Editorial: We need debate
As the Tory establishments North and South rob our children of their future, the elderly of their pensions, and workers of their livelihoods, they call for “consensus.” What they really mean is that the alternatives must be sidelined and their criminal behaviour never fully revealed.
After decades deriding those who pointed to the need for a strategic vision that went beyond mere profit accumulation, now the southern oligarchs speak of the “national interest.”
Make no mistake about it, their “national interest” demands that speculators and bankers continue to make massive profits and that right-wing politicians can sleep soundly at night, safe in the
knowledge that they have done their duty for their masters.
The willing puppets in the mainstream media share this consensus. The airwaves and newspapers are
filled with people preaching the necessity of the cuts, while voices challenging the magic word “austerity” are derided when they are not ignored altogether.
No matter how a compliant media spin it, the establishment’s interests are not our interests. This point was
driven home by the Con/Dem MPs cheering at Westminster as cuts that will devastate communities were
announced and Fianna Fail Minister Dermot Ahern ruling out raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for essential public services because it might discourage US multi-national executives from moving here.
The voice of the majority, of the true producers of wealth, of the working class must be heard. There must be as wide and open a debate as possible about the way forward; the backroom consensus must be opposed.
Our interests are not served by cuts to wages, hospitals, schools and other public services. Our interests
are served by investment in communities, jobs, education and public services. Cuts target the
most vulnerable communities and individuals. Cuts will kill those who lack the physical and mental
resources to survive without help.
The selfish are currently in the ascendency, but if history has one constant lesson it is that change is
inevitable.
