23.09.2009

Looking to Lisbon to end the crisis

Use the referendum as a platform to call for working class unity in Europe, demands Anne Mc Shane

In June the International Monetary Fund issued an ominous warning that Ireland faced “a deeper recession than any advanced economy”. It predicted dire consequences from the collapse in the grossly inflated property market and foresaw no recovery before 2014.

It certainly does not seem to have exaggerated the scale of the meltdown. Unemployment figures continue to climb, thousands of businesses have closed and many are facing real poverty. For the first time since 1995, the past year has seen more people leaving Ireland than coming here. The Celtic tiger is well and truly dead.

But the main governing party, Fianna Fáil, is determined to save Irish capitalism through deep cuts. Plans are afoot to introduce a savage budget in December. Healthcare and social welfare benefits are to be slashed and major cuts in public sector pay and conditions are certain. Private sector workers are being subjected to sackings, redundancies and pay reductions of up to 40%. In this atmosphere of insecurity and fear it is easy to stoke up resentment towards those still in permanent, pensionable jobs.

Not coincidentally, the Economic and Social Research Institute has just published a report claiming that public sector workers earn up to 25% more than those in the private sector. It should also be noted that public sector workers are currently the most unionised and militant. Efforts to discipline the working class will therefore concentrate on attacking and undermining this section. Isolating them is key to that task in the race to the bottom.

The Financial Times recently applauded the efforts of the Irish government to deal with the crisis and argued that the pain was inevitable and necessary. Weeping crocodile tears, it declared: “The next few years will be harsh and the burden of the adjustment will be borne by those least able to cope. Dealing with the fiscal crisis will mean it will be difficult to protect the country’s most vulnerable people. But, as the wreckage of the boom is washed away, older, safer sources of growth will be uncovered” (August 10).

That obviously gives courage to a government hell-bent on a collision course with the working class. Its three stated aims in the coming months are: to rescue the banks (again); to make sure the Lisbon treaty is passed this time round; and to push through a draconian budget. Legislation to implement the first of these is currently going through the Dáil. The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) is a state body that will be set up to relieve the banks of ‘toxic loans’ clogging up their balance sheets. €54 billion is to be paid for loans said by the government to be worth €47 billion. The extra €7 billion is to be added in to allow for an “upturn in property prices”. But everybody knows that talk of an upturn at this point is not credible - it is more about massaging bank balances to camouflage their bankruptcy. Even €47 billion is a gross overvaluation, as property prices have plummeted by around 25% compared with 2007.

The cash, of course, will have to be borrowed, adding to an existing national debt of almost €100 billion. Banks will then be looking for injections to allow them to start lending again. As usual the government will be on hand to help out. And despite its encouragement of government efforts, even the FT describes Nama as badly thought out and fraught with risk.

Certainly, given the inexorable decline in the economy, the scale of the national debt is grim. And that is even if Nama does not turn out to be the disaster that many predict. Massive interest repayments will be funded by cuts in public spending. And, at the risk of being repetitive, that equals inevitable misery for the working class.

It is an extremely serious and worrying time for many. There is anger at a government so obviously in the pay of property developers and the banks. But this has not - as yet - translated into a new round of mass demonstrations of the like we saw in 2008. Both the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party have expressed confidence that the class will fight back. But, as well as resentment and bitterness, there is anxiety and demoralisation. There seems to be no real alternative to the government’s agenda. Fine Gael and Labour also insist that there must be pain. Sinn Féin poses left, but has shown in the Stormont government that it too is a party committed to running capitalism.

Evidently what is urgently needed is a party that puts forward a principled programme based on Marxism. It is obvious to all that capitalism is dramatically failing. There is no point in calling on trade union bureaucrats to call a general strike to bring down the government, as the Socialist Party does, if there is nothing to put in its place. In any case, David Begg, secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, has made clear his commitment to accept cuts on behalf of his membership. Social partnership is alive and well and working to the advantage of the bourgeoisie. Nor can the left depend on spontaneity - it must take up the challenge of creating a working class party.

