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The May Issue of Socialist Voice is Out Now

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The May issue of Socialist Voice is out now. It can also be view online (pdf) or below.

Contents:

  • Irish austerity: Change of words but not of policy [EMC]
  • Medical cards under savage attack [MA]
  • Water and woods to be flogged off [MA]
  • Reform or transform? The confusion of growth economics—Part 1 [NL]
  • Croke Park II rejected [Anne Casey]
  • The capitalist crisis and the demolition of workers’ rights [NC]
  • Can we learn from Cuba?—A response [EON]
  • Venezuela: Electoral challenge a coup attempt [RCN]
  • Colombians call for solidarity [SE]
  • The Progressive Film Club: an inspiration and an education [PD]
  • Ireland’s neutrality demonstrated again

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Full-Sized Life

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A story by Susan Millar DuMars

Luke swallowed the bird on a cold, clear December night – trees of bone, the river in a silver-black sulk. He’d waved off a taxi, needing the air after all those back-slapping pints. Crossing the bridge toward the cathedral, he thought how the dome at night was a great green helmet; the windows, unreadable eyes. He remembered funerals, several, in the past year. Muttering responses to prayers, following the coffin out slow and stiff-legged. Luke crossed himself without knowing he did it. As his hand fell it brushed the old stone banister of the bridge and he thought for a moment of the river beneath him, God and Death in front of him. Himself suspended in a comfortable middle age. How lucky. How very lucky.

Though even as he plumped and pinked with a sense of good fortune, another voice inside him contradicted. “Earned! Surely, earned.” He lifted his other arm and gazed at what he clutched. The book. His book. Bringer of Light: The Life and Poems of Malachy Flynn. Launched into the world this evening in a modest, yet satisfying, ceremony.

The applause had been warm and lasting. Loyola had beamed. Afterward, in the pub, many pints of Erdinger were bought him. Loyola had drunk half an orange juice and had driven herself home to prepare a late supper. He’d promised to be home before the meat turned tough.

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Left MEPs to debate austerity and abortion rights in Dublin

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GUE/NGL MEPs will take part in two days of debates and talks at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin as part of the Group’s study days in Ireland.

At 3pm this afternoon GUE/NGL MEP Mikael Gustafsson, Chair of the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality committee will moderate a seminar on ‘Abortion Rights in Ireland’, with guest contributions from Sinéad Redmond (Abortion Rights Campaign), Jacqueline Healy (National Women’s Council), and Niall Behan (Irish Family Planning Association). There will also be a political tour of Dublin and a talk and Q&A on the 1913 lockout by historian Donal Fallon, chaired by GUE/NGL MEP Inês Zuber.

On Thursday at 9am GUE/NGL MEP Paul Murphy will chair discussions on ‘Austerity and the Fightback’ with guest speakers Jimmy Kelly (UNITE Regional Secretary), Rita Fagan (Spectacle of Defiance), Peadar Toibín TD (Save Navan Hospital Campaign), Matthew Waine (Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes), and Michael McCabe (Campaign for Independent Living).

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Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken? Part 4

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For many the detail about the pressure which was widely reported to have been applied by the ECB for Ireland to enter the 2010 Troika bailout has coloured their understanding of the original blanket guarantee. The extent of the guarantee and the large sums being poured into our failed banks ensured that a bailout would be required. It was hardly a coincidence that the bailout occurred in the months after the blanket guarantee ran out on the 29th of September 2010.

The ECB’s insistence that the promissory note for Anglo Irish Bank and other unsecured unguaranteed bonds should be paid have led people to think that it was ECB pressure that led to the 2008 – 2010 guarantee in the first place. I have tried over the previous posts to unravel this myth and show that it was an Irish decision alone put in place for very local reasons. In fact, the ECB warned the Irish government that under Maastrict (where the cost of borrowing is dependent on maintaining a good credit rating in the financial markets) the guarantee could cause substantial funding problems for the sovereign. Other events disprove it, including the fact that an attempt by the Greek government to also bring in an unlimited guarantee immediately after the Irish made their announcement was rescinded due to pressure from EU Commission. Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner at the time said “A guarantee without limits is not allowed”.

