Peasrse Doherty made a brilliant speech in response to the budget and many more people in the South are now seeing Sinn Féin as a genuine alternative to the main parties.
Sinn Féin is seen to be fighting for the poor, disadvantaged and marginalised people of this country. Sinn Féin is seen to be offering a modern ecomic alternative to the market based policies that created the current world economic crisis. Sinn Féin is seen to be taking on the priviliged groups in this country and refusing to allow an economic elite to get away with making the working class pay for the mess we are in.
However, in the North Sinn Féin is in a postion of power and is being told by London to make budget cuts of 4 Billion pounds. If Sinn Féin agrees to implementing cuts of this nature, then what the hell are we doing down the South. We cannot oppose cuts in the South and implement them in the North. If we do we will loose all crediblility with the Irish people, and what is worse is that we will be seen as liars.
Sinn Féin must fight for working people North and South and it must refuse to implement the cuts in the Six counties.
Below is Pearse's speech and he outlines for me the direction Sinn Féin must go throughut the island.
Totally agree Mellows. If we can't block these cuts in the North then we ought to seriously reconsider our position in the Executive.
ReplyDeleteThe entire draft document is based on the neo-liberal nostrums of the Con-Dems. Keep Left? Some hope!
ReplyDeleteJustin, can you actually explain what you mean exactly with some examples? Because I have no idea what you are on about.
ReplyDeleteso what do you suggest Justin? The ruling power in the 6 counties is the British Government who pay the bills with their annual subvention. As far as I can see SF has 3 choices. Help to implement savage cuts... try and ameliate the effect of cuts on the most disadvantaged in society..walk out of the executive.. I agree with Wednesday above that we should pull the plug on the executive if we can't deflect cuts against front line services, social welfare recipients and low paid workers.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteJustin, can you actually explain what you mean exactly with some examples? Because I have no idea what you are on about.
You really have no idea?
It is difficult to respond in detail to the Budget provisions because – typical of the way that Stormont works - the details will be laid out at some point in the future by each department. But even as it stands, for thousands of workers this Budget will mean disaster. The pay freeze for the 12,000 civil servants under Stormont control and who earn over £21,000 is a clear attack on working class civil servants and their families and localities. For those workers earning in and around £21,000 a pay freeze will mean that they and their families will go without basic goods and services. Moreover, as unemployment in the public sector and related sectors increases, the number of unemployed workers will increase by the thousands. There are some small-scale nods to redistribution and green new deal in the Draft Budget but they will not even begin to outweigh the thatcherite onslaught that working people are about to endure.
Under the terms of the Budget at the very least there will be massive cuts in education, public resources such as Belfast Harbour will be sold off, hospitals will close. Moreover, the figures don’t add up. As noted in the Irish News (16th December), the Budget is predicated on Stormont earning £540 million from the sale of public assets and this figure relies on a wildly optimistic expectation of future property prices. When this sell-off doesn’t work, the Sinn Fein/DUP Stormont Coalition will doubtlessly introduce even greater austerity cutbacks and levies. I hope I am wrong in this prediction but I doubt it. Sinn Fein will develop a policy of rubbing its hands and saying that it has no other choice, just as it has already done in the past in relation to introducing PFI programmes in education and health.
I wrote that the Budget entirely reflects Con-Dem ideology. How so? The Budget Sinn Fein has co-written with its DUP coalition partners affirms that "the challenge for the Northern Ireland Executive [...] is to both rebuild the economy in the aftermath of the recession and to rebalance it towards the private sector in the context of the constrained public expenditure position" (2.30) and Chapter 3 of the document sets out the background to the UK deficit in terms that entirely reflect the Con-Dem austerity agenda, with its talk of "reducing welfare costs and wasteful public spending" (3.6) . Following the public consultation "a draft Economic Strategy will be developed and this will also reflect the outcome of the UK Coalition Government Paper on rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy" (2.33).
Red Rebel said...
so what do you suggest Justin? The ruling power in the 6 counties is the British Government who pay the bills with their annual subvention. As far as I can see SF has 3 choices. Help to implement savage cuts... try and ameliate the effect of cuts on the most disadvantaged in society..walk out of the executive.. I agree with Wednesday above that we should pull the plug on the executive if we can't deflect cuts against front line services, social welfare recipients and low paid workers.
Sinn Fein could leave the executive but this need not bring down (pull the plug on) Stormont. The Party could lead the opposition to these cut-backs from the opposition benches, in the process ending the cross sectarian stitch-up that passes itself off as democracy on Northern Ireland. In the opposition benches Sinn Fein could represent the interests of workers from across the nationalist divides, which is to say that it could act as a leftist party rather than as a Catholic/communalist all-class alliance. This is what a party of the Left might do. Will Sinn Fein even consider doing this? I don’t think so.
oooohhhhh TYPICAL ULTRA LEFT SHITE. STAND AT THE SIDE OF THE PITCH AND BOO RATHER THAN GET ON THE PITCH AND DO SOMETHING POSITIVE.
ReplyDeleteSinn Féin will fight to make things better for REAL people. What you want is for us to step away and let the right do as they please. We won't allow this.
You don't care about people you just read your books on left wing theory and go from there.
OK, you're ANGRY and you think I care more about my library of lefty books than people. I notice that you have nothing to say about the details of the right-wing nature of the Draft Budget.
ReplyDeleteIn reply to Red Rebel I was trying to supply a positive alternative to Wednesday's idea of collapsing the Executive and to SF continuing to put right wing policies in place in the North. BTW is Wednesday above also a 'reader of books'? After all, s/he also would prefer to go out of government than put a right-wing agenda into action. More importantly, would you go into coalition with anyone in order to make sure that things are a bit better for real people. Doesn't sound Left to me -sounds more like Nick Clegg.
Anyway, good luck to you, Anon. You assume that I'm an effete, ultra-leftist. I'm guessing that for you the SF leadership will always do the right thing no matter what they do.
Justin,
ReplyDeleteI thought your points were pretty reasonable and hardly ultra leftist. It is the sort of thing a left party would do. This argument that we should join in the cuts because we can cut better than the others allows for no politics of opposition. The right will always set the agenda and we will have to go along on the ground it creates. The weakness of Anonymous's response to you shows the limits of Sinn Fein's thinking. Although not all of them are so famished. Red Rebel outlines a position that is mightily more radical than the outburst from Anonymous.