[page 27]
The recent election in the Irish Republic failed to establish a firm majority for any of the capitalist parties. But it did free the Irish Labour Party from the disastrous coalition with Fine Gail. DERMOT CONNOLLY axplains how, if Labour adopts socialist policies, it can mobilise the growing anger of Irish workers. A new opening for Irish Labour THE GENERAL election, held in February of this year, has brought a minority Fianna Fail government to power in Southern Ireland. Despite the almost universal hatred for the outgoing coalition government of Fine Gael and Labour, Fianna Fail, under the leadership of Charles Haughey, were incapable of winning an outright majority of seats in the Dail (Irish parliament).
Fianna Fail therefore has to depend on the support of the other capitalist parties, Fine Gael and the recently formed Progressive Democrats. This loose alliance of the capitalist parties may last for a year, or two at the outside. But it represents an unstable and extremely unsatisfactory outcome from the election capitalist class. Despite the massive funding of these parties, over £4 million was spent by them in the election, and despite the fact that the capitalist parties have 90 per cent of the vote, the ruling class still do not have a stable party capable of winning an outright majority and carrying out in full the programme of big business. the crisis facing The pressures of capitalism has brought about the present alliance in the Dail. In order to gain the support of Fine Gael, the Haughey government have adopted Fine Gael's economic programme of massive cuts, and dropped any talk of "renegotiating" the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Fine Gael on the other hand, cannot vote against the government while it is carrying out policies for which they themselves have In fact, the budget introduced by Fianna Fail last month goes even further than anything attempted by Fine Gael. The budget amounts to a declaration of war on the working class (See p29). Overall, the budget will have a severe deflationary effect on an economy which has not yet recovered from the recession of 1981-2. It is estimated by the government itself that growth in 1987 will be below one per cent. Between 1982 and 1986 GNP actually fell by 1.2 per cent, with gross investment falling by 14.6 per cent. The budget will continue this trend of stagnation in the economy. It is now likely that the economy will go in to the next world recession without any recovery since the last one.
The capitalist class have attempted to resolve the crisis by a ferocious onslaught on the living standards of the working class. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), have estimated that the living standards of their members have been cut by 20 per cent since 1980. The capitalists have sacrificed living standards, jobs, SINCE THIS article was written in April an explosive movement has developed against the Fianna Fail government. Tens of thousands of workers in the Health Service have taken part in strike action and protest demonstrations in every town and city over the last two months. On Wednesday 24th June 50,000 workers took part in a four hour general strike in support of the workers. In Dublin over 30,000 took part in the demonstrathe short space of four months since this government took office, every town and city has seen the biggest workers demonstrations since the tax marches of the late Despite this the government is still determined to press ahead with the cuts. In the autumn the cuts will also start to bite in education. There is a growth in the economy, have cut education, and the minimal social and health services that exist, but the crisis in the state's finances has actually worsened. Debt has actually doubled since 1982. The total public sector debt now stands at 148 per cent of GNP. In a recent speech to his parliamentary party, where there was an outcry about the severity of the budget, Haughey stated that unless massive cuts are carried out now, the debt would reach £36 billion by 1990. According to Haughey, the economy would not be able to service a debt of this magnitude in two or three years time. The servicing of the debt at present is just below f2 Debt crisis billion a year, about 15 per cent of GNP, and a quarter of the amount of current government spending.
The attempts to resolve the debt problem by monetarist cuts in spending only makes the situation worse. Spending on education, housing and health has been reduced in real terms each year since 1983. Increases given in social welfare payments have barely kept place with inflation. Yet government spending on social services rose from 28.9 per cent of GNP in 1980 to 35.6 per cent in 1985.
