Intimidation and bullying secure victory for this bankrupt government

Statement of the Communist Party of Ireland

The Communist Party of Ireland congratulates the tens of thousands of our fellow-citizens who, despite intimidation and bullying by the state and their masters in Frankfurt and Brussels, along with sections of the mass media, voted against the permanent austerity treaty.

Once again the working class came out in their tens of thousands to vote No, as did many small business people, self-employed, family farmers, and the unemployed—all refusing to bend the knee and tug the forelock. They stood up for themselves, their families, their communities, and their country. Many who voted Yes did so out of fear and trepidation about what the future holds. What the result shows is not the will of the people but the fear of the people.

While the government may have secured a Yes vote, they have most surely lost the trust that the people had placed in them. This is particularly true for the Labour Party. What awaits them at the next election is the same fate that befell the Green Party and Fianna Fáil.

This is equally true of leading sections of the trade union movement, those who actively campaigned for a Yes vote as well as those who sat silent, refusing to oppose the Labour Party line. Increasingly they will become redundant, as the new situation will require greater leadership and more radical solutions than those they are clearly capable of understanding, never mind providing.
This treaty, along with its twin, the European Stability Mechanism, will provide neither stability nor growth, nor will it provide a solution to the deep crisis at the heart of the system. It will in fact deepen their crisis. The debt crisis, both in this state and throughout the EU, is but a symptom of the deeper crisis of the system itself.

The socialised corporate debt will not go away, and this government is incapable of doing anything about it, except to hold on to the coat-tails of Germany in the hope of a few crumbs of relief.
There is clearly now a significant platform on which to build a real people’s resistance to this government and the EU. The forces are building for a new direction for our country, to replace fear with hope, to turn anger into energy for building a different country: an Ireland of equality.