Labour Party out of touch with people

The call by Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore on RTE radio on Sunday morning (22nd) for the Taoiseach Brian Cowan to intervene with the trade union movement to get them to call of the one day strike on the 30th of March is yet another example of how out of touch the Labour Party is with the growing anger of the Irish people to the deepening economic crisis and the attempts by the government to make working people pay for a crisis that is not of their making.

As this bankrupt government prepares its emergency budget it must be meet with the full force of that anger so that they get the message loud and clear.

Instead of leading working people Eamon Gilmore and the Labour leadership are falling in behind the Government, the employers, the seried ranks of economic spin doctors, and the mass media, who since the beginning of this crisis have been attempting to continue with their long campaign of attacks on workers living standards and the gains made by working people over many decades. They are using the crisis to implement their strategy.

It appears that the Labour Party and the government are marching to the drum beat scripted by the ruling elites. Whether Eamon Gilmore recognises it or not, there is a major struggle for the hearts and minds of the people. The hairy old chestnut of "we all did well under the Celtic Tiger,- so we all must bear the burden and the responsibility for this crisis" is simple not true, no matter how many time they spin it on the television or across the airwaves.

Currently that struggle is all one way the employers have not given up their attacks against workers, they are attempting to scape goat public sector workers and using every spin doctor to get public and private workers pitched against each other, while they steal away with all the social conditions and gains that workers have won. The representatives of those who claim to speak for the labour movement have failed to recognise this fact. Working people can't afford to wait for those who see all politics as mere debates in the vapid talking shop of the Dail, this will only lead working people into yet another cul de sac. Eamon should be leading the call for unity of public and private sector workers, calling for maximum support for the strike to show clearly to the employers and its government that workers are not prepared to lie down and be fobbed of with sterile homilies and harmless and futile debates.

Now is not the time to demobilise but rather it is now time to intensify the pressure.

Communist Party of Ireland