Joe Higgins Euro Election Campaign Launched

Joe Higgins Euro Election Campaign Launched

April 25th, 2009 |

PRESS RELASE: Although the Euro Elections are to elect a Parliament that is to legislate on a Europe wide basis, it is inevitable and universally accepted, that the economic calamity in this State will be a vital factor in determining how people will vote and will dominate the campaign.

For working people and the newly unemployed in Dublin, the Euro Election provide a brilliant opportunity to damn the disastrous policies of the Fianna Fail/Green Party Coalition. They carry no responsibility for the catastrophic economic crash caused by Fianna Fail sponsored greed, graft and profiteering in the property market. Yet they are being subjected to a savage assault on their living standards, services and even livelihoods, to pay for this crisis.

Joe Higgins launching is Euro Election Campaign

The victims of the crisis in Dublin – the ordinary working men and women and those losing their jobs – should pay back Fianna Fail for the disastrous consequences of handing the economy over to speculators and profiteering chancers who bled young people for the price of a home and the big bankers who financed their racketeering. They can now wipe out Fianna Fail and wipe their feet on the Green Party who have cast themselves in the role of doormat for Fianna Fail.

Working People Can Use Euro Election To Make Up For Trade Union Leaders’ Capitulation To Attacks

The abject surrender of the leadership of the trade unions to the demands of big business represented by IBEC and the political establishment, that it is workers who must pay the price for the crash they did not cause, has meant that the most savage attacks ever on wages and public services are being inflicted without a fightback. While a vote in the Euro Election is not an adequate substitute for a concerted trade union campaign to defend jobs, wages and services, nevertheless it can knock the Government and big business back. And having decided to punish Fianna Fail and the Greens, ordinary people could not make a more powerful statement than voting No. 1 for Joe Higgins. A vote for Joe Higgins is a vote for the establishment of a new mass party to fight in the interests of working people. During his ten years in the Dail from 1997 to 2007, Joe Higgins vehemently fought the privatisation of public enterprises, the unrestrained profiteering in the property market, the massive tax cuts for speculators and big business and the waste of the fruits of the economic growth of that time.

Fighting Against Neo-Liberalism – for a Workers’ Europe

Among the key issues the Socialist Party is campaigning on are:

Opposition to the neo-liberal economic agenda championed by the EU Commission and many EU governments including attacks on workers’ wages, decent working conditions and pension rights;
opposition to the privatisation agenda driven by the EU; In defence of democratic and efficient public services and the rights of public service workers;
For a one tier Public Health Service and opposition to ‘for profit’ medicine including the co-location of private hospitals beside public hospitals;
Against militarisation of Europe and the armaments industry;
For a socialist Europe run democratically by working people rather than one dominated by big business interests and powerful transnational corporations;

In particular, the Socialist Party will use the Euro Election campaign to highlight the attack on workers’ rights within the European Union with the approval of the EU Commission and the European Court of Justice. The European Court of Justice(ECJ) has made clear in various cases that workers’ ‘fundamental rights’ are not absolutely fundamental and have to take second place to the rights of businesses to trade and make profits. We will demand clarification of the position of the Labour Party and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions which, while speaking for workers’ rights, support the Lisbon Treaty which institutionalise the right of contractors to exploit workers.

Socialist Party & Joe Higgins aim to mobilise “People Power”

The Socialist Party will fight a vigorous Euro Election Campaign. Although having far less financial resources than the establishment parties, that will be more than made up for by the political platform of the campaign and popular involvement of ordinary people in campaigning activity.

Joe Higgins – The Record

Joe Higgins is a long time activist in the labour and trade union movement. Elected to Dublin County Council in 1991, he was a leading fighter against corrupt land rezoning in Dublin and for planning in the interests of communities rather than for speculators and major developers. Joe Higgins was the Chair of the Federation of Dublin Anti Water Charges Campaign which won massive support and forced the Fine Gael/Labour Government to abolish water charges in December 1996. Minister for Social Welfare, Mary Hanafin, said last year that had abolition not happened, each household in Dublin would be currently paying €700 per year in water charges. Joe Higgins was elected to the Dail in 1997 and for the next ten years was a leading opponent of the right wing policies of the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat Government. He frequently challenged the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, on a wide range of issues including land speculation and profiteering in the housing market, Government support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and in defence of workers’ rights. In 2003 Joe Higgins was sent to Mountjoy Jail for a month over his opposition to Bin Tax, a new stealth tax on Dublin householders. In 2005, with the Socialist Party, he exposed the horrific abuse of migrant workers by Gama Construction and struck a major blow against the ‘race to the bottom’ when that company was forced to pay unpaid wages of around €30million to its workers.

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