Edward Horgan resigns from Green Party
national |
politics / elections |
news report 
Wednesday June 03, 2009 14:33
by Reporter
“Green Party shreds and incinerates its principles to achieve power-at-all-costs”
Dr Edward Horgan (Comdt. retd.), former UN peacekeeper and anti-war/human rights activist today resigned his membership of the Green Party.
The full text of Dr Horgan's resignation statement are as follows:
The Green Party has abandoned its core principles in order to get into Government, and has pushed out its most principled members, including Patricia McKenna, Bronwen Maher, Chris O’Leary and Betty Doran.
The Green Party, led by John Gormley claimed to be staunch opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and opponents of the abandonment of Irish neutrality at Shannon airport. They have even abandoned the pretence that the programme for Government would impose searches on CIA associated aircraft at Shannon airport.
Not only have no such planes been searched and no investigations carried out on the use of Shannon airport in the US torture rendition programme, but whistle blowers such as Edward Horgan and Conor Cregan have been unjustifiable arrested, charged and spuriously brought before the courts several times for daring to ask the Gardai to investigate the presence of CIA aircraft at Shannon. Both have been repeatedly vindicated by the Irish courts for their whistle blowing actions at Shannon airport.
Who will vindicate those lives lost and those prisoners tortured with the active complicity of the present Irish Government at Shannon airport?
It is now known that about one hundred prisoners have died in US custody since 2001, and that at least thirty of these died as a result of torture. Yet the Green Party in Government have been silent and complicit in these crimes in breach of the UN Convention against Torture, and complicit in the deaths of up to one million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I have been very slow to leave the Green Party and have discouraged others from doing so, on the basis that if we did leave, the lack of critical voices within the Green Party would lead to the whole green movement becoming corrupted by their unprincipled quest for power. This has now happened and the Shannon airport and neutrality issues have been final straw.
Ireland needs Patricia McKenna, and others like her, as critical voices in the European Parliament, and as crucial voices in the Dail, and in Local Government.
Ireland needs to end its complicity with crimes against humanity at Shannon airport. We have helped to cause the deaths up to 250,000 children in Iraq and Afghanistan. This scandal is of a greater scale than even the abuses perpetrated against Irish children by the religious orders.
Irish soldiers are now serving abroad with NATO in Afghanistan preventing the Afghan people from expelling their foreign invaders.
The Green Party have betrayed their members, and the Irish people, in a far more serious way that the Dick Spring/Albert Reynolds power at all costs arrangement in 1992.
The Irish electorate punished the Labour Party for several years, but it is recovering. The damage to the Irish green movement by the Green Party’s complicity in the present corrupt Fianna Fail Government is so deep that it may be beyond repair. The electorate should support those former Green party members who are standing by their principles and are now running as independent candidates.
In spite of claims that the Greens in Government are achieving their objectives, the opposite is the case. On the environment, relatively trivial successes on low energy bulbs and organic farming hide the reality of failure to make any substantial progress on alternative energy with Ireland trailing the rest of Europe on wind and solar energy.
The Green party has sold out on Corrib Gas project, sold out on tara, and sold out on Irish neutrality and US military and CIA use of Shannon Airport.
The Greens have bought in to Willie O’Dea’s triple lock on Irish neutrality, and ignored the fact that all these so-called locks have been dumped into the Shannon estuary, as Irish neutrality was abandoned in favour of war profiteering.
The Green Party leadership have effectively incinerated their principles. Perhaps the new incinerator in John Gormley’s constituency can be used to dispose of their unwanted principles.
However, the most serious aspect of Green party betrayal has been in the area of international peace and Irish neutrality.
The Green TDs and Senators have probably made a pact to stay in Government for the next three years to enhance their pensions and their power privileges. The people of Ireland cannot afford another three years of this corrupt and incompetent Fianna Fail /Green Government.
Dr Edward Horgan (Comdt. retd.), former UN peacekeeper, former Green Party member.
Contact details: Tel: 086-3539911 Email: edward_horgan@hotmail.com
Comments (7 of 7)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7If the Green Party was in Government on it's own it would have the mandate to do something about these issues, however, the electorate has quite clearly shown that it cares less about these issues. This is of course very sad and frustrating. Put the blame where it really lays-with every single person voting FF and FG. Of course the GP have been stupid, naive, power-hungry ( perhaps but I don't think so ). The GP should pull out of Govt, of course.
