Limerick election victory

STUNNING LIMERICK VICTORY FOR JOE HARRINGTON

A VINDICATION OF

STRUGGLE

In the June Local Government elections Peoples Democracy Councillor Joe Harmington scored a stunning victory in Limerick City when he was relected on the first count with 905 first preference votes. The result was a tribute to his selflessness and campaigning work on behalf of the working people of Limerick.

VINDICATION

But Joe’s election doesn’t just represent a success for a hardworking community activist. It’s also a vindication of the campaigning policies of many years, building self activity and democratic organisation in the working class and the community. Joe's socialist ideas were reflected in the anti-water tax campaign.

He was one of the central leaders of this movement and his election victory reflects a successful electoral intervention by that campaign.

COMMITMENT

In fact, eight candidates overall who had pledged opposition to the water tax were elected - local candidates of the Labour and Workers Parties, independent Socialist John Gilligan and Joe himself. Jim Kemmy, formally of the Democratic Socialist Party and now on the right of the Labour Party, was elected on a commitment to fight the service charge. He is now mayor. These elections, plus the strong local campaign, are a heavy blow against the local charge, but they usher in a new period of struggle. The water tax was widely unpopular because itrepresented a double taxation of working people - ensuring that they and not the rich would pay the debt that Irish capitalism had run up with imperialism. Now the Fianna Fail coalition that has enforced it is planning even further cutbacks.

RESPONSIBILITY

Any abolition of the charge would be accompanied by calls for redundancies and cuts in social provision to ensure that working people are the ones to suffer in the austerity. The campaign will face new challenges and the councillors elected on an anti-water tax program will face a heavy responsibility if they are to live up to all the implications of the poll results. There is one much broader implication of Joe Harrington’s victory. As in other parts of the 26 counties the radicalisation of voters bypassed Sinn Fein and the Labour and Workers Parties benefited. Nationally the leaderships of these movements talk big about opposition to cutbacks but practice a “new realist” collaboration with the bosses. Both are marked by anti-republicanism and abandonment of Connolly’s heritage. Joe’s re-election shows that revolutionary socialists can win electoral battles and broad class struggle movements can be built. In the process he has put forward a policy that links capitalism's cuts and the British occupation in the North in one consistent program of socialist anti-imperialism.

PAT CONNOLLY.

An Reabhloid page 11