New Labour Sell-out in Kilkenny

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Wednesday December 03, 2008 20:24 by Nixie Boran - Mine & Quarry Union

Sparks Fly at Gilmore's New Labour Bash!

Why did Eamonn Gilmore’s New Labour pre-Christmas jolly in Kilkenny (Nov 29 – 30) blow up in his face?

Who is the shadowy eminence grise behind Gilmore's Twenty First Century Commission?

Why were the party faithful reduced to discussing leaked extracts from the Twenty First Century Commission report in Kilkenny?

Why did the comrades revolt at Gilmore's proposals for a dynamic, modern, internet-driven, Lisbon-friendly, union-free, Obama-style revamp of the creaky old party of Larkin and Connolly?

Gilmore brought the comrades together to schmooze their consent to his Twenty First Century Commission Report. But early soundings indicated that the trade unions would not roll over for him, and that the comrades themselves were not prepared to commit electoral mass suicide on the altar of Lisbon.

So the Twenty First Century Commission Report had to be pulled at the last minute, and, in a surreal development, the Twenty First Century Commission Conference in Kilkenny was limited to discussing various leaked sections of the Report itself. You couldn’t make it up!

The shadowy Peter Mandelson-figure behind Gilmore’s failed New Labour proposals is one Greg Sparks whose day-job is with FGS Tax Consultants Limited, one of the mushroom growths which flourished on the dung of the Tiger.

Their website says: “Greg Sparks has vast experience in consulting and corporate finance, and has unrivalled expertise in public sector projects …advising on the liberalisation of Ireland's electricity industry.” http://www.fgspartnership.com

According to the same website, Sparks’ main claim to fame is his role in setting up and running the North’s Strategic Investment Board, which is the driver for the Private Finance Initiative which enables private financial interests to suck the blood of the North’s schools, hospitals and other public services.

Just what Ireland needs as the world economy falls apart at the hands of the corporate financiers, globalisers and liberalisers!

You would think that Gilmore and his crew might just have noticed that the world has suddenly recognised the necessity of reining in the brain-dead spivs, financiers, globalisers and liberalisers like Sparks, and of putting our livelihoods under some social guardianship!

In view of Fianna Fáil’s financial disaster, all he really had to do to prepare for the next election was to say: “We warned you about this!” (Actually they didn’t.)

A further indicator of New Labour’s incompetence was given in a curious conference sideshow. A proposal to engage politically in Northern Ireland was squashed by the Twenty First Century Commission, on the grounds that contesting elections there would force Labour to declare itself to be either Unionist or Nationalist. Therefore Labour members in the North should join the Fianna Fáil-leaning SDLP – which declares itself to be Nationalist!

A leaflet distributed by the Northern Labour conference delegates pointed this out, in a commendably restrained manner, saying that the Good Friday Agreement requires that parties in the North declare themselves as Unionist, Nationalist – or Other. And that the previous Labour leaders had endorsed the position that Labour in the North was Other.

The Good Friday Agreement received endorsement in the Irish Constitution. New Labour seeks to present itself as fit to govern the country whilst publicly displaying egregious ignorance, not only of its own existing policies, but of the Constitution of the country it seeks to govern!

In a moment reminiscent of the legendary, perhaps mythical, occasion when a group from Belfast’s Shankill Road attending the Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown in the 1930’s were attacked by southern Catholic Republicans, Sparks was struck dumb when one of the Northern delegates asked Sparks how, as a Protestant, he could be instructed to join the SDLP.

At the last sighting, the rebuffed Northerners were hot-footing it across the Boyne towards the fastnesses of North Belfast.

So much for “Hands Across the Border” in Gilmore’s New Labour!