I joined the Socialist Party because listening to the party’s ideas I realised there was an organisation planning to act in a radical way to shift economic power away from the few born with it and towards the working people who create it.
I could go into the reasons as to how I’m effected by the blunt edge of capitalism on a daily basis- I’m a solo mum with three children, a mortgage with massive negative equity, I’m a survivor of domestic abuse, I’m a mature student who’s grant has been savaged, I’m locked out of the job market due to the privatisation policy in care where graduates in my field earn little more than minimum wage on insecure contracts and no predictability- but I won’t!
What angers me into action is the short sightedness of the establishment when cutting services and the blatant way they act against the interests of the majority. When they cut services to disabled children and their carers they are storing up social dependency for the future. When they remove financial support for people to undertake masters programmes they restrict education not to students who have a capability and dedication to their field but to those who can afford it.
On a one day survey in 2010 before the cuts really started to bite 18 women and their children could not be accepted to refuge accommodation. This week five SIPTU members in Amber Kilkenny Refuge were sacked with no consultation. Also in this week’s news a District Court judge berated women who withdraw complaints of violence against intimate partners without considering what may have occurred in the often long period between the violence and the court appearance. This, for me highlights the disconnect between the lived experience of working class people and the privileged law makers and enforcers. Every injustice needs to be resisted and that’s why I’m a socialist.
