Socialist Party European launch: The Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins, has claimed that the Government must bear some responsibility for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
At the start of his campaign yesterday, Mr Higgins predicted that many of the 100,000 people who marched against the war in Iraq in February would support him in the election. "This time the Government cannot brush aside their protest," says the party's election literature.
Mr Higgins is campaigning with an anti-capitalist message in opposition to "neo-liberal attacks on European workers' rights".
He said at a press conference that he would contest the next general election even if elected to the European Parliament.
Mr Higgins predicted he would be returned to the Dáil and said he would stand down from the European Parliament and pass his seat to one of five Socialist Party substitutes.
The Socialist Party is characterising the European and local elections as an opportunity to pass judgment on the "privatisation agenda" of the Government, its taxation policy and its policy on the war in Iraq.
Mr Higgins said the Government had a culpability "even for the extreme horror" in the Iraq prisons and went on draw parallels between the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 and the provision of landing and refuelling facilities to the US at Shannon Airport.
"Yesterday we commemorated the tragic explosions of 30 years ago in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings," he said.
"If a petrol station along the Border, let's say, fuelled or refuelled the vehicles that were travelling south to create that mayhem and knew what they were coming to do, would anybody seriously say those people had a defence saying they really didn't assist? That's what Bertie Ahern and the Government are saying with regard to Shannon."
Mr Higgins received 10,619 first-preference votes in the 1999 European election, but his profile has increased significantly since then, particularly during the anti-bin-tax campaign.
While stating that he would spend some €15,000 on his campaign, he declined to specify where his supporters should transfer their votes in the event of his elimination from the poll.
"We stand for a democratic socialist Europe where the services and the key wealth-producing sectors are democratically owned, controlled and run for the benefit of working people in society," he said.
"All over Europe the key institutions of the EU are pushing an agenda of privatisation of public services, attacks on workers' rights, pension rights particularly, and a strategy of militarisation. Millions of workers have been mobilising against this over the last two years."
Mr Higgins published a document which said the pressure to privatise public services was coming from the EU.
"Huge profits that properly belong to the Irish people are going into private hands instead of being invested in public infrastructure and services," it said.
"We want high-quality public services developed in Europe, with proper wages and conditions for workers delivering them."
