Rabbitte signal his intent to take on the unions

dublin | politics / elections | news report

Monday April 03, 2006 11:28

by Rocky Byrne - Caucus of cosmic absurdists

Rabbitte signal his intent to take on the unions

"Labour supports social partnership. Change in the workplace and the modernisation of our public services should be negotiated, but no interest group has the right to veto changes which are necessary for the public good. When 130,000 young people can’t get a driving test, Labour will not shrug its shoulders and walk away. The rights of those young people and the imperative of road safety overrides any other consideration"
Pat Rabbite

Looks like the Labour Party conference signalled the final intent of Rabbitte to transform labour into what on paper would seem to be its opposite- a neo liberal party fully intent on implementing a neo-liberal programme for government.

We are not even left with the shell of left wing rhetoric to cling onto in the illusory hope that Labour will at some inderminate stage in the future reveal its truly radical intentions. .In his leader’s address to the conference Rabbitte honed in on the problem of ‘vested interests’ in the public service unions.
Yes, speeches about taking on the ‘vested interests’ (read democratic organisations of working people) are a hallmark of the right. They belong to the kind of anti working class phrase mongering usually associated with Thatcher, Reagan and their descendants in traditionally right wing parties. More recently as the parties of social democracy have been accelerating their rightward drift , ‘vested interests’ has become part of the vocabulary of Blair, Shroder, and no doubt of Prodi in the near future.

Genuine left-wingers might prefer to see this ‘vested interests’ as bastions of union strength.

A labour leader might also be expected to look for a solution to the problems of road safety in increased expenditure on public transport

But that would mean more taxes on the wealthy, and since dear Pat has also re-iterated his new found faith in the magical powers of low taxes, which going by recent experience, translates into no taxes for the wealthy and a plethora of direct and indirect taxes on the working population, we can forget about that too.

It now makes sense to ask an ontological question:

What is Labour for?

And How long before Rabbitte and the bureaucratic opportunists he relies on to maintain his grip on the Labour Party propose a full merger with Fine Gael?

More on Rabbitte’s conversion at http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2006/0403/722495....html

full txt of his speech at http://www.labour.ie/press/listing/20060401202710.html