Ist Finnlands Hinwendung zum Thatcherismus noch aufzuhalten?

Ein Gespräch mit Li Andersson, Parteivorsitzende der finnischen Linkspartei Vasemmistoliitto (Linksbündnis), über die Prioritäten und Herausforderungen der finnischen Linke vor der Europawahl.

Im Vorfeld der Wahl zum Europäischen Parlament im Juni 2024 führt die Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung eine Reihe von Interviews mit Parteien und Kandidat*innen aus der ganzen EU durch, um den Wahlkampf, die politischen Forderungen und die Herausforderungen für die politische Linke in den jeweiligen Ländern und in Europa zu diskutieren.

Duroyan Fertl sprach mit Li Andersson, EU-Kandidatin und Parteivorsitzende der finnischen Linkspartei Vasemmistoliitto über die Prioritäten der finnischen Linken in diesem Jahr.

Welche Prioritäten hat sich Vasemmistoliitto im diesjährigen Europawahlkampf gesetzt? Was sind Eure wichtigsten Wahlkampfthemen und Forderungen?

Wir wollen den Wähler*innen vor Augen führen, dass die aktuelle Situation in Finnland das ist, was herauskommt, wenn Rechtskonservative mit Rechtsextremen oder Rechtspopulisten koalieren. Auf nationaler Ebene beobachten wir historische Angriffe auf Gewerkschaften und Arbeitnehmer*innen, extreme Sparmaßnahmen im Bereich der sozialen Sicherheit und im Gesundheitswesen sowie Rückschritte in der Klima- und Umweltpolitik. Unsere wichtigste Botschaft ist, dass wir in den Europawahlen dafür sorgen müssen, dass sich diese Entwicklungen auf europäischer Ebene nicht wiederholen – dass bei den Europawahlen genau das auf dem Spiel steht.

Unsere wichtigsten Themen sind Arbeitnehmer*innenrechte und die Notwendigkeit, eine ambitionierte europäische Sozial- und Arbeitsmarktpolitik zu verfolgen. Natürlich hätte in den letzten Jahren viel mehr getan werden können, aber dennoch hat die EU einiges erreicht, insbesondere verglichen mit dem, was die rechte Regierung in Finnland gerade tut. Außerdem ist es nötig, in den kommenden Jahren auf EU-Ebene Jugendrechte, Jungendarbeitslosigkeit und die psychische Gesundheitskrise in den Fokus stellen. Des Weiteren ist natürlich eine ambitionierte Klima- und Umweltpolitik zentral. In all diesen Bereichen könnte ein potentieller Wahlsieg der rechten oder rechtsextremen Parteien den größten Schaden anrichten. Aus diesem Grund stellen wir diese Themen in den Mittelpunkt unseres Wahlkampfs.

Lesen Sie den vollständigen Artikel auf der Website der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung - Büro Brüssel.

Opposing Finland’s Thatcherist Turn

An interview with Li Andersson, MEP candidate and leader of the Finnish Left Alliance, Vasemmistoliitto, about the challenges facing the Finnish Left in 2024.

As the European Parliament elections this June draw nearer, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is conducting a series of interviews with left-wing parties and candidates from across the EU on the election campaign, their political programmes, and the challenges facing left-wing forces domestically and at a European level.

The foundation’s Duroyan Fertl spoke to Li Andersson, MEP candidate and leader of the Finnish Left Alliance, Vasemmistoliitto, about her party’s priorities in this super election year.

What are Vasemmistoliitto’s key priorities in this European Parliament election campaign? What are your key campaign areas or flagship demands?

Our narrative in these elections revolves around reminding voters that the current situation in Finland is what happens when the conservative right wing teams up with the far right or populist right. We are seeing historic attacks against trade unions and workers at a national level, with extreme austerity cuts in social security and health care services, and backwards steps on climate and environmental policy. Our main message is that in the European elections we need to make sure this same development is not replicated on a European level, that this is what is at stake in the European elections.

The main issues we are talking about are workers’ rights, and the need for the EU to pursue ambitious social and labour market policies. Much more could have been done in the past few years, of course, but what has come out of the EU has been fairly good, especially compared to what Finland’s right-wing government is doing. We are also highlighting the need for the EU to focus on youth rights, youth unemployment, and the mental health crisis in the coming years. Of course, we are also talking about the need to continue with an ambitious climate and environmental policy.

These are all areas where a potential right-wing or far-right electoral victory would have the most damaging effect, so we are placing them at the heart of our main narrative in this election.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

«Wir besinnen uns auf unsere Grundwerte zurück»

Ein Gespräch mit Frederikke Hellemann, Kandidatin der rot-grünen Allianz, über die Herausforderungen für die dänische Linke im Jahr 2024.

Im Vorfeld der Wahl zum Europäischen Parlament im Juni 2024 führt die Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung eine Reihe von Interviews mit Parteien und Kandidat*innen aus der ganzen EU durch, um den Wahlkampf, ihre politischen Forderungen und die Herausforderungen für die Linke in ihren Ländern und in Europa zu diskutieren.

Duroyan Fertl sprach mit Frederikke Hellemann, der Nummer zwei auf der Liste der dänischen Linkspartei Enhedslisten (EL), über die Prioritäten der dänischen Linken in diesem Jahr.

Was sind die Prioritäten von Enhedslisten für diese Europawahl?

Unsere Priorität in diesem Wahlkampf ist, die Menschen davon zu überzeugen, dass Enhedslisten auf ihrer Seite steht. Wir wollen ein sicheres, grünes und gerechtes Europa schaffen, das sich gegen die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels schützt. Mehr als der Hälfte des Trinkwassers in Dänemark ist mit Pestiziden und PFAS – sogenannten «ewige Chemikalien» – verunreinigt. In Südeuropa erleben wir Waldbrände und Überschwemmungen. All das sind Anzeichen dafür, dass Europa weder sicher noch gesund ist. Dagegen können wir nur angehen, wenn wir den grünen Wandel vollziehen.

Dazu müssen alle an einem Strang ziehen und die Verschmutzer*innen, die Reichsten, müssen das zahlen. Zum Glück schafft man, wenn etwa Häuser renoviert werden, Windräder gebaut und all das tut, was für ein grünes Europa nötig ist, viele gut bezahlte Arbeitsplätze. Und natürlich wollen wir sicherstellen, dass für diese Arbeitsplätze Tarifverträge gelten.

Deshalb sind unsere Prioritäten Klimaschutz und Artenvielfalt. Wir wollen zu Ende führen, was wir mit dem Grünen Deal, dem Naturwiederherstellungsgesetz und den Vorschlägen zur Landwirtschaft begonnen haben. Wir wollen auch dafür sorgen, dass Geld für die richtigen Zwecke ausgegeben wird. Wir setzen uns dafür ein, das EU-Vergaberecht wieder zu öffnen, damit wir Tarifverträge fordern können, wenn wir als Regierungen oder als Kommunen einkaufen. Wir wollen ein faires Europa und ein besseres Abkommen für Flüchtlinge, damit sie gerechter auf die Mitgliedstaaten verteilt werden und die Kosten von den Reichen getragen werden.

Lesen Sie den vollständigen Artikel auf der Website der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung - Büro Brüssel.

“Back to Basics”

An interview with Red-Green Alliance candidate Frederikke Hellemann on the challenges facing the Danish Left in 2024.

As the European Parliament elections this June draw nearer, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is conducting a series of interviews with left-wing parties and candidates from across the EU on the election campaign, their political programmes, and the challenges facing left-wing forces domestically and at a European level.

The foundation’s Duroyan Fertl spoke to Frederikke Hellemann, second on the list for Danish Left-Green Alliance, or Enhedslisten, about the Danish Left’s priorities in this super election year.

What are Enhedslisten’s key priorities or campaign areas in this European Parliament election campaign?

