Party looks to community groups for election pact

The Socialist Party wants to form alliances with community groups intending to run candidates in the next general election, party…

The Socialist Party wants to form alliances with community groups intending to run candidates in the next general election, party leader Joe Higgins told its annual conference at the weekend.

He said the party was "open to working with principled political groups" and with "genuine local campaigns".

The party is targeting two Dáil seats and has hopes of doing well in two more constituencies, with Cllr Clare Daly's challenge for a seat in Dublin North "a key objective".

Demanding "a socialist alternative" to either Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, or a Fine Gael/Labour/Green coalition, Mr Higgins said voters were being offered "no real choice" by the major parties.

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"All these parties share similar economic and political positions. All they fight over, in reality, is which cabal should have its hands on the loot. There is a need to construct a major party of the left, a real mass workers' party on this island," he told the conference at NUI Maynooth, Co Kildare.

Referring to the Easter Rising commemoration, Mr Higgins said James Connolly had led the Irish Citizen Army into the GPO in 1916 in support of the working classes. Last Thursday, hundreds of historical items from the Rising were sold off at auction for €3.4 million.

"The flag that flew over the GPO was auctioned for €600,000.

"No doubt apart from the sellers, the auctioneers will have a cut of some hundreds of thousands of Euro from these historic relics made valuable by the blood that was shed by those associated with 1916.

"The 1916 auction is a stark illustration of the depraved and grubby values that drive the big business establishment and their political cronies in the Ireland of 2006," he said.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern had trumpeted the values of the Rising Proclamation while "he is planning to put Aer Lingus, the national airline, into the hands of the sharks in the international stock markets.

"He is prepared to put thousands of workers, their families and communities and a crucial strategic public asset at the mercy of the swindlers and asset strippers.

"Only weeks ago, as a result of past Fianna Fáil privatisation, we witnessed the liquidation at a stroke of the entire sugar beet industry. And the jobs of hundreds of workers.

"The privatisation of the B&I ships led last year to the grotesque spectacle of its new bosses in Irish Ferries, seeking an entire trade unionised workforce to be replaced with shamefully exploited migrant workers."

Mr Ahern should have been "greeted by a jeering parade" at the GPO yesterday of sacked Irish Ferries and Irish Sugar workers and of Aer Lingus employees, along Telecom Éireann pensioners, rather than the Irish Defence Forces.

The State's land which should have been for the benefit of the people had been used for "obscene profiteering by speculators" who have made the right to have a home an impossibility for ordinary working families.

Highlighting party successes during the year, Mr Higgins said the party had "outed" Turkish construction firm Gama for its exploitation of Turkish building workers.

"We lifted the veil on a vile machine of worker exploitation that had carried on for four years under the very noses of powerful organisations and agencies with infinitely more resources than the Socialist Party," he said.

Mark Hennessy

Mark Hennessy

Mark Hennessy is Ireland and Britain Editor with The Irish Times