Blueshirts and Pestilence
Prior to the current health crisis, the Irish nation was already in the throes of another crisis. This was brought about by 9 years of Fine Gael rule and prior to that, decades of Fianna Fáil. On the 8th of February, the Irish people responded to this crisis and voted for change. Since the time the exit poll was announced, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have banded together to ignore the people and continue in their attempts to form a government that nobody asked for.
There is an onus on people now to hold these two parties accountable for their failures in housing, health, justice, and a plethora of other disasters that they have left in their wake. These failures coupled with shameful ministerial incompetence are paid for by workers and their families, whilst these charlatans continue to line their already bulging pockets by awarding themselves pay rises. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael remain true to form in looking after themselves. Compare this to Sinn Fein TDs, who across the board are leading by example, by returning the €8847.28 pay increase, in solidarity with the people of Ireland during this global emergency.
Fine Gael along with their partners in government, Fianna Fáil, at this time of impending economic catastrophe, are working hard to ensure the preservation of the current ruling order; where landlords, banks, vulture funds and developers dictate the social and economic policy of our island. The not-so-subtle historical revisionism of claiming that the black and tans, the very occupying forces of England, were innocent victims, is also part of preserving this narrative. It all serves to muddy the vision that republicans still hold true today, that of The Socialist Republic.
The current COVID-19 crisis has exposed Fine Gael as the neo-liberals that they are. They are ideologically incapable of standing up for workers. The €350 COVID payment and the subsidising of wages to the benefit of private employers, all serve a unitary purpose; protecting the interests of the monied classes by a. preserving their businesses and b. keeping workers in a position of precarity.
Rhetoric of unity and “all in this together” breaks harshly against the reality that Varadkar and his elitist circles look at people receiving social assistance as beneath them, all in line with his #RatForLeo/ Welfare cheats campaign, which sought to demonise people who are availing of financial assistance, due to either unemployment or criminally low pay and insecure hours. This arrogant look-down-the-nose attitude is nowhere to be seen when it is a private business benefiting from financial assistance through tax breaks, or in the case of Apple, Google, Starbucks and a number of other mega-corporations, apparent tax exemption.
It took mere days for this snobbish and elitist rhetoric to resurface; “I have heard stories of people who have asked their employers to lay them off because they’d be better off on the €350 payment than maybe working 20 hours a week for €11,” Varadkar said, “you know, do the maths yourself.” That is to say, we should continue working for poverty wages, risking personal and family health, in order to allow private businesses to profit off your labour. The “all in this together” narrative evidently, has its limits.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil had the opportunity to ban zero hours contracts by supporting a Sinn Féin bill to this effect to combat the continued growth and apparent hegemony of insecure work, but of course, we aren’t really “all in this together”. It is becoming increasingly apparent to people that when Varadkar says “we are all in this together” he isn’t speaking about workers.
Varadkar has sought to abuse this most recent crisis as an opportunity to recover from the abysmal performance of Fine Gael in the recent general election. He is rattled, and donning doctors’ scrubs to answer phones for a few hours in the week, as well as shameless photo ops beside the very people whose wages he has cut and conditions he has worsened. However, this display is an accurate analogy of Fine Gael’s approach to everything, all optics and spin, no substance.
With a health service that has been mismanaged and cut to the bone, Ireland is struggling, despite RTÉ, Denis O’Brien’s Independent Media group and the excess of right wing and liberal media going into overdrive to praise this unelected Taoiseach. Despite the spin, the facts show that Ireland is not coping well with this crisis.
The contradictions of Fine Gael health policy have been laid bare in recent weeks, the Fine Gael policy of a dual health system to provide for people’s health needs has been met with Simon Harris now claiming that “there can be no room for public versus private”. During times of crisis where the interests of the rich are threatened, even Fine Gael turn to the only system capable of dealing with this crisis; public healthcare. However, even then, Fine Gael have managed to pour resources into the pockets of their ‘buddies’. Other EU countries such as Spain immediately seized control of the private health sector. On 24th March 2020, it was announced that Ireland had “nationalised” all hospitals. In reality this means “renting” 19 private hospitals to the tune of €115 million per month. The state has also agreed to reimburse the existing pay of top management in private hospitals by up to €200,000 per year.