For this campaign, we have an umbrella theme of convincing people that Enhedslisten is on their side. This means creating a Europe that is safe, green, and just, that is safe from climate change. We are finding dangerous pesticides and PFAS — so-called “forever chemicals” — in over half of the drinking water in Denmark. We see flooding and forest fires in the south of Europe. All these things point to a Europe that is not safe and not healthy and the only way to combat these things is to complete the green transition.

For this to happen we need everyone on board, and to make sure that it is the polluters — the richest — who pay. Luckily, when you renovate homes, when you build windmills, when you do all the things that are necessary to create a green Europe, you also create many well-paying jobs. And, of course, we want to make sure that those jobs have collective agreements.

Therefore, for us the key priorities are going to be climate action and biodiversity — to finish what we started with the Green Deal, with the Nature Restoration Law, and with the proposals touching on agriculture. We are also campaigning on ensuring public money is spent in the right way. We want to reopen the EU Public Procurement law so we can demand collective agreements when we are buying as governments or as municipalities. We want a fair Europe and a better deal for refugees, with a fairer division among member states, and for all of this to be paid for by the rich.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

„Wir müssen den Menschen Hoffnung geben“

Ein Gespräch mit Hanna Gedin von der schwedischen Linkspartei über die Prioritäten und Herausforderungen der schwedischen Linken vor der Europawahl.

Im Vorfeld der Wahl zum Europäischen Parlament im Juni 2024 führt die Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung eine Reihe von Interviews mit Parteien und Kandidat:innen aus der ganzen EU durch, um den Wahlkampf, ihre politischen Forderungen und die Herausforderungen für die politische Linke in den jeweiligen Ländern und in Europa zu diskutieren. Duroyan Fertl sprach mit Hanna Gedin, der Nummer zwei auf der Liste der schwedischen Linkspartei Vänsterpartiet, über die aktuellen Prioritäten der schwedischen Linken.

Welche Prioritäten setzt sich die Vänsterpartiet für diese Europawahl? Was sind die wichtigsten Wahlkampfthemen und Forderungen?

Wir haben drei Prioritäten in diesem Wahlkampf: Klimawandel, gute und sichere Arbeitsplätze, und die Lebenshaltungskosten-Krise. In mancher Hinsicht ist die EU beim Klimaschutz progressiver als die rechte schwedische Regierung, die gerade klimapolitische Errungenschaften der letzten Jahre wieder zunichtemacht. Dennoch verbietet das auf EU-Ebene vorherrschende neoliberale Dogma staatliche Beihilfemaßnahmen für die gewaltigen Investitionen, die für den grünen Wandel nötig sind. Es muss den EU-Mitgliedstaaten erlaubt werden, massiv in eine gerecht gestaltete sozial-ökologische Transformation, in die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen und in eine bessere Lebensqualität für viele Menschen zu investieren. Gleichzeitig muss die EU aufhören, die fossile Industrie zu subventionieren.

Beim Thema gute Arbeitsplätze geschieht die Priorisierung von Kapital und Wettbewerb in der EU zu Lasten der Qualität der Arbeit. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die aktuelle Debatte um die Richtlinie zur Plattformarbeit. Wir wollen außerdem die Regeln für das öffentliche Beschaffungswesen ändern, die den niedrigsten Preis zum Hauptkriterium für die Auftragsvergabe gemacht haben, was zu Sozialdumping führt. Zusammen mit den europäischen Gewerkschaften fordern wir eine Erneuerung des öffentlichen Vergabewesens, die Sozialklauseln und Tarifverhandlungen in den Vordergrund stellt.

Letztlich sehen wir bei den Lebenshaltungskosten, dass die Inflation zu mehr Armut und sozialer Ungerechtigkeit geführt hat, während gleichzeitig Schwedens Großkonzerne historische Gewinne erzielen. Wir müssen eine neue Gesellschaftsform aufbauen, von der alle Menschen profitieren statt nur einige wenige. Ein tiefliegender Grund für die Wohnungskrise in Schweden – die durch Wohnungsknappheit und steigende Mieten verursacht wird – ist, dass Wohnraum auf dem europäischen Markt schlicht als Ware angesehen wird, was uns daran hindert, staatliche Beihilfen für den Bau neuer Wohnungen zu vergeben und öffentliche Wohnungsunternehmen dazu zwingt, die Marktregeln einzuhalten.

Lesen Sie den vollständigen Artikel auf der Website der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung - Büro Brüssel.

 

”We need to give people hope”

An interview with Hanna Gedin from the Swedish Left Party Vänsterpartiet on the priorities and challenges of the Swedish Left ahead of the European elections.

In the lead up to the 2024 European Parliament elections this June, the Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung is conducting a series of interviews with parties and candidates from across the EU on the election campaign, their political demands, and the challenges for left forces domestically and at a European level.

Duroyan Fertl spoke to Hanna Gedin, second on the list for Swedish left party Vänsterpartiet, about the Swedish left’s priorities this year.

What are Vänsterpartiet’s key priorities in this European Parliament election campaign? What are your key campaign areas or flagship demands?

There are three key priorities for this campaign: the climate transition, securing good and safe jobs, and the cost of living crisis. In some respects, the EU is more progressive on climate than the right-wing Swedish government, which is now dismantling years of climate policies, but the neoliberal dogma that prevails at the EU level prevents state aid measures to deliver the large investments needed for the green transition. EU member states must be allowed to make huge investments for a just transition, creating jobs and a better life for many people, and the EU must stop subsidising the fossil industry.

On the issue of securing good jobs, the EU’s prioritising of capital and competition comes at the expense of job quality – the recent fight around the platform work directive is a case in point. We also want to change the rules around public procurement, where securing the lowest price has been made the key condition for making procurements, something that leads to social dumping. Alongside the European trade unions, we are calling for a new kind of procurement where social clauses and collective bargaining are made the key factors.

Finally, on the cost of living, we can see that inflation has led to more poverty and increased social injustice, while at the same time the big companies in Sweden are making historic profits. We need to build a different kind of society, one that works for all the people, not just for a few. One reason we have a housing crisis in Sweden – which is being caused by a shortage in apartments and increasing rents – is because housing is deemed to be just another commodity on the European market, preventing us from using state aid to build new housing and forcing public housing companies to operate under market rules.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

“Death or Liberty” – Australia’s Battle of Vinegar Hill at 220

220 years ago, on March 5, 1804, several hundred armed rebels – mostly escaped Irish political prisoners, veterans of Vinegar Hill and the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798 – clashed with British armed forces near Castle Hill in western Sydney. They lost, but while their rebellion was short-lived, it was far from the impromptu uprising many suggest. Rather, it was just the latest, and largest, manifestation of an ongoing Irish republican struggle in the fledgling colony.

In terms of scale, the ‘battle’ of Castle Hill was truthfully little more than a skirmish in the bush in western Sydney. Only a handful of rebels were killed, the rest fled, and their leaders were easily captured by crown forces under a false flag of truce. The rebel forces were poorly organised and divided, while – due to betrayal – hundreds more who would otherwise have joined them did not. Even so, the rebellion shook the colony to its core – a reaction that can only be understood in the context of the years immediately preceding it, both in Sydney, and in Ireland.

A vulnerable penal colony

By 1800, Sydney Town was a young settlement of barely 12 years, with only 2500 European inhabitants – 43 percent of them convicts. Further inland, Toongabbie and Parramatta had a combined population of under 1500, and perhaps another 1100 – mostly free settlers – could be found in the Hawkesbury. The colony was dotted with several small garrisons, but the military presence was confined largely to Sydney Town.

