Eamonn McCann A wasted opportunity

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Thursday April 30, 2009 20:13 by Unitetheunion member

McCann Interview

Eamonn McCann, journalist, SWP member and leader of the People Before Profit Alliance in Northern Ireland is interviewed in the spring 2009 edition of the Unite trade union’s members magazine.

This magazine is distributed to the homes of Unite’s 60,000 members in Ireland.

This was a golden opportunity for someone on the left to speak to an important audience of trade unionists through the medium of their own union magazine.

Many issues could have been addressed, the impact of the recession on both parts of this island and the role of the right wing and sectarian political parties in forcing the burden of the recession on to the working class.

North and South the trade union leaders have failed to lead a defence of jobs, pay and working conditions. The trade union leaders have instead maintained their cosy social partnership with the employers and the capitalist parties in the South and also in Northern Ireland. The ICTU leaders in Northern Ireland are backing the sectarian parties in the Assembly and peddle the myth that the unions must back the Assembly parties in order to build a better future.

In the South the social solidarity talks continue despite the savage budget attacks and after the ICTU leaders betrayal when they called off 30th March national strike.

Now the ICTU leaders are in government buildings plotting with IBEC and the government to screw the working class for the next five years.

There is the need to build a radical opposition to the right-wing trade union leadership and North and South we need a new mass working class party.

There were so many issues that could have been dealt with in this interview, but Eamonn McCann choose not to deal with any of the above. He didn’t even mention the right wing trade union leaders. No mention of social partnership or the need for a real struggle to defend the working class from the impact of the recession.

Not surprisingly he did mention Waterford Crystal but made no comment on the failure of the Unite leadership to organise a credible fight for nationalisation. Instead the Irish regional leadership of Unite focused all of their energy on trying to find a venture capitalist to rescue the workforce. Predictably this resulted in the Waterford Crystal workers being defeated, handed up on a platter to the vulture capitalists by the Unite leaders.

For the left in Ireland this interview was a wasted opportunity and smacks from start to finish of someone who is self-indulgent and carried away with his D-list journo celeb status.

But does this represent more than just a lost chance to communicate a socialist alternative to trade unionists in Unite? Does this represent a further political shift to the right by McCann and his comrades in the SWP?

If you take a number of extracts from the interview you could very easily draw that conclusion.

The magazine arrived in my inbox in the week that his comrades in the Southern region of PBPA launched their election campaign. Eamonn McCann didn’t even mention PBPA or the need for a new left or socialist alternative. Instead he focused his comments on the Labour Party.

In a section entitled Politics: Republic, Eamonn McCann is quoted as saying:

'If Labour was to come out now and made a clear commitment to a radical programme not to go into government with either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael I really do believe that it would get strong electoral support. There's never been a better time.'

Eamonn Gilmore and the Labour Party have been straight up about the need for working class people to carry the burden of the economic crisis. They have made some token utterances about going after tax exiles and getting rid of some tax shelters, but fundamentally they are on the same track as Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

Eamonn Gilmore attacked the trade unions for threatening to strike on the 30th March. Labour are set to go into government with Fine Gael the party who condemned Brian Lenihan’s budget because it didn’t contain enough cuts in public spending.

Against this reality it is astonishing that a leading member of the SWP has called on a right-wing capitalist party to deliver a radical alternative for the working class in the midst of this crisis. Where does that leave his Southern SWP comrades who are standing in the elections as PBPA candidates?

In the interview Eamonn McCann gives a comment on Barack Obama. This what he had to say:
'His autobiography 'Dream of my father' is a most remarkable book. This man is a brilliant writer. The turn of phrase, subtlety of his
language, the structure of his sentences is amazing. It is beautifully
written.'

I haven’t read the book so I can’t comment on whether McCann’s judgement on Obama’s literary style is accurate. I can say that if I was asked to make a comment about Barack Obama that it would never enter my consciousness to comment on his writing skills. Instead I would comment on his role as the leader of US Imperialism. On his recent decision to intensify the war in Afghanistan, to send more US troops to that country and the threat to take that war into Pakistan. The continuing war which he now oversees in Iraq might feature and then there is the economic crisis which is steamrollering over the American working class and Obama’s role in making the US workers pay for the crisis.

From start to finish this was truly a wasted opportunity and possibly is another indicator of the SWP’s transition away from revolutionary politics towards the reformist centre.