Unemployment has now grown from 10 per cent of the workforce to 20 per cent at present. An all time record of 250,000 are officially registered as unemployed. Apart from the social cost of soaring unemployment, in purely economic terms, what the government saves on the strong possibility that funding for the local authorities will be cut by 10 per the summer, while the government are also trying to impose a wage freeze in the public service. All the indications are there for a massive confrontation if not during the summer then almost certainly during the autumn. A general strike is now implicit in the situation. The Fianna Fail government has already faced its first crisis in the Dail. They survived a vote on the allocation of funds for health only on the basis of the abstention of Fine Gael. While the two main capitalist parties are still working in a loose alliance all the pressures building up on them by the movement of the workers will most likely see the fall of this government within a relatively short period one hand through cuts, it loses through rising unemployment and poverty on the other. Haughey himself has stated that if the unemployed were productively engag ed in the economy, f4 billion could be added to GNP. This would be an increase of 20 per cent in the nation's wealth. There is no way out of the crisis on the basis of capitalism. By adopting a tough monetarist approach in the budget, Fianna Fail hopes to reduce interest rates by lessening the government's demand for credit in the home economy. Interest rates at present are running three times the rate of inflation. By reducing interest rates the government hopes that it can stimulate investment in the economy.
The declaration of war on the working class in the budget is intended as a signal to big business that their profits and wealth will be safe in Ireland. Fianna Fail hopes to convince those capitalists who have been exporting capital out of the country to invest at home. This is a forlorn hope. It is not just high interest rates which have prompted the capitalist class to move their funds abroad. They have lost all confidence in their system in the South. Faced with the debt crisis, high interest rates, low productivity in native industry, stagnation and crisis in every section of the economy, and a depressed home market, the capitalist class have engaged in what the Irish Times has referred to as "a strike of capital." £1.5 billion, the value of two months exports, was spirited out of the country in 1986. This exodus of capital is now referred to as the Black Hole Mark II. In
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1984, an economist in Trinity College used the term 'the Black Hole' to account for the expatriation of £1 billion in profits out of the country by the foreign multinationals. Between the black holes, mark 1 and II, and the servicing of foreign debt, huge amounts of money are now leaving the economy every year.
While the capitalists engage in an orgy of speculation on the stock exchange, of investment abroad, of the illegal shipping of capital and profits out of the country, the local economy is going down the tubes. The number of workers employed in manufacturing nas fallen from 227,000 in 1981 to 185,000 at the end of 1986. Industry is completely dependant on state aid.
The same situation holds true for agriculture. This is an important sector of the economy, accounting for 40 per cent of exports. Although less than 15 per cent of the workforce are directly employed in agriculture, a total of 500,000 jobs are involved when processing and farm servicing is taken into account. Agriculture is also completely
Black hole
dependant on state and EEC funding. For example, the South produces only 4 per cent of milk production in the EEC, but holds 10 per cent of the butter mountain. The general crisis of agriculture in the EEC, given collapsing markets, the fall in the value of the dollar, the inability to continue funding the Common Agriculture Policy, means a particularly severe crisis for farming in the South.
The severity of the economic crisis, along with monetarist government policies, has led to an explosion of poverty.
The situation would be far worse if it was not for the re-emergence of mass emigration. 100,000, mainly young people, have been forced to look for a future elsewhere over the recent years. A report from a voluntary organisation formed to highlight this problem, estimates that if the present level continues, 50 per cent of the 15 to 29 year age group, or over 150,000 people, will emigrate over the next five years.
If this were to happen, it would represent an absolute catastrophe for the country. Most likely, while emigration will continue at a high rate, the onset of a new recession in the world economy, will cut off this avenue. As it is, most of the emigrants are working as illegals in the USA, where they could end up on the streets in a new recession, or are working in the service and construction industry in the South East of Britain, especially London.
The exodus of young people is ly economic in character. It also their despair at Irish society, the
not onreflects lack of
The budget amounts to a declaration of war on the living standards of the working class. Pay As You Earn (PAYE) income tax will go up by 14 per cent in 1987 as a result of the budget. The income levy for health care has been increased. Pay related benefit is to be cut by 50 per cent. In addition, 4 years social security stamps instead of 3 years will now be required to qualify: 39 stamps instead of 26 will be required to qualify for flat rate unemployment, disability or maternity benefit.
