SIPTU women's conference: Irish people must shift their emphasis from "charity to solidarity" when addressing global issues, the SIPTU president, Mr Des Geraghty, has said. Lorna Siggins reports.
In his closing remarks to yesterday's final session of SIPTU's women's conference in Galway, Mr Geraghty urged the Irish trade union movement to work more closely with international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Such a partnership could ensure that the values of solidarity, equality, equity and democracy were respected in the new global institutions, he said.
"That emphasis is necessary if we are to make sense of the job losses in our manufacturing sectors, in clothing and textiles, to accommodate ourselves to a multicultural population of the new Irish workforce, and to engage intelligently in the debate on the future of Europe," Mr Geraghty said.
"Our solidarity as trade unionists, as humanitarians, as concerned citizens, must find expression of new forms of genuine internationalism. That solidarity must begin at home through addressing issues of racism, low pay, inequality in all its forms, homelessness and inadequate social provision for health, housing and education. Internationally, we must work for an effective EU and United Nations.
"We in the trade union movement must ourselves develop a perspective of outward-looking commitment to progress rather than a defensive, inward-looking, narrow-self interest focus," the SIPTU president continued.
Earlier in the conference, the Labour Party's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Michael D Higgins, said that globalisation was a "myth" constructed by right-wing politicians for an ideological purpose. It was neither "inevitable" nor was it "neutral or benign", Mr Higgins said.
Constructing a global consciousness to expose the rhetoric of the "New Right" required "engaging in analysis, in opposing their politics and economics," Mr Higgins said, and he emphasised that this necessitated participating in politics, rather than rejecting it.
The "big lie" that globalisation was some kind of "neutral" or "natural" phenomenon which was "inevitable" and even "desirable" was the most "dangerous and bogus myth of our time", Mr Higgins said.
"We are morally responsible for not only what we do but also for that which we allow to happen. The current globalisation debate should concern itself with challenging the inevitabilities, rather than accepting the myth."