The Workers’ Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with the people of Greece in the struggle against austerity and the humanitarian crisis it has wrought.

We condemn the actions of the EU-IMF-ECB Troika and the continuing efforts to bleed the Greek working class dry by transferring wealth from the workers of Greece to pay for the capitalist crisis. These development take place in the context of a serious crisis within the capitalist system and the intensification of imperialist competition.

The Workers’ Party expresses its profound disgust at the actions and interventions of the Irish government which has ruthlessly pursued an agenda of austerity, privatisation and protection of the bondholders to the detriment of the Irish working class. It comes as no surprise to see this government play the role of enthusiastic cheerleader for the demand for ever-harsher austerity to be imposed on the people of Greece.

This posturing rings hollow in the ears of the hundreds of thousands unemployed, those forced to emigrate in search of work, those suffering from cuts to healthcare and other public services, those in precarious and under-paid work and those subjected to water taxes and the universal social charge.

Cuts in public services, privatisations and the sale of state assets, job losses, pay cuts and other attacks on the quality of life of workers are for the benefit of the capitalist class. There are always powerful forces supportive of such policies, members of the economic, financial and political elites that dominate individual countries and the whole world. There are political forces in every country willing and often eager to do their bidding, including in Ireland and Greece.

The attacks on the living standards of workers across Europe to bailout the bankers and the speculators are not accidental. They are not the whim of malicious politicians or sadistic individual bankers. They are inherent in the very system of capitalism which ensures that governments are run in the interests of the ruling class and the monopolies. Capitalism, whatever its manifestation, is a system of exploitation which cannot be repaired. The WPI recognises that the capitalist class adjusts its tactics and reorganises its alliances in the struggle for the preservation of its power and interests.

We support the struggle of Greek workers against the vicious attacks on their quality of life by the capitalist system under the mantra of austerity. Whether those attacks take place in the name of the Troika or of the Greek government, the results are the same – a deepening of the humanitarian crisis affecting Greek society and an increase in the power of the monopolies. Austerity is austerity, an attack on the working class, no matter who implements it.

We salute and send our solidarity to our comrades in the KKE confident that they with their long wealth of experience and analysis, will continue the struggle on behalf of the working people, youth, pensioners, unemployed and poor of Greece. We know that they will continue the struggle to defend the quality of life for workers and to pose the socialist alternative in Greece in the months and years ahead.

The struggle to defend the interests of the working class continues in Ireland, in Greece and across the world – for democracy, for liberation from exploitation and oppression; for the protection of workers’ rights; for social justice; for solidarity; for the building of a society in which the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” – for socialism.

No to Austerity! Solidarity with the Working People of Greece!

International Section

Central Executive Committee

Workers’ Party of Ireland

01 July 2015