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Showing posts with label Irish Left. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish Left. Show all posts
Tomás Ó Flatharta - A very welcome post by Des Derwin, first published on the Cedar Lounge Revolution blog. 

Last week the left – alongside all decent people – was blaring a fanfare for the referral of Israel by South Africa to the International Court of Justice. And rightly so, of course. It is to be welcomed and it should be supported by the Irish government. All platforms and publications of the left are buzzing with it. South Africa is being commended effusively for their initiative and congratulated wholeheartedly for their solidarity with the people of Gaza. The left has, obliviously, great respect and faith in the International Court of Justice. The left sees it as very significant that a state should be brought to the International Court of Justice to answer for its crimes.

The BBC reported: 

evidence submitted by South Africa claims “acts and omissions” by Israel “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group."

The Irish government and many other governments are being accused, not least by the Irish radical left, of double standards, inconsistency and hypocrisy in their attitudes and responses to Russian crimes in Ukraine and Israeli crimes in Palestine.

Fine. So:

On 26 February 2022 [two days after the invasion], Ukraine filed an application instituting proceedings against the Russian Federation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, concerning “a dispute . . . relating to the interpretation, application and fulfilment of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” (the “Genocide Convention”). In its Application, Ukraine contends, inter alia, that “the Russian Federation has falsely claimed that acts of genocide have occurred in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts of Ukraine… In the Application, Ukraine also accuses the Russian Federation of “planning acts of genocide in Ukraine” and contends that Russia “is intentionally killing and inflicting serious injury on members of the Ukrainian nationality – the actus reus of genocide under Article II of the [Genocide]Convention”. 

Ireland, along with 32 other countries, supported Ukraine’s submission to the International Court of Justice. Since the invasion the Irish radical left has lambasted the government for its support for Ukraine. Neutrality is demanded between Russia and Ukraine. Now the Irish government is being filleted for not supporting South Africa’s submission to the same court on the same issue of genocide.

On March 16, 2022, the International Court of Justice indicated among its provisional measures that “the Russian Federation shall immediately suspend the military operations it began on February 24, 2022 in the territory of Ukraine”. Russia did not accept this order, and objected to the Court’s jurisdiction and the inadmissibility of the application. 

There is only one International Court of Justice (ICJ). However there are two international courts that deal with war crimes. The other is the International Criminal Court. And Russia’s leaders have been brought before that too in relation to the war in Ukraine.

…ICJ [International Court of Justice] cases involve countries, and the ICC [International Criminal Court] is a criminal court, which brings cases against individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity. Also, whilst the ICJ is an organ of the United Nations, the ICC is legally independent of the UN, (although it is endorsed by the General Assembly). While not all 193 UN Member States are parties to the ICC, it can launch investigations and open cases related to alleged crimes committed on the territory or by a national of a State party to the ICC or of a State that has accepted its jurisdiction. The ICJ, which is situated in the Peace Palace in The Hague,… is one of the six “principal organs” of the United Nations.

On 17 March 2023, following an investigation of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, alleging responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children during the Russo-Ukrainian War. The warrant against Putin is the first against the leader of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The 123 member states of the ICC [including South Africa] are obliged to detain and transfer Putin and Lvova-Belova if either sets foot on their territory.

A tale of two courts after all. Both have had Russia hauled before it. Both have ordered Russia to stop. Civilian casualties in Ukraine take on a limited aspect only because of the scale and pace of the massacre in Gaza. Yet UN figures for November 2023 calculated that at least 10,000 civilians, including more than 560 children, had been killed and over 18,500 had been injured since 24 February 2022. This in Europe, where millions of Ukrainians have been displaced and ten of thousands of the displaced now live with us in Ireland.

Over 102,000 refugees from the war in Ukraine have come here. On Sunday 14th two or three hundred Ukrainians demonstrated at the Spire where the previous day tens of thousands had marched in an astonishing demonstration for Gaza. The relatively modest band of Ukrainians, cut off, perhaps alienated, from the left (as there wasn’t a sign of Irish left solidarity at the gathering), cut off from the teeming Gaza solidarity movement and, it seems, from their numerous Ukrainian compatriots here, was a contrast to the previous momentous day of solidarity. And here too was a stark juxtaposition to what can be built when the left, and solidarity organisations and humanitarians and internationalists, know the realities, show interest, pay attention, make connections and organise action.

On Tuesday last there was a press conference in Dublin to demand that the Irish government join the South African case in the ICJ. This press conference featured a rare conscious unity right across the left-leaning parliamentary spectrum (a unity seen of course too in practice on the continuous magnificent marches for Gaza). Some of these parties have supported Ukraine and its resistance. The left of the left have not. While shaking a fist at the government’s inconsistency, towards Ukraine and Palestine, the radical left shook a shadow fist at their own reverse inconsistency. When we march, and march, in the hope of an end to the onslaught in Gaza, let us hope for a day when all the left can unite, and march, for an end to the onslaught in Ukraine too.

⏩Keep Up with  Tomás Ó Flatharta.

Are There Two International Courts?!!

John Meehan ☭ writing in the Tomás Ó Flatharta blog flags up the double standards on the Left. 

Hypocrisy is shared by many political actors on the left and the right. 

We witness genocide against the Palestine people and genocide against the Ukrainian people. It is the job of the left to practice critical solidarity in each case. 

Ukraine’s political leader (Zelenskyy) is not left-wing. Palestine’s political leadership in Gaza is anti-left (Hamas). Resistance has to be enabled. Many on the left have a blind spot on this issue. 

In the case of Ukraine we must prevent the creation of a Palestine/Gaza in Europe by backing armed resistance against Putin’s genocidal invasion.

We present a meme and a counter-meme.

Spot the Inconsistency 1.


Spot the Inconsistency Number 2.


Holly Cairns TD (Social Democrats Leader, Cork South-West) spoke in the Dáil (the Irish parliament) on this issue on October 12 2023. She got it right.

Holly Cairns TD
@HollyCairnsTD

War crimes are not defined by the identity of the perpetrator - they are defined by the act. The mass murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas is a war crime. The slaughter of Palestinians - and cutting off food, water and energy to 2 million people in Gaza - is a war crime.

