Tag Archives: demonstration

Thousands march in Dublin against Austerity

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Thousands of working people from around the country marched in Dublin yesterday against austerity.  The demonstration had been called by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions and by other groups.  While not on the scale of the earlier demonstrations in 2008 and 2009 it was nevertheless a large protest against the government.  That it was smaller should not be surprising since in the meantime the people of the state have voted in a referendum, reluctantly of course, to support austerity.  The Garda initially estimated that there were 18,000 on the demonstration and later reduced that number to 10,000.  In my own view, at its height, the former figure was closer to the truth.  In this post I want to give my own impressions of the demonstration and in a further post look at some of the issues raised by it.

The demonstration was very diverse with lots of banners and placards from many different organisations and places around the State.  This diversity was not unfortunately united around any very clear or coherent perspective of opposition or alternative.  If it had a unifying theme it was simply one of opposition to austerity and opposition to the Government.  However what the demonstration did show was the potential to build some sort of opposition.  Unfortunately the organisers offered no means for those who might attend to either meet beforehand or afterwards to discuss what an opposition might look like, how it would come together to organise itself and on what policies it might unite.

In the age of the internet it should not be impossible to register groups and individuals’ interest in a demonstration beforehand and call a conference to discuss the demonstration and what everyone attending might want to come out of it.  On the other hand the demonstration itself could have been used to issue a single predominant leaflet advertising such a conference.  As ever these demonstrations seem to unite those prepared to protest for one afternoon, only for them to disperse and go their separate ways again.

The largest contingent on the demonstration seemed to be the Campaign Against the Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT) with banners from various localities in Dublin and other cities and towns across the State.  There were also large contingents from various trade unions including the Communication Workers Union, TEEU and SIPTU.  They were large by the standard of the demonstration but obviously not at all in relation to the size of their memberships.  The unions had obviously mobilised some of their activists but had not built more widely inside their union or across the movement.  A comrade had mentioned to me that he had looked at the union web sites that morning and it was clear that they had not sought to really build the demonstration.

The Communication Workers Union held up placards ‘for a better fairer Ireland’(while their band played the Internationale), no doubt in reference to the Irish Congress of Trade Union’s ‘better fairer way.’  Unfortunately we’ve already got this better fairer way as far as the trade union leadership is concerned.  They have negotiated a deal with the Government – the Croke Park deal – which has involved acceptance of austerity with no more than verbal opposition and the odd protest allowed.

The Croke Park deal requires that the trade unions not take industrial action and the union leaderships have ensured that this has been the case.   They seem happy enough with the present situation because they are about to go into negotiations for a Croke Park II with the Government setting a condition of a €1 billion cut.  This is proving no barrier to entering the talks.

The various community campaigns took up a large part of the demonstration and the rest by the various political parties.  Sinn Fein had the largest contingent of a political party, taking up the rear of the march.  Labour Youth also had a banner and a very small contingent.  This was brave enough given their Party’s role in Government but at least they had the decency to look a bit sheepish.  These young comrades must certainly know that their task, if they insist on staying in the Party, is to build an opposition within it to the leadership and demand it withdraw from the Government and never enter another one like it.

There were banners and members from People before Profit/SWP, Socialist Party, United Left Alliance, Communist Party, Socialist Democracy, Irish Socialist Network, Workers Solidarity Movement, Republican Sinn Fein, 32 County Sovereignty Movement, Republican Network  for Unity and Erigi – all in favour of the unity of the working class or of the nation.

There was no predominant chant from the demonstration; the odd ‘they say cutback, we say fightback’ and chants against paying the household charge.  Socialist Democracy (SD) and their supporters held up a banner at the side of the demonstration as it left Parnell square and called for ‘Labour out of Government, ICTU out of Talks’ and ‘No new Croke Park’.

A demonstration united around these demands would have been a more powerful expression of opposition.  It would have targeted the weakest part of the Government and the key task of the moment – stopping ICTU and the trade unions selling out to the austerity drive once again.  It must be clear that preventing the trade unions’ acceptance of cuts would be a real victory, and would be a first step to really opposing them.  Failure to do so would make it much more difficult to achieve this.  The many on the Left calling for a general strike should realise that such calls mean very little if the prior step of preventing ICTU from signing up to a Croke Park II is not achieved.

