Part Four

The best tactics to fight against non-collection

When the legal cases taken by Con O’Connell and Clare Daly/Joe Higgins forced the courts to rule that the councils didn’t have the legal right to threaten or impose non-collection against bin tax non-payers, we predicted that the law would be changed sooner rather than later. Duly the law was changed in the Dail before the summer break and the new legislation was signed into law in early September 2003.

Socialist Party members in all the four campaigns played key roles in the discussions on how the battle would likely unfold and on the tactics that needed to be adopted against non-collection. While we felt that Fingal Council would be the first to use the new legislation and impose non-collection, our members tried to prepare the campaigns in all the four council areas on the basis that collectively the whole movement was entering a key stage. There may have been four different campaigns but it was clear to us that the struggle was completely integrated. We felt that Fingal would go first because the government and the councils anticipated that was where the strongest resistance would take place and that a setback for the campaign there, with such outspoken leaders as Cllr Clare Daly and Joe Higgins TD, would have a general impact. In our view, we had to operate on the basis that there were not four different struggles against the bin tax. The differences in details between how the councils were operating were secondary; the future of the campaigns was completely interdependent.

As mentioned at the start the Socialist Party has always felt the battle against the bin tax would be more difficult than the anti-water charges campaign. Crucially the councils knew they had the draconian option of withdrawing the refuse collection service to non-payers, which is a very serious sanction against householders and is difficult to combat.

The key tactics of the campaign were - mass non-payment; delay and defying the courts; political pressure and organised, mass direct action to defeat non-collection. All these tactics would be needed at one time or another. Unfortunately the leadership based around the SWP and Dermot Connolly paid most attention to the least important of these tactics and the least attention to the tactics that would be key to maintaining non-payment – organised mass direct action to defeat non-collection!

Use of the courts and political pressure are less important tactics in the arsenal of the ABTC, relative to having a well-organised widespread campaign prepared to fight non-collection with mass direct action. The truth is that they underestimated the seriousness of the battle and mis-read how it would unfold. It seems that they were more concerned with building a campaign geared to exerting political pressure on the likes of Labour and Sinn Fein and standing candidates in the local elections than one capable of going all out to try to defeat non-collection.

We stated in our journal Socialist View in early 2001, "It is vital that any new campaign [against the bin tax] is as sharp on tactics as the water charges movement. Bringing people to court holds less fear now than before and can be countered. The most serious weapon the councils have is to withdraw the service and the campaign must come up with appropriate tactics, otherwise confidence in the campaign and mass non-payment can be undermined."

The Socialist Party's ability to conduct a dialogue with and listen to working class people helped us to put forward the most appropriate and workable tactics for the ABTC. We played a leading role in the anti-bin tax struggles in Drogheda and Limerick, and drew many lessons from those experiences, which predated the campaign in Dublin.

The campaigns in Limerick and Drogheda created significant political pressure. That wasn't enough. Non-payment diminished because the campaigns weren't able to employ tactics that could deal with the non-collection of non-payers bins. In Limerick the considerable attempts of the campaign to organise mass, organised placing of rubbish on council property, didn't take off in the communities. In Drogheda there were genuine mass mobilisations on a couple of occasions. Campaign activists put the bins into the trucks on behalf of non-payers for a considerable period. However this wasn't a tactic that could be maintained indefinitely nor did it give people confidence that the council could be forced back. We looked at the issues and tactics for Dublin in that context.

The Socialist Party outlined well in advance that once the councils imposed non-collection a decisive period of battle would open up that would last for a period of weeks or a couple of months at most. Either the campaigns would force the councils to retreat by major disruption of the refuse collection service thus causing a massive political crisis or the tendency would be for the majority of people to reluctantly pay the charge as the most realistic and easiest way of disposing of their rubbish in the longer term.

Therefore, with non-collection, the nature and tempo of the struggle would change dramatically. From years of a slow burning campaign, the issue would explode and most likely be reduced to a battle of weeks or months. We didn’t want such a situation but we couldn’t determine the tactics of the councils and the government. The campaigns had to thoroughly prepare the activists psychologically and tactically for an intense and hard battle. If the battle against non-collection was lost, anger at the bin tax would remain and even deepen but a campaign of active opposition to it would diminish. Non-collection represented D-Day for the all the campaigns.

There was much discussion as to what tactics could have the best chance of mobilising the communities and of causing maximum disruption and political pressure. As mentioned Socialist Party members played a key role in these discussions and in general there seemed to be an acceptance that trying to ground the service by blockading bin trucks in the working class estates was the best tactic.