Genocide In Gaza, Palestine; Genocide in Ukraine 💣 Good Bad And Ugly Statements From The Left In Ireland

Michael O’Rourke ✍ We are somewhat unique and privileged here in Ireland to have the political legacy of one of the world’s great revolutionary Marxists and revolutionary socialist republicans, James Connolly.

Socialists in Ireland can also feel forever honoured at having Commandant James Connolly; international socialist, theoretician and writer, military commander of the forces of the Irish Republic, signatory of the Easter 1916 Proclamation, one of the founders of Irish independence, outstanding Irish patriot, and one of their own. 

Connolly was also one of the early founders of modern socialism in the British and American working class movements, lecturing, writing and organising in defence of workers rights against the brutal oppression and starvation policies of the capitalist class and state forces of the time. 

But you would be mistaken if you thought that in the subsequent following decades after his execution by British imperialism that an appropriate relationship of equals would exist between British socialists, the British left, and their Irish counterparts. Instead what followed was a retreat into chauvinism on the most part with the British socialist movement - with the exception of a small minority - and the assertion of a kind of social imperialism towards Ireland and Irish socialist parties, which is still evident today in the British left. Furthermore, it is not hard to see how this unhealthy political circumstance would also provide opportunities for British state intelligence in their ever present quest to subvert Irish independence as it arises across the political spectrum. It is not alarmist to suggest this: it is realistic and should be understood by any mature, serious political person interested in the political world we live in. With these opening remarks I would then look at the current Irish Left.

Firstly I would consider the vassal role the CPI played towards its political overseer, the CPGB, because it remains an important political factor to this very day. It is unfortunately true that the CPI existed under the political hegemony of its British counterpart from the 1930's on. And reinforcing its Anglophile credo by adopting as it did the Stalin-Churchill pact, there was no place for revolutionary republicanism or Irish independence from Britain within that Anglophile political construct. It was to be replaced with a doctrine of defeatism to encourage republicans to desist from traditional struggle and adopt whatever policies emanated from the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow wrapped up in fake republican rhetoric and quack socialism. It gained traction to some extent because of the dearth of political theory in Ireland during the time. 

This political methodology has been the stock and trade of the CPI, and presumably also the British CP ever since WW2, and for some old hands of the CPI it meant (whether true or not), the wholesale conversion of the Official republican movement, the Stickies, into an ideological mirror image of themselves. 

But not unexpectedly there was a falling out between the two over which party was more entitled to official recognition from Moscow. It is interesting to note also that both of these parties have in recent years undergone political splits in their ranks; both of them with their northern branches who were deemed to have emerged fully as politically Unionist made it untenable to hold together as a single unit. 

For those who observed the cow-towing by these two parties to reactionary Unionism within the Irish trade union movement, pandering to the autonomous Unionist, Northern Ireland Committee of the ICTU, and providing it with a veto on any policies or resolutions supportive of Irish national aspirations, it is not a surprise. The two Stalinist parties in the south ran out of road supporting this reactionary deference to Unionism, while simultaneously performing political contortions in still maintaining links to the Irish working class. Nonetheless they would still certainly be incapable of seeing it as the objective reality or the historical process of the Irish working class objectively assuming its historic role to remove British imperialism. And also incapable of seeing that political factor asserting itself despite their years of believing they had actually suppressed it, in their own minds at least. Instead their responses all resort to subjective reasoning and personal bickering, none of which reflect or concur with Marxist historical materialism.

But the CPI are not solely to blame for an overriding influence and control of the Irish left by the British left. All of the Irish left-wing groups, those not affiliated to the Stalinist wing of communism, groups who claimed allegiance to the Fourth International also in one way or another originated as Irish offspring of left-wing British political parties. This occurred usually among Irish immigrants in Britain who joined the various organisations and then later returned to Ireland to begin establishing an Irish group affiliated to its British counterpart, but in reality very much under their control and mirroring the imperialist relationship between the two countries.

However, to their credit and notwithstanding any due criticism or differences one might have with them, Peoples Democracy were the only indigenous Irish left-wing group to be formed in Ireland and affiliated as an Irish section of the Fourth International, though at this time they may not any longer be affiliated to that body. 

Other than that, the only other breach of the left-wing British infusion into Irish politics was in the 1980’s when an Irish group with a connection to the British WRP after it had imploded, formerly broke with them on the basis of their perceived imperialist conceptions regarding Ireland. It was a political and theoretical break that allowed for a real theoretical and political development among the Irish group without the profoundly debilitating constraints derived from Britain’s domination of Ireland in every respect over the centuries, and transmogrified into the politics and culture of the British left.

Today in Ireland it is the groups who are, or were at one time, associated with the Fourth International that have made progress in electoral terms, not the CPI however (except perhaps two closet members who are TDs) mostly because of their toxic Stalinist brand. And there does not appear to be much or any open antagonism between them as both subscribe generally to a reformist agenda. But the British Left influence is still in existence in the parties that make up People Before Profit. They are very much integrated with their British counterparts, and despite the Irish parties having elected members in the Dáil unlike their British counterparts, they play a subservient and deferential role to the British. In addition and most importantly, they maintain an identical policy in relation to the British occupation of the north, which they wrongly refer to as “internationalism”.

The story of the Irish Left is not a pleasantly edifying one; it is one with a serious question hanging over it. The question to be asked and answered is: to what extent are the British left infiltrated by MI5, and to what extent is that infiltration and influence carried over to their Irish counterpart? It is a serious and relevant question that needs be taken up by those committed to the Irish and international working class cause, and particularly by those committed to Ireland’s struggle to remove British imperialism.

🖼 Michael O’Rourke is a former POW imprisoned on behalf of the INLA.

Problems of The Irish Left ✏ An Overview

Matt Treacy ✒ President Michael D. Higgins is very much against any concentration of power that might lead to “an absurd form of dictatorship.” Oh, and that “you don’t have to be a mad left wing person to believe that.”


Where would you even start?

Perhaps Higgins was engaging in the sort of “playful” irony beloved of the likes of the now much lesser quoted Michel Foucault – to whom he has referred to on at least one occasion in his magisterial pronouncements on this that and t’other.