There will be a £10 charge for outpatient hospital visits, and a charge of £10 per day for inpatients in public wards. An indefinite wage freeze has been declared in the public service from July onwards. The ban on recruitment to the public service has been extended to cover all vacancies instead of the existing situation whereby one out of every three was filled.
40,000 new places on employment schemes were announced. Participating in these fake training, cheap labour schemes is to be made virtually compulsory. 150,000 of the unemployed are to be "interviewed" Refusal to take part in a scheme would lead to a loss of benefit. The rates of pay on these schemes varies from £30 a week up to f65 a week for so called trainees in the public service.
any co-ordinated struggle by the leaders of the labour movement, and a mistaken impression that the recent defeat of a referendum on divorce, and the passing of an anti-abortion referendum earlier, means that the Catholic church is tightening its grip on the country. The development of mass struggles can change the situation. The political effect of mass
Militancy
emigration, while it to some degree denudes the working class of some of those workers who have been its best fighters, is on the other hand, a further confirmation to the youth and the working class that capitalism offers no future.
The youth that remain, whether on the dole, in cheap labour schemes, or in dead end jobs, will have no option but to tight to change the system. 50,000 are on fake training schemes, but the majority are in low paid jobs, both in the private and public sector. An ICTU report has found that 72 per cent of workers under 20 years old are low paid. 50 per cent of all school leavers get less than £55 a week in their first job, while 75 per cent get less than f70 a week, and 12 per cent get less than
Payments on one scheme, the Social Employment Scheme, will be cut from £70 to £60 a week for all single people who enter this scheme from now on.
In total, cuts of £246 millior in current spending, and £77 million in capital spending were outlined in the budget. These cuts, plus the tightening up and continuation of the recruitment embargo, will have devastating effects.
The health service is already tottering on the brink of collapse after five years of cutbacks. People aiready queue for hours for outpatient treatment, and for months for a bed in a public ward. This latest round of cuts can push the already overloaded system into complete collapse.
The budget abolished at a stroke a £5,000 surrender grant for people moving out of local authority housing, a £2,500 grant for the purchase of new houses, and all house improvement grants. This affects thousands of working class families who had already applied for these grants. In some instances people could even have been left homeless, because they were unable to complete house sales and purchases due to a loss of these grants. Since then the government has slightly amended these proposals, but the measures will still effect thousands who had applied for grants.
£30 a week. The is £160 a week
10,000 civil service workers are low paid including 1,000 who get less than £6,500 a year. In general workers in the South work the longest hours, receive the least holidays, for the lowest wages in the EEC outside of Spain and Greece. They also face taxation rates and a cost of living similar to the richest Scandinavian countries. Along with the youth, women workers and workers over 50 years are the most exploited. Wages for women are on average only two-thirds of the general industrial wage.
Every section of the working class has been hit by the crisis. The country is being pauperised by the failure of capitalism. Yet the bourgeois are preparing through the new Fianna Fail government supported by Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats, to tighten the screws even further. This can only result in a massive explosion of the class struggle in the period ahead.
When Fian a Faii won a record majority in the 1977 election, within a year they were faced with the biggest ever movement of the working class. At that time a boom in the economy restored the con-
average
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MIR Summer 1987: Ireland
fidence and fighting spirit of the working class after the recession of 1973/4. The number of strikes grew dramatically in 1976 and 77. Then in 1978, 500 workers threatened with redundancy in Waterford staged a demonstration through the town. They found that the army had been called out to block a bridge leading to the town centre. A few days later 20,000 workers struck throughout Waterford and the surrounding area in a protest general strike.
Throughout the whole period of national industrial unrest that followed, Waterford remained one of the most militant areas. A shop stewards committee was formed in the town, around the glass workers, the biggest industry. When the national leadership sold out the struggle on PAYE taxes, the Waterford shop stewards unsucessfully attempted to build a National Shop Stewards Committee to give the movement direction from below.