Within the left talks of unity are again in the air. The SP produced an article after the European and local elections calling for discussion between itself and the SWP. It was critical of the politics of the People Before Profit Alliance (the SWP-dominated platform which won a number of council seats), with its lowest-common-denominator policies. It said that it would be using all its energies in campaigning for a “new mass working class party” and would not enter into any alliance unless it has “a programme that opposes the capitalist market” (www.socialistparty.net). It was also critical of the fact that some members of the SWP - in particular councillor Richard Boyd Barrett, its most well known member - have been calling for ‘left unity’ with Sinn Féin and the Labour Party.

The SWP replied by welcoming the renewed call for debate, but asserting that any coalition formed should make room for both reformists and revolutionaries. It wants a “broad left alliance” to be formed now, not for the general election. In other words, the SP only wants an electoral alliance, but to the left of the type of organisation the SWP is proposing.

Neither option deals with the need to form a party based on Marxism. That project, rather than some electoral lash-up or yet another populist bloc, is the burning question. You would have thought the SWP comrades might have learned a lesson from the Respect debacle over the water. And the SP appears to be as determined as ever that its ‘mass party’ is a project for itself alone! At least there is talk of some kind of political unity once again.

Another public meeting is being held this weekend by a number of smaller groups including the Irish Socialist Network, Workers Solidarity Movement and Socialist Democracy. This is to discuss united political opposition to Nama. Hopefully comrades can be won over to the need for principled revolutionary unity in the face of attacks - an initiative for a party - rather than another anti-cuts campaign. As we have seen from the poor turnout on recent anti-Nama demonstrations, campaigns on their own are not going to inspire our class or provide the critical alternative.

Referendum

In the meantime the Lisbon treaty is again being put to a referendum - just 15 months after a resounding rejection. This time, however, the ‘yes’ campaign is in a far stronger position.

Some of the nationalist objections raised last time have been answered. Reassurances have been given that Ireland will retain a commissioner and will not be pressurised into introducing abortion or have to compromise its ‘neutrality’. Crucial, however, is the changed environment. EU president José Manuel Barroso recently arrived in Ireland with a warning that a ‘no’ vote on October 2 would not go down well in terms of any future assistance from Europe.

Given the level of indebtedness to the European Central Bank and the scale of projected borrowing, this message struck home. The ‘yes’ camp, with its key slogan, ‘Vote yes for recovery’, also argues that Europe will help to bring jobs to Ireland. In the absence of an alternative, it will be hard for working class people to reject the treaty.

Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins leads the ‘no’ campaign for the left. Both he and Kieran Allen of the SWP make cogent arguments about the acceleration of privatisation and militarism under Lisbon. The SP also points to the increasing practice in Europe of ‘social dumping’: ie, bringing in workers from another member-state at lower rates of pay to undermine local labour. But neither organisation raises the need for working class unity across Europe to defy these attacks. Instead their slogans and propaganda are principally confined to defeating Lisbon from an Irish perspective. Comrade Allen considers that a positive outcome of a ‘no’ vote would be the redrafting of the treaty - the same position as Sinn Féin, which has a ‘For a better deal in Europe’ slogan. Higgins believes that a ‘no’ vote could kick-start a revival in militancy within the 26 counties.

There are also problems within the rightwing ‘no’ campaign. Coir, a catholic organisation, has organised a major propaganda campaign. It does not have the backing of the bishops, though, who have stated that they are satisfied with the guarantees on abortion and recommend a ‘yes’.

Interestingly, the UK Independence Party has entered the fray, using EU money to fund a leaflet drop to every door and a postering campaign. This has done little to improve the credentials of the conservative ‘no’ campaign, as Ukip is not exactly popular among Irish nationalists, understandably enough.

And the trade union movement is divided, with the ICTU calling for a ‘yes’ vote and Blair Horan of the civil service union, CPSA, confronting Joe Higgins in a war of words about workers’ rights in Europe. Unite, one of the country’s largest unions, has called for all its members to vote ‘no’, however.

It is hard to guess the outcome. But the most important aim for the left should be to use the referendum as a platform to call for working class unity in Europe. We must oppose efforts by the bourgeoisie to unite Europe in its own image and according to its own agenda. But we need to come up with inspirational ideas - that of unity with the militant and class-conscious workers in France and Germany and right across the EU.

That, rather than a defensive and potentially nationalist campaign, is the answer.