Sunday 28th June 2015
Speech given by Gemma Weir
Comrades and friends,
Once again we have gathered here in Bodenstown, in the graveyard where Theobald Wolfe Tone is buried. For us this is not some ritual or some type of unthinking glorification of the past or deification of heroes. For us this is a meaningful event because we can relate to what Tone had to say in his lifetime, and we can translate what Tone had to say 220 years ago to the Ireland of today.
Tone’s republicanism, the radicalism of Tom Paine, of the French Revolution and indeed of the American Revolution had at its essence the struggle of the people to move from being subjects to being citizens. This struggle, the struggle to overthrow the monarchy, to bury once and for all the notion of the divine right of kings and create a democracy – this was the essence of Tone’s inspiration and his legacy in Ireland. And we in the Workers’ Party know it is important to look back and see what Tone actually wrote, and said and did in his lifetime – and not at Tone as interpreted during the centenary events of 1898 when the United Irishmen were wrapped in a veil of Celtic mysticism and catholic martyrdom.
Citizen versus subject; democracy versus the divine right of kings – we can look back 200 years and wonder why there was need for that debate. How could anybody defend the divine right of kings, or how could anybody defend the concept that the population must blindly submit to the diktat of some hereditary ruler. Indeed, but in reality how far have we progressed? Now we have the divine right of bankers, the divine right of markets, the divine right of bondholders. How far has our democracy progressed when the Irish cabinet could sign a blank cheque for €80 billion, but that could have amounted to €380 billion, because of the divine right of a cabal of Irish bankers, the ECB and the US Federal Reserve? How far has democracy progressed when the people of Ireland, of Spain, of Greece, of Cyprus and of Portugal can be bled dry because that is what is written in the scripture according to Milton Friedman. In Tone’s time the struggle for democracy crossed national boundaries and continents and the internationalism of that struggle has not changed from the late 18th to the early 21st centuries.
We, as a party of the working class, know that unity and class consciousness are vital if progress is to be achieved. We know that the state, that capitalism, deliberately foments division. Public sector versus private sector; permanent versus temporary; full time versus part-time; indigenous versus migrant. These are just some of the divisions that have been fostered. Each time a worker loses a job, a perk, a state benefit and blames another worker, we lose and capitalism gains. To fight those divisions, to create that unity, to raise class consciousness, are mammoth tasks which we are facing and which we cannot shirk. Tone in his time also faced a divided people. He faced bitter sectarian division and fought strenuously to overcome that division. It is easy now to recite Tone’s call for the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter. I’m sure hundreds of speakers have stood here and made that call. But did they mean what Tone meant? Or did they really mean that the Protestants and Dissenters should just shut up and go away so that these self-proclaimed heroes could create a sectarian 32-county catholic gombeen country?
On the other hand the Workers’ Party moves in the footsteps of Tone. We have consciously developed from being a non-sectarian Party to being actively anti-sectarian. And this anti-sectarianism informs policy and action both North and South. Our policy on education, health care, reproductive rights, marriage equality are clear examples of where we are prepared to identify and fight the sectional and sectarian interests of the different religious denominations. In this regard we must salute the fantastic victory of the recent Marriage Equality Referendum on May 22nd in the South and commit ourselves to campaign even more strenuously for marriage equality legislation in the North. The referendum was a milestone but we must remind ourselves that of the 3,300 primary schools in the Republic almost 3,000 are still under the patronage of the Catholic Church. Covert sectarianism, as opposed to the old-fashioned catholic triumphalism of John Charles McQuaid. A further battle, both North and South which poses democracy against theocracy is on the issue of reproductive rights. In the South the campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment must be accelerated while in Northern Ireland the long battle to extend the UK abortion legislation continues.
In the North sectarianism is constitutionally grounded. The Assembly, the Executive, public sector jobs and public funding generally are all based on sectarian headcounts. This is slowly strangling politics and political engagement by the people. The sectarian ghettoization of society with the parallel growth in the number of misnamed peace-walls is the most obvious outcome of this cancerous philosophy.
Of course institutionalised sectarianism is no hindrance to the forward march of capitalism; of privatisation; welfare cutbacks; attacks on the health service; stealth taxes on wages. But fear not, our heroes on Stormont Hill have a solution to all our problems – reduction in the rate of corporation tax. They will reduce this tax to 12.5%. And then fast forward to the new Jerusalem.
Maybe they should look across the border first. Hardly a shining example of a bright new dawn – a land of milk and honey! Because the South has a 12.5% Corporation Tax rate. At least that is the theory. The reality is that the effective tax rate is closer to 2.5%. Multinational corporations, banks, speculators, the shadow banking sector, and other assorted shysters are laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands. The private sector is ripping off the state for billions each year – but equally as important our tax legislation allows these huge companies to rob the poorest countries of Africa, Asia, Latin and South America of the basic means of survival. Tax evasion on that scale is a crime against humanity.
In Northern Ireland the Workers Party is fighting institutional sectarianism as well as the Thatcherite economic race of the bottom. In the last 14 months we have fought two elections and in May 2016 we will fight the Assembly elections. In the recent Westminster elections we contested five seats. In that election we clearly and deliberately put the fight against austerity centre stage. We clearly set out to prove that behind the sectarian mask there is a class war and in that war we know where we stand.