The general strike in Waterford was a foretaste of the developments that began in 1979. Between 1979 and 1981 there were nine half day general strikes and mass mobilisations of the working class. On the first of these 750,000 workers downed tools and took part in mass demonstrations around the country. In Dublin, a city of just over one million, 250,000 at least took part in the demonstration. The scale of this movement was unprecedented in Irish history. After the industrialisation of the 1960s, it was clearly shown that the working class were the overwhelming majority and a force to be reckoned with.
But the movement failed for a lack of a clear programme and strategy. The only demand raised by the union leaders was for a fair tax system! They accepted a government appointed commission on taxation to investigate the system. Less and less workers were prepared to strike and demonstrate when it was clear the movement was being given no strategy or clear leadership. The leadership were like the Grand Old Duke of York, who marched his men to the top of the hill and down again, several times over.
But the movement shattered the Fianna Fail government. Lynch, who had led a historic victory, was replaced by Haughey. Contrary to his stated intention, Haughey was forced to continue the policy of high government borrowing begun by the coalition of 1973 to 1977, and continued also by Lynch. Faced with this movement of the working class, he made concessions rather than confront the unions.
Now history is set to repeat itself, through in a different way. The ruling class are determined to end the policy of high borrowing and not to make concessions. While the trade union leaders are seeking talks, and promising to trade wage restraint for a limited deflation of
30
the economy and measures for job creation, the government has set itselt on a path of confrontation. The ICTU leadership are preparing for a sellout. They are prepared to contemplate cuts, provided they are "fair" and hit everyone equally! But a new movement from below is in preparation.
In October 1985 ICTU were forced to call a one day strike in the public service against a threatened pay freeze. Throughout 1986 one group of workers after another in the public sector took on the government. Teachers, electricity workers, local authorities, workers in the state owned peat industry, were all involved in struggle. In one week during the recent election, 8,000 workers were on strike in the public and private sectors.
The budget will create a mood of enormous anger throughout all sections of the working class as the full reality of the measures proposed sinks in over the coming weeks and months. Despite the fact that the tactic of limited general strikes became discredited in the minds of workers after the failure of the movement from 1979 to 1981, such generalised struggles and general strikes will become inevitable within a period of time.
Coalition ends
While the trade union leaders are able now to resist demands for action, and to stall through the talks taking place with the government, in one way or another the movement will find an avenue to fight back. The Irish Nurses organisation, and the local government and public services union, have said they will not handle the £10 health charges. The demand has also been raised for local co-ordinating committees of the health service unions to coordinate action to fight the cuts.
While there is still a certain caution among the working class, or sections of it, due to mass unemployment, the threat of closure, and a lack of faith in the leadership to take the movement forward, all the conditions now exist for a rapid escalation of the class struggle.
This makes the perspectives for an already unstable government even more conditional.
It is by no means ruled out that the present government can be brought down as a result of a movement of the working class. A new election would solve nothing in terms of bringing a majority bourgeois government to power.
Fianna Fail became the major party of the capitalist class after the 1930s. But under the leadership of Haughey, the capitalists became less than enchanted with Fianna Fail. The last time they were in government, for a few months in 1982, they fiddled the financial estimates set before the Dail. In a bizarre series of events, the government were caught tap-
ping journalists' phones. A member of the cabinet was involved in bugging a conversation with another cabinet member, and after a massive police search, the murderer of a young nurse was found hiding in the home of the Attorney General.
The memory of these events is a factor in why Fianna Fail failed to win a majority. Fine Gael, on the other hand, espoused all the policies which the ruling class wanted implemented, but could not deliver on them in total in coalition with Labour. Despite their general capitulation, Labour's right wing were still forced to reflect the class base of the party, and put up a struggle in the cabinet against the worst aspects of Fine Gael's programme. A Fine Gael deputy best sums up the position from their point of view: 'The break-up of the coalition will invigorate both parties (Fine Gael and Labour). We now have the prospect of either a Fianna Fail government, a Fine Gail and Progressive Democrat coalition, or indeed a Fianna Fail—-Fine Gael coalition. Any of these possibilities has the inherent advantage of offering clear cut centrist economic and social policies... that common base does not exist between Fine Gael and Labour. While there are good working relationships between ministers and deputies, there is also an inevitable tug of war between a socialist party with a growing and strong left-wing and a party of the middle ground."
