The Irish Republican Socialist Party, and the wider working class continue to look on in alarm as the Green Party’s negotiations with Fine Gael and their historic rivals in Fianna Fáil – appears to have given birth to an agreement for a draft programme for government. Sugar coating and media spin cannot hide that this Draft Document of Death by Austerity signals the formation of an alliance between Ireland’s most conservative and pro-exploitation parties – all made possible by a historic act of treachery by The Green Party.
Make no mistake, if this government succeeds in receiving the required backing from their own constituent memberships, it will entail the implementation of mass austerity on a scale, and attacks on the living standards of the working class not even imagined during the post-2008 crisis era.
As previously noted by the IRSP at the beginning of the three-way flirtation between the 3 Austerity Henchmen – Micheál Martin, Leo Varadkar & Eamon Ryan – the Green Party were one of the principal beneficiaries of the recent sea-change in Irish electoral politics. The results of the February 2020 General election showed that the Irish people had enough of the cosy consensus between the established parties of the 26 counties which had lasted for the best part of a century. For the first time since the formation of the state the ‘big two’ civil war traditions represented today by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael failed to receive more that 50% of the total vote between them.
Faced with this radical new vista and the potential to build real opposition to the ruling class establishment parties, we are very concerned to see the Green Party not just flirting with the idea of betraying the vote for change in the recent election – but in fact now looking to consummate a relationship that will see a coalition government with the parties most representative of exploitative Irish capitalism and environmental pollution.
We implore ordinary members of the Green Party, and any progressive elements which may survive within the Irish Green movement to do their best to stop this draft deal becoming a governing reality. Furthermore, we ask all political parties of the progressive left to turn away from the seductive glances of the capitalist class and their representatives in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – and join the working class left in a real fight for economic and environmental justice
