in late March, Sinn Fein LE launched its campaign for the Irish General election with a rally in Dublin's Gresham notel, at the same time as the Irish Labour Party was holding its Both conferences focused on the issues immediately facing southern voters. What is the republican programme for working people of the southern state? Hardly different from that of the Labour Party it would seem.
Both promise a new health service and Sinn Fein promises one free at the point of delivery and funded from general taxation. The Irish Labour Party are rather more specific in identifying of money required and funding mechanisms - apparently raiding the national pension fund will do the trick.
Both make promises on housing a big feature of their plans and both are keen to castigate the inequality created by the existing coalition government.
The Labour Party and Sinn Fein both promise to remove the lowest paid trom the tax net. promises no new tax cuts for the rich, while Sinn Fein promise only 'A full review of the income tax system, to be completed and implemented within the lifetime of the next government.
Since They also promise that 'indigenous industries should receive the same aid as foreign companies' is quite clearly implied that corporation taxes are not to be increased.
Indeed in the past Adams has floated the idea that the low corporate taxes in the south should be introduced in the north. How exactly new health service is to be created without radical increases in taxes on the rich is unexplained. At least the Labour Party acknowledge a problem and propose a once off 'creative accounting' style solution that was used in the last budget to postpone public expenditure cuts until after the election.
What both parties make clear, by omission rather by open declaration, is their attachment to a policy which sees multinational investment as the dynamic for society. Sinn Fein just makes more noise about helping indigenous capitalists but since these are more and more subordinated and dependent on these multinationals the effect could not help but be much the same.
No mention is made by Sinn Fein of promoting the trade unions to break from the disastrous social partnership deals that have hobbled worker's organisations for the best part of fifteen years.
Indeed their promise, like the Party, focus public spending on health, education and infrastructural development, without saying either how it would be financed or what would be cut, would take place in a new 'partnership' with the trade unions and 'other representatives of the wider society.' Their vision of equality is utopian one of maximum local self sufficiency - 'a return to a sustainable practice of local quality produce for local markets,' and of 'equality' defined by each of the oppressed having the opportunity to become the oppressor - greater assistance and funding for women in business.' Sinn Fein criticises the EU, but its alternative is to turn the clock back and attempt to strengthen the nation states comprising it. But the centralisation of the EU is taking place is in recognition that there is future for the indigenous national capitals in Europe without unity in competition with the USA and Japan. The Nice Treaty is only criticised fos its impact on the "policy of southern neutrality" not for its neo-liberal agenda.
mention at all is made OI women's reproductive rights despite the recent referendum - and even the Labour Party promises to legislate for the X case. On the other hand, and despite the activities of the armed republicans of the IRA, 'more resources' are promised to the Garda.
In one sense it is unnecessary to look at what Sinn Fein promises for the south because it already sits in 'government' in the north. Indeed the party's experience in the north is held up as reason for support in the south.
Attacking critics, Adams says: "Some of those who are saying we can't be trusted are the same people who are commending Ministers in the north - Martin McGuinness Minister for Education and Bairbre de Brun Minister for Health."
Just why right wing politicians in the south would congratulate Sinn Fein's performance in the north is not addressed. So let us instead.
Let's take health first. De Brun's first action as minister was to close a maternity hospital and later to set up a review of acute facilities in the rest of the north under Maurice Hayes, a former top civil servant under British direct rule.
As an aside, it is easy to pass over this without noting the irony. Here is a movement that killed the most minor and 'collaborator' with the British state, including workmen and caretakers, yet in government appoints to determine the future of of hospital services under its responsibility a top 'collaborator,' and no one in Sinn Fein even notices!
The Sinn Fein record in government has been one of failure only postponed by the now notorious tactic of delaying difficult decisions by farming them out for review by 'experts. At the beginning of March it was reported that hospital waiting lists in the north, already the longest in the UK, had increased from under 48,000 a year before to 57,704 at the end of 2001, an increase of 14.5%. This despite a solemn promise from the Sinn Fein minister that they would be reduced.
One in ten people waiting for cardiac surgery will die before they reach the operating table according to research carried out by a nursing lecturer at the University of Ulster. (Irish News 08/03/02)
The response of Sinn Fein is to blame the British for insufficient funding, while claiming credit for new developments which are also the result of this funding. All of a sudden Sinn Fein apologists write letters to the press explaining how difficult a job health is, and how no one else wanted the job. Could anyone else be expected to do better?
Inadequate funding from the British state only cruelly exposes how Sinn Fein in government is merely the mechanism for delivering a deteriorating service.
The north of Ireland is not even the same increases in TeCe VIS health service spending England, with a shortfall of £83m in 20001/02 and a forecast shortfall of £214m in 2003/04.
The new found understanding among Sinn Fein supporters for the "difficulties' of the job also means they are no longer a force campaigning against the poor service but are the standard bearers of excuses for those in charge.
The situation in Education also exposes the radical rhetoric as a sham. On March Martin McGuinness announced spending of £107m on new school buildings, £53m Public Private Partnerships (PPP), that is privatisation, where private firms design, build, maintain and run 'non-core' services in new schools.
again this is an exercise in rationing, On 21 March Martin McGuinness announced spending of £107m on new school buildings, £53m through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) later PFI schemes will make serious inroads into school revenue budgets, making it even harder to tackle teacher shortages and oversized classes. "Education is a hugely labour-intensive service ...The only way these new buildings can be paid for, without significantly raising public spending, , is by taking funding away from existing services and distorting local school budget priThis means lower not higher standards' (Public Finance Feb 8-14 2002)
These schemes aim to reduce government borrowing that might arise from the state building the new schools themselves. But the state has to pay back the costs of the new building to the private sector as if it had taken out à loan, except that the cost will be greater to allow the private companies to make a profit.
This attempt at what accountants call 'off-balance sheet? accounting: if the school is not financed by a loan the future cost does not appear in the government's books.
It was precisely such 'off-balance sheet' accounting that was involved the Enron scandal when America's seventh largest company collapsed. On the day _tha announcement of the school-building programme the Irish News reported that the Department of Education had spent £750,000 on consultancy costs for these PPP deals over the previous year. The other major initiative of the Sinn Fein minister of education is the Burns report on the 11-plus, the means of selecting young children for either grammar school or secondary education. The effect of this initiative so far has been to present choice between the existing iniquitous system and a new one, that also fails to guarantee equality. No wonder right wing politicians in the south, not to mention the British, have no reason to complain about Sinn Fein's performance in government. Who said that they needed to be 'house trained?' With all this in mind it is simply laughable to hear Gerry Adams say that "the real question is not, and never has been whether they (Fianna Fail etc) will go into government with us. The real question is whether we would gọ into government with them." Having gone into coalition government with lan Paisley's DUP, could anyone. believe that there would be the slightest problem supporting a Fianna Fail government in the south? Only the most blind of Sinn Fein members could possibly be deceived.
Sinn Fein does not represent any sort of alternative to working people in the south. They represent a dead end for anyone looking for a radical alternative to the corrupt politics of the southern establishment.
rewpont