Attempt to Expel Bree from SIPTU

sligo | worker & community struggles and protests | news report Monday May 07, 2007 15:21 by Harry Pearse

The latest news from Sligo and the North West is that the Rabbitte wing of Labour/SIPTU is trying to prepare a case to justify expelling Declan Bree from SIPTU.

Labour Head office and the McGarry wing of the party in Sligo are hell bent on taking Bree to task ever since he publicly embarrassed the party leader and the party establishment following the shambles of the disciplinary hearing they established to deal with him last year.

McGarry’s buddy and director of elections John McCarrick, (Sligo branch Secretary of SIPTU) is pressing the Sligo SIPTU branch committee to commence proceedings so as Bree will be expelled from the union.

By all accounts McCarrick and McGarry hate Bree with a vengeance.

When Bree launched his website declanbree.com at the beginning of the year, the first story he posted “No Room at the Inn for Sligo Pensioner” related to a pensioner who was refused lunch in a local geriatric hospital on Christmas Day. Bree strongly criticised the HSE and described the decision to refuse the meal to the pensioner as unacceptable and unchristian. see: http://www.declanbree.com/news-currentissues/

Bree’s criticism of the HSE drew a sharp response from John McCarrick in the local media. McCarrick said that the Union was calling on Bree to withdraw his remarks.

However Bree in a head to head debate with McCarrick on local radio not only refused to withdraw the remarks but repeated them. As a socialist Bree said he had a duty to speak out against injustice wherever he came across it. He said as an elected representative he would not be silenced just because HSE management happened to be members of trade unions.

McCarrick had expected that the Sinn Fein people on the SIPTU branch committee would jump at the chance to take action against Bree. But it now appears that they have no intention of siding with the McGarry wing of Labour against Bree. McCarrick is now in a stew as to whether to proceed with the case to expel Bree.

Last year when the labour party establishment organised a disciplinary hearing against Bree because he criticised labour councillors (including McGarry) for voting against the Sligo Traveller Accommodation Programme, Bree turned the tables on the establishment when he told the media about the matter and exposed the shortcomings of the hearing

At the time travellers picketed Labour Headquarters in support of Bree. He put the party establishment through the hoops, even to the extent of having the National Executive Committee of the Party meet on two separate occasions to consider his case. In the end the majority of the members of the NEC refused to take any action against Bree.

I figure Bree would look really forward to putting McCarrick and the HSE management through the hoops on the issue of the pensioner being refused a meal on Christmas Day