There were one or two calls from small parts of the demonstration for calling a general strike and in my next post I will look at this demand.  Whether or not the Socialist Democracy call had some effect I do not know but a couple of sections of the demonstration took up their point about the Labour Party.  One SD member told me that the CAWHT contingents had reacted enthusiastically to their loudhailer demands, the trade union contingents had reacted with silence and the SIPTU contingent had attempted to raise an alternative chant to drown them out.

The small Union of Students of Ireland contingent targeted Labour with –

“Ruairi Quinn – we know you

We know you’re a blueshirt too”

The Waterford CAWHT contingent had a rather more colourful take on this message –

“Eamon Gilmore – we know you

You’re a fuckin’ blueshirt too”

At the end of the demonstration what was left of the protest waited outside the GPO for the speeches.  I waited a while as well as some music was played.  I was talking to a fellow Marxist when he said he was debating whether to wait to listen to the speeches or do some shopping.  I was in the middle of telling him I was debating the same issue myself, but felt obliged to stay since I was going to cover it in the blog, when I realised that over 90 per cent of the demonstration had left and that I could leave as well without doing an injustice to most participants’ experience of the day.

It was later reported that one of the speakers, the current President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Eugene McGlone had joined in calls for a general strike in protest at austerity and cutbacks and that other speakers had echoed this call.  He was initially heckled when he took to the platform as was SIPTU President Jack O’Connor who said that ‘while he is not necessarily opposed to a day of action against austerity, unions would have to be able to convince the overwhelming majority of workers that the objectives they were advocating were achievable and were a better alternative.’  Sounds like a job description to me but not obviously one that Jack recognises.

The precious SIPTU leader then criticised what he called ‘fascist behaviour’ at the protest when McGlone and he were heckled by members of the crowd.  RTE reported that ‘a number of other senior trade unionists dissociated themselves from Mr McGlone’s call for a general strike – describing it as a “solo run”.’

RTE also reported that ‘the organisers of the pre-Budget anti-austerity protest have condemned what they describe as “the divisive attack” (on) Mr O’Connor (by) a section of the crowd.  In a statement, Councillor Brid Smith said: “Nobody orchestrated any heckling – it was a spontaneous outburst of anger at the inaction of union leaders.  Some highly-paid union bosses appear so much out of touch with the anger of their own grassroots that they see conspiracies everywhere,” she added.

We can be in little doubt that McGlone’s call is indeed a ‘solo-run’ but that unfortunately it is not “the inaction of union leaders” that is the problem but rather their actions that are.  In negotiating a deal with the Government which accepts austerity and agrees not to organise effective action against it they have consciously adopted the role of enforcing Government and Troika policy.  Their actions, in appearing to be concerned only with their members in the public sector, has effectively validated and supported the strategy of the Government, bosses and media of dividing workers into public versus private and making easier the imposition of austerity on both.

Attacking O’Connor is not “divisive” because these leaders have agreed a deal which supports austerity.  That he was allowed and able to speak at an anti-austerity rally shows how far Irish workers have to go to build a real opposition to it.  What is heartening is that some workers seem to appreciate this.

Belfast Trade Unions demonstrate against Austerity

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Trade Unionists march against Austerity

As part of the trade union campaign against austerity across the UK the trade union movement in the North of Ireland organised a demonstration in Belfast to coincide with those in London and Glasgow.  It is difficult to estimate the size of the demonstration which appeared significant as it snaked its way through Belfast’s city centre but didn’t look impressive as it assembled and looked even less so at the final rally.  The latter however is a feature of trade union demonstrations. The notion that the purpose of a rally at the end is to explain what to do next and get everyone involved is as alien to most people at these things as little green men from Mars.  What happens next always depends on the decisions of the union leaders.  It is not for deciding by those involved.

Supporters of the United Left Alliance in the North correctly made this the subject of their leaflet and put forward the key task of the demonstration as one of creating a real permanent campaign against austerity:

“Last November saw 40,000 mobilised in Belfast in a general public sector strike  – but it was a one-off event and everyone went home again.  No further action was taken, there was no continuing campaign and the next public sector strike was much less successful.

Everyone is no less opposed to austerity and the Tories and Labour plans show the issue isn’t going away.

