CPI Statement

CPI welcomes decision of SIPTU Executive to support campaign against water charges

The Communist Party of Ireland welcomes and expresses its solidarity with the decision of the National Executive Council of SIPTU to oppose water charges. This is an important development and one that can only strengthen the campaign being waged by working-class communities and the Right2Water Campaign, under trade union leadership, to oppose these charges.

 

This change in SIPTU policy is the result of growing opposition within SIPTU itself from the rank and file, who are deeply unhappy with their union’s stance up to now. Many thousands of SIPTU members have been active in the anti-charges campaign.

 

Working people have seen through the smokescreen and the cosmetic changes trumpeted by this bankrupt Government.

 

We now need to build for the rally on 10 December at Dáil Éireann to show the Government that resistance is growing and not weakening, and that the Government’s strategy of demonising communities, and its efforts to split those opposed to water charges into “reasonable” people on the one hand and “political extremists” on the other, is not working.

 

The CPI calls on the rest of the labour movement to become involved in this important struggle and to support communities that have been opposing these charges.