Gormley plans to break the Union Labour link: what are the bourgeois scared of?

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis

Wednesday July 28, 2010 20:48

by Tony Healy - Fightback Supporter

ireland at marxist dot com

A ban on trade union donations to the Labour Party will not benefit anyone other than the enemies of the working class and the organised working class in particular.

The Green Party leader John Gormley has announced that the ban is to be introduced, alongside a ban on corporate donations, so much for the Green Party’s veneer of radicalism. This “radicalism” has become very stale and particularly mouldy also. Of course the proposed legislation is designed to appear even handed.

But the truth of the matter is that the link between Labour and the working class is potentially very important and the bourgeois understand that very well.

The Irish Times 26/7/10 reports:

“Is it really good for our society if the unions are hand-in-glove with the Labour Party and dictating policy?

“The Croke Park agreement, which, extraordinarily, Labour did not publicly back because of a possible backlash from some of their donor unions, shows that public service reform is possible and indeed long overdue. If Labour had been in power it might never have happened.”

What does this mean? Could it be that the Greens are trying to protect the poor old Labour Party Leadership from angry workers? Of course they are not. Could it be that the bosses are worried about workers moving into political action and putting pressure on the Labour Leaders to take the lead in fighting the crisis? Sure, now maybe we are getting a bit warmer. Could it be that they are frightened of the consequences of Labour in power, potentially as the biggest party in a coalition, coming under pressure to take action to defend workers? We think that’s much more likely.

While there are some on the left in Ireland who deny that the workers would move through their traditional organisations, it’s clear that the bosses don’t want to take the risk.

On the other hand given the generally low level of political knockabout that the FF and Greens generally stoop to, there’s a distinct likelihood that the coalition are merely after scoring some petty political points, claiming that Eamon Gilmore is tied hand and foot to Liberty Hall.

The reality is quite different. Gilmore and the Labour leaders have consistently dithered over the key political issues. In truth what’s needed is more pressure on the labour leaders and a greater input from the trade union membership. If Labour is going to win the next general election and it is not impossible that it could win a majority, then it needs to develop a political programme that corresponds to the aspirations and the interests of working people.

In other words Labour needs a bold Socialist Programme and it needs to build a mass membership drawn from the factories and estates, from the offices and the agricultural workers. Capitalism has created a huge crisis in Ireland. The task for the most active workers in the movement has to be to strengthen the political edge of the movement and turn it out towards the working class.