When Desmond O'Malley was expelled from Fianna Fail by Haughey, a section of the bourgeois persuaded him to establish a new party. They gave massive financial support and media coverage to the Progressive Democrats, pushing it initially to 25 per cent in the opinion polls. The intention was to use the PDs to prevent Fianna Fail winning a majority, and hopefully then to have Haughey removed from the leadership, or else to provide Fine Gael with a suitable right-wing partner for a new coalition.
On both counts they have failed. Haughey remains as leader of Fianna Fail, and the PDs won support in the election at the expense of Fine Gael whose vote plummeted. The capitalists have ended up with the worst of all possible worlds, three parties, and none with a majority.
A section of the capitalist class are now demanding a Grand Coalition of the right to force through the necessary programme of cuts. If the present government arrangement falls apart, especially as a result of a movement of the working class, it is not ruled out that such a grand coalition can be brought about through the pressure of the capitalist class on their political representatives.
Such a coalition of the right would give the ruling class a breathing space, giving them a virtual dictatorship of capital in
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the Dail. But it would also open up the process of the rapid development of a mass socialist opposition around the Labour Party. This process has already begun with the resignation of the Labour ministers from the coalition government which brought on the February election. The election result was contradictory as far as Labour is concerned. Labour received its lowest ever vote, at 6.4 per cent, with the exception of the 1933 snap elections called by Fianna Fail, who had been a minority government supported by Labour. This low vote in 1933 can be taken as exceptional. The vote received by Labour in February reflects the disgust felt at Labour's right-wing, who were in the cabinet of a vicious right-wing government, in charge of the Department of Health, which presided over cuts, and the Department of Labour, when corporation workers were being batoned by the police to clear a way for the army to break their Yet at the same time, even by leaving the government at the 11th hour, and campaigning against cuts and the Fine Gael budget proposals, what could have been an absolute disaster for the party was averted. Labour managed to hold onto 12 out of their 14 seats. Despite all the predictions to the contrary, and the enormous discrediting of the party by its rightwing in government, Labour has not been The Workers Party The Workers Party won four seats in the election, and managed to win a marginally larger vote in Dublin than Labour. Labour's vote in Dublin was 7 per cent, with the WP at 7.5 per cent. Yet in every other area of the country Labour was ahead of the WP. In 1969 Labour won 28 per cent of the vote in Dublin, making it the second largest party in the capital. The WP have completely failed to capture the lost Labour vote in any significant degree. This vote will move back to Labour now that it is out of coalition, over a period of time.
The Workers Party has failed to replace Labour as the traditional left party. The fact that they have failed was shown by the tactics they adopted in the recent election. They refused to argue for vote transfers under the PR system to Labour. Their position was, if they could not capture Labour seats at this election, then let the bourgeois parties win them, in the hope that Labour would be decimated, preparing the way for the Workers Party in the future.
This tactic completely rebounded on them. For example in Galway, where Labour left winger MD Higgins was fighting for a possible seat, the attitude in the working class areas was that the left could win a seat, and that the position of the Workers Party jeopardised this. In the event MD Higgins captured the last seat. The tactics of the Workers Party reflect in reality their desperation. With Labour pulling out of coalition and moving to the left this was their last chance to make inroads into Labour's vote.
The Workers Party won just 4 per cent of the national vote in an election where Labour received a historically low vote. catastrophic. Having taken a decision to drop the policy of abstention from the Dail, they only achieved 1.9 per cent of the vote, and came nowhere near winning any seats.
