After months of kicking the can down the road, Simon Harris has finally set the date for the general election for November 29.
Sinn Féin – only one year ago the undisputed masters of Irish politics – have been in crisis, especially since their terrible performances at the local elections. The ruling class, and their faithful lackeys in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are hoping to stick the knife in while they can.
According to the latest opinion polls, they have every chance to succeed in doing so. Together they poll at around 45 percent of first preferences, and on a good day, they could even obtain an overall majority. Sinn Féin in the meantime would have to consider themselves lucky if they get anywhere close to their 2020 results.
After the big scare of the last general elections, when for the first time in a century the ruling class feared the Dáil would fall out of control of their trusted duopoly, they are gloating now at the possibility of humiliating Sinn Féin. With sex scandals and tired old accusations that Sinn Féin is run by the IRA Army Council being blared daily from front page headlines, it was clear an election was coming. The past few months have had the smell of an establishment plot to politically assassinate Sinn Féin, the Irish ruling class having clearly learned a thing or two from the filth the British establishment used to attack Corbyn.
But Simon Harris, Micheál Martin and the rest of the Irish ruling class would be wiser not to count their chickens before they hatch. They can easily overreach themselves. Now that the election has been called, the situation can change quite quickly. Many might still cast a vote for Sinn Féin simply to give the middle finger to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Even if they win, it will be a pyrrhic victory on a low turnout, in which hundreds of thousands are further convinced that the whole political system is a rotten edifice. This is not going to be a return to the ‘good old days’ that the ruling class is dreaming of. On the contrary. The last four years have only brought us the sharpest intensification of capitalist contradictions in living memory.
The whole political setup of the South is discredited and despised by millions. Only 26 percent have any trust in political parties. And 59 percent of Irish people think that “most politicians only care about the interests of the rich and powerful.” And they are entirely correct.
The deepening of the crisis of capitalism is exposing the sham of capitalist democracy in the eyes of many. Not since partition has the south of Ireland walked into a general election with so much inflammable material accumulated at every level of society. A single spark could set the whole thing alight.
We say:
Kick Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael out!
Fight for a revolutionary alternative!
One Century in Power
Over one century of power by the so-called civil war parties has turned life for workers and young people into hell. They rolled over, showed their bellies to the imperialists, and sold the working class to the highest bidder.
When capitalism went into crisis in 2008, they made it their sole purpose to protect the profits of the imperialists by ruthlessly attacking the living conditions of Irish workers and decimating the future of the youth.
They’ve sat back and watched as one of the worst housing crises in the world went off the rails. Since launching their infamous “Housing for All” programme, homelessness has doubled and homeownership rates have reached historic lows. Average disposable income is lower today than it was in 2020, and child poverty has risen to 22 percent.
Hospitals waiting lists have grown longer than ever, from 375,000 in 2015, to a staggering 705,000 today – mostly under the dutiful watch of our Taoiseach during his times as Minister for Health. After years of austerity, the whole infrastructure of the South is one step away from complete and utter collapse.
And how to forget their collusion with the Catholic Church! With nearly a century of vicious oppression and brutal violence against women and children, with new reports coming out to this day. Or their subservience to the American, British and German imperialists over the North of Ireland, Palestine, Ukraine, EU, NATO and more. In just the latest demonstration of this subservience, the US ambassador wagged his finger at the Irish government like a headmaster scolding a naughty schoolboy, warning of “consequences” should the Dáil pass the Occupied Territories Bill.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael represent everything that is backwards, reactionary, cowardly and parasitic about Irish capitalism. They are the most faithful representatives of the hated establishment.
No wonder many want to see the back of them all!
Sinn Féin
It was this anti-establishment mood that Sinn Féin managed to ride in 2020.
After all, they are despised by the Irish Times, they are constantly attacked by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael & co. And that certainly qualifies as a badge of honour in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of workers and youth.
The rush of coordinated establishment attacks on Sinn Féin alone does not explain the party’s doldrums at this moment. Just look at Trump: the whole establishment has relentlessly attacked him, yet each time they do it only further legitimises his claim to be ‘anti-establishment’. Therein lies the problem for Sinn Féin.
After one century of undisputed rule by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, Sinn Féin had a chance of finally displacing them from their throne. But having raised the hopes of workers and youth that “change” was finally arriving, they have proceeded to smash these hopes into pieces, especially over the last year. To put it plainly, they have shown themselves to be soft and weak.
The ruling class doesn’t trust them with power. That’s the reason why they are engaged in a constant propaganda war against them, which has only intensified in the build up to the elections.
But rather than fighting fire with fire, rather than going on an offensive against the powers that be, rather than standing up and mobilising their base of support in a struggle against the Irish establishment and the imperialists – Sinn Féin caved in.
At times it seems Mary Lou McDonald has spent the last 12 months apologising, backtracking, and seeking atonement for Sinn Féin’s past, present and future. They have crawled in front of the capitalists and American imperialists even more humiliatingly than Fine Gael. Even as Israel carried out a genocide in Palestine, their response remained meek and submissive to the imperialists. When the war in Ukraine broke out, they quietly removed all their past anti-NATO material from their website. Even worse, when the far right instigated anti-immigration riots, the party which allegedly stands for abolishing the border with the North claimed it was now against free movement of people!
They’ve spent the past years proving their ‘respectability’ to investors in London and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Whilst doing little to allay the weariness of the capitalists, it has succeeded in wearing their anti-establishment veneer right off. But people voted for them so that they might put up a fight! Workers and youth are looking for someone that will stand up to the establishment, not for middle-class softness.
Even before getting into power, Sinn Féin has proven itself to be unable to channel the sheer amount of pent-up anger that exists today in society.
This is no accident nor the result of the personal failures of Mary Lou McDonald. Sinn Féin never had any prospect of breaking from capitalism. Betrayal inevitably follows from that.
Revolutionary Alternative
Given the lack of a serious revolutionary alternative, Sinn Féin have been bleeding support left, right and centre – metaphorically and politically – to independents, minor parties of the left, and a small backward layer to the far right. But many will simply not turn out to vote.
In fact, turnout at the last local election was the lowest in the history of the state, and the general election is projected to be no better. Ireland has one of the lowest turnouts among parliamentary ‘democracies’.
This is no apathy. It reflects an utter political disillusionment with the system.
A few weeks separate us from the upcoming election. And much can change in terms of relative results for Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. The final arithmetic will depend on voting transfer patterns and turnout.
But one thing is clear. No matter how the numbers shake out in the Dáil, none of the main political parties are stirring up much enthusiasm any longer.
Many will be justly horrified at the prospect of another 5 years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But there is no genuine electoral alternative. All Irish capitalism has in store for workers and youth is more crisis. Hundreds of thousands are desperately looking for a way out.
There is no solution to the current crisis on a capitalist basis. And a further explosion of the class struggle is implicit in the situation.
We must now build the revolutionary alternative, to carry out the fight against capitalism in the stormy period that lies ahead.
We need to prepare the fight for a Socialist United Ireland now!
