Eamonn McCann responds to Joe Higgins' call for new left party

national | anti-capitalism | press release Monday April 24, 2006 22:52 by kevin Wingfield - SWP info at swp dot ie

Speaking on Sunday morning, 23rd April, at the Jim Gralton Commemoration School in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Eamonn McCann responded positively to Joe Higgins' call for a new left party.

Speaking on Sunday morning 23rd April, at the Jim Gralton Commemoration School in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Eamonn McCann responded positively to Joe Higgins' call for a new left party.

"Joe Higgins’ call last weekend for a left-wing slate of candidates to fight the next Dail election is to be welcomed. There will be difficulties in the way of achieving the unity necessary to offer common left programme across the State. But we should not be daunted. We should see it as a duty, on as wide a basis as possible, to put forward a clear alternative to coalition with Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

"The idea of a new mass-based Left party is some distance in the future. But a united campaign, bringing together credible community and single-issue groups, trade union activists and existing Left organisations is a realistic ambition which it is our duty to pursue.

"The party I am a member of, the SWP, responds positively to Joe Higgins’ call. We look forward to discussing how we might advance the project together, neither hiding the differences which exist, nor making such a fetish of them that continued fragmentation is ensured.

"At anti-war meetings and meetings of the People Before Profit/Davitt Alliance over recent months, I have been struck by the wide range of people who have been able to make common cause, despite previous sharp disagreements and resentments of one sort and another. Others will have had similar experiences in different contexts. We must build on this. I hope the days are gone when we allowed, say, different analyses of the class nature of the Soviet Union to stand in the way of joint action on immediate issues.

"We should discuss our differences as we march forward together. We might discover we have much learn from one another. We might have even more to learn from the people we would be appealing to in a general election campaign, who have no time for the endless wrangling which has characterised the Irish Left for too long.

"Some of the most committed fighters against neo-liberalism I have met in the past year would not describe themselves as socialists at all. Many have come into political activity through involvement in local issues---to do with planning, incineration,. hospital or school closures, etc., etc. They havn’t set out to overthrown capitalism, but their activity has brought them into confrontation with the neo-liberal agenda adopted by all the major capitalist parties.

"Who better than local campaigners who have earned the trust of their neighbours to carry the flag for a new Left initiative? Who better to represent the broad working class interest than the union activist who has helped organise her or his fellow workers to defend jobs and conditions?

"It is, I think, within the bounds of possibility to put forward candidates standing on a common programme in a dozen constituencies at least, not to seek a junior position in an administration dominated by adherents of neo-liberalism, but to represent and amplify the voice of resistance to neo-liberalism."