The NO side won a comprehensive victory of 53.4% against 46.6% of the 1,621,037 people who voted in last Thursday’s Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (participation was 53.1% - twice as high as those who voted in the Nice Referendum).From the 43 constituencies nationally 33 voted NO!! And as an ex-Irish PM lamented: “The result was very class divided….the NO vote was strongest, up to 65% in working class areas…” Our victory came in the face of a NO side, made up by a variety of small left wing organisations, a couple of Trade Unions and Sinn Fein, having to confront the entire political establishment [all four major Parties: Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens], every conceivable employer organisation, the Catholic Church establishment, the powerful Alliance for Europe and 90% of the media.
Three were the major reasons the NO side won :
• The utter contempt shown by the YES side both towards its opponents but also the people in general by refusing to distribute the Treaty to households (“it’s too complicated – people wouldn’t understand”), by refusing to debate the contents of the Treaty and relying instead on ideological subterfuges (“Europe has been good to us – it’s our turn to be good to Europe”, “lets be in the heart of Europe”) and such like.
• The potency of the three main arguments put forward by our NO campaign, i.e the threat of galloping militarisation and our peoples desire to remain neutral coupled with the fear / anxiety of the free market/undistorted competition focus of the Treaty on the future of public services, particularly health and education and the perceived threat on workers rights following the recent decisions by the ECJ (Laval, Viking and Ruffert).
• The general impact of the arguments put forward re: the democratic deficit, the loss of the Commissioner and the decrease in the already small voting power of Ireland in the Commission and the European Parliament
The left/progressive element of the NO campaign has been working
diligently since mid-November 2007. Our Campaign is
an umbrella grouping of affiliated organisations that had reached
15 by mid-May ’08. While some of the affiliates conducted their
own autonomous campaign, there was tight internal cohesion in
the Campaign website [www.sayno.ie], the Campaign literature,
our meetings all over the country and the Press Releases and
statements.
My own personal evaluation of the Campaign, as a National
Co-ordinator over the final 10 weeks, is that it has worked
exceptionally well managing to set the basis for further
programmatic and political unity among most if not all the affiliates.
It is to be noted that the extensive political work of our Campaign, our 10,000 32 pp pamphlets, our more than 600,000 leaflets, our door-to-door canvassing, the 60 or so country-wide meetings were largely ignored by the mainstream media. It was only on Saturday June 14th that the Irish Times published for the first time sections of our victory Press Release. The Irish media was largely on the YES side while some dissent was shown by the UK owned smaller publications.
What does the future hold for us? Where do we go from here?
As these lines are being written, a mere 48 hours after our NO victory, we are already confronted by a political scenario operating on two distinct, parallel and potentially conflicting lines. One the hand, we are living in a domain of enthusiasm, of celebration of the popular forces – so rare in Ireland – and a wave of support and congratulations flowing at us from all over Europe, particularly France, Germany, Austria and Greece. This is no dreamland and there is no Alice here who doesn’t live here anymore.
On the opposite plane, there is the anguish, the dejection, the incomprehension of what exactly happened shown by the political elites. At home, the main political parties are blaming each other for not doing enough while the pro-YES media is jeering at them telling them they managed the extraordinary trick of making the YES sounding anything but positive.
In Europe, as Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Martin is going to Brussels on Monday, and the Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Cowen is readying himself to go to Brussels and explain himself on Wednesday, the mood is in crisis mode. Brussels, Paris, particularly Berlin and London are said to be in shock while the London Financial Times headlined: “Irish poll delivers big blow to EU morale”!!
It is far too early to start speculating of what medicine the Eurocrats may describe to ease their pain, what machinations and scenarios may develop. We will have some time to come back to this as we ourselves sit down and start discussing our next moves. There are a few things though that can be said as a conclusion to this article. Our political traditions in Ireland come from the Enlightenment of the 18th century, of the republicanism of the American revolution against the British, our republicanism in the colonial struggle over the last 150 years, the internationalist socialism of Larkin and Connolly and Constance Markievicz.
We believe that democracy is one of the best ever ideas and realities developed in Europe and we are telling Brussels to respect it. France voted NO, the Netherlands voted NO and now we have voted NO!! Respect the democratic spirit of our people, start defining Europe, our Europe, not merely as a paradise for industrial and financial multinationals and, instead, think about workers rights, the environment and of and end to military aggression. Think of the messages the democratic process is bringing to your doorstep.
Our wish is for a democratic, demilitarised and social Europe.
We are waiting impatiently for your response.
Dublin June 15th