At the end of this demonstration we must make sure we don’t go away either.  To ensure that this doesn’t happen we need to come together to create an on-going cross-union permanent campaign that will oppose austerity.  Not one that pops up every six months but one that continues every week to campaign inside the trade unions, inside workplaces and inside communities to unite them all in a way that each of them cannot do by themselves.”

I overheard one of the trade union leaders responsible for the demonstration express her delight at the size of the turnout.  The demonstration was successful in so far as it confirmed that a basis exists for starting to build a wider and potentially successful campaign but one should not underestimate the obstacles.

The first is that the demonstration was no more than a few thousand at the very, very most.  It was dwarfed by the very, very large sectarian demonstration three weeks before, which commemorated the signing of the Ulster Covenant that led to partition.  This was celebrated by the participation of dozens of ‘kick the pope’ flute bands.  A prominent organiser of it was Nelson McCausland of the Democratic Unionist Party who has led the introduction of the Welfare Reform Bill in the Stormont Assembly, which imposes in Northern Ireland the cuts decided by the Tory Government in London.   It is ironic that many of the marchers in the Ulster Covenant commemoration will be shafted by these cuts.

The welfare changes introduce the biggest assault on entitlement in decades and were also supported by Sinn Fein.  The latter bring their own ironic aspect to its passage.  The back bone of Sinn Fein’s political machine is a network of advice centres at which Sinn Fein activists help those on welfare get as much as they can.  It is what they called ‘screwing the system’ when they first started doing it.  Now of course Sinn Fein has joined the system and the only people getting screwed are their constituents.  The first many of them will know about the changes will be when their benefits get cut.   They will then run to the advice centres where Sinn Fein will tell them ‘sorry but these are the new rules’.  What they won’t tell them is that Sinn Fein voted for them and had the power to stop them but didn’t.  While welfare is cut along with public sector pay Martin McGuinness will continue to complain that the British won’t let Sinn Fein and the DUP cut corporation tax.  Sinn Fein posturing has been particularly vacuous – they have said they ‘might’ make an issue of monthly payments of benefits and demand that they are paid fortnightly instead.

The third obstacle is reflected by the fact that so many walked away from the demonstration with no demand to those on the platform that they provide them with a strategy promising success.  The demonstrators were activists in their various trade unions and community groups but there is no understanding of the need for wider organisation.  They were there to protest and no more.

A protest is an expression of disapproval, summed up in the slogan ‘not in my name’.  It is not an alternative and it ultimately receives the following answer by the Government and State – ‘yeah, so what?’  Sinn Fein and the DUP live and breathe as defenders of their respective community against the other even as together they fillet both.  The limits of the trade union leaders’ challenge can be seen in the statement released before the demonstration:

“The devolved administrations must build a robust joint defence of the people who elected them.  Let this rally today send a message to our MLAs and our MPs from all political parties that we the people are firmly opposed to the failed policy of austerity which destroys lives and futures.”

An appeal to the political parties at Stormont and to Stormont itself is not a strategy.  It amounts to an appeal to the enemy.  The financial crisis exploded because of a property boom and the well-reported antics of the Developers’ Unionist Party and hidden ‘let’s get rich’ antics of the leaders of the Provisional Movement mean these people ae personally tied up with the system that is demanding the cuts.

The political sectarianism of the left means that it too is not an alternative.  It is unable to unite its tiny forces in an attempt to make a difference, although this is not the biggest problem.  The Left’s inability to organise in an open and democratic way means it cannot include the wider forces needed to create a real movement.  Were it to attempt to do so the Left group concerned would no longer retain control.  Since their absolute need for control is not just a rather unfortunate sectarian aberration in their practice but a foundation in principle of their existence- they all believe that they are the sole essential nucleus of the mass working class party of the future because of their particular approach to socialist politics -they are both practically and in theory sectarian.

The leaflet of the supporters of the United Left Alliance correctly put forward the next step – creation of a permanent campaign that is organised across unions by rank and file members, in workplaces and in communities and their community campaigns.  This is not just the next step in a campaign against austerity.  Just as socialism is the creation of working people themselves so is the resistance to capitalism, one of the means by which the capitalist system will be superseded by the power of a new ruling class, made up for the first  time by the vast majority of society.