Hands off Venezuela invited to the Connolly Festival in Ireland
- 05 March 2008
The Connolly Festival is one of the two main annual events that Labour Youth organises in Ireland in order to bring up the political level of its members and sympathisers. The other annual event is the Tom Johnson summer school, more focused on Labour party policies.
This year the Connolly Festival took place on the 22nd and 23rd of February. It included sessions with guest speakers on the US elections and the role of the democrats, the "shock doctrine" and alternatives to privatisations and disaster capitalism, alternatives within the student movement in Ireland, and the model for change that Venezuela represents.
Around 35 people mainly from Labour Youth attended the session about Venezuela on Saturday afternoon. Maggie Ronayne (Global Women's strike), Patrick Nulty (former chair of Labour Youth), and Darrall Cozens (Hands off Venezuela) made up the panel.
The three speakers agreed that the revolutionary political process taking place in Venezuela has contributed to improving the living standards for the majority of people, and has a deeply democratic nature. They particularly pointed at the organs of popular power as the way forward. Maggie Ronayne, for example, said that women are a majority in the Missions and that grassroots women lead the engine of the revolution. She also warned that the enemy of the revolution is not just neoliberalism, but the enemy from within such as union and government bureaucrats who rather represent their personal interests.
Darral Cozens also warned that the Bolivarian revolution is in danger due to the resistance of the old state bureaucracy that the Bolivarian republic inherited from the past but also due to the scarcity of basic products that capitalist producers have artificially created by hoarding and withdrawing products from the market. He mentioned the increasing appeals of workers and peasants to Chavez to nationalise under workers control the strategic sectors of the economy as the only way forward.
A lively debate followed the presentations of the speakers. The audience showed an enthusiastic support to the Venezuelan revolution. Patrick Nulty said that Venezuela was an example for the rest of the world and closed the meeting by encouraging everyone to support the Hands off Venezuela Campaign.
On the 26th of February, Labour Youth organized another talk about "Venezuela and the South American Revolution". This time it was in Galway, where Francesco Merli, from Hands off Venezuela, addressed an audience of around 15 people.
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