It's Time For A New Left To Emerge In Ireland

Ireland is fast becoming a super-capitalist paradise based solely on the accumulation of profit for multinational companies and a golden circle elite. Everything is being sacrificed on the altar of corporate globalisation. Our neutrality is sold to US war planes, migrants and asylum seekers are treated like criminals, and all dissent, alternative views, culture and lifestyle are crushed.

Fianna Fail and the PDs are steam-rolling ahead with their plans for a nation where the rich get richer and the poor just poorer. Look at the record of their treatment of children and youth.
*Ireland has one of the highest rates of child poverty in Europe.
*Forty six percent of local authorities don’t provide playgrounds.
*There are twice as many golf courses as playgrounds in Ireland.
*One in 8 children live in consistent poverty, i.e. have a low income and lack certain basic necessities.
*Approximately 5,000 young people leave school early each year.
*The UN Human Development Report (2001) indicated that Ireland has the second highest concentration of poverty amongst developed countries.
*48,000 households nationally, meanwhile, are on waiting lists for social housing.
In order to divert attention away from these real problems and to clamp down on any form of dissent the Minister for (in)Justice Michael McDowell and others bang on about the bogus asylum seekers and young yobs overtaking our estates and streets. As the Minister himself said last week, if he had his way he stop (‘bogus’) asylum seekers at the airport and send them back on the first available plane. Rumour has it he is planning another mass deportation.

A CRIMINAL BECAUSE I’M UNDER 16
Asylum seekers facing deportation claim that they face torture and possibly death if they are sent back. But McDowell says these stories are just cock and bull. Hmmm, not so sure he would say the same thing if he was a human rights activist in the Niger Delta facing death because he had stood up against oil being stolen from his land by the Nigerian Government and foreign multinationals.
But tin man McDowell is not just attacking vulnerable asylum seekers. His latest scapegoats include youth and protestors. As hotpress has already outlined, McDowell’s proposal to introduce ASBOs and aspects of the Criminal Justice are an attack on our civil liberties. The negative experience of this clamp down on civil liberties in the UK should make us worried.
Take two examples. Firstly there was the case of a Quaker peace campaigner, the Yorkshire grandmother, Lindis Percy, who escaped an ASBO but got an electronic tag and an eight-week, 8pm-6am curfew at her home instead. The campaigner was convicted of obstructing traffic outside the US National Security Agency’s base at Menwith Hill. The Judge in the case warned that the right to protest did not override the right of others to use the highway, or of police officers to carry out their duties.
He added that “there could be circumstances where anti-social behaviour orders may be used against those engaging in political or other protests, if they indulged in intimidating behaviour.” But outside the court, good old Mrs Percy promised an appeal against the sentence, using the words of the anthem “You can’t kill the spirit.”
Secondly a a 15-year-old boy in Richmond, Surrey is challenging two child “dispersal areas”. More than 400 dispersal areas have been designated under the 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act throughout England and Wales. An unaccompanied child under 16 found in these areas after 9pm can be arrested and taken home, no matter what they are doing! The boy said “they shouldn’t be allowed to treat me like a criminal just because I’m under 16.”

WHERE HAS ALL THE OPPOSITION GONE?
In the past the Trade Unions and the Labour Party would have led the way in opposing such attacks on vulnerable groups. They were the voice of the working class, minorities and oppressed. But where are the strikes and trade union protests against the lack of investment in public services, the deportations and clamp down on civil liberties? And the Labour Party seems more interested in re-building Fine Gael and leaving its options open for the election than opposing these right wing attacks.
Instead the opposition is coming from youth, students, socialists, greens, the independent left (especially in the anti-war and anti-capitalist marches), workers (e.g. nurses) and working class communities such as the bin tax fighters. The results of the local elections last year showed that this new left opposition is growing.
Across the world, a new resistance is emerging in the anti-war and anti-capitalist movement protests and social forums that attract hundreds of thousands discussing and protesting for a world of peace without capital and profit dominating our lives. It is also visible in new left organisations like George Galloway’s ‘Respect’ in England, the new left in Germany and Portugal and the left opposition to the EU Constitution in France.
The central message of this new left is that contrary to what we are told in our schools, colleges and on TV and the mainstream newspapers, there is an alternative. Another society is possible with genuine democracy, multi-culturalism, properly funded public services, alternative cultural space, equality and a decent quality of life.
There is a hope for a better world and a better Ireland. It’s not coming from established politicians but from the streets, the new cultures and alternative movements. With McDowell, Ahern, Fine Gael and the right-wing establishment on the offensive and their only obstacle a wishy washy opposition, it’s clearly time for a new left in Ireland too.

Rory Hearne is Deputy President and Campaigns Officer with the Union of Students in Ireland

USI and USS are calling on everyone to take part in our ‘celebration of youth, dissent and difference’ protest against the introduction of ASBOs, On The Spot Fines and other controversial aspects of the Criminal Justice Bill at 2.30pm ,on 11th June, at Parnell Square, Dublin. Please sign the Hot Press petition against ASBOs and send messages calling for the proposals to be dropped to the Minister for Justice, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Children and the Tanaiste.