The Socialist Workers Party is running a candidate for the post of Vice-President of SIPTU. The Election is to take place in January 04. Des Derwin, an unaligned socialist (and a previous election candidate for the position of General Secretary of SIPTU) who announced in October that he was running for the position published his reaction on Indymedia. Follow the link below the excerpt for the full text of his reaction.

"In over thirty years of political activity I cannot recall a more astonishing act of pure sectarianism on the socialist far left. They are running a candidate with no surface difference of policies to mine. As it is a trade union election they cannot run as an organisation. There can be no defensible reason for them standing a candidate against me. Not only have I worked with them in SIPTU and actively supported their member Carolann Duggan in four successive SIPTU elections, but also, as I detail below, they were instrumental in persuading me to run for General Secretary just last year. I might add that not only have I worked with the SWP in various campaigns and bodies, trade union and other, including the recent Socialist Alliance, down the years, but that I have been in recent times an increasingly isolated voice on the rest of the far left for working with and not writing off the SWP.

Now, when I am actually in a better position to run, having stood last year, I am not good enough and they put up a virtual unknown. The effect will be (particularly in the absence of a soft left candidate - though there's a whisper of one emerging) to split the left vote. To run against a radical socialist candidate in a general election (which the SWP did once against the Socialist Party) is bad enough. Seemingly identical organisations vying for votes is a scandal to ordinary workers. But to run a candidate against a long established, independent oppositional activist, with a thirty-year history of exactly similar ‘Rank and File-ist’ policies (i.e. myself) in a trade union election, where candidates are standing on trade union issues and trade union records, is sectarianism and sectism without any cover."

''What I am fighting here is a criminal government that has been involved in an illegal war. We have facilitated more than half the US troops that went to fight in an illegal war. Also they've turned our Constitution to shreds. They've not allowed our Gardai and security forces in Shannon to go on board these planes and even find out what was [in] them. They have had no regard for the safety of the citizens living [near] Shannon and it's been reported that there is a huge arsenal of weapons flying over at least Shannon and there is no concern for the safety of the citizens in that area.

So, I will be fighting this case vigorously, but as I say, I need support, very strongly I need support, and I call on anybody who might be free next Tuesday or whatever court dates are set in the future, to come and support, to come and picket outside, to write about it, to do media interviews, and to put the word [out] that Ireland has been complicit in an illegal war, despite the will of the Irish people.''
- Mary Kelly, 17 October 2003
MP3 interview streamed / download (2.8megs - 4:09 mins)

UPDATE: ReTrial date set for early February, 2004 (new photos)

Past Features on Civil Disobedience at Shannon Airport:
· Mary Kelly Trial: Hung Jury, Re-Trial Possible in October (Jul 4 2003)
· Good Friday Resistance at Shannon Airport (Apr 18 2003)
· Pit Stop Ploughshares 5 action at Shannon Airport (Feb 3 2003)
· Peace Activist vs. US Military Jet (Jan 29 2003)