The President of the Workers’ Party, Mick Donnelly, has said that the campaign against water charges and privatisation remains as valid as ever and the campaign should continue on the basis of community based activism and non-violent civil disobedience.
The campaign was a genuine people’s one with mass support as shown by the huge Right to Water marches. To suggest that it was manipulated or controlled by any group was gross misrepresentation of the reality, he said. That was not the case and should not become the case.
“The reason this campaign has been so effective”, said Mick Donnelly, “is that is led from the ground up. It is a genuine flowering of mass participation from communities who have suffered seven continuous years of unbearable debt, cutbacks and deprivation.
They have seen plainly that water charges are utterly unjust at any level and are part of a wider plan to privatise the delivery of a resource that is central to life itself”.
Mr. Donnelly said that there had been a government and media frenzy of lies, innuendo and gross exaggeration of the facts while violence from the gardai was being ignored. At the same time actions or alleged actions of individuals were being blamed on the hundreds of thousands of campaigners as a whole.
“The government and the establishment including big business and the mainstream media have been spooked, not by violence but by the success of this campaign which has deep roots in the Irish working class, the class which has borne the brunt of austerity. They are running scared. Everything they have thrown at the campaign so far has failed to stick, threats of cutting water supplies or deduction at source, fake reductions in the charge and blatantly untrue claims of paramilitary influence. We are seeing a hysterical campaign of black propaganda of a type not seen in this country since the 1930s”, the Workers’ Party President said.
“This is an emotive issue and a publicly owned and operated water service funded by fair central taxation is a fundamental right. It is inevitable that tempers will be frayed especially given the stonewall refusal of the government to back down and the use of state violence. Democratic community led campaigning is key and the Workers’ Party stands fully behind the working people of this country. We urge people to remain calm and resolute in the face of provocation and lies and to see this campaign through until such time as water charges and Irish Water are abolished and privatisation is permanently off the agenda.” said Mick Donnelly.