Of course, the myth has its own political uses and it’s not surprising that there has been very little examination to date of the guarantee. But even any future Public Accounts Committee examination and its ‘who said what in the room on the night’ scope will not provide much clarity. Looked at from the perspective of class and power, however, examining the guarantee reveals much about how both work in Ireland. Such a focus would not fixate on the technical detail of whether dated subordinated bonds should have been included, or whether Dermot Desmond was there behind the curtain throwing his voice in to the mouth of Brian Cowen. Instead, the focus should be on the decisions made in the context of how the Irish government behaved in the past when other Irish financial institutions went into freefall. We tend to see 2008 as a rupture, but in terms of understanding why certain decisions are made it’s more useful to examine the continuities. After all, this was not the first time that Ireland provided a blank cheque for Irish banks.

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What’s Left After the ULA?

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Originally posted on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal on the 29th of April.

This brief report intends to outline the situation within the Irish left following the slow implosion of the United Left Alliance (ULA).

The ULA was an alliance made up of the Socialist Party (affiliated to the Committee for a Workers’ International, CWI), the Socialist Workers Party (the International Socialist Tendency, IST), the Workers and Unemployed Action Group (WUAG, a locally based group with public representation including a member of Ireland’s parliament [TD] and numerous municipal councillors). It also included smaller groups such as the Irish Socialist Network and Socialist Democracy.

The ULA was initially very successful by Irish left standards and won five TDs. Though, it should be understood most, if not all, of these victories did not come only from the unity project itself but from literally decades of work by the various groups.

However, seeing the left under a single banner with a serious electoral challenge did initially attract many activists to its banner.

The ULA unfortunately lasted less than two years and today exists in name only.

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The Origins of May Day and Why it’s Relevant Today

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Originally posted on Irish Student Left Online on the 24th of April.

Eoin Griffin writes about the history of May Day and how we can use this focal point to reassess our own goals. On Wednesday, May 1st from 6:45PM at Parnell Square we'll be taking the energy that was part of last Monday's public meeting organised by the 1913 Unfinished Business Youth Bloc into the DCTU’s May Day march leaving Parnell Square at 7pm. What was it Oscar Wilde said about socialism and evenings? Sign up to the Facebook event here.

May Day holds a mythical position among the international workers and union movements. Its origins can be traced back to Australia in 1856 when stonemasons and builders in Melbourne downed tools on the 21st of April and marched on Parliament to demand an eight hour working day without any deterioration in pay. In 1884 the Chicago Labour Movement adopted the eight hour working day as their core demand, declaring that May 1st 1886 would mark the beginning of the 8 hour working day being a standard. They famously campaigned for this using the slogan “eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, eight hours of recreation”. This slogan had first appeared in the UK during the Industrial Revolution.

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Belfast & District Trades Union Council Talk 2nd of May: Who Profits From Peace?

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Belfast & District Trades Union Council invite you to their Annual May Day Lecture:

Who Profits from Peace?

Thursday 2nd May at 7pm to 9pm

Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre

45/47 Donegall Street, Belfast , BT1 2FG

Will decent manufacturing jobs be replaced by low paid jobs in the finance and services industry?

The ‘double transition’ – towards peace and neo-liberalism – has been evident in the world of politics, finance, law and accountancy. This talk will examine who the winners and losers are in the peace process and will also explore ‘who really profits from peace?’

All welcome and talk will include a Q&A session.

Speaker: Dr Conor McCabe

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Provisional University: Talk by Peter Linebaugh plus contributions from research collectives based in Spain, Ireland, USA and the U.K.

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The Provisional University Presents…

A day of talks and discussions with acclaimed historian Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto

plus research collectives based in Spain, Ireland, USA and the U.K.

Time: Saturday, May 18, 2013 11:00am until 5:00pm

Location: O’Connell House, 58 Merrion Square, Dublin 2

This event is open to the public and admission is free but booking is advised.

RSVP: commonsevent@gmail.com

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The Deficit is Stagnating, Just Like the Economy

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The rest of the world seems to be suffering from austerity fatigue – apart from the Berlin and Dublin governments (and London too – but no-one is holding it up as a model for anything).

The Department of Finance tells us that the deficit is improving. DoF reports that the general government deficit fell from €22.4bn in 2009 to €12.4bn in 2012. But it is widely known that the impact of bailing out bank shareholders and bondholders has had a hugely distorting effect on public finances. Unfortunately, DoF does not show these effects in the same release as the overall government finances, and you need to go to a separate database to get these data.

Adding the two together produces a measure of the underlying deficit, excluding both costs and revenues from the bailout. It is regrettable DoF doesn’t do this itself. The table below shows the deficit excluding the effects of the bank bailout.

