Labour shouldn’t invoke Connolly and Larkin

The response by Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, to the magnificent turnout at the water charges protest in Dublin, has done much to galvanise the movement.

His threat to legislate for deductions from social welfare, pensions or wages was reprehensible. Why didn’t he threaten the bankers and those who have transferred all their assets abroad, to avoid paying their taxes in Ireland, and legislate to cease all the schemes that enable such payments?

I accuse the Government of stymying any genuine social and political protest with the imposition of their most foul ‘deduction’ law.

To think that Labour, so heretical in their sham allegiance to the doctrines of James Connolly and James Larkin, still call on them to justify their policies and existence; this is more reprehensible.

It is sad to think that Kathleen Lynch and Jan O’Sullivan, now Labour TDs in Cork and Limerick, stood with us against service charges in the late ’70s to the early ’90s, but are now fully supportive and party to these new ‘penal laws’.

They must have shed crocodile tears in May, 1991, and again in May, 2001, when quite a number of us ‘householders against service charges’ members were jailed. Will they become the new jailers?

As the Cork wag said, ‘Labour’s excuses don’t hold water anymore’.

Brendan O’Neill

Dundanion Court

Blackrock

Cork