Even more importantly for its future development, Labour still has the affiliation of the major trade unions. 43 per cent of trade unionists are in unions affiliated and paying a political levy to the Labour Party. The future of Labour is best summed up not by its low vote in this election, but by the results won in Galway In these areas two prominent anticoalitionists were elected. In Kildare canvass returns showed a 90 per cent vote for Labour in one working class estate. In Galway, workers from the Post Office and CIE, the state transport company, came out and worked in the campaign because of the candidate's position on the questions of privatisation and defence of the public sector. These are the developments which will become the norm rather than the exception as Labour continues to move to the left. The move to the left by the leadership of Labour, forced on them by events, saved the party from disaster in the election. This raised the morale of the activists still left in the party, leading to the best campaign in 15 years. It was reported that 300 people rejoined or joined the party during the campaign.
Since the election, a Workers Party councillor in Kildare, and one in Bray, have joined Labour. The U-turn by Fianna Fail in the budget has created an uproar in the ranks of that party. There were illusions amongst the membership, and also among sections of workers, that Fianna Fail would reflate the economy, even to a limited degree. There are now reports of people leaving Fianna Fail, and of individuals looking towards joining Labour. These are just the first indications of the possible developments that can take place over the next years. During the course of the last coalition, 20 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party either resigned, were expelled or joined other parties. The ranks of the party were even more decimated by the disgust at the policies supported by the leadership. But the move to the left has now begun to reverse that process. The leadership of Labour have performed an 180° sommersault since leaving the coalition. When the Dail convened in March to elect a new government, Labour adopted the position of socialist opposition. This has been the position advanced by the Marxists in the party for the last 15 years. That is, that Labour should refuse to support any of the capitalist parties, and put forward an independent socialist alternative on all questions.
On the election of a government the position of the soft left in the party was to support a minority Fianna Fail government. This position is given a 'theoretical' justification by the insignificant Communist Party. They argue that Fianna Fail, and Haughey in particular, represent the progressive wing of the capitalist class. While castigating Labour for being in coalition, they argue that the party should enter another coalition! Unfortunately these ideas have a certain vogue among the soft left in the party, and in the trade union leadership. Even after the budget, which dispelled any doubt about whether Fianna Fail are any different from Fine Gael, the trade union leaders still believe they can do a deal with Haughey. Events will deal cruel blows to those who chase after the shadow of a liberal wing of the capitalist class.
Independent The position adopted by the Labour Party in the Dail, to put forward their own candidate for Taoisceach and to vote against all the nominations of the right, forced the Workers Party to adopt the same position. Left to their own devices, the Workers Party would have followed the example of Tony Gregory, the socalled left independent, and supported Haughey as they did in 1982.
Labour is now poised to become the vehicle of a mass movement of opposition to capitalism over the next decade or so. Similar developments began to take place in the 1940s and 1960s but were unfortunately cut across by Labour going into coalition. Of course, it is not ruled out that Labour will not enter a new coalition at some time in the future. But this is not possible in the immediate future. The effect of 15 years of coalition, and especially of the last government, created a mood of enormous opposition to coalition in the party.
This was reflected in the report of the party commission on electoral strategy which recommended that Labour remain independent for a period of 15 years in order to rebuild the party. This report, which could not avoid the conclusion that coalition was destroying the party, had to be accepted by the leadership. The right wing can only maintain their positions by moving to the left.
While many workers, especially the older, more active workers, will maintain
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MIR
Summer
987:
Ireland
their hostility to the party's leaders, massive illusions in the old right will develop as they move to the left. The mass of the working class, and especially the youth, will judge these leaders not by their past activity, but by their actions in contrast to those of the capitalist politicians in the events that will take place in the next 15 years.
The working class have been searching for an avenue to struggle over the past 15 years. In the late 1970s, the massive movement on taxation was initially reflected through the trade councils. These bodies were able to generalise the struggle and link up the various strata of the class. Since then the trade councils have been tightly controlled by the tops of the unions, but they still possess the ability to reflect future movements of the class.
Throughout the past five years there have been a whole series of isolated struggles. There were a series of factory occupations in 1982 and 1983, led by the effective local leadership of shop stewards, but unfortunately the movement could not find an effective leadership at national level. When members in one of the occupations at Ranks were jailed, there were walkouts throughout workplaces around Dublin in February 1982. A general strike from below was possible.