The economic viability of the settlement was also still uncertain, particularly after huge floods in 1799. This instability was to continue for several years, with ships sent to seek emergency food supplies from India as late as 1813. While hindsight can give rise to a misleading sense of inevitability, this vulnerability would have been palpable at the time, not least to hundreds of Irish political prisoners – convinced republicans and veterans of a large-scale armed rebellion against the British only months before.

The first ships carrying around 400 of these Irish political prisoners arrived at the start of 1800, sent as exiles-without-trial to the New South Wales colony in the aftermath of the failed United Irishmen rebellion of 1798. While some were senior members of the United Irishmen, arrested before the rebellion had begun, others had seen action in Waterford, Wexford, the Midlands, and the north. It would soon become apparent that the long journey to Australia had failed to break their spirits.

Sedition and conspiracy

As early as February 1800, records tell of a seditious meeting among the Irish being broken up in Sydney, while another plot was reported in May. In September, another conspiracy among the Irish prisoners was uncovered, with plans to take the Sydney barracks and overthrow the Governor, and for the rebels to then live on the settlers’ farms until they heard back from a message they would send to France. More disturbances were reported in October, with suspected ringleaders shipped off to Norfolk Island to defuse their plotting – unsuccessfully. In December, a rebellion on Norfolk Island was apparently averted only by the pre-emptive execution of two of its leaders.

Such accounts make the colony seem a hotbed of rebel activity, but it is difficult to know how much was true, and how much was British paranoia. One witness testified to the notorious “Flogging Reverend”, Samuel Marsden, in 1800 that she became convinced the Irish were planning “something that was improper” after seeing them “talking very earnestly in Irish”. A sectarian bigot, Marsden was already predisposed to distrust the Irish, describing them as "the most wild, ignorant and savage race that were ever favoured with the light of civilisation", while considering Irish convicts even worse, “depraved beyond all conception”.

Bigotry and sectarianism

Yet while the evidence of conspiracy and unrest may have been often flimsy, the British fear and distrust of the Irish was real enough, reflecting both ingrained ethnic prejudices and genuine political insecurities in aftermath of the events of 1798. Governor John Hunter – replaced by Governor Philip Gidley King in late 1800 – repeatedly complained to London that the Irish prisoners were “turbulent” and “diabolical” and called for the number of Irish transportees to be drastically reduced in the interest of colonial security.

Another consequence of the 1800 Irish scare was the establishment, on September 7, of an official civilian paramilitary movement: the Loyal Associations of Sydney and Parramatta, each with a captain, three sergeants, two drummers and three corporals, 36 privates in the Sydney group, and 29 in Parramatta. These loyalist paramilitaries were suspended by Governor King in August 1801, but recalled on December 9, 1803, when news arrived that France and England were at war. They marked the beginning of a conservative, protestant, “law and order” tradition that was to continue well into the twentieth century, built on profound distrust of, and discrimination against, the Irish Catholic community in Australia.

Echoes of Emmet’s rebellion

Further ships soon arrived from Ireland – the Anne, which reached Sydney in 1801 after surviving a mutiny by the prisoners onboard, and the Atlas I, Atlas II, and Hercules in 1802. Each carried more veterans of 1798, along with the latest updates of the state of unrest in the Irish countryside. Perhaps in response to news that the rebellion had finally been defeated, reported Irish agitation in the colony lessened, so much so that the British allowed the colony’s first Catholic priest to (briefly) perform his ministry. As late as March 1, 1804, Governor King wrote to London that the Irish in Sydney were now behaving themselves.

The spark for a new rebellion was already being kindled, however, after the whaling ship the Ferret arrived in Sydney in January 1804, bringing newspapers dating from August 1803. These bore tidings of Robert Emmet’s new United Irish rising near Dublin – but not of its demise, which followed closely in the weeks that followed. Not to be dampened by news of later events, word of Emmet’s uprising spread through the colony like wildfire, and six weeks later – whether by coincidence or not, on Emmet’s birthday – that spark became a flame.

“Liberty or Death…”

Literally, as it turns out. Instructions spread on March 4 that the rebellion would begin at nightfall, and the official signal was when one of the leaders, John Cavenah, set fire to his hut at Castle Hill Government Farm at 8 o’clock. That night, some 200-300, mostly Irish, prisoners escaped from the prison farm, led by Philip Cunningham – a key architect of the rebellion. A Kerry-man, Cunningham was a veteran of the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion and of its aftermath, where he had been captured and tried in Clonmel while rebuilding the United Irishmen in Tipperary. He had also been involved in the mutiny on board the Anne during its journey to Australia.

The signal fire was not seen by his comrades at Green Hills (today's Windsor) on the Hawkesbury River, but Cunningham proceeded with his plan regardless, taking weapons, ammunition, and food from the Castle Hill Government Farm, and recruiting local supporters. The rebels - their numbers soon swelling to over 685 - adopted the slogan “Death or Liberty” as their rallying call, planning to join hundreds more from the Hawkesbury area, to rally at Constitution Hill, and to march on Parramatta and then Sydney’s Port Jackson itself. There they would establish Irish rule and send those who wished it back to Ireland to reignite the 1803 rebellion.

Damned Betrayal

After looting the government farm, the rebel group divided into smaller parties, going from farm to farm on their way towards Constitution Hill, collecting further supplies and recruits. Their actions were informed by intelligence gathered the previous year, when 12 escaped prisoners sought out friends and sympathisers in the surrounding districts. Even so, many lost their way during the night and failed to reach the rendezvous point – including a group of 70 under the command of Samuel Humes. These losses were worsened when plans to join with hundreds of prisoners in the Hawkesbury region went awry after John Griffen, the courier taking their mobilisation orders, betrayed the uprising and surrendered to authorities that night.

Another small group of rebels attempted to enter Parramatta to set a building alight as a signal for local rebels and those in Sydney to join the rebellion, but two defectors again ruined the plan. Captain Edward Abbott commenced defensive measures in Parramatta and sent a message to Governor King in Sydney. King, alerted to the rebellion late during the evening of March 4, declared martial law, although when news of the uprising reached the small colony, a great panic set in, with some officials – including Samuel Marsden – fleeing the area by boat. Major George Johnston of the New South Wales Corps (himself later to play a key role in the Rum Rebellion coup d’état of 1808) quickly gathered a force of British troops and a large civilian militia – including the Sydney Loyal Association – to pursue the rebels.

New Ireland

With the element of surprise lost and plans to mobilise rebels in the Hawkesbury, Parramatta and Sydney having failed, the uprising was confined to the area west of Parramatta. Cunningham, lacking any sign that Parramatta had been taken, and without the expected reinforcements, was forced to withdraw the rebel group to Toongabbie to re-assess strategy, gather new forces, and perhaps find his lost comrades. In the process, he also collected a significant number of arms, by this point possessing of perhaps a third of the colony’s entire armaments, but the rebel forces continued to dwindle in number. Those that remained are reported to have proclaimed the area around Constitution Hill "New Ireland”.

Meanwhile, Major Johnston’s much smaller crown forces endured a forced march through the night, coming to within only a few kilometres of the remaining rebels, now reduced to approximately 233, on the morning of March 5. Outnumbered and tired, Johnston decided to employ delaying tactics, riding on ahead of his men along with a trooper, Thomas Anlezark, and the colony’s sole Catholic priest, Father Dixon – himself an Irishman exiled to Australia following 1798 – to demand the rebels surrender, and to otherwise parley with them while his troops advanced to a more favourable position.

“… and a ship to take us home!”

Sending first the trooper Anlezark, and then Father Dixon, to demand (unsuccessfully) that the rebels down arms and accept an amnesty, Major Johnston himself finally rode up to meet them. Cunningham’s response, however, remained emphatic: “Death or liberty”. It is sometimes claimed that he also said, “and a ship to take us home”, although that addition is first recorded some while later. During this exchange, the government troops and the loyalist militia finally appeared, lining up behind Major Johnston. Seizing his opportunity, Johnston – still under a flag of truce – took Cunningham and another rebel leader captive at gunpoint.

