First there was the Bankers debt. 

Then, with a stroke of the pen, capitalism transformed the reckless gamble of bankers and speculators into a debt for the working class and for individual nations. 

Capitalist debt became sovereign debt. Bail-outs claimed to save individual nations became austerity drives to save the Euro.

When endless austerity didn't work Merkel and Sarkozy moved to stage coups in Greece and Italy. In Ireland a trioka sits in Dublin castle and economic decisions are discussed in the German  parliament before they are discussed in the Dail.

Now the European Stability Plan removes democracy across Europe. You may vote in any government you like, but you cannot vote down indefinite austerity.

Greece shows us Ireland’s future.  Wages and pensions set at starvation levels, all public assets sold to the bankers and speculators, then a second bailout to push us further into poverty and save the European banks. Democracy across Europe replaced by the direct rule of the banks as the representatives of capital, both by the suspension of national governments and by fiscal rules that replace any democratic process.  In Ireland the Troika rules and a gombeen quisling government does its bidding. 

The Mahon tribunal tells us that the chief local criminal, the hero of the Celtic tiger, Bertie Ahern, can’t be convicted because he didn’t confess. Noonan tells us that the Irish economy is about to take off like a rocket. Enda Kenny tells us we will still be paying the vultures of the Anglo-Irish bondholders in 2025 and claims this is a victory!

This merciless offensive has been accompanied by a crisis of the workers movement.  Labour are in the government. The trade union leadership sit in partnership committees, implementing and advising on the austerity. Even within the opposition many call for fairer payments rather than reject the robbery outright.

We need to start building a new movement, a movement  that   repudiates the bailout utterly, that seeks the expulsion of the troika, that works to oust the quisling government and seeks to unite in struggle with workers across Europe to end the rule of the bankers. 

The time is long past when we could ask our masters for fairness and mercy. Our call is to the Irish working class, a call to arms to organise, to boycott and resist the bailout, to sabotage charges and privatization, to seize back factories and services where they are being taken away, to claim what is ours.