were paraded around Jerusalem, then taken to a quarry and murdered. Today this would be called 'collective punishment' – the terrorism of the powerful. Today a million and a half innocent people in Gaza are being collectively punished. They are imprisoned; they are starved of food and water, subjected to aerial bombardment, tank and rocket attacks; denied electricity, medicines, and sewerage facilities.
They are being denied a future. Hundreds have died so far this year. This senseless brutality must stop if there is ever to be peace. Make your voice heard - come to our demonstration and demand that Israel ceases - and the International Community stops being complicit in - the destruction of Gaza. We can't stop yesterday's atrocities; we must prevent today's.
Remember Deir Yassin! Remember the Palestinians in Gaza today!
Related Link: http://www.ipsc.ie
Crisis in Gaza
The U.S. elections
Some thoughts on the U.S. elections
RED BANNER Issue 31 of Red Banner is out now, available at €2 / £1.50 from Red Banner sellers, good bookshops, or from the address below
Kurdistan: A people in revolt - An interview with Adnan Mohammedi, a Kurdish political refugee who has succeeded in winning asylum in Ireland
SOCIALIST CLASSICS: Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom - Joe Conroy looks at a book that, fifty years ago, rediscovered the emancipatory heart of Marxist politics
The Russian revolution and the temporary advance of Soviet feminism - James Caspell considers the remarkable gains made by women in Russia after 1917, and how those gains were worn away
Léargas leathan ar chlé - Scrúdaíonn an staraí Éamon Ó Ciosáin leabhar a insíonn scéal na heite clé in Éirinn
The Ukrainian revolution 1917-21: Russia’s Ireland and the fate of socialism in Europe - Chris Ford examines a forgotten chapter of socialist history that had profound consequences for Russia and Europe
The Hidden Connolly - In a chapter of The Re-Conquest of Ireland not published since his death, James Connolly uncovers the roots of northern sectarianism
Getting poetry red - Henry Gibson reviews a collection of left-wing poetry from Wales
Correspondence - John McAnulty restates his position on sectarianism
€2 / £1.50 from bookshops, sellers or PO Box 6587, Dublin 6
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