Quickly retreating with the captured Cunningham, Johnston ordered crown forces to fire on the rebels. After fifteen minutes of gunfire, followed by a charge, between 15 and 20 rebels were killed, the others scattering into the bush in disarray. An unknown number – certainly more than a dozen – were killed in the pursuits that followed into the night and the following days. Governor King then announced leniency for those who surrendered before March 10, leading many of those who got lost on the night of March 4 to give themselves up, while the large group commanded by Samuel Humes was captured by the Parramatta Loyal Association militia at Castle Hill.

Aftermath

The extent of British alarm over the Castle Hill rebellion can be measured by the scale of repression that followed. While some have estimated that 39 rebels died in, or as a result of, the Castle Hill uprising, the precise numbers will never be known. Around 230 people were arrested in the days following the rebellion, of whom nine were executed. Eight of these received a court-martial, while a wounded Cunningham was hanged without trial on the steps of the Government Store at Windsor, which he had claimed he would burn down. Interestingly, of those executed, four were Protestant, and two were English.

Two prisoners – including Humes – were hung from the gibbet, while two others, Bryan McCormack and John Burke, were reprieved and detained. Seven were whipped with between 200 or 500 lashes and sent to the Coal River chain gang at Newcastle, and a further 23 others were sent to the Newcastle coal mines. Another 34 prisoners were placed in irons until they could be "disposed of”, but their fate remains unclear. Of the approximately 150 rebels that remained, many were sent to Norfolk Island on good behaviour bonds, but the majority were pardoned and allowed to return to their previous lives, it being adjudged that they had been coerced into rebellion.

The International Society of United Irishmen?

Martial law ended on 10 March 1804, but the Irish insurgency in Sydney – both real and imagined – continued. Two Frenchmen who had come to the colony to cultivate vines were expelled on suspicion. More realistic plots continued to develop, with authorities on the constant alert over the following three years. For his part, Governor King was convinced that the true leaders of the 1804 rebellion had remained out of sight, and were continuing to plot the colony’s demise. As a result, he sent numerous suspects to Norfolk Island as a preventative measure.

Whether King was correct will likely never be known – the identity of the rebellion's co-conspirators in Parramatta, Sydney and the Hawkesbury are lost to history. It is true, however, that the rising was neither as spontaneous nor isolated as most Australian historiography would have us believe. Indeed, there are unverified claims that at least two Irish prisoners who arrived in February 1800 on board the Friendship were corresponding with the United Irish leadership around Emmet to establish a secret branch of an “International Society of United Irishmen” in Sydney to act there under direction from Ireland.

Loyalist paranoia about Irish republicanism was further fed by the arrival in February 1806 of another group of Irish political rebels on board the Tellicherry. They included the last hard core of United Irishmen, and were led by none other than Michael Dwyer, the “Wicklow Chief”, who had only surrendered in December 1803 on condition of voluntary exile to the United States of America. Perfidious Albion, of course, had other ideas, sending Dwyer, Hugh Byrne, Martin Burke, Arthur Devlin, John Mernagh, and a dozen of their comrades to Botany Bay. Perhaps regrettably, the loyalist fears of renewed rebellion were misplaced.

Australia's Vinegar Hills

Known as Australia’s “Battle of Vinegar Hill” due to its links with the Irish events of 1798, and that famous battle in particular, the 1804 Castle Hill rebellion is now commemorated at the Vinegar Hill Memorial, Castlebrook Memorial Gardens, in Rouse Hill. A monument was unveiled by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1988, carrying the names of several contemporary politicians and councillors, but with none of the rebels. This rather blinkered oversight was remedied on the bicentenary of the rebellion in 2004 with a new plaque.

The Castle Hill rebellion was also the opening sally in a longer struggle for democracy in Australia in which Irish republicans have played a key part. The anti-authoritarian streak, and the lived experience of many Irish in Australia, found its expression in the widespread popular support for the Kelly Gang in northeast Victoria, in the better expressions of Australia's trade union movement, in the struggle against conscription during World War One, and in the fight for Aboriginal rights. In 1920, 100,000 people marched in Melbourne's annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade to demonstrate their support for Irish independence.

Perhaps the most iconic such expression, however, took place fifty years after Castle Hill at the Eureka Stockade rebellion on the Ballarat goldfields in Victoria. It, too, was defeated in blood, but the popular support it enjoyed saw one of its key demands realised: a Legislative Assembly in the Victorian colony. The Eureka rebels – migrants from every corner of the earth – were inspired by the same ideals of liberty, justice, and freedom as the heroes of '98 and '04. Led by Peter Lawlor, the brother of Young Irelander James Fintan Lawlor, they raised a standard of liberty while using the password "Vinegar Hill".

Impact workshop: “The Left in Power”, Copenhagen 9-10 June

In June 2022, the Brussels Office of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung hosted a workshop in Copenhagen to better understand and compare the central issues, experiences and strategies of left-wing parties’ participation in, or support of, governments in the region. The event was face-to-face and by-invitation only to guarantee an atmosphere of trust and confidentiality to participants.

The workshop brought together 30 party activists and decision-makers from among the political left in Sweden, Denmark and Germany.[1] Participation included current MPs, members of the party leadership, and activists with experience at the regional and local level from Enhedslisten (Denmark) and Vänsterpartiet (Sweden), as well as DIE LINKE officials and elected representatives from several German states and state parliaments (Thuringia, Brandenburg, Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bremen and Hamburg).

Participants had the opportunity to exchange viewpoints on analysis and strategy, learn from each other and connect, gaining useful insights into the experiences and debates of left parties in the Nordic countries and Germany. A dynamic mix of inputs, interactive methods, small group discussions and strategy development, concentrated on a number of key questions, including the case for the “left in power”, strategies and tactics for making this a reality, and the question of placing limits or “red lines” on government participation.

The workshop was part of an ongoing series of events with a focus on the Nordic countries organised by RLS Brussels.

Read the full report at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

Denmark’s left in crisis?

Denmark’s radical left party, the Red Green Alliance, is in a spin. At the November 1 general election, it lost a quarter of its support, a third of its seats, and its influence with government. Alongside the immediate financial and political ramifications, the result has opened up both internal and public debate on what went wrong and why – exposing strategic disagreements over the party’s direction.

This was the Red Green Alliance’s (RGA) third electoral retreat in a row, following the 2019 national election and last year’s municipal vote. The party won just 5.1 percent of the vote, down from 6.9 percent in 2019 and its historic high-water mark of 7.8 percent in 2015. The result is worse if you consider the party was averaging 8.1 percent support when the election was called in October. Compared to expectations during the campaign, the election results came as something of a shock.

In the regions, the party’s vote continued to drop, with many voters turning to the Social Democrats or the Green Left party, and confining RGA support largely to the big urban centres. There too the party faced setbacks, with many supporters of radical change backing the new Independent Greens or the environmentalist Alternative instead.

The party’s Main Board soon announced an internal review and plans to address the sudden financial shortfall, but this review was pre-empted somewhat by an article in Politiken, Denmark’s main newspaper. In it, former party spokesperson and outgoing MP Pernille Skipper blamed the poor result on – among other things – outdated party structures, calling for an intensification of the “modernisation” process begun a decade and a half ago, and for greater political manoeuvrability for MPs.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

Denmark to hold early elections as Social Democrats move right

On November 1, Denmark will vote, seven months ahead of schedule. Polls show left and right blocs almost neck-and-neck, and the risk of an outright win for the right-wing remains real. However, with Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeking to hold onto power through an unlikely coalition across the middle, a rightwards shift seems inevitable.

