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Paddy H wrote: "SF's parliamentary demagogic onslaught at the Dail opening was just mere noise. Bombast over the homeless and other issues does not solve such problems. It was merely a tactical ploy to look good and concerned. Sinn Fein is merely exploiting suffering, as it has been doing in the six counties, to venally promote itself." I think a big concern for the Shinners is the rise of the Trotskyists. The Trotskyists now have nine seats in Leinster House, which is more than the Labour Party. (Although, interestingly, they got less votes than Labour, just a lot more concentrated in a few areas of strength.) They won a few seats which the Shinners probably expected to win and Adams and co. will be looking over their shoulders at the SP and SWP particularly. One of the crazy things about the Trotskyists is their division. These 9 members of parliament are divided between four formations: the SWP/People Before Profit (3), the SP/Anti-Austerity Alliance (3), the WUAG (1), and Independents 4 Change (two of their 4 members of parliament are Trotskyists, Joan Collins and Clare Daly, both ex-members of the SP). The SP and SWP, especially the former, have put the 'needs' of their group ahead of the needs of the class. Thus, instead of having 9 ULA (United Left Alliance) TDs, they killed the ULA and went their own narrow ways, forming an alliance purely to get elected to a bourgeois parliament after which they go their own sectish ways again. Having, of course, secured a certain level of state funding. Isn't this what Lenin would have called 'parliamentary cretinism'? Moreover, the SP has an appalling record on the national question, its earlier manifestation (the Militant Tendency in the capitalist Irish Labour Party) even opposing the five demands of the hunger strikers in 1980-81 and, in the north, these days being closely associated with the screws who are involved in ongoing abuse of republican prisoners. (See, for instance, the RNU statement on the Socialist Party and the screws: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/the-socialist-party-and-the-screws/ ). Phil _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
