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Time For Sinn Fein to join Water Charge boycott printable version

09 Mar 2015: posted by the editor - Ireland

Cathaoirleach éirígí Brian Leeson has called on Gerry Adams and the leadership of Sinn Féin to endorse the mass campaign of non-payment of the Water Tax. Speaking from Dublin Leeson said: “The time has come for the Sinn Féin leadership to get off the fence and fully support the boycott of the Water Tax.”

“There was plenty of rhetoric about defeating the Water Tax at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis but very little about how that might actually be achieved. A golden opportunity was missed for that party to commit itself to the campaign of non-payment of this unjust tax. The only strategy that Sinn Féin is advocating—‘vote for us and we’ll get rid of the Water Tax’—isn’t a whole lot different to what we heard from The Labour Party before the last election. It smacks of the failed politics of the past, asking people to elect different ‘leaders’ to abolish the Water Tax instead of empowering people to collectively defeat the Water Tax long before the next election. This strategy has at least one major flaw—what happens if Sinn Féin isn’t part of the next government in the Twenty-Six Counties? How does Sinn Féin then propose to defeat the Water Tax?”

Questioning Sinn Féin’s incoherent attitude to a boycott of the Water Tax Leeson said,

“Sinn Féin’s position in relation to the boycott of the Water Tax is completely incoherent. Four months ago Gerry Adams, Mary Lou McDonald and other members of the Sinn Féin leadership were going to pay the water tax. Then they did a U-turn and individually committed themselves to not paying. So it is clear that the Sinn Féin leadership are not opposed to the boycott in principle and that they also view it as an effective tactic to be used in the fight to protect Ireland’s water resources.

“And yet Gerry Adams and others leadership figures are still vociferously opposed to Sinn Féin as a party joining the boycott campaign. Nobody expects Sinn Féin to hoodwink people or offer commitments that it cannot honour in relation to the boycott. Why can Sinn Féin not use its vast finances, support base and media access to firstly inform people about the potential power and risks of a boycott and secondly to ask people to join the boycott?

“Is Sinn Féin refusing to endorse a boycott because it is not willing to call on people to break the law, even when that law is clearly unjust and immoral? Is Sinn Féin afraid that a call to boycott will frighten away potential middle class voters? Is Sinn Féin afraid of a grassroots anti-austerity movement developing—for fear that such a movement will be in conflict with a Sinn Féin government in fourteen months’ time?"

In conclusion Leeson called on Sinn Féin to stand with its own voter base and the wider working class,

“From the time of The Land League the tactic of boycott has been deployed with great effect in Ireland. Why now is an allegedly radical republican party so afraid of using it? Surely if it was good enough for the great Michael Davitt it is good enough for Gerry Adams. Now is the time to replace rhetoric with real leadership and stand with the hundreds of thousands who are not going to pay this odious tax. The issue of water services and water resources is too serious for political opportunism. With just three weeks to go the clock is ticking for Sinn Féin to use its considerable resources and must vaunted political strength to help the working class win a great victory."

Tags: Water charge, water metering

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