Lexit: The socialist case for voting Leave

The European Union is undemocratic and irreformable. On June 23 the Workers Party will be calling for a vote to Leave.

However, our position is not the same as the narrow right wing approach of the mainstream Brexit camapign. Ours is a principled socialist case for leaving the European Union. Our campaign is a  Left Vote to Leave – Lexit.

The European Union at present has 30 million unemployed and a similar number of under-employed. More than 127 million people are condemned to a life of poverty.

Two further examples demonstrate the EU’s reactionary and anti-working class agenda.

The EU and its institutions imposed the harshest discipline on those  members  states that sought debt relief in the wake of the 2008 capitalist crisis forcing an unrelenting austerity agenda on the working people and poor of Europe.

Recently we  witnessed closed borders and the inhumane treatment of thousands of refugees fleeing the effects of foreign intervention in their countries. Any pretence of a caring European Union has been exposed.

In the forthcoming  referendum, the US government, NATO, the multinational corporations, the banks and financial institutions, the IMF and World Bank, the rich and the powerful and the European bureaucracy are urging us to remain within the European Union. They do so because that is in their interests.

The Workers Party urges workers to vote in the interests of their class. For a principled, socialist Lexit – Vote Leave on 23 June

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Public Meeting: The Workers Party will be holding a public meeting in support of the Lexit Campaign in the coming weeks. Details to follow

Read the Workers Party statement in full: 

LEXIT – the socialist case for voting Leave

‘There will never be justification for gun law, criminality and murder’ – Gemma Weir

The Workers Party in Belfast has  organised a public protest meeting against recent murders and maimings  in the city.

The meeting was prompted by the  murder of Dan Murray just several hundred yards away from the site of the meeting, but also reflected the  growing public anger and resilience in the face of eleven serious armed attacks across Belfast in the past six months in which four people were murdered and several others, including a seventeen year old boy, seriously wounded.

Chairing the  protest Conor Campbell said, “It is important that the community publicly displays its resilience in the face of these attacks and demonstrates its refusal to accept the rule of armed gangs across the city’

Party representatives Gemma Weir and Joanne Lowry also addressed the meeting

Gemma Weir (North Belfast) said , ‘ I am here tonight to tell you – there is no justification whatsoever for murder on our streets. There was no justification in the past, there is no justification now. There will never be justification for gun law, criminality and murder.

This cannot go on. We cannot allow it to continue. Right across Belfast we have to respond as a community. We all have to stand up and say No to murder, No to attempted Murder and No to maiming’.

Joanne Lowry ( West Belfast) challenged those responsible and those who support them to explain themselves.

‘We can’t bring back the people they have murdered. We can’t un-shoot the people they have shot. Be we sure as hell can stand up to them and make sure that that they have murdered their last victim and crippled their last teenager’, she said.

‘West Belfast was blighted by these type of attacks for almost thirty years. Yet eighteen years after the Good Friday Agreement we not only have murder on our streets but we have the remains of a culture which supports and justifies it.’, Joanne added

‘It’s not just the gunmen and the thugs that we need to confront. There are also people who support them. They have to be held to account too. I am challenging them to explain themselves and their actions to this is community’,  Joanne concluded

The meeting was also addressed by SDLP and Sinn Fein MLAs

Anyone with information about the murder of Dan Murray, or any of the other recent shootings, get in touch with the PSNI directly at Grosvenor Road PSNI Station or by using the Crimestoppers number 0800 555 111

Protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice  in Belfast yesterday

Party members have attended the demonstration organised by the ‘Northern Ireland Says No to Animal Cruelty‘ group demanding that sentencing guidelines be changed so that tougher penalties are imposed on those convicted of animal cruelty offences.

The Workers Party opposes the cruelty and suffering of animals bred in so called puppy and kitten farms and is calling for an end to this outrageous practice.

We also support tighter regulation and registration of breeding establishments, rigorous enforcement procedures and tougher sentences for those who abuse and neglect animals.

We also condemn the barbaric practices of “badger baiting” and hunting with dogs, the commercial mass production of animals in a manner which causes suffering and the abuse of animals by large commercial companies which put profits before animal welfare.

The Party supports the promotion of the “Five Freedoms” adopted by the World Organisation for Animal Health and national societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.