RTÉ - An Establishment Mouthpiece

RTÉ was established a century ago, on the 1st of January 1926, the precursor to RTÉ, then called 2RN, delivered the fledgling new Irish state’s first public radio transmission.

As we all know, the Irish rich came out on top after the civil war. These wealthy counter-revolutionary forces wanted to increase the influence of conservative Catholic religious nationalism and hold the Irish people down.

Since its inception RTÉ has played a huge part since to kick down on the Irish working class, with women bearing the brunt of the counter-revolutionary backlash.

The Marriage Bar was brought in 1924 to ‘retire’ married women out of the public sector and it was later extended to primary school teachers who became pregnant. The state wanted to force women out of the workforce.

RTE offered little ‘checks and balances’ when reporting on this and allowed a Cork Bishop by the name of Cornelius Lucey to defend this institutionalised discrimination against women workers by making the following disgraceful statement: “more women at work means more men out of work and a deterrent to marriage.”

Fianna Fáil promised change in the early 1930s but Ministers like Sean Lemass agreed with such backward views by bringing in the 1936 Conditions of Employment Act that further prohibited women from doing shift work.

It’s not just RTE being the megaphone for the Bishops and successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments, but look at RTEs attitude to the 1916 Rising with the eighth-part series TV production called, ‘Insurrection’.

A boring, middle class academic storyline depicted the rebels (mostly unionised/Irish Citizens Army workers) as an inferior, lumpen, uneducated blood thirsty minority rabble that needed to be led by intellectuals like Pearse & O’Neill and presented the British Aristocracy as caring, responsibile rulers who were up against the unruly James Connolly and his fellow working class Irish Citizens Army.

Up to the RTEs 100th birthday the public broadcaster still acts as the anti-union/pro-establisment voice for the Irish rich like Denis O’Brien and Michael O’Leary with the latter being given airtime to moan about school teachers and attack miniscule pay increases.

During every strike RTÉ gives bosses airtime to counter the workers, during the water charges they misrepresented protesters views. While RTÉ journalists occassionally expose a political scandal this is always done in a way that ultimately protects the system as a whole by pointing to a few bad apples.

RTÉ has jumped feet first into the neoliberal age with productions outsourced to private production companies who set up fronts and shell companies so they can pay workers little or nothing and workers have no comeback. Not to mention the disparity in pay between the tops at RTÉ and those workers who are still directly employed by the state broadcaster.

RTÉ will never amplify the cost of living concerns of low income security officers/retail workers or the anxiety of tenants living in mould and rat infested flat complexes (like Constitution Hill to Oliver Bond) who are facing rent hikes as of April 6th.

We need a state broadcaster. Private TV is under the control of monsters like Rupert Murdoch and his like. But state TV and radio have to be under the control of the people, serve the people.

The only way we can make a state broadcaster our national megaphone is when organised workers are in control not just of the ariwaves but in the driving seat of a planned economy, a 32 county socialist repubic. And if you agree then why don’t you join us be part of the working class rebellion?