As it turned out I did not get the chance to speak but I had prepared myself for that eventuality. A week in politics is a long time and I was expecting that things would change and the list of people wanting to address the crowd would mean that some would be bumped in favour of others. Nevertheless I began to write what I thought were the important things to say to people on the day.
The thoughts which formed were numerous and my 'speech' was getting longer and longer. I had so much to say and to try to condense it into a few minutes was looking more and more difficult. On the morning of Nov 1st, after mentally rehearsing for days, I actually changed what I thought I would say and hoped it would capture the essence of the day, the significance of the protest and perhaps give people something bigger to think about than just an illegal bill for water.
This is the 'extended mix' of (a) what I had originally prepared, (b) the address I finally hoped to give and (c) my thoughts today, the day after Ireland's citizens took to the streets.
IRELAND - LESSONS IN SUFFERING AND SACRIFICE
It is said that "history has a habit of repeating itself".
Almost a century and a half ago the ordinary people of Ireland were in the midst of a holocaust. During the time of the famine peoople had no food and children were hungry. One million people emigrated to escape the hardship. One million more died of starvation. Families were evicted from their homes by force and thrown out into the mud and the rain. It was the bleakest time in our nation's history and the story of it is known around the world.
At that time however, the politicians did not go hungry. The people in authority, the police, and the judiciary. Did not go hungry. The landlords, the gentry, the businessmen and the wealthy did not go hungry. There was food aplenty for those with means but the ordinary people suffered.
It happened because the potato crop failed.
Today, in 2014, more than 150 years later, the people of Ireland are suffering. Because the political system has failed.
Families cannot afford three meals a day. Children going to bed hungry and in the morning go to school hungry. In the past 6 years since the toxic banks failed only to be saved by our polticians, hundreds of thousands have emigrated to escape the hardship. Today, half a million families are being threatened with eviction by these same banks. Homes are being taken by the sheriffs by force and families thrown into the mud and the rain. Thousands have died. Victims of suicide, pushed to the edge of despair with no vision of a brighter future.
In 2014, the politicians are not suffering. Their families are not hungry. The bankers and businessmen and property developers and landlords are not hungry. The wealthy are not hungry. Judges and Senior Gardai are not hungry.
Why would they be? In a time of famine, it is the rat and the parasite that thrive.
In 1916 a few hundred men rose up and took the power back from an oppressive regime. They did it not for themselves but for the people and they gave the power to the people in the form of a Proclamation of Independence and a Constitution. In 1937 the politicians destroyed that constitution and took the power back for themselves.
In eighteen months time we will be back in the capital to celebrate the heroes of Easter 1916. And the politicians will have front row seats, and give their inspiring speeches and patriotic laments about the sacrifice that those men and women made to give birth to our nation. The President and Taoiseach will host dignitaries and luminaries and all manner of royalty, state and corporate wealth. The ordinary of people will be barricaded out.
I don't think I will be celebrating. I think I will go to some quite place and ask for forgiveness. For if we return to this historic place in 2016, and have not repeated what Connolly and Pearse and Collins did, then we will have dishonoured their memory.
WE DON'T NEED STRENGTH OF NUMBERS - WE NEED STRENGTH OF RESOLVE
It doesn't take 100,000 people or 200,000 to do it. The number is not important. What's important is the resolve.
In Ballyhea, a village in North Cork, a small group of people have been marching every week for almost four years. They were marching for two years before I ever heard about them. They inspired me and few friends to march in solidarity against the bank and the bondholder bailout - the noose that was put around our necks and the necks of our children. Dublin Says No have marched for more than a year and half every week without fail as one small group prepared to face down the might of the government and say we will not go quietly.
The Ballyhea group have had the resolve not just to march in their own small town, but to travel to Brussels and demand meetings with the heads of the Troika and plead for the Irish people ... something that Michael Noonan hasn't had the balls to do.
The challenge for us is to have the resolve of the people of Ballyhea to continue to demonstrate our disgust and anger at our politicians. We will bring Irish Water down, but the government will retreat and regroup to attack us on another front. If we do not defend ourselves again and again, in the face of repeated assault on our lives then we will have surrendered the war to the masters of our puppet politicians.
DON'T READ THE HEADLINES - SEE THE TRUTH BEHIND THE SPIN
The (government) media will report that 10,000 marched in Dublin City today and 100,000 marched across the country.
I say that each one of us represents 10 people who could not be with us today.
Each of us represents friends and family who could not make it. Our young children. Our elderly parents. Our sick. Those who are working. We also represent 500,000 homeowners, equating to more than a million people under threat of repossession and eviction from the banks we bailed out - afraid to leave their homes becasue the sheriff and the banks are ready to move in and put them out on the street. Hundreds of thousands of our friends and family who have emigrated since 2008 because they see no possibility of a future in the country of their birth. And thousands of friends and family who did not make it to see this day - victims of suicide through desperation and despair.