In a speech at the Galway International Arts Festival in 2018, Higgins boasted about having introduced Foucault to the curriculum at Galway University and how students had said that the President’s use of Foucault’s concepts of gender and class in the social sciences had “taken it all apart for them.”

Which, as the best critiques of Foucault have shown, is really what Foucault was interested in. Taking things apart, discovering what he claimed were the oppressive bases of western civilization and seeking to destroy them. I don’t recall that he ever suggested that there was anything better with which to replace them. Quite the contrary.

Which led Foucault himself variously on a journey from the Communist Party of France, through admiration for the violence of the Maoist Cultural Revolution to initial support for the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Not to mention his own individual contributions, it would seem, to subverting norms.

Of course, Higgins is not responsible for Foucault, but in the spirit of intellectual rigour much beloved of the post-modern Left (some post-modern irony coming at ya there …) Foucault’s disciples ought to be interrogated about the actual meaning and intent of his ideas. Ideas incidentally, as Higgins himself once noted., which were in turn deeply influenced by Martin Heidegger whose legacy, as Higgins noted, “continues to be haunted by his monstrous moral failings in the 1930s and the 1940s.”

As indeed they ought to be. Just as a whole raft of the other icons of the post modern post socialist left ought to judged by their “monstrous moral failings” which range from the type of political and other actions of Foucault, to Sartre’s lifelong apologia for Stalinism, and to the contemporary Left’s failure to confront the continued monstrosity of Marxist totalitarianism where it still dominates the lives of those unfortunate to live in places like China, or North Korea, or Cuba.

Speaking of Cuba. When Fidel Castro died in 2016, Higgins eulogised the dead dictator whose regime had killed tens of thousands and imprisoned and tortured countless others over the course of Communist Party dictatorship as “a giant among global leaders.”

He also referred to the myth that Cuba has a health service which is “one of the most admired in the world,” “100% literacy” and low levels of inequality and poverty. This is the sort of crap I used to believe when as a teenager I read that every Albanian had 1.75 colour TVs and that every East German girl was studying quantum physics.

Anyone who has met a Cuban who managed to escape socialism, or read accounts of the lifestyle of the Castro gang with their private island, jets and bank accounts, will know that the only equality that exists is the equality of grinding poverty and repression outside of the ruling elite. There are Irish republicans who have been beneficiaries of the opulence of the Castros which has been likened to that of Roman Emperors.

Higgins’ paean to the dead dictator led to his being invited in to visit Cuba in 2017 by Raul Castro who took over the family business after the Capo di tutti I Capi’s departure. While there, Higgins was photographed happily in the company of the armed forces that have imposed Communism and protected the cosseted and vastly wealthy Communist elite for generations.

The armed forces and police and Party apparatchiks who at that very time were engaged in intensified repression that followed the death of Fidel. It was estimated that there had been an average of 827 political detentions a month following his death. That led to some of those detained going on hunger strike.

They included three members of the Leyva family who were being held in Havana while Higgins was apparently chatting about human rights with Raul. They had been sentenced in January 2017 for counter-revolutionary defamation and had embarked on a hunger strike on March 7. Their mother had refused to allow the prison doctors to force feed them. Echoes of Thomas Ashe and Terence MacSwiney. I don’t need to surmise whose side they would be on.

The Leyva siblings and other Cubans, including black and gay activists associated with the San Isidro movement, continue to be subject to arbitrary detentions and beatings at the hands of the regime. Not once, ever, has any of our sanctimonious leftie chorus made a peep about any of this. You would have to resort to the deplorable Gript to find any mention here of their plight.

“Former hunger striker Adrian Curuneaux Stevens.”

Apart from all of that, the Irish Left’s moral objections to the dominant role of billionaires in the world of social media or in influencing contemporary discourse is frankly risible. There is not one single leftist entity in this country that does not benefit in some manner, big or small in financial and other logistical ways, from the support of these people.

One of their greatest “achievements” was the legalisation of abortion on demand. It is probably their only achievement as the Irish left has had no part in any of the practical state measures over the past century to create the sort of public provisions that are genuinely attributed to the British Labour Party or the Scandinavian social democrats for example. The Irish equivalent of that was Fianna Fáil for 30 or 40 years before it lost its bearings like the rest of them.

It is clear that a large part of the “achievement” was the left liberal dominance not only of mainstream media, but the manipulation of the public debate by social media. Social media owned by “good billionaires.”

So, when someone from the Irish Left bangs on about billionaires and dictatorship and what not, they really ought to be “called out” on it.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

President Higgins On Why Social Media Billionaires And Dictatorship Is Bold

Kevin Morley discusses the recent Irish general election in the context of a national health service. 

I can remember exactly where I was back in 1986 when Sinn Fein (Provisional) had taken their momentous decision to break their own rule book entering the twenty-six-county parliament, Dail Eireann. This caused a split in the organisation, not for the first time over the issue of entering Dail politics. Out of this, just as the provisional wing of Sinn Fein came into being, so did Republican Sinn Fein come about. I was sat on the London tube, Northern Line travelling to work at a Builders yard, Waterloo, wearing my work clothes, denims, steel toed boots and a Donkey Jacket still sporting the COAL NOT DOLE stickers from the previous year’s Coal Miner’s Strike. I glanced up and read the headlines of a broadsheet which read; “Uproar As Provos Enter Dail” which was referring to the above mentioned decision by the former revolutionary party to enter the Dail. 

The man reading the newspaper was, in sharp contrast to my dress, wearing his work clothes consisting of a three-piece suit and suede shoes! I recall thinking, fucking wanker! These enterist policies into the world of the bourgeoisie and their parliaments – all parliaments of liberal democracies are institutions geared solely to governing the affairs of the indigenous capitalist class. 

From Congress in the USA to the Bundestag in Germany, then West Germany, including Westminster, this is the role of what I call “Pandoras Boxes”. They are not there to govern the interests of the working-class, we are just led to believe this crap for five minutes every five years or so – I thought, what about the much heralded 32 county socialist republic? This was Sinn Fein policy and for many years afterwards remained, at least in public, to be so. Their paper, An Phobolacht, at least the one sold in Ireland and Britain often referred to the party’s aims of a 32 county democratic socialist republic. The one sold in the USA, I understand, made less reference to socialism, after all can’t be upsetting the capital of bourgeois ideology. The capital in the modern world yes, but not the originators.