The early election was called when the Social Liberals, one of three smaller parties propping up the Social Democrat minority government, threatened a no-confidence motion after damaging criticisms in a report on the government’s handling of a Covid-19 mutation on Danish mink farms in 2020.

Frederiksen, widely applauded for her handling of the Covid pandemic, faced accusations of arrogance and abuse of power over the government’s cull of all 17 million of the country’s farmed mink. The official investigation revealed no legal basis for the cull, and while the Prime Minister avoided sanction, it has damaged her popularity.

Denmark is dominated by bloc politics and coalition governments, and both major political blocs – red (left) and blue (right) – currently sit even in the polls, with a slight advantage to the red bloc. With no obvious winner, two new parties – one nominally centrist, the other on the right – may decide the outcome.

Unusually, Frederiksen has called on centrist and centre-right parties to join her in a broad coalition across the political middle ground, to find "joint solutions to the country's major challenges”. While the Social Liberals, the Socialist People’s Party and the Moderates agree, the leaders of the two traditional opposition parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, have rejected the idea.

The proposal is also opposed by parties on the far-right, and by the radical left Red-Green Alliance, another of the parties that has kept the government in power for the last three years. Indeed, Frederiksen’s proposed coalition is also deliberately designed to diminish left-wing influence on government, and to shift Danish politics further to the right.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

How will the EU regulate the tech giants?

The European Union is currently negotiating several pieces of legislation to regulate the digital economy, to improve the EU’s digital sovereignty and make it “fit for the digital decade”. This new digital strategy brings the EU directly into conflict with the so-called “tech giants” – companies like Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft that don’t pay their share of taxes, stifle competition, steal media content and undermine democracy.

The struggle against the dominance of the tech giants is not a new one – the EU's General Court in Luxembourg recently upheld a 2017 antitrust ruling against Google (Alphabet), fining it 2.4 billion euros for using its search engines to promote its own comparison-shopping ads, at rivals’ expense. In Italy, regulators have fined Amazon 1.1 billion euros for abusing its dominance to favour its own logistics service. Nonetheless, such responses are exceptions to the rule of the large online platforms.

How will EU grapple with the difficult task of regulating the tech giants, what is at stake, and what are the potential pitfalls? Is EU-regulation of the field even preferable to the current “law of jungle”? EU-journalist Staffan Dahllöf and Die Linke’s Nora Friese-Wendenburg – who is working on the digital package in the European Parliament – addressed these and other issues during a December 9 debate on the European Commission's new package of laws on digital regulation.

Read the full article and view a video of the presentation at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.   

Brexit vil plage Europa, indtil Irland er genforenet

Brexit vil fortsætte med at plage Europa, så længe der er en britisk grænse gennem Irland. Danmark og EU skal støtte opfordringen til folkeafstemning om forening af Irland for at løse problemet.

Med brexit blev den britiske grænse mellem Irland og det nordlige Irland forvandlet til en ydre grænse for EU’s indre marked og toldunionen. Det skabte en række nye problemer, der ikke kan løses, imens grænsen eksisterer.

Den irske grænse løber 500 kilometer tværs gennem boliger, bygninger, kirkegårde og marker. Der er mere end 300 grænseovergange, men kun 11 ligger ved egentlige hovedveje. 

Læs mere: https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/breve/ECE13582329/brexit-vil-plage-europa-indtil-irland-er-genforenet/

 

Denmark: Local election set-back for Social Democrats; wins for the left and centre-right

Denmark’s local elections have delivered a stark warning to the governing Social Democrats, and handed big wins to both the far-left and the centre-right, amidst an historically low voter turn-out.

Denmark’s municipal and regional elections, held on November 16, brought mixed results across the political spectrum. The biggest wins came for the centre-right Conservatives and the far left’s Enhedslisten (the “Red-Green Alliance”), but the stand-out story is the disastrous result for the governing Social Democrats. Poor results across the country and in the capital are a warning to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that the political ground has shifted beneath her government as she faces revelations of political impropriety, a new wave of Covid-19, and simmering discontent over issues both local and crossing the local-national divide, such as the mishandling of healthcare and childcare.

Already navigating an unfolding scandal over the forced closure of Denmark’s mink industry after a Covid-19 outbreak last year, the pandemic’s resurgence has brought into sharp relief government mismanagement of the recent nurse’s strike. Underpaid and under-resourced, nurses rejected a pay offer that fell short of their demands, only to have it foisted on them when the government legislated an end to negotiations. There are fears that future waves of the virus could drive an exodus of nurses and break the back of a public health system run by underfunded regional government. Similar issues of pay and recruitment plague the childcare sector, which is administered at a municipal level.

While the Social Democrats remained the largest party in local elections, as they have been for over 100 years, there were heavy losses across the country, with retreats in 70 of the 98 council areas. The damage was most obvious in the party’s urban heartlands, and in the four largest cities (Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense and Aalborg) support dropped by over 10 percent. The result was worsened by a record low turnout nation-wide - the third lowest in a century at just 67.2 percent - that reached its nadir in many urban working class areas. The worst participation rate came in the area around Tingbjerg, Copenhagen, where only one in three of those eligible cast their vote.

It was in Copenhagen, too, where the Social Democrats suffered their greatest and most symbolic defeat. After 112 years, they are no longer the most voted-for party on Copenhagen Council, slumping to just 17.3 percent support. They were overtaken by the radical left party Enhedslisten, topping the polls for the first time with a record 24.6 percent - nearly a quarter of the electorate. As well as taking the party vote, Enhedslisten’s lead candidate, Line Barfod, took the most direct candidate votes.

The Copenhagen result has several causes, but a key theme was development, with the city caught in the grip of a housing crisis, fuelled by housing speculation and development firms such as Blackstone. The market having failed to fix the crisis, the Social Democrat-run council and previous liberal government cooked up a controversial scheme to create an artificial island, “Lynetteholmen” in Copenhagen harbour to house 35,000 new residents, funded through loans to be paid off through the sale of public land.

The project’s potential traffic congestion alone is astounding: it would require transporting 80 million tonnes of soil through the city - some 350 truck journeys per day. The climate and environmental impact would be disastrous, and - rather than making housing more affordable - the initiative will create a new market for private real estate speculation. Lynetteholmen faces considerable opposition from local communities, climate and environment NGOs, and affordable housing advocates, but approval was rammed through the national parliament by the Social Democrats and the right, and given to development company By & Havn (“City & Port”) to implement.

A similar issue emerged in Copenhagen’s south, where the planned destruction and development of one of the city’s very few extensive nature areas - Amager Fælled, which hosts deer, endangered salamander, lark nests and other wildlife - was met with fierce resistance and a popular protest movement. Ostensibly, the project - also tendered to By & Havn - was to meet the city’s growing housing needs, but again the reality does not match the rhetoric. In both cases, the intersection of housing, climate and the environment played to the strengths of the left, and Enhedslisten in particular.

Finally, some more specific issues have hurt the Social Democrats, with former Lord Mayor - and vice president of the party - Frank Jensen being forced to resign last year after multiple sexual harassment allegations, and an attempt to fob off the issue by offering to be “part of the solution” to the problems he had caused. As a small wave of MeToo scandals hit the country’s political elite, Jensen was forced to resign his posts, and his replacement at council level has failed to impress.

The result in Copenhagen was an outstanding success for Enhedslisten, tapping popular support for action on the climate emergency and housing affordability, and from young voters. Despite its historic result and largest-party status - which would traditionally afford it the position of Lord Mayor - Enhedslisten was locked out when the Social Democrats formed a block with the right-wing parties to install their candidate Sophie Hæstorp Andersen instead. Reflecting the party’s new size, Enhedslisten nonetheless took both the Environment and Technical, and Social Affairs, deputy mayor portfolios on council.

