Creating Legends

Ireland has a rich history of community and cooperation. Once ruled by strong clans, neighbourly trust and shared work. The land fed the people, and wealth stayed in the community. Trade routes through Europe and beyond brought prosperity and culture from all over the world.

If we cast our eye back over the history of Ireland we can see that as far back as Newgrange 3200 BC, the Irish people were cooperating labour in large numbers to erect not only a wonder in the sense of it's engineering feat for the time but also a wonder in it's obvious alignment with the solar calendar and knowledge of astronomy.

That's over 5000 years ago and what it can show us today is that even way back then a community was formed, farming labour cooperations no doubt lead to surplus and that surplus lead to shared knowledge and skills which was used to create something so monumental that it still stands today.

From scattered ruins to myths, poetry to music, craft to art, the Irish people were cooperating together to generate the Irish culture we inherit today. The time period from 3200 BC to 1600 AD was the time of Legends. A time when battles were fought, invasions were repelled, and the spirit of cooperation thrived.

An End to Community Ownership

During the invasions and plantations of the 1600s, the Irish lost control of their land and economy. A long history of exploitation by the British empire followed but let's not forget at the same time the British ruling class were exploiting the Irish, they were also exploiting their own British working-class.

Some Irish men turned from Chiefs and Kings to Lords and Dukes. Common men became tenants and laborers, losing their status and power. A profit driven class system evolved and a dark age of exploitation began.

• 3600 BC

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  1600 AD

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  1800 AD

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Rediscovering Community Cooperation

In Ralahine 1830s, farm workers from Co. Clare somehow convinced their landlord to agree to a radical idea to work as a cooperative community, share the profits and responsibilities, own the tools, not just rent them, and provide free meals, education and care to youth of the community.

Investing in capital as a community the workers seemed to have cracked the code or maybe unknowingly rediscovered the ways of the past.

"This machine of ours is one of the first machines ever given to the working classes to lighten their labour, and at the same time increase their comforts. It does not benefit any one person among us exclusively, nor throw any individual out of employment. Any kind of machinery used for shortening labour except used in a co-operative society like ours must tend to lessen wages, and to deprive working men of employment, and finally either to starve them, force them into some other employment (and then reduce wages in that also) or compel them to emigrate. Now, if the working classes would cordially and peacefully unite to adopt our system, no power or party could prevent their success."

Feeling the utter joy in their words as they urge their fellow Co. Clare labour workers to "cordially and peacefully unite to adopt our system, no power or no party could prevent their success" makes my heart want to leap out of my chest. Like the first farmers discovering their surplus, these workers understood the power of cooperation and community ownership. They had found the solution and wanted all of Co. Clare to join them.

How have we forgotten or choose to ignore this solution today? How have we far surpassed the technology of the 1830s reaper machine they boasted about, but still lag behind in this basic solution we have rediscovered over and over again?

We are but Commodities

Of course this could not be tolerated by the ruling class and within 10 years the potato blight and famine would destroy this and any surrounding efforts to gain control of the land and the economy. The Great Irish Famine was a rolled up newspaper to the nose of the Irish working class, a warning to never try to take control of the economy again. Have no doubt, there was plenty of other food in Ireland, it was just not for the Irish lower-class people. Coincidence or not between the timing of the Ralahine cooperative in 1830s and the Great Famine starting to unfold in 1845, this short lived experiment could not be allowed to spread and reduce the power of the ruling class.

The working-class worked the land, the working-class built the structures, the working-class made the products but could not own them. As the commoner starved their landlords both Irish and British were exporting the fruits of the peoples labour overseas to be sold for profit.

• 3600 BC

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  1600 AD

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  1900 AD

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A Free State?

And so we enter the 1900s, an Irish people long stripped of their land, their culture, their language, and their economy. The time had come to finally reclaim Ireland. The 1916 Rising was a call to arms, a call to take back our land, our culture, our language, and our economy.

James Connolly before being matyred by the British Empire had warned us:

"If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you through her capitalists, landlords and financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individual institutions she has planted in this country."

The empire's flag came down, but its system stayed and new ones moved in. The Irish working-class were left with nothing but their labour remaining to sell.

When will we realise that for there to be a rich man there must be a poor man also?

