Ireland: Socialist Joe Higgins elected to European Parliament
Monday, 8 June 2009.
chinaworker.info sends congratulations on sensational victory to Ireland’s Socialist Party (CWI)
Joe Higgins, a leading member of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) and well-known working class fighter in Ireland was elected to the European Parliament in Europe-wide elections held on Friday 5 June in Ireland. Joe served as a TD (member of the Irish national parliament) from 1997 to 2007. He has been a crucial figure in opposing the neo-liberal Lisbon Treaty of the capitalist European Union (EU) and a thron in the side of Ireland’s political establishment. He and the Socialist Party are known for leading and supporting many workers’ struggles including the union organisation and wage arrears battle of Turkish migrant workers (GAMA workers) in 2005.
Joe Higgins has also given strong support to the struggles of Chinese workers to organise independent unions, to strike, and fight against ‘blood-and-sweat’ corporations and the Chinese dictatorship. In 2004, when ten young workers at the Stella International footwear company in Dongguan were sentenced to long prison terms for a strike that turned violent, Joe Higgins used his parliamentary position to raise this issue with the then Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, just prior to an official visit to China. This generated publicity for the case as part of an international campaign in other countries like the U.S. which eventually secured the release of all the Stella strikers from prison.
The result was announced on 8 June at 5.15am European time. In a close three-way fight for the third place in the Irish capital Dublin, Joe Higgins received 22,201 votes from the defeated Sinn Fein (nationalist) candidate Mary Lou McDonald, which gave him 82,366 votes.
On behalf of the editors and regular readers of chinaworker.info we would like to congratulate Joe Higgins, the Irish CWI comrades and all Joe’s election workers on what we hope is the first of many left gains in these elections. The result in Ireland is a great victory for clear, principled, socialist ideas and campaigning. The voters of Dublin have given us a landmark on the road to rebuilding a socialist labour movement worldwide.
A full election report will be published later on chinaworker.info
Joe Higgins, a leading member of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) and well-known working class fighter in Ireland was elected to the European Parliament in Europe-wide elections held on Friday 5 June in Ireland. Joe served as a TD (member of the Irish national parliament) from 1997 to 2007. He has been a crucial figure in opposing the neo-liberal Lisbon Treaty of the capitalist European Union (EU) and a thron in the side of Ireland’s political establishment. He and the Socialist Party are known for leading and supporting many workers’ struggles including the union organisation and wage arrears battle of Turkish migrant workers (GAMA workers) in 2005.
Joe Higgins has also given strong support to the struggles of Chinese workers to organise independent unions, to strike, and fight against ‘blood-and-sweat’ corporations and the Chinese dictatorship. In 2004, when ten young workers at the Stella International footwear company in Dongguan were sentenced to long prison terms for a strike that turned violent, Joe Higgins used his parliamentary position to raise this issue with the then Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, just prior to an official visit to China. This generated publicity for the case as part of an international campaign in other countries like the U.S. which eventually secured the release of all the Stella strikers from prison.
The result was announced on 8 June at 5.15am European time. In a close three-way fight for the third place in the Irish capital Dublin, Joe Higgins received 22,201 votes from the defeated Sinn Fein (nationalist) candidate Mary Lou McDonald, which gave him 82,366 votes.
On behalf of the editors and regular readers of chinaworker.info we would like to congratulate Joe Higgins, the Irish CWI comrades and all Joe’s election workers on what we hope is the first of many left gains in these elections. The result in Ireland is a great victory for clear, principled, socialist ideas and campaigning. The voters of Dublin have given us a landmark on the road to rebuilding a socialist labour movement worldwide.
A full election report will be published later on chinaworker.info
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