Enhedslisten also saw success on Denmark’s “summer isle”, Bornholm, taking 23.1 percent on the back of a 17 percent swing among the islands 40,000 residents. The ruling Social Democrats and liberal party Venstre had pushed through a disastrous municipal budget that slashed social security while splurging millions on a new town hall. Enhedslisten - led by deputy mayor Morten Riis - were cut out of the decision-making, and quickly became the face of opposition. As in Copenhagen, however, the numbers weren’t there for a left mayor, and Enhedslisten lent its support to the Conservatives for the role, breaking the Venstre-Social Democrats duopoly and winning a re-negotiation of the budget.

This election saw Enhedslisten’s greatest results at the municipal level in its 32 year history. It elected 114 councillors on 68 councils - a slight drop on 2017 - but reached a new high in overall support, 7.3 percent nationwide. The results in Copenhagen and Bornholm were a high water mark, making a serious statement about the party’s role in Danish politics and strengthening its negotiation position in the national parliament. Unlike the Socialist People’s Party, however, which held onto its single mayor on the island of Langeland, Enhedslisten failed to win the position of mayor in any council, with parties of both right and “left” uniting against it.

A Blue Denmark?

A struggle of a different kind unfolded on the right wing of Danish politics, with liberal party Venstre suffering modest setbacks and the Conservative Peoples Party earning the largest swing and most impressive gains of any party. Meanwhile, the extreme right saw a splintering, as the Danish People Party lost more than half its votes, and its new, more pro-market, competitor on the right fringe, Nye Borgerlige (“New Right”) failing to fully capitalise. The results continue an emerging trend of the Conservative party leading the charge on Denmark’s political right.

Venstre had anticipated worse losses than it experienced, and its poor results paled in comparison to those of its main opponent, the Social Democrats. Some losses were self-inflicted, however, such as in Tønder, where internal discontent led a large part of the local branch to run its own list of candidates, costing Venstre the mayoral post in the area. As a result, the Schleswig Party - representing the German-speaking minority in southern Denmark - took the helm of the council for the first time since 1946.

The biggest winner was the Conservative Peoples Party, which saw a swing of 6.4 percent (over 10 percent in 15 councils) and improved support in nearly every council area. The party took over the position of mayor in several councils, including Bornholm and in Kolding, where the Socialist People’s Party’s former chairman and foreign minister, Villy Søvndal - infamous for his role in the sale of the state energy company DONG - gifted the Conservatives the mayor’s seat in order to keep Venstre out.

Despite this, the Conservatives suffered a humiliation in their stronghold of Frederiksberg - a wealthy enclave within Copenhagen with its own council. Up until now, it had been the Conservative’s crown jewel - under their control for 112 years - but a clever campaign, and a strong left vote (including a surge in support for Enhedslisten, which secured second spot with 17.5 percent, ahead of the Social Democrats) gave the area a social democratic mayor for the first time.

Further to the right, a different drama was being played out. The far right populist Danish Peoples Party lost more than half its votes and 133 seats, losing support in every single municipality. The party, which once polled over 20 percent, dropped from 8.7 percent in 2017 to only 4.1 percent, prompting national leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl to announce his resignation and call a special party congress. With internal squabbling and no obvious replacement, and leading figures in the party facing legal and criminal investigations, the party appears to be in a state of deepening crisis.

Even so, perhaps only half of the support lost by the Danish People's Party went to its more extreme rival Nye Borgerlige, in the first serious local challenge between the two. Nye Borgerlige increased its representation by 63 seats, but many disaffected Danish People’s Party voters seem to have stayed home, or lent their support to the Conservatives or Venstre. Some may also have supported the Social Democrats, who have adopted many of the xenophobic immigration and social policies of the far right.

Ultimately, however, the main story remains the bloody lip Danish voters have delivered to the government. Before summer, it looked unassailable, coolly managing the pandemic crisis through sensible lockdown measures and Keynesian supports to workers and business that made life difficult for rivals on both sides. Adopting a far-right position on migration and refugees, it removed the issue as a political threat - breaching the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Denmark was the first signatory, in a cynical move to maintain electoral support.

This overall strategy gave the Social Democrats a powerful position at the very centre of Danish politics, capable of forming majorities to both the right and left. However, it also fed a tendency towards arrogance and overreach reflected in the mishandled mink scandal, the nurses strike, and development projects in Copenhagen. These latest results show that in politics, such moments are fleeting, and change is coming from both a restored conservative right, and from a re-energised radical left, that has a project for change.

Nordic Socialism During and After the COVID-19 Crisis

On 27 May, the Copenhagen-based Democracy in Europe Organisation (DEO), together with the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office, hosted a debate with Pelle Dragsted, former MP for Danish left-wing party Enhedslisten and author of the new book Nordisk socialisme: På vej mod en demokratisk økonomi (‘Nordic Socialism: Towards an economic democracy’).

The past year-and-a-half has been extraordinary. The global coronavirus pandemic has caused millions of deaths and triggered an economic crisis on a scale not seen in generations. 

This crisis has exposed shortcomings in the neoliberal economic model, particularly in areas such as health and social services, as well as in overall economic democracy—weaknesses that could also serve as an opportunity for a more just, socially-oriented recovery. 

The challenge, however, is how the left can use the current crisis to push for the democratisation and redistribution of ownership, and secure greater economic democracy.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

Spain re-opens controversial “Bateragune” case against Basque leaders

On December 14, the Spanish Supreme Court unanimously ordered a re-trial of the contentious 2011 “Bateragune” case against Arnaldo Otegi and other Basque pro-independence leaders, on charges for which they have already served prison sentences. The kafkaesque decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and is a reminder of the entrenched power the political right holds within Spain’s judiciary. The EU has made a great show of condemning breaches of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. Will it ever act on Spain’s abuses?

In 2011, Otegi - now general coordinator of the Basque abertzale (pro-independence) left party EH Bildu - was convicted along with Rafa Díez, Arkaitz Rodríguez, Sonia Jacinto and Miren Zabaleta, of trying to re-launch Batasuna, a political party declared illegal by Spain over links to the armed group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA - “Basque Homeland and Freedom“). They had been arrested in October 2009 during raids on the headquarters of the left-wing pro-independence trade union LAB, and charged with trying to “re-form the leadership of Batasuna on the instructions of ETA".


Otegi has always maintained his innocence concerning what became known as the "Bateragune” case - after the Basque word for “meeting place”. He argued that he and his co-accused were in fact meeting to design a new peace initiative to end the decades-long bloody violence plaguing his homeland. The arrests also brought a huge public response in the Basque Country - four days after the arrests, 50,000 supporters demonstrated for their release - and, despite the arrests, a new Basque peace initiative was indeed announced at a press conference of 100 abertzale left leaders the following month.

The logic of Spain’s charges is even more grotesque when you consider that, more than any other individual, Otegi was responsible for convincing ETA of the need to end their armed campaign. He was key in initiating and guiding the broad democratic discussion among pro-independence political activists that achieved firm popular support for this strategy. World-famous anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu described Otegi as “the leader of the Basque peace process”.


Nonetheless, Otegi and Diez were sentenced to 10 years jail each, while Sonia Jacinto, Arkaitz Rodriguez and Miren Zabaleta received eight years. The Supreme Court later reduced Otegi’s sentence to six and a half years, which he served in Logroño prison before being released in 2016. Meanwhile, ETA declared a unilateral ceasefire in 2010, announced its decommissioning, apologised for the harm it had caused, and by 2018 it had completely dismantled, ending all its activity after a five-decade campaign.

Otegi’s legal team appealed his sentence to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which in November 2018 overturned the original trial for having violated his fundamental rights. In particular, the European court concluded that Article 6.1 of the European Convention had been violated due to the court's lack of impartiality, with at least one judge having made comments indicating a pre-existing prejudice against Otegi. Nonetheless, it still took the Spanish courts almost two whole years to act on the decision of the ECHR, finally annulling the convictions in July this year.