As we know in Ireland, 26 counties, we have recently had an election and Sinn Fein are not the only party to drop their revolutionary clothes. People Before Profit, PBP originates from the Socialist Workers Party who trumpeted as their motto: “No Parliamentary Road to Socialism” which is as true today as ever. Their partners, Solidarity, come from the old Socialist Party and espoused a similar revolutionary road towards socialism. The SWP, I remember, ran down O’Connell Street many years back to the astonishment of shoppers shouting in their massed ranks; “one solution, revolution!” Both Sinn Fein and PBP/Solidarity are voteable and preach progressive policies. They are the best of a bad bunch in many respects.

Now we see these former revolutionaries trying to cobble together a “left-wing government” and I wish them well in this venture. The alternative is years of the same tried, tested and failed Fianna Fail and Fine Gael policies. The policies of homelessness, a health service not worthy of the name – no fault of the nurses and doctors employed – and more of these policies will kill, literally, many people. In the case of Fianna Fail they were unlucky enough, in one respect, to have been in office when the international capitalist economies collapsed. They presided over the effects of this in Ireland and could have done a lot more to cushion the blow on working-class people, but they didn’t. They instead, and true to form, looked after their friends in big business.

Sinn Fein and PBP/Solidarity both champion the establishment of a nationalised health service, and rightly so, single tiered with treatment free at the point of need. Modelled closely on the UKs NHS and funded from general taxation, primarily Income Tax, these policies are certainly progressive though not revolutionary. Below I shall briefly examine the UK NHS from its hey-day to present decline.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, the United Kingdom, including the six counties, was in a state of needing repair. In the election of that year the British electorate – not including the six counties, though they benefited for once – voted in by a landslide a labour government. Out went the wartime leader, Winston Churchill – who presided over the war time coalition – who, despite what many said about him being a great wartime leader, which may or may not have been the case, he was too closely remembered for the hard times of the pre-war years, the thirties. Britain (and empire) had been on the winning side, along with the USSR, USA, Canada to name three in the war against fascism and people demanded better. The thirties had been austere years for the working-class in the UK, even in Belfast during the outdoor relief schemes of the early thirties the boss’s biggest fears were evolving before their very eyes. Protestant and Catholic workers were united in their poverty and for a period it looked like the old sectarian divisions were in the process of being broken down. This was more than the employers could face and, as usual, they played the sectarian Orange Card thus resurrecting the age-old divisions between Catholic and Protestant, which Britain used for years as justification for their occupation. The 1945 election saw Churchill kicked out of office and the election of a parliamentary constitutional socialist government headed by Clement Attlee. This was the first ever majority labour administration and Attlee won by a landslide. His manifesto was radical, as were some of his ministers like Aneurin Bevan, a firebrand socialist who believed passionately in health which was the Ministry he was given. Attlee also nationalised some of the major industries, Coal, Rail, Transport to name but three. The programme was not revolutionary but by the standards of the day was radical. The labour government elect also included a broad-based Welfare State which included a National Health Service (NHS). Among the slogans of the welfare state was the maxim; “never again” meaning, “never again will people be means tested” before aid will be given. To cover the whole welfare state would be too broad for this piece so we shall look at the NHS. Aneurin Bevan, Atlee’s Minister for Health had a huge battle with the health professions, doctors in particular and even today most doctors practices, though incorporated into the NHS are in fact private business’s. Hospital Consultants were also a problem who had to be overcome but, and against massive odds, Bevan overcame them.

On July 5th 1948 Bevan unveiled the NHS where treatment would be given “free at the point of need” irrespective of a person’s ability to pay. Gone were the days when before treatment would be given a person’s bank balance had to be checked first. Another part of the post-war labour government’s policies, were the adoption of a mixed economy based on the principles advocated by the economist, John Maynard Keynes known as “Keynesianism.” These policies were geared towards full employment, an essential ingredient for labours vision. The new NHS was to be funded by general taxation, particularly Income Tax, and for this to even stand a chance full employment with everybody paying their share of Income Tax was essential. The UK as a whole needed rebuilding after the war many hands were needed for the task. For this reason, the bourgeoisie never objected to these plans, it would save them paying for the job, and, in many cases, they would profit out of the work which needed doing. Only about five percent of industry was nationalised leaving plenty of spare room for private companies to make money. Of course, a strong, large healthy workforce was needed which provided much impetus for the NHS and full employment. The welfare state provided unemployment benefit, the dole, which nobody claimed because everybody was in employment. Only those between jobs, sometimes called frictional unemployment which was not even registered, were for a short period, usually a week or so, out of work. Nobody claimed the “dole” even though it was considerably more relative to wages, than an unemployed person gets today. This drives a stagecoach through the theory of people not being willing to work, preferring to live off “hanouts”, for a living, often pedalled by the bourgeois media in modern days. The middle-classes, bourgeoisie, knew one day they would get their nationalised industries back, at a cut rate, once the post-war project was complete. How right they were! The political theatre after the war became known as the “Post War Consensus” in Britain – again the six counties were different, one party unionist rule prevailed there – and by consensus it was meant; one party would not do too much to undo what the other party had done while in government. So, in 1951 when Churchill was returned his administration did little if anything to reverse the nationalisation of Attlee and the previous labour government. Similarly, the conservative administration went along with, and even developed, the NHS. They too realised the boss’s needed a strong, large, reliable and healthy workforce to keep industry working and profits coming. If people were off sick, and could not afford healthcare they would be away from work much longer, thus costing the economy money. If they could receive healthcare free at the point of need, the quicker they’d be back at work. This consensus thrived and kept Britain going throughout the fifties and into the sixties. In 1960 Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan once boasted to the British people; “you’ve never had it so good” and this included the jewel in the crown, the NHS.

