Slash and Cut

By AM Tuesday, December 21, 2010

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Draconian cuts dictated by David Cameron’s Tory-led British government … It is quite clear that the Stormont partners are more than happy with thousands of job losses and severe cuts to crucial services and benefits for those already amongst the most disadvantaged members of our community … London’s orders will only serve to protect the profits of many of those individuals and institutions most responsible for the economic losses that have occurred - Mairtin og Meehan

Anyone thinking Sinn Fein should be taken seriously as providing some form of alternative to the economic debacle that prevails in the South should now be seeing what a colossal figment of the imagination that was. Based on absolutely nothing of substance to begin with, the litmus test that would invalidate the belief was always going to be the party’s response to the issue of cuts in the North. This is hardly an original insight on my part. I am merely echoing the Sinn Fein activist ‘Mellows’ who in a post on the radical blog ‘Sinn Fein Keep Left’ titled ‘Brilliant Pearse - Now Marty don't fail us now', boldly stated:

However, in the North Sinn Féin is in a position of power and is being told by London to make budget cuts of 4 Billion pounds. If Sinn Féin agrees to implementing cuts of this nature, then what the hell are we doing down the South. We cannot oppose cuts in the South and implement them in the North. If we do we will loose all credibility with the Irish people, and what is worse is that we will be seen as liars. Sinn Féin must fight for working people North and South and it must refuse to implement the cuts in the Six counties.

It comes no clearer than that. Criticisms of the party can hardly be dismissed in the usual way as the work of malcontents out to rob the party leader of his glory if people within Sinn Fein are making pointed observations of this nature.

Conor Murphy’s pathetic attempt to put a radical sheen on his party’s Tory credentials should wash with few:

We wanted to continue to protect society here, to continue to adhere to the elements of the programme of government which we collectively had put together and that was to grow the economy, to protect the most vulnerable in society. I think we have managed through very difficult work over the past number of weeks - and it has not been easy at all for any of the parties - we have managed to supplement what was a savage programme of cuts to try and protect what was important to us.

Because in the cold light of day Murphy’s party was up to its neck in the Tory slash and cut assault on the people of the North. Yet what is Sinn Fein in the South saying about this? Nothing it seems.

Watching Pearse Doherty last evening on RTE it was hard not to be impressed with him. He asks the right questions and presses the right buttons. But it is a foregone conclusion that if he and his more radical colleagues do not establish an autonomy that allows them to firewall their radicalism from the right wing slash and cut Northern leadership Adams will screw him into the ground. And the signs are not good. If he is serious about his radical discourse it is incomprehensible that he has been silent up to now about his party’s Tory driven economic assault on the Northern populace which it is certain to repeat in the South and justify with a Murphyism.

Doherty is a much better performer than Adams. He relies on argument rather than hectoring and bullying and is literate about economic matters in a way that Adams most definitely is not. Because of that he is viewed by Adams as someone who can entice an electorate suspicious of a party it perceives as economically illiterate, to expose its neck to the Master’s fangs.

Once sucked dry it will be abandoned.