However, the movement was cut across by the threat of a national strike by the ITGWU, and the workers were released in the middle of the night, after the general secretary of the ICTU went to the jail by taxi. Workers have organised struggle through ad-hoc organisations like the Concerned Parents against Drugs, through fleshing out tenants organisations to fight water charges and so on.
A left Labour Party will become the natural vehicle for such struggles in the future. Needless to say, the Workers Party, Sinn Fein, the Communist Party or the small sectarian groupings have no possibility of becoming vehicles for mass movements of the working class. They have not done so over the last 15 years, and now will be completely cut across by the development of Labour.
All the strands of perspectives are now coming together for huge events and battles in Ireland over the next period. The Irish working class has a long history of industrial militancy and struggle. The general trade unions were formed out of revolutionary upheavals at the turn of the century. Traditionally there has been a
very high level of union organisation, reaching 65 per cent of the workforce in the South in the 1960s. This has fallen
now as a result of the recession, mass
unemployment and the decline of
manufacturing in particular. In the 1960s,
98 per cent of the workforce in manufac-
turing, mining and transport were
unionised.
32
Best Bifice Werkers
OR K
AD
THE WENT
AKE NOTE LYMOND
LINE LOVERINEN BILLIST (SM
MUND FIST TACTICS
LINE MORTS WITH IS
The movement of workers shattered a previous Fianna Fail government led by Lynch. Now history is set to repeat itself.
Despite the recession, there is still a powerful and militant trade union movement. Contrary to the whingeing of the cynics and pessimists, the population of Ireland is neither naturally conservative nor dominated by religious views. Unlike many European countries, the trade union movement is completely secular.
There are no separate Roman Catholic or Protestant trade unions.
The Roman Catholic bishops have won pyrrhic victories on the question of abortion and divorce.Despite the amendment to the constitution, 5,000 Irish women travel outside the South for abortions every year. The closing down of clinics who were giving advice for these women has brought about the campaign "Defend the Clinics". The issue of abortion, the right of women to information on how to control their own bodies, have been made issues in society, and especially in the unions where this campaign has directed its resources in the main.
Catholic church
The defeat of the referendum on divorce actually highlighted the weakness of the bishops. They campaigned not on moral questions, but by cleverly using distorted economic arguments. Their campaign claimed that women would lose benefits, that family farms would be seized, etc. It was the inability of an extremely unpopular government to answer these questions, which meant that the referendum was defeated.
It was not the influence of the Catholic Church, but the role of the labour and trade union leaders, which prevented the development of a mass socialist movement in Ireland. With Labour out of
coalition, and forced to the lett by events, this enormous barrier to the development of a political class consciousness will be removed. The process of industrialisation in the 1960s has completely changed the character of the South. On its Eastern seaboard, where two thirds of the population live, 80 per cent live in urban areas. It is only in the West that a small majority, 60 per cent, still live in rural conditions. Southern Ireland has the youngest population in Europe, with 50 per cent under the age of 25.
Events in the North of Ireland, where the Anglo-Irish Agreement has created a very unstable and dangerous situation for the working class, can cut across perspectives in the South. If a civil war were to develop it would envelop the whole of the island. While such a nightmare of reaction cannot be ruled out, it is not the most likely development. Far more likely is that the process of socialist revolution in Europe, and especially class battles in Britain and in Ireland, will push the possibility of civil war into the background. The development of the class struggle on both sides of the border, given a Marxist leadership, can create the conditions for workers unity through common struggle.
This will place on the agenda the socialist transformation of society, and the creation of a socialist united Ireland linked in federation to a socialist Britain. Through the process of the socialist revolution the Irish working class will overcome the legacy of poverty, sectarianism and discrimination which cannot be overcome by capitalism and imperialism, It is to these developments that the forces of Marxism in Ireland now look with confidence and optimism.
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