During the sixties the first cracks appeared in the consensus, as capitalism recovered after the war, it was seen that the NHS costs were rising and therefore, in order to suit the needs of capitalism cuts were introduced by the labour government of Harold Wilson. It was Wilson’s administration who first introduced the closure of coalmines and it was in 1963 that Dr Richard Beeching closed many railway Branch lines which were uneconomical. These cuts became known as; the “Beeching Axe”, officially called “The reshaping of Britain’s Railways” and coupled with the cuts in coal production saw the first reduction in nationalised goods and services. The NHS did not escape these cuts, many rural “cottage hospitals” were closed. In the cities some smaller hospitals were closed in favour of larger, what would later become, “centres of excellence” and specialised hospitals. All the same and despite the cuts the NHS was still the jewel in the crown of the consensus, and the best in Europe. it was also the largest employer in Europe, and still, despite the cuts and privatisation of certain areas one of the largest employers in Europe.

In 1979 the election of Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister signalled the end of the Post War Consensus. She hated the consensus with a vengeance and was determined the nationalised industries would be privatised, and the trade unions, strong in these industries, destroyed as a meaningful force. This was her policy, union bashing culmination with the year-long miner’s strike in 1984/85. She also dispensed with Keynesian economic practices replacing these with those espoused by Milton Freidman and the “Chicago School” of economics, monetarism. There was less emphasis on full employment and much more was aimed at reducing inflation, without telling anybody what the real causes of inflation were/are. If she could blame the unions for inflation, and enough gullible people believed her, then that was good enough. Unfortunately, through her control – unofficial – of the media it worked. Once she had tackled, or reduced the power of the trade unions, the NHS would have to be trimmed, but she was acutely aware this could not be done in one sweep. The people would not stand for her butchering the health service as she had done with other industries. This had to be done bit by bit, and while the cuts were being initiated she continuously told the public, “the NHS is safe in our hands”. By 1990 Thatcher had gone, but Thatcherism lived on and, arguably, still does! With unemployment, purposely rising – this was all a factor in defeating the unions, if people were out of work, the less likely those in employment were to go on strike – meaning again, less income tax revenue. That meant the NHS had to look increasingly more to private investment for funding. Now, private investors do not invest unless a profit can be made. The NHS was/is not supposed to be a profit-making organisation but the private sector would not invest their money unless a profit could be secured. Work it out for yourselves, I won’t insult the readers intelligence with all the details, but the NHS had to, for these people, return them a profit for their investments. Privatisation of certain areas of the NHS was on the cards!

Through the nineties, morale in the NHS among staff was ebbing fast. It was still among the finest health services in Europe but was beginning to look a shadow of its former self. Capitalism no longer needed the large healthy workforce it once did, new technology brought in by private employers deemed workers, human ones, unnecessary. Everybody began to believe the myth unemployment was inevitable, due to “automation and new technology” which of course is bollocks. It is not, was not, the automation of industry which causes unemployment, it is who owns this technology? The new means of production, distribution and exchange, just as their Fordist forerunners and before, right back to the Industrial Revolution, were/are not in themselves responsible for unemployment. Private ownership of the means of production now, as in history, is the cause of unemployment. Therefore, this private ownership is indirectly or otherwise, of the means of production, causing unemployment, is a major factor in the demise of the NHS. In the six counties one major reason against Irish unity the unionists could, with some justification, point to was the disparity in the health systems, north and south. The NHS was leaps and bounds above the HSE in the 26 counties. Not because the Doctors and Nurses were any better in the NHS than the HSE (or its previous name) but because of the structural set up delivering treatment and care free at the point of need practised by the NHS in the six counties. Contrast this with the system in the south, VHI and Medical Cards, and we can see why the NHS comes out well on top. That gap, however, had narrowed in recent decades, not because the HSE has caught up, but because the NHS has digressed. The UK National Health Service, once the jewel in the post war consensus crown, initiated by the government of Clement Attlee, based on the wartime report of William Beverage, is now in the lower part of the European health table. The twenty- six counties are lower but the gap between the two is much narrower!

Last year a report on the state of the finances in the NHS was commissioned. This was compiled by Sir Robert Naylor and has become known as the “Naylor Report” or, “Naylor Review”. It advocates the selling off of NHS “surplus land” and hospitals, disused buildings owned by the NHS, and the money raised used to invest in what is left. Building new hospitals is one way of investing, so we are told, but where? If all the “surplus” land has been sold to private speculators to build houses, private dwellings on, even if the money raised was sufficient, where are any new hospitals going to be built? Hospitals which do not sell land have been told they will be punished. They may be strangled of repair and building monies! To accelerate these sales hospitals will get a “2 – for – 1” offer roughly translated this means, to my understanding, the government steps in and doubles the cash received for the sale. The money to be paid straight to the hospitals, not private developers – supposedly to finance building projects. Again, the question must be asked, if hospitals have sold their land and receive this money, where exactly are they going to build? On new land costing more than the old land, even with the government double money, was sold for. More than what was received for the old land? What would be wrong with the government giving this money without the hospitals selling the land, they, the government, obviously have it, to build or develop for health on the land they already have? This could also lead, in order to get this cash, to the NHS selling land which isn’t really “surplus”! The Naylor Report recommends selling NHS land and buildings worth around £2 billion rising to £5 billion to build homes on. In order to secure this money, cash which should have been there from taxation, is tantamount to a drive to further privatise the NHS. Leading Doctors have criticised the “Naylor Review” claiming it is a drive towards the “complete privatisation” of the NHS.

Various conservative administrations have been dismantling the NHS for many years now while telling people, “the NHS is safe in our hands”. It is akin to telling people the weather outside is warm and sunny when, in reality, there is a foot of snow and freezing. Unfortunately, and despite evidence to the contrary, many people believe what they are told irrespective of what they can see.

