Heather Humphreys Is Showing Her True Face

Catherine Connolly is a social democrat. This means that she is absolutely committed to the so-called rule of law under capitalism and to the limited democracy of the parliamentary and electoral system.

But it also means that she is aware of the suffering, inequality and injustices of capitalism. Within the limits of this system, she has fought to make life better for the poorest, most marginalised and oppressed people.

So, even though she is no threat to the system itself, Catherine Connollly genuinely wants to make life better for working class people.

Heather Humphries is also committed to the so-called rule of law and defends the limited parliamentary democracy on offer under capitalism. However, if Humphreys is in any way aware of the suffering, inequality and injustices of the economic system, her life’s work in politics shows a woman fanatically committed to the interests of the privileged and the wealthy.

She genuinely wants to make things worse for working class people.

She is a member of Fine Gael - the party of parasite landlords, greedy bosses, big farmers and higher professionals. She has voted to pass every pro-landlord, anti-worker measure - that has seen homelessness quadruple.

She tried to force mild and moderately disabled people to work and to reduce their payments - just like the cruel Tories did in Britain.

Humphreys has the arrogance and complacency of her class. She is a big farmer who hoards residential properties. On the centenary of the 1916 Rising she published a video that celebrated Bono and the Queen of England and later she joined a Fine Gael Chorus praising the Royal Irish Constabulary!

Humphreys is not alone. In fact, she has an army behind her. Every journalist from the mainstream media, almost without exception has taken to the battlefield to smear Catherine Connolly and softsoap Heather Humphreys.

The electoral campaign conducted by Heather Humphries and her cabal of reactionary propagandists has been vicious, scurrilous and offensive to the values of any right thinking person. Lies. Innuendo. Character assassination by association. These are the tools of a losing campaign. These are the methods of a rotten system.

Connolly will probably win this election. In all this, there is a lesson. To repeat: Catherine Connolly is a social democrat, she’s not a revolutionary. But look at the coordinated attack.

Can you imagine the viciousness and violence of the response if the economic system that wrecks the lives of working class people was really challenged by a more humane and dignified alternative?

If they act like this when faced with mild mannered former Labour Party Mayor from Galway - imagine how they’d respond to a mass movement of working class people striking and protesting for a real alternative system?

We’ve seen glimpses of it when the Guards manhandled the striking Debenhams workers or pepper sprayed Palestine solidarity activists. They will use every dirty trick in the book to stop us.

Catherine Connolly will not overthrow this rotten system. In any case, the Irish President has no power. But her campaign can give people hope if it’s followed through with mobilisation by the wider left on the issues that matter to working class people. If you raise expectations you’d better take that raised hope somewhere.

There really is no contest who to vote for on 24th October. Humphreys has nothing to offer so she smears and heckles. A vote for Humphreys is a vote for the cruelty, grubbiness and contempt for the vulnerable that is in the DNA of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

The real struggle is for us working class people to protest, strike, organise and fight for an economic system that is run by and for our own class. Catherine is not offering that. Social Democracy can never deliver that. That’d take a revolution.

But she has smoked out our enemy and given us a lesson in how they operate when their power and privelege is questioned.