Return to Recent Articles menu

 
 
Statement: SD response to Daly and Collins proposals 

31 January 2013

We do not agree with the CJD and Bree statement.

The ULA has essentially collapsed into chaos. The CJD and Bree statement explains this as a combination of organizational failure and sectarian self interest on the part of the Socialist and Socialist Workers Parties.

The proposal is to build a loose left alliance with no action programme, a distinct bias towards electoral politics and a somewhat more democratic structure.

The likelihood is that the outcome will be the same. We should be doing something different.

Our view is that the ULA failure is a political failure based on a fatal ambiguity. It balanced between Dail representation and working class action, between revolution and reform. The lack of a coherent policy left the ULA as a vehicle for the different groups, encouraged organisational rivalry, left TDs without constraints and contributed to the abandonment of the original ULA programme.

We have to put flesh on the original ULA calls for repudiation of the debt, for independent organization of the working class and the need to develop a socialist alternative.

A first step in the battle to repudiate the debt is a united campaign to force an already weakened Labour out of the coalition government.
 

Opposition to coalition is put forward, as it has been in many left unity initiatives, as a way of stretching the definition of left as far to the right as possible when, before our eyes, a real-life coalition is driving the working class into the ground and the ULA have little to say about the issue .
 
We should campaign to break ICTU from their coalition with capital by demanding an end to Croke Park I and II. We should be fighting to highlight the denial of democracy involved in the rule of the Troika.
 
It will take time to build a democratic socialist movement but we should be acting now to show that we are committed to action. A united call to force Labour out of government and ICTU out of partnership would be a real step forward.
 

 

Return to top of page