Down here in the 26 counties we hear Sinn Fein committed to a national single tiered health service. This is progressive without a doubt, but if they are going to fund it from general taxation they must also be committed to full employment. If this is the case, as surely it must be, then how are they going to force employers to take on staff they do not need? They cannot instruct employers what to do, it would be in breach of neo laissez faire (none governmental interference in the economy) economics. Therefore, it must be assumed in order to secure full employment, to fund, through Income Tax, a national health service free at the point of need, Sinn Fein, or People Before Profit/Solidarity or a combination of both must be committed to full employment, and this can only be done through the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. It must therefore follow, that to achieve this the private companies, large ones, must be at least nationalised. However, despite the radicalness of their policies in the build up to the recent Irish election, I heard nothing about breaking with laissez faire economics and governmental involvement in the economy. But it is Sinn Fein policy to build a national health service, single tier based on the British model. That means funding through general taxation which must also mean, everybody paying Income Tax! We can go around the mulberry bush for ever here, but these are essential ingredients, which was why Clement Attlee embraced Keynesianism as the 1945 labour administrations economic policy.

To summarise, 1945 the end of the war. Unlike their predecessors in 1918, the troops coming back from fighting fascism wanted a better society than the one they left behind. They wanted no more means testing, no mor being afraid to visit a Doctor or hospital because they could not afford the fees. For this, among others, the electorate in Britain elected a radical labour government who promised, and delivered, a welfare state including the NHS. Capitalism allowed these radical reforms as it benefited the capitalist class as well as the proletariat. The United States were not entirely happy with the British electorate for rejecting Churchill and, using some bullshit excuse about Britain abusing Marshal Aid, stopped this lifeline to Britain. So much for the special relationship! The “Post War Consensus” briefly explained above, became the status quo between 1945 and, ultimately 1979 which allowed for incoming governments not to dismantle their predecessors achievements. The consensus. Margaret Thatcher dismantled the consensus and arguably introduced a new right-wing variant epitomised by the Tony Blair (New) Labour Government which did little to attack Thatcherism. By this time capitalism, the priority of any government in a liberal democracy, no longer needed the sizable workforce which they did when the NHS first came into being. With unemployment rising, due to various government policies – chiefly conservative administrations – Income Tax revenue was falling leading to less funding which taxation was supposed to pay for. Enter private sector. If taxation was no longer sufficient to fund the NHS, and still they kept giving tax cuts to benefit the rich, then funding would be sought elsewhere. This is clear evidence that governments, despite what they say, are in the business of privatising the NHS. If they were not, even allowing for unemployment, they would stop giving tax breaks to the rich! On to 2019 and the “Naylor Report” and the selling off of NHS land and buildings, including old hospitals which could be refurbished, or, demolished and a new one built on the site!

This in brief is the rise and what looks like the fall of the UK National Health Service. Things not set to improve any time soon, the electorate don’t seem that bothered yet. If they were, they would have voted in a labour government, as they did in 1945! Unfortunately for the people in the six counties who did not vote for Johnson and his version of conservatism they will have to put up with him as their Prime minister. Never mind the Legislative Assembly, they are not, no matter how it is dressed up, the government any more than Greater Manchester Council are!!

Any government or potential government in the twenty-six counties must be prepared to interfere or intervene in the economy if they want to establish a nationalised, single tier health service. Failure to do this will not result in such a service coming into being. Clement Attlee had the Second World War to build his NHS on the back of, the people needed radical change and he broke with all previous protocol and delivered. He intervened, as Keynesian economics allowed, in the economy and delivered his “jewel in the crown”, the NHS. This service applied to all parts of the UK including the six-counties. Today, the ideas of Keynes are points of history as monetarism, which does not allow the scope for the same government intervention in the economy, is the policy of the day. So the question must be asked: how far would the capitalist state allow such intervention? For socialists, it would not matter, the state would have to be engaged to get all measures through and a socialist state established, but would the capitalist economy allow for some moderate intervention in order to deliver a nationalised health service delivering care free at the point of need? Or, would the capitalist class link arms, possibly using the army if matters were to go too far threatening their state based on profits for the boss’s? Chile was an example of a constitutional government, socialist, under Salvador Allende being overthrown when the capitalist class felt he, Allende, had gone too far. It resulted in a fascist takeover and cost Allende his life. The capitalist world looked on and did nothing why? Probably because they felt under such circumstances, they would have done the same, their armed forces and their police would take out the government! If anybody has seen the film; A Very British Coup about a left-wing British Prime Minister brought down by the state they’d see what I mean. The film epitomises the power of the state over governments. Would this happen here in Ireland if any government, constitutional government, broke with aspects of laissez faire? These are all arguments for the old maxim; “no parliamentary road to socialism”, which brings us to the meaning of left-wing and right-wing. Left-wing tends to be those committed to social change and sit on the left wing of parliament. It originates from the French Revolution and is a bourgeois political concept. Right-wing tends to be the forces of conservatism who sit on the right wing of parliament. Therefore, in the British parliament the labour MPs sit on the left wing or left side of parliament, the conservatives sit opposite. In the former USSR the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) would be considered right-wing, wishing to conserve the status quo, whereas Boris Yeltsin, who wished to dismantle communism – Soviet version – was considered left-wing. During the fall of the USSR western media often mentioned “conservative communists” a contradiction in terms to most people listening or reading. They simply meant the people who were in power at the time, the CPSU who wished to conserve the status quo.

Whether you agree with the revolutionary road to socialism, or still believe a parliamentary avenue remains open one thing all must agree on is; we need a new health service, free for all at the point of need! Just as Clement Attlee’s labour administration back in the forties brought about the NHS and nationalised certain industries which, as it turned out were only on loan, as progressive these moves were, they did not equal socialism. Socialism cannot coexist with capitalism and of all the isms the one which capitalism fears is socialism. Capitalism can coexist, even thrive, under fascism and as history tells us, under certain conditions the capitalist class will resort to it as their saviour. Nationalisation of industry, a move in the correct direction certainly, must not be confused or mistaken with “workers control of the means of production” it is not the same. The latter cannot be brought about without the removal of capitalism. If a Sinn Fein and possibly PBP/Solidarity coalition ever do bring about an Irish variant of the NHS, funded by general taxation, and if the capitalist state allow it, that same capitalist state can take it away. Just look at the UK! It will not be a substitute for the Socialist Republic which Sinn Fein once claimed to subscribe to, remember? That fight must continue!!


Kevin Morley, writer, activist,  author of A Descriptive History of the  Irish Citizen Army & Striking Similarities & The Misogynous President.

Socialism: Revolution or Reform? A National Health Service

Enda Craig lambasts the Irish Left over water charges. 

