Red Statement: Contractors, Bus Companies, Farmers Revolt Over Fuel, We Need A Worker Revolt!

The fuel blockades of the last few days have caught the whole country’s attention. Agricultural contractors, private bus companies, hauliers and farmers have shut down Dublin and blocked the entrances to many fuel depots across the country.

While the self employed, small businesses and farmers revolt, workers are left watching from the sidelines as our organisations sit on their hands. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has 800,000 members and yet has called no actions on fuel or on the cost of living.

This failure to stand up for workers leaves angry workers with no choice but to applaud the actions of other classes as they revolt over fuel hikes. Many workers will be asking where’s our revolt? Who’s standing up for our class?

We should be clear who’s leading the current fuel protests.

Dave Mulcahy one of the spokespersons is managing director of Mulcahy Agri Services Ltd, Sean Collins another leader is part of the Daly Agri team – a company contracted in 2025 for the Cork City Meadow Enhancement Project.

James Geoghegan is another Agri contractor and runs a small company called Agriknives. He also has a company that imports and distributes creosote fencing materials. Private bus company Mc Gettigan Travel made an appeal for other transport operators to join them in blocking Dublin.

Many of the people blocking Dublin City, fuel depots and roads are employers. This is a revolt of small businesses against the big bosses and the puppet government in the Dáil. The class basis of the movement is made up of people who are the former grassroots of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have always put the interests of the billionaires like Larry Goodman above the interests not only of workers but of small farmers and contractors too. The big bosses will always use the state to turn every crisis in their favour. The government will even threaten militant protests with the army to get people to accept the rule of the billionaires.

In some cases small businesses and farmers have broken with the establishment parties but moved further right. Spokesman James Geoghegan for example shares conspiracy theories and far right content 24/7 on his facebook page. It’s in the nature of revolts by the classes that sit between workers and the big bosses that they’ll be confused because they’ve one foot in each camp.

What are they demanding?

Firstly, the suspension of the carbon tax. That’s something every worker can get behind as the carbon tax is a regressive tax that punishes workers for the crimes of big corporations. Make the corporations pay, not workers.

Secondly, they want a cap on fuel prices. Socialists have been calling for caps on rent, food and energy costs. But if the government forces down prices the big corporations will demand subsidies for their losses which the government will only be too glad to hand over.

Workers want higher wages to deal with rising rents and energy costs but the small employers would never call for that as many hire labour themselves and class us workers as one of their costs. That’s why workers need to shut the country down in our interests, for demands that favour our own class.

A motorway blockade can eventually be moved by state forces. Workers are on the inside of the economy and can shut down production from within. We have all the power in our hands but we rarely get to use it.

You see parties like Labour use control over the unions to keep them out of the fight, leaving workers with no other option but to applaud the militancy of other classes from the sidelines. The cost of living crisis is escalating because of the actions of that idiot Trump, the profiteering by big companies and the greed of landlords.

Every crisis will see the rich use the state to act in their favour.

That’s why we also need to start talking about who actually controls the economy. Governments operate in the interests of big corporations and they will always stab small businesses and farmers in the back. If the working class was in the driving seat of a planned economy then the impacts of external shocks like a war would not be forced onto the backs of workers or onto small farmers.

The problem for many of those protesting at the moment is their pro-capitalist ideas means the only real and stable alternative to capitalism is ruled out for them. They think electing different capitalist politicians, independent snakes or even in some cases the far right would change anything?

It’d be the same old system with scapegoating to cover up when things inevitably went wrong.

They need to throw off prejudices against socialism and realise a real democratic socialist economy is the only way out of a world of crisis. The working class in the driving seat is the only real stability on offer.

To get this workers need to rise but we are always fighting with one hand tied behind our backs as long as Labour and a stale bureaucracy govern all our unions. In the short term we need to demand mass protests on the cost of living and on housing. We also need to do the hard work of building a network of revolutionary workers across every major union to force them to fight in our interests.

Only then can workers build a revolt the capitalist state can never contain.