Belcoo stands strong against Fracking

Belcoo at the centre of the campaign against Fracking

At 4.40am on the morning of July 21st a convoy of vehicles snaked its way from Enniskillen to a small quarry located on an unclassified road located just two miles from the border village of Belcoo. A handful of local farmers who met the vehicles enroute described seeing that the extended convoy of vehicles included police vehicles at the front, in the middle and at the back.

Throughout the early hours of the morning, security guards erected eight foot high gates and garnished them with razor wire, when finished they stood behind them accompanied with guard dogs in a very visible manifestation of what this industry means to the local community.

Only after they had erected the security structures did Tamboran notify locals of their intentions and a team of three canvassers visited doors. As the morning wore on and the word got out on what had happened more and more households demanded that the uninvited visitors leave immediately. In the end up, they only leafleted many houses.

At 9am, Tamboran lodged a request with the Department for Environment to proceed with exploratory drilling at the site under ‘permitted development rights’ under a pre-existing quarrying license. There would be three weeks until the Minister would sanction their request and drilling could proceed then.

Donal O’Cofaigh to run for Socialist Party in Enniskillen

In September 2009, I resigned my council seat and left Sinn Féin to join the Socialist Party in protest at what I described as their ‘overseeing the long-term administration of senior civil servants and their right-wing agenda’.

At the time I said that:

“Change can only come about if working, unemployed and young people themselves organise to challenge the status quo. We have seen the power of effective local campaigns in fighting against health cutbacks and against the imposition of water charges. The sad truth is if we are waiting for change to come at the hands of any of the mainstream parties, then we will wait a long time indeed. Working people must organise themselves against cuts and to defend jobs.”

I remain convinced of that as much today as I did then. We must build cross-community campaigns to defeat the cuts and have no illusions about any of the parties. This council election is important in building an effective opposition to the cuts tsunami. History teaches us that the extent and depth of the cuts imposed will be determined by the strength of our campaigns against them.

Defending Public Services

All of the mainstream parties are keen that people do not find out the just how bad the cuts will be before the election so that they can implement them all the more effectively in the four years before the next elections - but people can see through that.

If I am elected I will be 100% committed to supporting grassroots campaigns and working with the local Trades Council, community and voluntary groups to fight the cuts affecting our communities, public sector workers; to reverse the cuts to benefits, the imposition of stealth taxes such as water rates; and demanding a much-needed public works programme for the county that would create jobs for the unemployed and yield improvements to our social, economic and environmental infrastructure.

Sinn Féin’s ‘Alternative’

Sinn Féin recently published its plan for the cuts which offered a few populist measures as window-dressing e.g. a marginal pay-cut for MLAs, reduced use of business consultants and slashing bonuses to hospital consultants but aside from these few positive policies, the document masked the party’s 180˚ u-turn on its previous opposition to the cuts:

 “We fundamentally disagree with the Tory government’s slash and burn approach to the economic crisis, but we are nevertheless forced to deal with the consequences of its approach.”

Sinn Féin plans to quietly administrate the cuts, safeguard business interests and slash workers wages hoping that big businesses will eventually be attracted to set up here and exploit local workers. Meanwhile, they will make a big play of their ‘opposition’ locally and hope to prevent any political fallout.

Regressive Taxes

The document proposes a number of regressive taxes e.g. on plastic bags (raising £4 million) and on mobile phone masts. The latter will simply result in phone companies ‘passing on’ the costs to consumers and in rural areas masts may be removed altogether as they will not be ‘profitable’.

Instead of shilly-shallying around the telecoms giants, the industry should be nationalised and democratised to ensure all profits are either reinvested in improving local infrastructure or to supporting other public services.

A Financial Services Mentality

The party has adopted the mindset of financial capitalism, their vision is for “financial engineering instruments...to help regions and cities meet their investment needs"!

They propose a bank bond to pay for private sector investment. This policy will guarantee massive profits for the bankers at the very time when working people are demanding that they be nationalised and run in the interests of the people.

The party also proposes the privatisation of future Housing Executive rent payments through creating a ‘special financial vehicle’ to ‘take advantage’ of accounting rules that allow a ‘body outside government to borrow’. The party appears to have forgotten that this was precisely why the 1990s Tory government implemented this ‘off-balance sheet’ accounting rule in the first place. Since then it has been instrumental in driving the widespread use of PFI with the aim of creating lucrative returns for speculators – something Sinn Féin appear to have no problem with.

But the speculators who lend money to the Executive will require annual payments for inflation, interest, so-called risk, as well as their profits. Surely a better deal would be secured if new social housing was simply paid for with increased taxation?

Lower Taxes for Big Business

Sinn Fein’s talks up their demand for ‘fiscal powers...to tackle the fiscal crisis. Without the necessary tools we are simply reduced to redistributing a smaller pot of money’. But before you assume that the party is seeking to increase the burden of tax to help protect public services you might notice this hidden sentence:

“The Tory party has articulated a public position around designating the north as an enterprise zone with the ability to vary [read lower] corporation tax rates. Sinn Fein believes that the British government should implement these proposals as part of a Budget Settlement.”

Far from using fiscal powers to protect the public services and workers from the devastation of the cuts, Sinn Féin seeks to lower business taxes even further!! The cost: £500 million a year to be paid for by further cuts and more stealth taxes.

It is an irony of history that after 30 years of divisive and fruitless struggle, Sinn Féin in government content themselves to implementing cuts that Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamed about.

Socialists must seek to build a cross-community opposition to the cuts involving workers and those affected in the wider community – that’s the only real alternative to the Tories in Westminster and in Stormont.