The Irish government has organized an Arms Fair at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. The keynote address is given by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney. Bizarrely, the theme of the event is ‘Building the Ecosystem’. You could not get a more hypocritical nod to the language about protecting the environment.
The Arms Fair shows that the political establishment is now openly supporting an industry that creates death and destruction. Coveney has previously invited the CEO of Thales, the biggest arms manufacturer on the island of Ireland, to address a meeting to introduce small businesses and Third Level Institutions in the Republic to Arms manufacturers.
This is what the moves to erode and remove Irish neutrality really mean. Coveney, Martin and Varadkar want to sign this country up to an Anglo-American imperialist alliance. They want to send Irish troops into an EU army that will cooperate closely with NATO.
And they see huge profits in this project for their rich friends.
In the last Dáil, Fine Gael pushed through a measure to sign Ireland up to an EU-sponsored Permanent Structured Co-operation (PESCO) agreement.
This committed the country to raise its military spending to 2% of GDP. That involves a five-fold increase in military spending.
At a time when we are facing a housing crisis, this is simply obscene. Homeless people are languishing in the streets because there is not enough accommodation. Thousands are waiting for a decade or more for a council house.
Yet this government wants to spend our taxes on weaponry and missiles to ensure their rich friends make profits. The CEO of corporations like Thales will never risk their lives on the battlefields. Their sons and daughters will probably never be present.
But they want working-class men and women to fight their gory wars so that they can profit from arms sales.
The best way we can resist all this is to build up a huge movement to defend Irish neutrality. This is why we are urging you to attend the first gathering of the Irish Neutrality League which takes place on October 15th.