The hypocrisy and cowardice of the so called ' Left ' and the Irish electorate in not acknowledging and challenging the sell-out and betrayal of PBP, SF, RISE, Ind 4 Change and the Soc Democcrats in supporting FG/FF/LAB and the Greens on the proposal for Charges For Excessive Use on our water is beyond measurement.

On the 6th of April 2017. in front of RTE cameras on the Dail plinth , the R2W TD's announced that they had 'Collective Agreement' with All political parties right across the board to the contents of the report.

This report ( Draft Final Report of the Recommendations of the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services ) contains the proposal For Charges For Excessive Use as did the Final Report also.

The evidence is there and indisputable.

Ask any of the ' Left ' commentators to explain this and they immediately get angry ... tell you they are against Excessive Charges and vehemently blame FG and FF but will not entertain or accept the fact that the above list of political parties (which they continue to support) are Equally guilty.

Now they are calling for the same gathering of reprobates to get into Government.

Those that we hailed as heroes threw us under the bus and are now looking for and getting huge electoral support without any explanation of their previous actions.

This is a damning sell-out and betrayal of gigantic proportions on our watch and has been deliberately ignored.

It will affect every family in the land.

We are not brave enough or straight enough to face up to the embarrassment and the shame that those that we put our trust and faith in (And Still Do) sold us out …  Lost Country … Lost People. 

 ⏭ Enda Craig is Donegal community activist.

An Inconvenient Truth

Matt Treacy writes for GRIPT on: The Care Bears ➧ How the Liberal Left control and populate taxpayer funded NGOs for their own agenda 
 

In his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels excoriated those wealthy philanthropists who placed themselves “before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when they give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them.”

Back then charity was the preserve of austere Victorians and mill owners who perhaps felt a twang of guilt over their new found wealth. Now it has been colonised by the liberal left, but with a much smaller proportion of the monies donated via the state or from guilt-tripped private donors actually accruing to the benefit of those in whose name it is collected.

Then again, socialists were never very efficient, except of course when using other people’s money in order to look after themselves. Having failed to capture the commanding heights of the economy, the activists of the left must now be content with infiltrating the areas in which they can establish their influence without the need to have any real popular support.

There is always the trade union movement of course; long a source of employment for graduates who have never for the most part worked in any of the jobs which “their” members occupy.

But now there is also the vast array of “non-governmental” organisations. The opportunities inherent in this as a means to incorporate potential opposition was first spotted by Charlie Haughey when he embraced Tony Gregory’s north Dublin city community apparatus. Charlie’s protégé Bertie Ahern took that to a new level during the Celtic Tiger years when there was a proliferation of state-funded organisations purporting to represent local communities. 

Tony Gregory, Charlie Haughey

The problem of course is not that some useful services may be provided but that many of the now vast network of massively funded NGOs have become sanctuaries of sanctimoniousness. The effectiveness of these virtue-signalling Care Bears – other than providing an opportunity to demonstrate how much better they are than everyone else, and ensuring their pet projects receive endless taxpayer funding – must be questioned. Not only that, but if you look at the people who administer and staff these organisations, it is clear that their political activism or affiliation may have been more than helpful in securing the positions so many of them hold.

As the unions once were, NGOs are now a means to ensure that activists are given jobs by other party members and sympathisers; thus ensuring not only that they can devote their time to things which benefit the party or the party’s agenda, and, in not a few instances, prepare themselves to be future candidates.

The difference now is that in place of the one-time bitter competition in the unions between Labour and the Workers Party, and to a lesser degree the Communist Party and Sinn Féin, for paid positions within the bureaucracy, the left is now quite happy to co-operate across party lines to ensure that NGO jobs go to others of the ‘woke’. And more importantly they co-operate to ensure the ‘unwoke’ are excluded. The same logic operates within sections of academia where they have established themselves, and of course in the mainstream media.

That is not unique to Ireland. A study conducted in Sweden found that 56% of journalists surveyed stated that they supported either the Greens or Left Party. Those parties got 12.6% of the vote in the 2014 general election. Hardly surprising then that the Swedish press was showing little evidence of the massive dislocation and concerns over the impact of mass immigration.

An incestuous nepotism operates to ensure that there is a seamless transition between jobs dominated by a coterie of activists from the left parties, for which purposes we include the Greens who have been quite adroit at exploiting their positions within the Care Bear network. An analysis of people within NGOs evinces a striking similarity in educational background, student politics, and employment by parties including within Leinster House. 


The most important thing is that they almost invariably share the same politics regardless of party. So anyone looking for a job with almost any NGO will have to tick a range of boxes on attitudes towards climate change, abortion, immigration, gender and so on.

That nexus was perhaps best illustrated by recent pro-abortion campaign in the 2018 referendum. While portrayed in the media as a grassroots movement and some sort of popular uprising, it was run almost exclusively by people who have been employed full time in taxpayer supported NGOs and even by the state itself. (Of course the Government and establishment media was on their side anyway).

The Irish Family Planning Association has long been a central cog in the Irish abortion campaign. It had an income of €2.15 million in the referendum year, 2018, of which €1.31 million came from the taxpayer. A further €100,000 came from its international body Planned Parenthood, €75,900 from Open Society and €46,551 from the United Nations Population Fund. Amnesty International Ireland and the Abortion Rights Campaign also received funding from Open Society.

At the time of the referendum the IFPA board included among others Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin’s former secretary in Leinster House, Natasha O’Brien a senior civil servant in the Department of Health, and Siona Cahill a former President of the Union of Students who makes podcasts for the Irish Independent.

The co-ordinating committee for the pro abortion campaign was the executive of Together for Yes. All continue to be professional members of the liberal elite masquerading as outsiders. Its members included Gráinne Griffin who is now a senior manager with the Citizens Information Board; Orla O’Connor who is a director of the almost totally state funded National Women’s Council and who has spent a lifetime in the NGO sector; and Ailbhe Smyth, one of the few MAs to have been made head of her own department at UCD and now a director of Age Action Ireland which has now employed a surprising number of left wing activists. 