By this time, Otegi and his co-defendants had already served their prison sentences and been released. It was only with the annulment of the trial in Spain, however, that a further part of Otegi’s sentence - imposed after he left prison - was ended, lifting a ban on him from holding public office. Predictably, when the annulment of Otegi’s ban on holding public office came, it did so just three weeks after the Basque Autonomous Community elections. While EH Bildu achieved its best result ever, finishing as the second largest party with 28 percent of the vote, Otegi was unable to stand as a candidate.


When Otegi was arrested in 2009, Basque pro-independence activists condemned it as an attempt to sabotage and undermine political initiatives developed by the Basque pro-independence movement to resolve the ongoing conflict and to strengthen democracy in the Basque Country. Indeed, the arrests were the first step in a five year period of intensified persecution by the Spanish state, not only of pro-independence activists, but of advocates of a Basque peace process in particular.

While Otegi’s credentials as peacemaker are widely recognised, the Spanish state’s policy remains that "everything that surrounds ETA is ETA”. This flawed outlook saturates Madrid’s attitude to the Basque people. In 2016, several Basque youth in the small pro-independence town of Altsasu got into an argument in a bar with two members of Spain’s paramilitary Guardia Civil, in civilian clothes. While video evidence suggests the altercation went no further than heated words, eight youth were charged with “terrorism resulting in injury” and posing a “terrorism threat.” Their families are still fighting to have them freed.

In the Bateragune case, the Spanish prosecutor's office sought a re-trial on the basis that a mere “procedural error” should not lead to Otegi being cleared of the charges. All sixteen judges of the Spanish Supreme Court's criminal chamber apparently agreed, and unanimously ordered the repetition of the trial. Such a decision - to re-hold the trial, after the ECHR has overturned it, and the sentences have already been completed - is unprecedented, and exposes the shameless abuse of the Spanish court system as a weapon against Madrid’s critics.

The decision is a divisive issue even within the traditionally conservative judiciary, with Spain’s National Court recently arguing against a re-trial. The new trial will be held, not only after those accused have already finished their sentences, but also very much after the fact. In reality, Batasuna was never rebuilt, and ETA has lain down arms and long since ceased to exist - precisely because of the efforts of those once again accused of terrorism, and despite the repeated interference of the Spanish state.
 
Why, then, has the Supreme Court decided to re-open the case? One reason is that trials of the Basque independence movement in Spain are never simply legal - they are always political. The persecution of Otegi is not only an infringement of his individual rights, it is also an attack on the Basque movement’s peaceful path towards independence, and a further warning to anyone - Basque, Catalan or otherwise - that in the Spanish state, Madrid’s authority remains absolute.


On this front, at least, it certainly won’t work. Responding to the Supreme Court’s announcement, Otegi accused the courts of wanting to criminalise the leadership of the pro-independence nationalist left, adding “They didn't tame us, they didn't bend us, they won't subdue us! Smile, we shall overcome!”, while Arkaitz Rodríguez pointed out that “12 years after our arrest, after having spent 6 years in jail in an absolutely unfair and illegal way, after a European annulment and without even that organisation already existing, they have decided to try us again for belonging to ETA. Democracy? What democracy?”.

The court’s move could also destabilise the balance of forces in Spain’s fragmented parliament. It comes only days after Otegi's party helped Spain's minority left-wing government approve the Spanish budget on its first reading. Unsurprisingly, then, the political right - apoplectic about what it considers a “social-communist” regime (due to the presence of Podemos and United Left ministers in the coalition) - resoundingly welcomed the court’s decision. The centre-right parties the Popular Party and Citizens reacted with joy, calling for the “full weight of justice” to fall on Arnaldo Otegi and his co-accused, as if they had not served unjust prison terms already.

The extreme right-wing party Vox also celebrated the decision, describing it as a “triumph of justice”, and repeated their demand that EH Bildu be outlawed. Vox considers both the left and independence movements to be threats to the integrity of the Spanish State - the Secretary-General of Vox even acted as a private prosecutor in the Catalan leaders’ trial. This is a view shared by some elements of the Spanish state, and many of these same forces, who yearn for the “order” of the Franco dictatorship, have been at the forefront of the persecution of both the Basque and Catalan independence movements.

The rapid growth of Vox, and its broadening support in organs of the Spanish state - the police and army in particular - is increasingly disturbing. Recent disclosures about Francoist and anti-democratic forces in the Spanish military suggest that ongoing connections exist between the party and elements of Spain’s armed forces, but the details remain - for now - unclear.

Nonetheless, the political-judicial absurdity decreed by the Spanish Supreme Court on Monday should act as a reminder - like the verdicts against the Catalan pro-independence leaders for organising a peaceful referendum, and the police violence on referendum day - that powerful forces in the Spanish state are not interested in democracy. The Spanish state has repeatedly instigated and sought out violence across the Spanish state to conceal its undemocratic nature and to maintain the status quo.

Until Spain's post-Francoist institutions - still teeming with those who would happily wind back the clock on democracy - are truly reformed, and the right to self-determination is genuinely respected, Spain will remain a failed state, where talk of “democracy” and the “rule of law” should only be used in an aspirational sense. For those living in the shadow of Madrid, the hypocrisy of a European Union critical of Poland and Hungary, but silent on Spain, is daily testimony to the failure of Europe to defend fundamental rights from abuses occurring right under its nose.

[Republished at Brave New Europe here: https://braveneweurope.com/duroyan-fertl-spain-re-opens-controversial-bateragune-case-against-basque-leaders]

The Catalan Independence Referendum – Three Years Later

Three years ago, while working in the European Parliament, I travelled from Brussels to Barcelona as part of a large delegation of a parliamentarians, experts, advisors and international observers to witness the October 1, 2017, Catalan Independence Referendum first hand. The experiences of that brief episode are seared on my memory, and the lacklustre international response remains an indelible stain on the European Union’s hypocritical rhetoric of “protecting democracy and the rule of law”.

Read the full article at Brave New Europe.

The Catalan Independence Referendum - three years later

Three years ago, while working in the European Parliament, I traveled from Brussels to Barcelona as part of a large delegation of a parliamentarians, experts, advisors and international observers to witness the October 1, 2017, Catalan Independence Referendum first hand. The experiences of that brief episode are seared on my memory, and the lacklustre international response remains an indelible stain on the European Union’s hypocritical rhetoric of “protecting democracy and the rule of law”.

Lawyers can - and will - debate the legality and constitutionality or otherwise of the referendum itself, and indeed of the acts taken by the Spanish state to prevent it, until they are blue in the face. Nothing Spanish on the ground that day - or those round it - resembled the “defence” of any kind of legality. The muscle of the Spanish state was on open display in ways rarely seen in the years since the end of the Franco dictatorship. The Spanish state - its government, police, courts and paramilitary forces - engaged in a brutal and gratuitous display of force, injuring over one thousand civilians, and treating a whole country like a war zone, and its people as the enemy.

When thousands of Spanish National Police and Guard Civil invaded Catalonia to suppress the vote, many were billeted in a cruise ship in Barcelona harbour, adorned - bizarrely, and to great amusement of the locals - with an enormous image of the cartoon bird Tweety Pie on its side. Catalan twitter went wild with mocking laughter, but while this frivolity never fully evaporated, it was rapidly overshadowed by darker events. The Catalan communications building was occupied and shut down by police, over 140 websites were blocked, newspapers closed down, and events across the Spanish state in support of the vote were banned.