The contradiction of Fine Gael claiming that the free market can provide for people’s needs whilst they simultaneously spend inordinate amounts of money on renting private hospitals in a vein attempt to avert this disaster, causes the head to spin. They do not believe their own ideology, and yet they stick to it. The executive and consulting jobs awaiting them upon retirement, pay far too highly to give notice to frivolous things such as evidence.
Fine Gael strategy, it would seem, is to blow money away when it comes to health, whether privatising cervical cancer checks or renting out unused private hospital beds, and otherwise cut our health services to the bone, and then use student nurses to fill the gaps with unpaid and sub-minimum wage work. Many student nurses are now on the verge of 5 weeks without pay, all the while continuing to pay rent to their landlords, for whose income Fine Gael will fight tooth and nail for.
The current crisis has exposed Fine Gael’s ability to act quickly and decisively (albeit with reckless incompetence and waste) when they are needed to, in order to preserve the interests of the ruling order. Although, when it comes to housing, there is “no quick fix” (– Leo Varadkar), when it comes to drug gangs terrorising communities, it’ll be ignored, or it is “regrettable”, never mind the fact that in many areas garda stations have been closed, or numbers cut to unworkable levels.
Mary Lou McDonald stated it perfectly- “Isn’t it amazing how words like “unaffordable” and “unsustainable” are always used to describe financial measures that help workers and ordinary families, but never measures that preserve the privilege of those at the top?” Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail rejected the proposed extension for a ban on rent increases, insisting that these are merely temporary 3-month measures. Neither party has a notion of working for the good of the people, not before, during or after this crisis.
The myth of EU solidarity has been well and truly shattered by this crisis, as the larger blocs confiscated PPE equipment being transported through their countries to other EU member states, the “enemies of the west” have been the primary source of international solidarity and commitment to humanity. Countries such as the People's Republic of China as well as Cuba have been to the forefront in fighting this crisis, exporting gargantuan quantities of health equipment, as well as sending doctors to countries all over the world!
Whilst we saw socialist states demonstrating selflessness, the innate selfishness and racism of neoliberalism has been laid bare for all to see. Even as the PRC provided countries with equipment, open medical information and support, sinophobic rhetoric has seen a correlated increase. The exemplary role played by the Chinese state in this crisis has not gone unnoticed by the workers of Europe, with messages of solidarity and thanks being sent from all across the continent, despite the media furore either ignoring or demonising the PRC.
Whilst the Chinese economy has now started to climb once again, the liberal economies of the rest of the world have demonstrated a complete inability to cope with any disruption, with many businesses going bust and airlines looking for multi-billion-euro bailout packages.
Social distancing has caused this consumer society bubble we’ve been living in to burst, allowing the potential for a new socio-political landscape. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s scrambling to form another unwanted government, displays their complete denial of their increasing irrelevance in today’s world, all the while refusing to acknowledge the existence of Sinn Fein. They are simply stalling the inevitable. This Stockholm syndrome-like surge in popularity of Varadkar will be short-lived, as we know his policies will remain elitist and stale.
The recent general election demonstrated a re-emergent class consciousness in Ireland. A number of Sinn Féin candidates were elected, not necessarily due to local profile, but due to the policy platform on which they stood. The people have grown tired of the fearmongering driven by right wing media pundits and FF/FG. The writing is on the wall for these two parties, as Sinn Féin’s ceaseless advance marches us all towards a true republic.
With any luck, after this crisis, individualism will cease to exist. We will unite and thrive as we get rid of capitalist greed. What is now viewed as ‘radical’ will become the norm. I for one will not long for how things used to be. “Normal” has been the problem for the last 40+ years, and this crisis presents an opportunity to break the Thatcherite politics that has dominated this island for far too long. There is an alternative, and it is the role of republicans to believe and fight for it.
“We must see our present fight right through to the very end” - Bobby Sands
le Gemma Ferris