Tomás Ó Flatharta

The Left Unity Blogging Network has this post today:

comment on wall from H. Silke : “Not one but two different component parts of the ULA organised public meetings clashing with the ULA’s Dublin city branch meeting (at the same time and place). Hardly driving confidence in joined up thinking never mind revolution? :-/”

and asks, “Can anyone shed any light on the matter?”

Well yes, and it all sheds light on the Babel that is the ULA and the need concentrate on the ULA as an organisation. Last night the Dublin Central Branch held its (well attended) monthly meeting in the Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin. I was astonished to see posters in town for a Socialist Party public meeting at the same time in the Teachers Club on the Fiscal Treaty. Wait, we have a troika of our own.  Socialst Democracy, an informal component of the ULA, had a public meeting at the same time in the Teachers Club,  with Conor McCabe speaking on the economy. This seems to have been reasonably well-attended too.

Now all three meetings were very worthy of attention and attendance. And no doubt it was all the kind of mix up that we all do on occasion, and was no disrespect to the Dublin Central ULA trying to gather all ULA members and sympathisers in the area for a Branch meeting. But it was also a symptom of disengagement by the components from the ULA itself,  of everybody doing their own thing and of little reference into the organisation and schedules of the ULA. And, all three meetings could have been held under the banner of the ULA, and why not. And all three may even have been combined in some way, to cut down on all the subdivision of action and multiplication of energy that is a feature of the left – and the broad social response to austerity too – at the moment.

Des Derwin