Socialist Voice Review:
August – 2022
If you read the June/July review of Socialist Voice then there is not much reason to read our review of the August Socialist Voice. Same formula and same lack of direction or inspiration.
For instance, there are more than 40,000 refugees from Ukraine in Ireland and not a peep out of the Communist Party. No position on the overall question of refugees. No position on the issues that cause the movement of refugees. No position on the implications of such an inflow of refugees on housing. Or, on the social, political and monetary costs involved.
Nothing on housing: what happened to the great campaign the Dublin Branch was to launch on the issue of housing? It took six months to draw up a report on campaigning issues and then they came up with housing as the main issue they would focus on. Just imagine that: six months deliberations, a 70-plus page report and the issue of housing emerged as a priority. What has happened since that decision was reached around one year ago? Guerrilla Communists will publish whatever the Dublin Branch has to say.
What about an all-Ireland health service? Well, here we go again.
“What we really need is an all-Ireland health service, free to all, based on socialist principles.”
Really? The Party and Socialist Voice have been going on about this for years. And that’s about it – going on about it. It is another example of how the Party parades an idea but does absolutely nothing to progress or process the idea and ignores health professionals who are in the Party or who make themselves available to the Party.
Worse than that, it even ignores specific proposals submitted for consideration. In December 2020, a specific proposal presented to the Betty Sinclair Branch failed to even generate a debate. Of any organ within the Party, the Betty Sinclair Branch was in the most strategic position to start a campaign: its members straddled the border counties and a number of the members of the National Executive Committee were members of that Branch. Furthermore, there were health professionals who were also members of that Branch. What happened next? Nothing happened next!
It is downright misleading of Socialist Voice to keep reproducing such nonsense. Indeed, it is utterly dishonest.
The prospects for socialism in Ireland cannot be dependent on a political party that operates in a twilight zone of wishful thinking, misrepresentation and wilful obstruction of any possibilities for development.
The content of Socialist Voice is a mirror image of the Party itself.
Indeed, no position on the war in Ukraine (latest statement was on 3 March, 2022).
Nothing (again) on the re-alignment of capitalist powers, including China. There are massive political and economic changes and alignments underway but the Party has not a word to say to even commence an assessment of these changes.