• 3600 BC

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  1600 AD

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  2025 AD

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Capital our Idol

Foreign companies took control of our government. Banks laid hold of our money, our homes, our businesses, and our lives. Trade unions, turned from our shield and sword to now capping wages at GDP growth rates and other nonsense instead of raising them, let alone fighting for working-class capital. The EU now writes the rules for our economy from far away in Brussels.

Why has the bakery, the butcher, the grocer, electronics store, the hardware store, fish mongers and all other local businesses been allowed to be replaced by a single soulless big retail shop that pays its workers the bare minimum?

We spend our wages in the big retailers who may sponsor local sports teams and events but have been hoovering up all the communities businesses for years. We spend our wages in foreign companies so they can funnel the profits back to their shareholders overseas. Just enough gadgets to keep us happy, just enough food to keep us from starving, just about surviving.

Why is our economy so rigged, as to always keep the working-class just surviving?

Financial Torture

We thread each wage just on the edge of survival, always paying off the debt of the past and being made to be afraid of the debt of the future. Each wage paid to the working-class is just enough to get by, just enough to pay the rent, just enough to pay the bills. Just enough to keep us from marching in our millions and taking back what is rightfully ours.

Sadly we have lost countless Men and Women throughout the years to suicide, depression, and addiction. Each caused by the stress and strain of living under constant financial pressure leading to family breakdown and ultimately community disintegration. Instead of giving our youth debt from birth how about we give them grace and life instead?

The pain and suffering of our homeless and unemployed is horrific. To the ones of you who would say, that people on the dole have it easy, I beg you to reconsider. I beg you to consider giving up your dignity, social status, and financial security. At what point did the people on the dole realise they were never going to make it out of the council estate? At what point do our youth just give up and accept that their fate is going to be life on the dole?

I'll tell you, it's the moment the teacher tells them they are not smart enough to go to college because they don't fit the system, the moment the bank manager tells them they are not good enough to get a mortgage, it's the moment the Garda tells them they are not welcome in the town centre, it's the moment our society says there is no place for you here.

The dream we say to strive for is the life our great working-class Men and Women of our modern era, who now commute 40 minutes to a foreign owned factory in the morning, work 8 to 12 hours only to return home exhausted at night. But alas this way of life is but a nightmare for most and with the reality that houses are now out of reach for the average working-class family, the dream of a happy home and life from one wage is now just a pipe dream.

How are these Men and Women supposed to have time to guide and nurture the next generation while being financially tortured under our current system of debt?

A Sham Economy?

Ireland's middle-class is built on sand. Many of our good jobs come from foreign companies who set up here for cheap tax and easy profit — not out of loyalty to our people. These jobs look solid, but they can vanish the moment a boardroom abroad changes its mind and worryingly around 60% of our GDP is through foreign owned companies. When this does happen, towns lose wages, middle-class drop down to working-class, and working-class families are left scrambling. Only when we own and control our own industries can we have security that no outsider can take away. We must stop foreign wars/companies/markets from having a direct impact on our local economy.

We have been burnt not long ago by the Celtic Tiger, a time when the Irish people were told to borrow and spend, only to be left with a mountain of debt. Failing mortgage loans were packed up in a nice box and sold to the working-class pension funds as safe investments, knowing full well they would never face the consequences. The banks and the government profited, while the people were left to pick up the pieces and pay off the debt for years to come. The world was forced into a recession created by the wealthy but suffered by the working-class.

There Is Only One Truth

I may be a soft touch but I do dream of a time when people created surplus and with that surplus lifted the people beyond just surviving. That the people could ensure the new found free time was used to create art, culture, and teachings. The things of real value which echo to us from the past.

The working-class are not poor because they are lazy or stupid, they are poor because the system was built to keep them that way. For centuries, wealth and power have flowed upward while scraps are thrown down to keep us quiet. Now, with the tools of this new age in our hands, we can break that chain. Whether we create new cooperatives or return to the old, whatever way you want to view it, we must do this together as a united people of common sense. We must take control of our economy, our communities, and our lives.

There is only one truth, we created surplus thousands of years ago, it is time to stop lying and making excuses, it's time to start replenishing our communities with the benefits of our cooperative community labour.