Another Left Alliance Call

national | politics / elections | news report

Monday January 23, 2006 17:01

by Left Supporter

SF and Labour Call for "New Left Project"

With so many calls for a "left alliance" seen here over the past few months, two further interesting interventions were made over the weekend.

With so many calls for a "left alliance" seen here over the past few months, two further interesting interventions were made over the weekend.

1. Sinn Fein TD Caoimhghin O Caolain said that he would like to see some sort of alliance with Labour.
‘‘I believe Irish politics deserves to develop along amore traditional left/right basis,” he said.
‘‘I happen to believe that the Labour party continues to make serious mistakes in offering a crutch to Fine Gael instead of letting them just die off naturally.
‘‘I do believe there are left-of-centre and other progressive voices who in the future might be able to offer a more effective and more focused left-of-centre alternative government,” said O Caolain.

See. http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqid=11180-qqqx=1.asp

2. Mick O'Reilly Regional Secretary of the ATGWU and long-standing Labour Party member told a meeting of Labour Youth apparently (!) that the present leadership of his party should ditch the "Mullingar Accord" with Fine Gael , and stop being "Fine Gael lite". Instead they should build a "new project" of the left.

Rejecting the current alliance between the Labour Party and Fine Gael, Mr O’Reilly defined the “left” in Ireland as “Labour, Sinn Féin, the left independents, and a lot of the social groups outside that and the trade union movement”.
“They all together are bigger than Fine Gael. At the moment, the only ambition put before the labour movement is whether we participate in a Fianna Fáil-led government or a Fine Gael government.
“There is no confidence that we stand for something different.
“There is nobody in the trade union movement thinking about what is happening in Latin America.
“There is nobody in the Labour Party thinking about what is happening in Latin America.
“There is no sense that things can change there and we can help change things here.
“If we do not put together some sort of alternative, we face more privatisation, the Americanisation of the health service. We have to work for a left that co-operates more. It does not have to end competition but it has to co-operate on some new project that is going to be about redistribution of wealth, eliminating poverty, building social justice, rather than the failed politics of propping up the status quo,” said Mr O’Reilly

See Daily Ireland link

There needs to be more debate about these ideas.