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opinion/analysis
 Sunday April 01, 2012 15:54 by Off the Cuff offthe.cuff at yahoo dot ie
 Change tactics so they work. The tax protests back in the 70s and 80s proved futile when it came to ordinary working people being heard by their government. In reality the only thing that really happened on those occasions was that working people lost a day's pay. Mass demonstration in Ireland achieves nothing. It is seen as a way for working people and the unemployed to let off a bit of steam so that everything can move along as it was. The trade union movement has not seen or has deliberately avoided other forms of demonstration beyond mass demonstration. The time for change has come, mass demonstration is no longer a proven method of having the will of the people upheld by their political representatives. ts time for change. Fine Gael got over its Ard Fheis in a way that would make a funeral look like a party. The protesters outside were making all the right noise but unfortunately that noise will have long cleared the air by the time the lads and lasses stopped patting one another on the backs once the television cameras cleared the building. Enda, without openly thanking his buddy Eamon for all his support in helping to maintain the status quo that is Irish political system, wore an off colour red tie with a hint of stripe to indicate the minute levels of difference between Fine Gael and the Labour Party in 2012. If anything the short mention of the Labour Party during his speech when he told the nation how great Fine Gael was handling the chaos that was caused by "the last government" can only give comfort to the Labour Party when it comes around to the next general election and Fine Gael goes to the nation with all the cards in its hands. So what is the next move in the arsenal of the household charge campaign? Has the campaign got the strenght to keep those who refused to pay the charge on board before government intimidation really kicks in on a personal level. Will Hogan find strenght in the 800,000 people who paid the charge and start a witch hunt in order to victimise those who government politicians now describe as being unpatriotic? Are the 800,000 who paid the charge being unpatriotic in not standing up to past, present and possibly future levels of corruption by politicians and county councillors who themselves caused their country to fall from grace? If we want to talk about patriotism then lets start by lloking at those who walk and have walked the corridors of Leinster House. |
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Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 6 5 4 3 2 1"There was a campaign for online freedom recently which got 70, 000 signatures approx. "
so what? At best it was just a convenient list for government of discontents whose emails/internet should be watched. Otherwise, just a harmless ineffective campaign of people without even the motivation to get up off their arses and do something in the real world. Totally ignoreable. No nasty crowd of great unwashed scum chanting your name even. Totally harmless.
Digital protest such as facebook / mass emailing is government approved protest, and very easy to ignore. An emal spamfilter is all it takes. Oh dear, 70,000 emails gone. whoops! Great, yet another facebook page no-one cares about. Great, another million tweets no one cares about.
However, you can't easily ignore thousands of real people outside the dail, chanting, growling and holding signs. Neither can the national broadcaster or any other broadcasters who happen to be around. Also stories of protests seen on the news inspire others to protest.
The digital realm serves an important purpose to help organise and inform but as a form of protest in itself it is rather limited.
The only effective kind of digital protest is co-ordinated DDOS attacks on key websites. I think we could probably do a bit more of that. How about co-ordinated DDOS protests on household charge or bank websites? Anywhere they take in revenue. Now thats real digital protesting! With real quantifiable effects that cannot be so easily ignored. there are tools available to assist in such a protest.
Ask most people why they're not paying and they can't give a decent answer. If you think these people are going to be loyal voters for the rest of your constituency, think again. Watch the General and you'll know the difference between Bertie and Martin Cahill, or maybe not. One was loyal to brown envelopes the other took hard cash. Once they've served their purpose the electorate send them out into the wild to defend for themselves
The people who aren't paying this tax are property owners. People living in rented accommodation, including lacal authority tenants, are strangely exempt. Property owners are seldom candidates for marching, and their opposition to this tax isn't due to a sudden outbreak of enthusiasm among the middle-classes (and aspiring middle-classes) for a socialist revolution. I suspect the Left Wing Alliance is codding itself if it thinks the RPT refusniks have any intention of shifting their voting allegiance away from the 3 mainstream parties because of this tax. I'll tell you what is motivating this tax revolt (and it isn't the injustice of everyone having to pay the same flat charge). What is motivating this revolt is fear and anger: Fear that if you register you will be caught for €500 next year and €1,000 the year after. Anger because the middle-class householders who are being targeted for this tax are the same people who end up getting caught for everything, and end up paying for everything. They've had enough. These tax-refusniks have far more in common with the US Tea-Party movement than the anti-austerity movements in Greece and elsewhere in the EU.
Something like 55% of those liable have yet to pay. This level of disobedience is unsustainable, and the refusniks have good reason to believe that this level of default must result in a major reconsideration. It may also provoke the long overdue debate on the reform and democratization of Irish local government. The government has risibly claimed that this tax is to pay for local services and that the people who avail of services should be prepared for them. Yeah, right. Why then are the occupiers of council houses - most of whom have jobs and have no mortgages, exempt from paying? And why shouldn't the people who pay these taxes have democratic control over how they are spent? At the moment we have none. At the moment the Manager, not the elected representatives decide these things. His or her priority is the pay and conditions of themselves and their staff - not value for money for the tax-payer. It's about time the elected representatives had the responsibility. If they did, we the home-owners who are being shaken down yet again could vote for candidates who would force value for money on the Managers and their bloated staffs. Now, that would be a revolutionary change!
I agree with Dame st and opus it is time to develop new strategies. These boring marches make little impact we live in a digital age. There was a campaign for online freedom recently which got 70, 000 signatures approx. One of the Labour ministers refused to share a platform with one of the organisers of this campaign.
..why dont you outline your alternative strategy here?
Mine would be to forget about TweedleFF and TweedleFG and concentrate on Labour. The former are doing what it says on their nationalist corporate tins.
Its Labour are turning their backs on their original constituency. Doing a Capital job. Get to Galway for the 14th. The weakest link in the Iron Curtain of disinformation and spin..hold the scabs up to the light of exposure for what they are, as opposed to what they claim to be.
Enda has Gilmore for Tea, SHOCK!!!
It is obvious that those tactics dont work in Ireland 2012. However the ULA and SWP and SP are not forward thinking and are attached to the failed methods of the past. They will not think outside the box and no amount of appeals to them will work