Left alliance calls for general strike over EU-IMF bailout

IRISH STRIKES on the scale of Greece were possible but would not happen overnight, a protest against the EU-IMF deal was told last night.

Less than 100 people turned out at Leinster House in a rally organised by the United Left Alliance which was calling for a general strike.

The IMF would “asset strip and pillage society,” People Before Profit Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett told those gathered.

“If there was to be a general strike, people could not rely on the trade union leadership,” he said.

Such a strike could not be done overnight and took months of organisation in Greece to force the trade unions to take action,” he added

The public was holding its breath, thinking that Fine Gael and Labour were going to be different, he said.

But when it became clear after a couple of months that they were not different “the levy will break”, he said.

The small turnout at yesterday’s protests should not be mistaken for a lack of public outrage, Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said yesterday afternoon. “People are nearly beyond outrage and almost punch drunk between budgets, bailouts and threats to their home,” she said.

“Ireland has been different to other countries where there were mass protests.

“I don’t think anyone should imagine there is not anger; we need an election,” Ms McDonald said.

Some two dozen Sinn Féin activists gathered at the rally against the EU-IMF deal yesterday afternoon.

Three of them wore Irish Citizens Army uniforms and held a banner reading: “We served neither king nor kaiser then and well not serve them now.”

The EU-IMF loan would burden “not only this generation but a succession of generations of Irish people. It is not of their making and based on a gamble they didnt take”, Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said.

He called on Opposition TDs who present themselves as an alternative government to reverse the “sell-out deal immediately on taking office”.

Many individual protesters also stood outside Leinster House yesterday, including Dubliner Frank McCarthy who held an EU flag with a swastika on it.