If there are 300,000 people marching in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galways, Dundalk, Mullingar, Clonmel, Cavan, Donegal and the small towns and villages of Ireland, then there are 3 million people protesting against a political system that has betrayed and abandoned them to the jackals of the banks and the multinational corporations preying on their lives.
IRISH WATER - JUST ONE SYMPTOM OF THE REAL DISEASE.
Irish Water is not the problem. It is just the latest symptom of the disease that is steadily killing out country. The disease is our political system. Corrupt, broken, wasteful, unjust, inhumane.
Our politicians, who we elected to represent us and serve us, betrayed and abandoned us in 2008 when they guaranteed the deposits of the super rich with the taxes of working men and women; when they bailed out the banks of Ireland, Europe and the US who financial experts and economists now agree should have been allowed to fail; and when they bailed out the bondholders of Wall St and London and Tokyo - gamblers who bet on a terminally sick dog - the Irish economy.
The infusion of money into the banks was authorised by the European Central Bank on the condition that the money printed for the infusion would be taken back out of the Irish economy over time so that the economy would not overheat and reignite the fuse that would bring us to the point of meltdown for a second time.
When the politicians turned that promise into a contract written in blood the fate of generations was sealed.
As a promise it could have been broken ... after all that's what politicians do. But as sovereign debt, it became the chains with which to bind the people of Ireland into a life of slavery. We live to work and we work for absentee landlords and paymasters who will not go hungry while Ireland suffers a new holocaust.
There were other symptoms along the way to November 1st 2014. The household charge, which we fought off only to have it mutate into a much stronger and untreatable Property tax. The removal of medical cards from even children with serious illness and medical conditions. The Universal Social Charge: a tax that by the inclusion of 'Universal' in the title seems somehow noble and even unifying. The closure of hospitals and cuts to health services. The removal of critical educational support for those most in need. There were other attacks to subsections of society that, although massively punitive to those affected, would be small enough to go unnoticed by most and those hit would be of such a small number as could be easily ignored, if their voices were ever heard.
But we could not ignore water. Whether it was a tax too far, a human right, a public service not to be privatised, a political and administrative fuck-up, a charge on something that was not fot for purpose or some other reason, we marched for water.
When Irish Water is consigned to the scrap heap, along with now-third-hand meters and the board have had their fleet of mercs taken off them, the disease will still be there. Festering. Designing a new attack which will produce a new symptom. And maybe we will treat that symptom. And maybe we will beat it too. But the disease will remain.
Politics is the disease. The politicial system is cancerous. And polticians are not the ones who will cure it. If your waiting for politicians to make things better then you'd better prepare your funeral sooner rather than later.
We elect them to represent us. They are supposed to work in service of the public. But politics in Ireland is not about Public Service. It is about Self Service. And by Christ do they help themselves.
WE ARE THE CURE
Treating the symptoms will only gain us temproary relief. We need to address the cause of our ills and that is the political system.
It will not take much to do this.
The solution is NOT a new government; it is NOT more politicians; and it is NOT more political parties ... not under the current system.
The three most important solutions to our ailments (in my opinion) are these:
1. The reinstatement of the Right of Recall which was part of Ireland's original (and usurped) constitution which stated that the people, by simple petition in sufficient numbers, could demand the dissolution of Dail Eireann. With this power, a small proportion of the numbers who marched on November 1st could remove the government and call a general election.
2. The abolition of the Party Whip System. This insidious distortion of free speech completely silences the voices of the people in every constituency who send their representatives (TDs) to Dail Eireann. There is no democracy when local TDs are used simply as voting cards to implement EU and corporate policy drafted by the unelected masters of the party leadership.
3. A complete reform of Oireachtas salaries, expenses, perks and pensions which attract career politicians who have more interest in self service than public service.
Another important change would be the electoral process of the Seanad which should be the watchdog of government. Personally I think a reassessment of our membership of Europe is a life and death issue for the future of our nation. The old argument of "well, Europe was good to us...we got grant money ...and agricultural money ... and were attractive to foreign multinational investment etc etc" is all meaningless now. We're paying back everything we EVER got from Europe ... with serious interest. The EEC we joined in 1972 is a totally different beast to the EU that exists today. It was originally a political community of nations aimed at improving trade. Today it is the trading floor for European workers wages, bought and sold by corporate and banking giants, holding governments to ransom, bleeding every opportunity for profit under a banner of progress and prosperity.
These are the things we should be marching for even more than taxes and charges and cuts.
Change the system. Cure the disease. Or watch your country die a slow and painful death.
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