VINDICATION WAS sweet for Comrade Joe. Not, it goes without saying, that he was taking any pleasure in it.
That’s the sort of carry on which has us in so much trouble in the first place.
Socialist Party MEP Higgins took to the barricades yesterday and mounted a lunchtime protest outside the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank. Despite a fair bit of advance publicity, the turnout was disappointingly dreadful.
He arrived with his megaphone to find crash barriers lining the footpath outside the building on St Stephen’s Green, and around half a dozen gardaí standing behind them. He even merited a very tall inspector, and had he looked up the road towards Grafton Street, he would have seen a Black Maria tucked in discretely behind the tour buses.
Which was promising.
Members of the Socialist Party unfurled their red banner in front of the main doors and got busy with the placards. “Fianna Fáil and Green Party reward corrupt bankers while slashing worker wages and condition.”
There were two newspapers on sale: The Socialist Worker’s front page cried “Off our knees!” The Socialist (March edition) was a little off the pace with “No to private pension worker plan”.
Journalists and photographers outnumbered party activists, while a few curious members of the public lingered on the fringes to hear MEP Higgins speak. It seems that while talk of revolution is in the air, the man and woman in the street has yet to be convinced by Joe’s particular brand.
There was, of course, a bearded drunk adding his tuppence worth, a man with a dog and a petition to sign.
With his back to the barriers, Comrade Joe began his pitch, condemning the bailout of “the criminals and the financial sharks in this building” and he swept his arm back dramatically in the direction of the Anglo entrance. (Any thoughts the ordinary workers in Anglo might have had of nipping out behind him for a lunchtime bite would have withered at this point.)
Pausing only to draw breath, he got stuck into the gangsters “making their profits on the backs of the Greek working class” and the Portuguese and Irish working class too.
The ordinary people are being “pulverised” he quivered, waving around his notes and a dog-eared copy of the French newspaper Libération.
Anorak aside, he’s gone all continental since winning the seat in Europe. He pointed again to headquarters. Workers are “being sacrificed on the altar of speculative capitalism in this country to make up for the crimes of these people here, the senior people in Anglo Irish Bank.”
And Alan Dukes seems like such a mild-mannered man . . .
But the Anglo big-wigs are not the only ones to blame. An entire class of builders and bankers stand indicted, encouraged every step of the way by Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney.
“And therefore, when any reckoning comes, the political leaders of Fianna Fáil and the PDs should be put in the dock alongside [Seán] FitzPatrick and alongside the other financial criminals.”
At which point there was a loud cheer from across the road. Not from the young executive types carrying laptops and takeaway coffee who were peering over, but from excited children in the passing Viking Splash.
MEP Higgins finished his address and handed the megaphone to a fellow Socialist Party member, who got a chant going: “Stop the bailout of the bankers. Use the billions for the millions.”
He held a quick press conference, before posing for photographs under the silver Anglo sign.
He was in tip-top form.
“Cowen is effecting high dudgeon in a way that doesn’t convince anybody. Do we forget the queues down in Galway to tug Bertie Ahern’s sleeve during the Galway Races by every developer in town and by every big banker?
“Why? Because of the legislation that they were getting and the facilitation of the profiteering that was going on.”
Then it was time to cry vindication – the happiest of moments for any politician of whatever stripe.
“How many times did I stand up in Dáil Éireann between ’97 and 2007 and call them to account for the profiteering which young working people were paying for savagely in terms of mortgages?
“I named the speculators. I asked them what they were going to do about it and we were treated to contempt.”
And did anyone listen when he called for the nationalisation of the banks?
Nothing for it now but to “force a general election” and get a Dáil that reflects the views and aspirations of the ordinary working people.
And a better turnout on the day, Joe.
