Last week we looked at the failure of Ireland's 'economic miracle'. The present Irish Government, a coalition between the right-wing Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party, is taking the most desperate measures to ensure that the cost of that failure is borne by the Irish working class and the small farmers.
The world recession has meant a decline in the amount of foreign investment capital available for reland. ine fact that the latest annual trade figures show the Free State with a record 49 per cent share of Anglo-Irish trade, for Irish worKing cidss instance, merely means that the flow of equipment and money from British industrialists is drying up - the spare capital for expansion no longer exists.
The Irish ruling class know perfectly well that their only hope for changing this situation is to chop the cost of labour to a bare minimum. Ferocious wage cuts might make foreign industrialists see a percentage in using their limited investment capacity to screw impoverished Irish workers rather than fight it out at home. And the Labour Party s presence in the coalition has provided the means of achieving this end - the Nationa wade Agreement.
The NWA is an annual formal deal No, it's not our author they're complaining about! Above and right: the women's movement has started to make headway in the trade union bureaucrats. Its main function is to fix a maximum level for wages. Theoretically it has the force of law. It is the same sort of deal - but more elab orate, and with more power behind it - as tne social contract and the £6 limit over here.
his strateoy nas come up agains one big snag, however. The Irish working class aren't having any, despite what their leaders say. plemented more or less without com plaint, but the second and third have met massive resistance. In both cases they have effectively been smashed, as Tront line The first NWA was imlaws Weapon