While all our candidates were reasonably certain they would not be elected, the decision to contest was no mere tokenism or fatalistic flag flying. It was part of a conscious and planned strategy to reengage in a meaningful way with the electorate and to offer a credible alternative to the stale and failed politics of the status quo. All of our candidates and all of our election teams can be proud of their election campaigns and of the vote they achieved. And we can truthfully state that where local organisations and candidates took on board in a meaningful way the lessons of the 2010 and 2014 Ard Fheis the outcome positively reflected this fact.
Already the party in Northern Ireland is looking forward to next year’s Assembly elections. At the end of last month the party members in Northern Ireland decided that this time we will contest 8 constituencies. And once again we are talking about meaningful campaigns; about real engagement; about building branches and increasing our support base. If we are to be serious we should, in the medium term, be aiming to contest all 18 Assembly constituencies.
Within the next nine months there must be a general election in the South. Naturally the media is full of speculation. Will there be a snap election in late September; in early October, immediately after budget day. There are many possibilities but for us there is only one reality. We have no control over when the election will happen and whenever the election happens we must be ready to fight. In some constituencies candidates have already been chosen and in others the dates for election conventions have been set. There is no shortage of issues on which to fight – Water rates, welfare cuts; the housing crisis; precarious work; the destruction of communities; our two-tier health service. Undoubtedly some issues will garner the majority media and public attention.
We must recognise the external political realities during a campaign but we cannot chase shadows or try to tailgate on issues which other parties or personalities have colonised. We must carve out our own political space and engage with the electorate in a sustained and meaningful way.
Tone was an internationalist. He wrote a pamphlet against Irish involvement in the Peninsular War and sought to harness the resources of revolutionary France to promote democracy in this country. I have no doubt that if he were alive today he would be on the tarmac of Shannon Airport demanding the end of US military flights from that airport. One hundred years ago Jim Larkin was one of the many Labour leaders to give an oration over the coffin of Joe Hill, the Swedish émigré and IWW organiser who was murdered for trying to organise his class. Today, even though internationally trade union density is very low, and trade union activists are still being murdered in many countries, movements like $15.00 and a Union organised by workers in the fast food industry has inspired millions of low paid workers across the globe.
Here the EU, primarily through the Commission and the ECB, has been a cheerleader for austerity and the extension of unbridled capitalism. The EU elite, in conjunction with the elite of the USA, have conspired to foist the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP – on the peoples of both continents. The proposed terms of this treaty – well those that have been made public – and especially the proposed Interstate Dispute Resolution Mechanism – are a direct assault on democracy and will by treaty make states subservient to international capital.
The sovereign will of the people of the entire EU could be cast aside to satisfy the needs of International Finance capital. Over the last 20 years the EU has been building its military capability. The EU cannot be seen as a bulwark against US militarism because the EU is militarily aligned and militarily subservient to the US-led NATO. The reality of this new military adventurism, whether in Chad, Libya, Iraq, or Ukraine is evident for all to see in the destruction of previously stable states, in mass migration, tremendous poverty and suffering, and the pitiable scenes of thousands of would be migrants robbed by human trafficers and packed onto rotting cargo ships or old discarded fishing boats and abandoned mid-Mediterranean. And the response of the enlightened EU is to send a fleet of warships to ensure this flood of refugees who exist directly as a result of EU military actions never get to leave North Africa. If they starve there it is somebody else’s problem.
Within the next 12 – 15 months the UK will face and In-Out referendum on the EU. It will be a binding referendum. This referendum raises fundamental issues which were not on the political agenda previously and it is an issue which the Party must seriously address.
Whether it was Tone in the 1790s, Connolly in the early 1900s, or the Workers’ Party of today the reality is that to turn aspiration into actuality requires members, organisation and money. The PDs Mark 2, otherwise named as Re Nua, recently announced a fundraising drive for the forthcoming elections. To contest 40 seats they want to have a national kitty of €1 million. That is €25,000 centrally per candidate and does not take account of local fundraising. We can be certain that the established right wing parties have equal, if not much larger, treasure chests. Ally this level of funding to the power of the media and we recognise the scale of the battle we face.
Recognising the scale of the problem is not the same as creating an easy excuse for failure. Rather it is a challenge. If there is a problem then we must find the solution. There are no magic wands, there is no silver bullet. We must analyse, plan, use all our resources to best advantage. We do not discard the past but we must learn from the past. Where methods of work, tactics or strategy have consistently failed to work or have outlived their usefulness we must be prepared to move on. Over many years we have advocated greater left cooperation and building principled alliances. We still adopt this position but we will not jump in blindly to unprincipled alliances or surrender to populism at the expense of principle.
Comrades, as I said at the start, our visit here is no tokenistic gesture. Here we recommit to the ideals of Tone, the ideals of a Republic based on the needs of the modern “men of no property”.
And when we commit to build the new Republic we also commit to continue to build and rebuild the Workers’ Party. The PR gurus and newspaper columnists have labelled the decade 2013-2023 as the decade of centenaries, the decade of commemorations. History being repackaged as niche tourism. We also have a history to commemorate – men and women who developed revolutionary ideas, men and women who suffered and died in combat and who were ambushed and murdered because of their ideals and party affiliation. We can best honour these people by finishing what they started, by building our party and getting out there amongst the people and winning support for our ideas and our candidates.
Comrades and friends – Thank you for your attention and Slán Abhaile.