2009 2010 2011 2012
General Government Deficit -22.4 -48.3 -21.3 -12.5
Bank bailout net expenditure/receipts -3.8 -31.5 -5.7 +1.6
Underlying Deficit (excl. bank bailouts) -18.6 -16.8 -15.6 -14.1

Fig.1 – General Government Deficit Excluding Effects of Bailouts for Bank Shareholders and Bondholders, €bn. Source: Department of Finance

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Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken: Part 3

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This article follows on from Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken: Part 1 & Part 2.

Hindsight provides 20-20 vision, but in light of more recent events political spin and a sense of justifiable grievance can cloud the popular understanding of what happened in the past. There is, of course, the accuracy of the historical record to correct the flawed collective memory.

One ‘flawed memory’ is that the bailout by the Troika was forced on Ireland in order to ensure that money from Irish tax revenue was used to pay back French and German banks, and that since the bailout was a consequence of the guarantee, that it too was forced on Ireland by the ECB to ensure that European banks got their money back. At the time that the bailout was announced, Brian Lenihan began the process of conflating the terms and conditions of the program with the guarantee:

“There is simply no way that this country, whose banks are so dependent on international investors, can unilaterally renege on senior bondholders against the wishes of the ECB. Those who think we could do so are living in fantasy land.”

But when Irish politicians provided an unlimited guarantee the credibility of the guarantee and therefore its effectiveness in upholding the banking system depended on the willingness of the ECB to prevent a country from defaulting on its sovereign debt.

This is not to say that the actions of the ECB, its rules and structures or even the way that the single currency is arranged and the orthodox thinking that underpins it in the interests of private banking is correct or just. Far from it. However, a clear order of cause and effect must be followed, and the ECB is not responsible for the far reaching consequences of providing an unlimited guarantee.

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Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken? Part 2

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This article follows on from Why Ireland’s 2008 Blanket Bank Guarantee Decision Was Taken: Part 1.

It is five years since the Irish government announced on the 30th of September 2008 that Ireland was going to provide an unlimited bank guarantee to six covered financial institutions. It’s important to remind ourselves of the context of that event. On the 15th of September 2008 Lehman Brothers collapsed and the subsequent credit crunch ensured that the international banking system was soon struggling to obtain interbank credit. Soon significant problems at European banks came to a head. Towards the end of September France, the Netherlands and Belgium injected €11.2bn into Fortis, Belgium's biggest bank and then, a couple of days later on the fateful 29th of Sept, the Netherlands was forced to take over Fortis’ Netherland operation at a cost of €16.8bn. By the 6th of October the German government had authorised a €50 billion rescue package in its second, and this time ‘successful’ attempt to rescue Hypo Real Estate Holdings. The first attempt was a week previously, again on the 29th of September.

The problems for Irish banks trying to access liquidity in the interbank market were not unique, but Ireland’s solution to resolve it differed considerably to that of every other country in the EU. In the weeks prior to the full guarantee the Irish government had already taken the decision to guarantee deposits up to €100,000. Up to that point deposit guarantees in the majority of European countries was just €20,000 with only Italy providing a deposit guarantee of 100,000. As a result of the Irish extension 97% of all customer deposits in the Irish banking system were fully guaranteed (Carswell, IT Oct 2008, see image below). Yet this wasn’t enough to stem the banking crisis and the loss of liquidity. At this time Anglo Irish Bank that was losing significant deposits of between €50 million and €200 million each, amounting to losses of €1 billion a day, causing Anglo to breach its regulatory liquidity ratio. Most of these deposits were borrowed from the short term money markets.

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Progressive Film Club, Sat 27th of April, Labour Rights and Immigrant Workers

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Progressive Film Club – at the New Theatre · 43 East Essex Street · Dublin 2 · Saturday 27th of April

Labour Rights and Immigrant Workers

Admission free. (Donations welcome.)

2 p.m.
Irish premiere

Living as Brothers (2012)

Living as Brothers looks at the lives of Jamaican migrant workers toiling in the orchards of Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada. In their own words, these men, some of whom have been returning for more than twenty years, tell of the second life they have created for themselves in Canada, the reasons for their making this journey, and their struggles at home in rural Jamaica. Told over a season of picking fruit, their story is arduous, stressful, and precarious, one that offers few second chances. · Produced and directed by Kevin Fraser.

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