The job now is to save what is left of the GP.
The real problem is that people, in the majority, vote for the policies of FF and FG and only turn against them when hurt in their pockets.
The current anti-Gove anger is not a sign of change, rather it is the middle classes pissed off at the end of the binge/boom.
The one thing I would applaud is getting rid of the voting machines.
I am disgusted at their stance (if lying down can be called a stance) on Shannon Airport, Corrib Gas, and other issues.
True, if there had been 80 Green TDs then things would have been different, but they didn't show enough spine inside or outside the Dail.
If they were being blocked by Fianna Fail, they should have said it, rather than give mealy mouthed answers common to typical spin merchants.
The Green party signed up for the 'programme for government' prior to accepting a coalition partnership with FF, as a condition to share power. Since being in power they constantly referred to this programme for government as if there was nothing they could have done about it. They went into power with the people they held in contempt, or at least they pretended they did, then they blamed this agreement to share power as the reason they couldent do anything having agreed at an earlier date. Finian McGrath told me that the Greens 'Gave in to pressure form the Yanks', (as did he im sure), regarding the change in stance over Shannon Stopovers and Rendition.
Its a pity they are not building our new social services centre on the northside of Dublin now called Thornton Hall Prison, because i dreamed of the day that all of Dail Eireann would be marched into it with half the force of An Gardai Siochana who backs them up, cheered on by the public at large, and not released unless in a box. The charge... Treason.
It is said that English voters are conservative with a small c, which is proved by the way British Labour has abandoned its core working class agenda and become, in domestic financial policy and in foreign policy, like the Liberal party that suddenly died in the wake of social dismay at the Great War carnage.
It can be said that Irish voters are also conservative with a small c, voting massively for the centrist pseudo opposers, FF and FG. The swing to FG represents middle class despair at the collapse of the celtic tiger boom, and the swing of voting intentions towards a yes to Lisbon 2 symbolises anxiety about the financial future. The major betrayal of principles by the Greens is indeed in the area of peace, neutrality and natural resources. If the Greens experience meltdown in the next general election I hope their remnant activists will regroup to work for environmental protection. There is one aspect of Green policy that they have not got around to seriously - decentralisation and regional empowerment. That should be another task for the remnant when they begin to pick up the pieces. Edward Horgan and Patricia McKenna are sound individuals who can inspire the dispirited grassroots.
People who would have joined the PDs 10 years ago are now joining the Greens. It's another middle class party for middle aged people, as distant from the working poor and the welfare dependant as the PDs ever were. More's the pity.
The Greens greatest achievement was to focalise both the grassroots environmental movement and culture, and the EU eco Directives emanating from the enlightened Protestant think tanks of Germany and Scandanavia, to the point where every political party in the country had to have green policies. Even after the party's demise, eco policies will have been normalised in scarey Eire. That's amazing in itself given that 20 years ago "ordinary" people burned plastic in open fires in their gardens; drivers tipped toxic waste into rivers and there were no controls on the spread of pesticides and fertilisers in the agro sector. We've come a long way since Roger "rabbit" Garland became the first green TD in the 1980s.
Horgan has left - why did he stay so long? A good soldier he, on the moral high ground with the Sargent and General Gormley. I understand the arguement about wanting to stay in the party to "protect" it from right wing tendencies. But once Dan "crumpled suit and over fed" Boyle slithered into prominence, the GP were doomed to being the eco dressing of some right wing party or other.
to be outside their tent pissing in than vice versa?
I query your description of the Germans and Swedes as "the enlightened Protestant think tanks of Germany and Scandanavia" who were responsible for environmental protection schemes such as dividing household waste into categories of recyclables. My reading of these societies is that they have become post-Lutheran, Sweden and Denmark in particular. North German cities like Hamburg are now as agnostic as London. The religious atmosphere of Bavaria and Swabia in southern Germany seems different. But apart from that, yep, the Scandanavians and the Germans have led the way in thinking and acting on behalf of the environment.
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