Fermanagh Fightback!: arlene foster

Friday, 26 September 2014

Call for Minister Foster to Act Now to Stop Fracking

I call on Arlene Foster to shut the door on Tamboran’s plans to frack for gas in Fermanagh. In April 2011 her department, DETI, gave Tamboran a five-year license for the field with a deadline of three years to complete exploratory drilling and make a ‘drill or drop’ decision on the field. The license issued is the only one in NI which explicitly references hydraulic fracturing despite the fact that there was absolutely no local consultation or any assessment of potential adverse Environmental or Health impacts.

Minister Foster

In the intervening three years, Tamboran failed to take the steps necessary to meet the deadline for submitting its drill-drop decision. In March of this year they were forced to request a six-month extension which the Minister’s department unilaterally granted. This decision flew in the face of mounting awareness and opposition to this industry and concerns about its impact on our county.

About this blog

I've relaunched this blog - which has existed on and off for over 11 years. I've retained many of the older posts which may be of some historic interest.

I'm going to try better to maintain this as a means to detail what I've written - I may try and upload older articles where I can find them. In many ways for the duration of this blog my views have remained fairly consistent although they have certainly developed.

If you want to contact me in relation to any matter on this blog or to highlight any issue which is affecting you, please contact me directly. My email address is donaloc@hotmail.com and my mobile number is 078 1015 7926.

I ask anyone interested in getting active on these issues to join with me in building a party dedicated to revolutionary, socialist change, Militant Left.

The changing times we live in

The inherent consumptive demands of capitalism are everywhere pushing at the boundaries of the planet's finite resources. Unchecked, this threatens the viability of modern civilisation as we know it. It genuinely is a case of socialism or barbarism!

We live in a world where despite an ability to feed and clothe everyone, profit dictates that millions starve in a helpless and homeless condition with little access to medicine or hope of education for their children.

Globalisation is leading a 'race to the bottom' in wages, public services and working conditions to guarantee profits for the tiny elite who own most of the world's wealth and productive capacity. The public services we have came to take for granted are threatened with austerity and privatisation - opening the door to even more profit-making - yet all too few remember that we only won them through hard struggles in the past.

Moves towards deglobalisation, the rise in racism and xenophobia and a return to protectionism are tied to the rise of inter-imperialist rivalries as the losers in the competition seek to shut down their opponents and divide workers to further their exploitation.

In the face of these threats working people are once again mobilising - through their unions and politically. This global reality augurs an era of change.

There is an alternative. A global economy not subject to the dictatorship of the financial markets - a world where we are not divided but stand united to remould the economy to meet human need not the interests of the capitalist class.

Increasing numbers of people, in particular young people, around the world are working and organising to bring it to birth. But change will only happen when workers' collectively organise to build a mass party seeking fundamental and socialist change.

In Northern Ireland, the first steps along the path to an alternative must be built through establishing a cross-community politics rooted in the trade union movement to address not just workers' issues but everything from stopping the threat of fracking to saving public services and demanding real public investment, nationalisation and job-creation.

Working people in Fermanagh need to get involved and get organised to fight the cuts, ban fracking and oppose sectarian neo-liberalism offered by the green and orange establishment parties in Stormont.