Orla O’Connor
Others in the abortion campaign include Sineád Kennedy who is a tutor at Maynooth University and completed a doctorate on the stranger shores of Marxism and culture so ably demolished by Scruton and others. Sarah Monaghan is now campaigns manager at The Wheel and was formerly logistics manager for Michael D. Higgin’s presidential campaign; Silke Paasche is head of communications at the NWCI and previously spent four years working for FEANSTA which is part of the European Commission’s information service; Deirdre Duffy is a former Deputy Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and Amy Rose Harte runs her own communications consultancy and is a former press officer for the Labour Party.

The IFPA CEO, who was the only male member of the Together for Yes executive, is Niall Behan who used to be Proinsias de Rossa’s assistant when he was Minister for Social Welfare in the Fine Gael coalition of the 1990s. (Which is apt given that all of the above are now inseparable from the Fine Gael on every single major issue affecting the country.) Planned Parenthood’s branch in Bolivia, is funded by the Irish state through Irish Aid. So in effect the Department of Foreign Affairs is supporting an organisation whose purpose is to overturn Bolivia’s current abortion law.

Niall Behan
It is clear then that the party affiliations of leading liberal activists are pretty much meaningless. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by the key role played by Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katharine Zappone in ensuring that the pet projects and activists are kept well supplied with taxpayers’ monies.

Zappone became an Irish citizen in 1995 and epitomises the strange melange that embraces everyone from government ministers including An Taoiseach to members of the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party. Not only do they all share the same views on all of the key moral and social issues confronting the Irish people, but they all wet their beaks in the same trough.

Since moving here, Zappone has evinced a fanatical determination to change this country in the direction she favours. Her initial vehicle for advancing her agenda was An Cosán based in Tallaght. (It also served as the launch pad for Senator Lynn Ruane, a less articulate but nonetheless committed advocate of the Zappone agenda.)

Zappone is the Minister responsible for Tusla which has been the focus of several serious concerns and allegations in regard to the manner in which it operates. Tusla granted An Cosán €549,918 in 2018, and it received €1.69 million in total from the public purse. It has also received funding from multinationals like Accenture and IBM and from the Ireland Funds. It currently employs around 100 people.

The current CEO of An Cosán is Heydi Foster-Breslin. For years she managed to combine her ownership of a real estate company with a succession of NGO jobs. She was appointed by President Higgins to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and was until recently a member of the board of Dóchas which is the central administrative committee for Irish overseas NGOs and receives the vast bulk of its funding from the state through Irish Aid.

Katherine Zappone
Intriguingly, Foster-Breslin spent six years as the chairperson of Common Purpose Ireland, an organisation that has branches worldwide, which says it “develops leaders” and which has been described as “a left wing version of the Freemasons” and a “networking organisation for the great and good to advance their politically correct view.’

Those claims were made in relation to the British subsidiary of Common Purpose, which was officially founded by Julia Middleton who had been in the office of former British Labour Minister, John Prescott. Amongst those involved in advising Common Purpose was Joyce Thacker who was head of child services in Rotherham during the disastrous handling of the local council and police of the horrific systematic grooming of children to be raped by local Pakistani gangs.

As was later revealed “a child-protection body, of which Ms Thacker was an influential member” tried to conceal the ethnicity of the men who groomed and sexually abused at least one of the girl victims in Rotherham “because it was worried about the impact on “community cohesion”

Ms Thacker also oversaw the removal of three children from foster care because the parents of the family supported UKIP.

The Irish board and trustees of Common Purpose include Denis Leamy who is the CEO of the Cork Education and Training Board and was formerly CEO of Pobal, which operates various community schemes and has a budget of €700 million. Leamy’s holding of these public offices is an indication of the sort of members of the elite recruited globally by Common Purpose.

The question of course is, what is the common purpose and is that purpose supported by the Irish state?

Another key element in the Irish Care Bear movement is Amnesty International which not only played an outrageous part in the abortion referendum but took substantial funding from the Open Society foundation. It’s board, under Executive Director Colm O’Gorman, is a curious blend of respectable and no doubt well meaning people like journalist Razan Ibraheem, Professor Cliona O’Farrelly on the one hand; and Youth Section representative Katie O’Houlihan who professes a “keen interest in intersectionality,” and Niall Cowley who helps people to realise that they are being offended, on the other. He was a member of the National Steering Committee against Hate Speech, and in the spirit of tolerance for which the entrepreneurial woke are renowned was also an organiser of protests against the Pope’s visit.

Among the less-known lights of the NGO game are groups like The Irish Network against Racism, part of the overall European network, which is 77.5% bankrolled by the EU, and the remainder by private foundations including, of course, Open Society. It spends most of its income on wages and travel for its activists. The Irish section received €270,000 in state funding in 2019 and showed its appreciation by publishing a report claiming that Irish people, the ones whose taxes paid these people’s wages, discriminate in favour of “whites.”

Finally I will leave you with a brief vignette of one of the bottom feeders in the consumption of the vast sums dispensed by the state to improve us all with our own money, despite never having been asked nor consented.
Colm O’Gorman

Changing Ireland is a Limerick-based group which doesn’t appear to have much output to justify the €100,408 it received in 2018 – 99.56% of it from the Department of Rural and Community Development, from me and you in other words.

It did film some of the Embracing Diversity event in Ballyhaunis in October which was an opportunity to lecture the people of the west on their bad behaviour following widespread opposition to the plans to impose new direct provision centres in Oughterard and Ballinamore. One of the speakers was Anastasia Crickley who is a former member of the board of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). This is the body which recently told the Irish government that it needs to do more to get us all to acknowledge our “colonial guilt.”

What is mainly interesting about Changing Ireland, however, is that its website (which would hardly cost 100 grand to administer judging by the cut of it) heralds the doings of one Minister Michael Ring, who coincidentally happens to be the Minister responsible for the Department of Rural and Community Development. Yes, the Department that bunged Changing Ireland all that moolah.

All, it seems, are friends in the world where the Irish left is basically subvented by the state and philanthropic billionaires and eccentric Englishmen living in caravans. At least the Victorians saw charity in terms of keeping people alive rather than preventing them being born in the first place. 


Matt Treacy is a writer and a former republican prisoner.

The Care Bears

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