CPI Political Statement

GREECE AND IRELAND: THE TALE OF TWO BANKRUPT STATES

Yesterday in Athens tens of thousands of Greek workers took part in another general strike against the austerity measures being imposed by the Greek government at the behest of the European Union. Throughout Greece millions of workers took part in the general strike to show their opposition to these anti-people and anti-democratic policies.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is attempting to make the peripheral countries pay for the crisis surrounding the Euro in its bid to prop up a failing currency. They are imposing massive cuts making the people pay for the crisis. Within the European Union the relationship between the centre (Germany and France) and the periphery is increasingly taking a neo-colonial form.

The establishment media have focused on the tragic loss of three workers’ lives in an attempt to isolate Greek workers and to deliberately confuse and shield other European workers from the intense battle now under way.

The perpetrators of this deed, whoever they are, are not part of the working class movement or even the popular protest. They act and work as the left hand of the right wing establishment and of the state. The threat of the example shown by the Greek workers clearly terrifies the political and economic establishments throughout the European Union and particularly here in Ireland.

They touted the values and strategy of the so-called “Celtic Tiger” model of “light-touch regulation” and privatisation—a happy harvesting ground for transnational corporations, not just in Europe but around the world—as the best and the only way forward.

They now continue to tout their current polices as the only way of dealing with the stinking carcase of that tiger. They wish to impose massive cuts in workers’ terms and conditions and cuts in essential services, not just for Ireland but for the whole of Europe at the behest of the ECB and the EU Commission. We now have a new TINA—“There is no alternative.”

Irish workers need to learn the lesson and follow the leadership shown by Greek workers by mobilising and resisting this Government. The first step is to reject the flawed “Croke Park deal.”

Eugene McCartan
General Secretary
Ph: 087 9733414