Date Posted:Sat, Jun 14 2008, 19:57:32 PDT Author:baslamak Subject: Irish No vote is not against the European Union: but a rejection of its current direction.
SATURDAY, 14 JUNE 2008
If any one doubts that the Irish working classes have been at the fore in their opposition to the Lisbon Treaty, they need only look at how adjoining constituencies in Dublin voted. Dublin South - mainly middle-class - 62.9% Yes, 37.1% No, Dublin South-West - which has a majority of working-class people voted 65.1%- No, 34.9%-Yes
It is hardly surprising that on this issue there is such a clear class divide, for unlike a section of the middle classes who still have their snouts in the EU gravy train, although how much longer this will last is any ones guess. The Irish working classes have gained least over the last few years from EU membership and in the main are firmly set against the privatization and neo liberal economics and globalization that are enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty; and which is designed to trump and replace the social Europe that would have benefited a majority of EU citizens and not just Capital and the economically rich minority.