On polling day, in Barcelona and across Catalonia as a whole, the violence was intense and inflicted without mercy - fingers were deliberately broken, women blatantly and violently molested, elderly people pushed down stairs. Schools and other buildings being used as polling centres were smashed to smithereens, pensioners were bashed in the face, computers were stolen, rubber and plastic bullets fired into crowds, with one person losing an eye. I saw grown men in tears, shaking helplessly, at the violence of the Spanish Guardia Civil, a paramilitary shock force deployed against a civilian population who sought only to cast a democratic vote in peace.

At the first polling station I visited in the damp grey of the morning, in Barcelona’s Sant Andreu district, the crowd waiting outside was wary - a large police station lay just around the corner, and word was out that the police were coming. Here, as at the booth outside my apartment, dozens of activists had guarded the local polling centre in the dark and the rain, as police began shutting down booths across Catalonia. Despite their lack of sleep, however, they weren’t about to give up, and every false start led to a surge of people moving to protect the entrance - and their right to vote - from the police. Each time the rumour passed, they returned to an orderly queue.

The website carrying the electoral roll was blocked by the Guardia Civil, delaying voting by an hour, yet the crowd remained. When voting finally did begin, the first in line were the elderly, who had been waiting with us inside. I asked an old lady - 86 years of age and walking with the help of her daughter - if she wasn’t a little concerned about the threat of violence. "I've never seen anything like this since the war”, she said, clearly shaken. While the police violence and terror reminded her of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, she remained crystal clear in her resolve, and straightened her back: “This time we will not let them win!”

The night before the vote, over 100,000 people had gathered in Barcelona in the final rally of the campaign, and the feeling was festive and defiant, if somewhat wary - we all knew that the Madrid government would act, but we weren’t sure how. There were also pro-Spain rallies held across the Spanish state - they were very small in Catalonia, but significantly larger in Madrid - with the mainstream press willfully ignoring the overtly Francoist songs and the fascist salutes, and the Spanish National Police tweeting their full support.

The overnight mobilisations to protect the polling stations had also faced challenges, with some people being shot at with ball bearings. But they also showcased the humour and inventiveness of the Catalans. In the outer Barcelona suburb of Vallvidrera, 400 locals gathered to prevent the closure of their civic centre, the only polling station in the area, by conducting a 24-hour table-tennis tournament. The sound of helicopters came and went overhead, and, even with the rain, it was difficult to sleep.

In this maelstrom of violence and terror, however, I experienced something else, something powerful, firm and dignified. Everywhere I went on polling day, I was awestruck at the strength and dignity of the thousands who were coming out to vote, even in the knowledge that police violence was all but inevitable. Despite the violence - or perhaps because of it, and the shock it inevitably brings - their resolve had been hardened into something beautiful. “The streets will always be ours!”, they chanted, young and old. “We will vote!” Triumphant, insistent, restrained yet determined.

In the heart of Barcelona, in the heart of #Catalunya, the people will vote!!!! #votarem #referendumCAT #catalanreferendum #DiemSí #1O #1Oct pic.twitter.com/CVcsDqzIN0

— Duroyan Fertl (@dfertl) October 1, 2017

The people responded to the presence of international observers and guests with an overwhelming outpouring of love, gratitude and passion, that often left us lost for words as we traversed the wet streets. As polling booths were closed down, one by one, people gathered around those still open, determined to keep the police (uniformed and undercover) away and let voters in until closing time. As I stood inside the last booth in Barcelona to close, observing the counting finally get underway, the crowds stayed outside singing and chanting, their slogan changed now to “we have voted!” Firm. Clear. Defiant. As was the result.

In the days, weeks, months, and now years that have followed, more details have been revealed about the tenacity of those organising the referendum, including the daring networks of activists who smuggled the ballot boxes and papers into the country and distributed them in the early hours of the morning. The mask of democracy slipped from the face of the Spanish state that day too, and in the suspension of Catalan democracy that followed, revealing to the world what many already knew - that Franco’s ghost still lives on in the very marrow of the country called “Spain”.

In the face of such violence, such breaches of democratic and civic norms, many expected the European Union to act swiftly. Surely there must be consequences. If these crimes were to happen outside the EU - as indeed they do - they would be, rightly, condemned. But where the EU has puffed up its chest in indignation about the likes of Belarus or Poland, on Catalonia it has remained steadfastly silent.

Worse, the cosy consensus has deepened. In the years since the referendum, while the EU has accepted the presence of the exiled Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín in the European Parliament, it has also gifted the coveted position of EU High Commissioner on Foreign Affairs to one of the leading - if sometimes bizarrely incoherent - opponents of Catalan independence, Josep Borell, and Spain’s influence in Brussels remains firmer than it has been for years.

The leaders of the “European project” wring their hands ostentatiously about using Article 7 of the EU Treaty to address the very real threats to the rule of law and democracy in Poland and Hungary, yet Spain remains - in its own, repeated, insistent, and often far too shrill, words - a “model democracy”. This, while civil society leaders and politicians remain imprisoned on ridiculous charges for outrageously long jail terms, and others live in exile in Scotland, Switzerland and Belgium.

It must be admitted that the role of the Catalan pro-independence parties has not been perfect either. The revelation that Puigdemont and others genuinely thought they could force the Spanish government to the negotiating table was somewhat astounding, while the greatest weakness of the Catalan movement remains the lack of a clear, unified, strategy for success. As time passes, too, political differences between parties of the left and right, and between former colleagues, also cause frictions that only Spanish oppression can smooth over.

Fortunately, the arrogance of the Spanish state springs eternal, and it continues to attack the Catalan government like a wounded bull. The Spanish Supreme Court’s recent ruling - effectively removing Quim Torra as president of Catalonia for hanging a banner in support of the political prisoners and exiles - is only the latest act of self-harm by the Spanish unionists, and we can be certain it is not the last. Short of a disaster, the upcoming elections should provide a further democratic mandate to the independence movement.

Both within the Spanish state, and more widely, however, the left also suffers a partial blindness on the Catalan issue. Many have reduced it to a question of “mere” nationalism, that distracts from vital social and class struggles that extend beyond Catalonia - and indeed beyond the Spanish state. The leading role in the Catalan struggle played by some liberal and clearly pro-capitalist forces, not all of them with the cleanest or most progressive track records, is used to further justify a position of abstention on the issue - if not downright opposition.

Yet this is to ignore the nature of a national democratic revolution, the progressive origins of the revival in support for Catalan independence, and the implications that its denial have had on the political dynamic. The tension that has built up around the Catalan issue over the past decade - and the past three years especially - now constitutes a serious threat to the Spanish state, with its inbuilt systemic corruption, Francoist skeletons and shallow democratic veneer. It ought to be clear by now that the transition from the dictatorship was never truly completed, and the same old forces still rule in the courts and the corridors of power. To break their stranglehold over even one part of the state would be a great victory indeed.

This is not to say there are no dangers, nor that they should be ignored. The right wing recognises the threat Catalan independence poses, and the recent rise of Vox cannot be entirely separated from the failure of the Spanish left to harness the democratic fervour of the Catalan process for deeper political change in the Spanish state. For this the Spanish left can not be entirely blamed - the creation of popular animosity to Catalan independence across the Spanish state by the media and government alike has poisoned the chalice badly - but they haven't tried too hard either.

Yet the Catalan reality refuses to just go away, posing parts of the left a particular challenge - one that it has failed so far to come to terms with. After joining the centre-left PSOE in government, the radical left Unidas Podemos - which already held ambiguous views on the referendum - has become a defender of the unity of the Spanish state, largely ignoring this key battle for democracy within its borders. Such a position is difficult to maintain in the long run for a party of the left.

This contradiction will need to be resolved, or it will resolve itself - and not necessarily as we might wish it. While political parties in Barcelona and Madrid engage in political games, support for independence continues to grow, and cannot be denied for long. But the shadow of the right is growing as well, and across Europe and the world, a battle looms for the defence of democracy. If those that call themselves left do not side with democracy, others will seek to steal their clothes.