Putting the onus on the bin workers to defeat non-collection

While the city campaign formally agreed to the tactic of blockading, prominent members of the campaign, particularly the SWP, actually emphasised that the best option for defeating non-collection would be to get the bin workers to refuse to implement it. A number of activities to make this appeal to the bin workers took place before the battle really kicked off in mid September.

The Socialist Party fully supported an approach to the bin workers and implemented initiatives in all the areas which established important links with a number of the workers. We raised the fact that non-collection was key to implementing the bin tax, which was in turn key to the privatisation of the service and that therefore the interests of the communities and the workers were the same. We also raised the general idea that if the workers got organised they and their union could defeat the council and government plans.

However, we had to deal with the reality that the union leadership was prepared to accept or had already accepted, not just the bin tax but also the future privatisation of the service. Calling on the bin workers to take action on non-collection given that their unions would not support them in such action was difficult and any such appeal had to be skilfully posed and based on reality.

Socialist Worker (PDF) 10 September 2003 written just before non-collection in Fingal: "Make sure your estate is organised. Get campaign leaflets into every house. Approach your local bin workers and ask them to support the campaign by refusing to implement non-collection."

And again an article from Socialist Worker (PDF) 24 September 2003, just after the jailing of Clare Daly and Joe Higgins started off by saying: "The vicious response of the councils and the courts has upped the stakes. Anti-bin tax campaigners need to respond," and later went on to say: "Maintain the support and sympathy of bin workers – an absolute necessity. Nothing should be done which could be seen as antagonistic or would alienate that support. Where the bins of non-payers are not being collected, campaigners should organise to meet the bin workers and argue that they respect pickets in estates and collect all bins there. It is counter productive to hold bin trucks in anything more than token blockades where workers agree to collect all bins."

The SWP’s position completely contradicts itself. Non-collection and jailings in Fingal demands a very serious response but as the bin workers are collecting the bins in the city we must only hold token blockades that don’t cause any disruption!

All the leaflets that the SWP produced emphasised appeals to the bin workers. The way the SWP raised this issue actually made it less likely that the appeal would be taken up. The Socialist Party approached the bin workers but in a different way.

It was obvious that most bin workers were nervous of taking the initiative in opposing non-collection. The way the SWP raised this issue would have put the bin workers in the front line of the battle against the bin tax and they feared disciplinary action and being taken off the pay roll and/or getting the sack.

However appealing to the bin workers in a context where the campaign itself would initiate the action against non-collection was more likely to have an impact. The bin workers needed to be given a pretext for their action, and the confidence that perhaps the councils could be pushed back. Workers who were perhaps intimidated by management or the union also needed to be made fully aware of the resolve in the communities, which might in turn change their attitudes.

The key occasion that the bin workers did act to help the campaign in a significant way happened precisely in response to militant action and blockades called for by the Socialist Party and activists in Finglas in October. These blockades, on all seven depots throughout Dublin resulted in the closedown of the service and far from alienating the workers had a positive impact in the depots. The SWP approach of appealing for action but not being prepared themselves to initiate the action, made their appeals meaningless.

Overemphasising the need for independent action from the bin workers and in fact putting the main onus on them for combating non-collection, was an abdication of responsibility on behalf of the SWP, a forlorn hope that someone else would fight the battle for them.

This position was an echo of the position that the SWP in Britain took during the movement against the poll tax. There they argued "non-payment is a vulnerable form of resistance leaving it to the resolve of individuals to stand up against the law. With council officers being given draconian power to collect the tax, non-payment will be impossible anyway…" Instead they argued that local government workers should refuse to collect the poll tax. As it turned out mass non-payment defeated the poll tax and Thatcher!

Battle explodes in Fingal

When Fingal County Council declared that mass non-collection would be imposed on 10 September 2003, it was a test for the whole movement. It was critical that the campaign responded in a decisive way. From our work in the communities while people were very angry against the bin tax, it was also clear to us that many working class people weren’t confident that the council and Government could be forced back. People contrasted how they as workers were being attacked in comparison to the big business friends of the capitalist parties. Yet they had seen the increased attacks from the Government since their re-election in 2002 without any opposition from the trade unions. Levels of activity were low and many people wrongly interpreted that as a lack of willingness to fight on the part of working class people. People also recognised that the power to impose non-collection was a difficult sanction for the campaign to deal with.

In these circumstances the Fingal ABTC felt it was crucial that non-collection be met with a strong response. The campaign wanted to get the message across that the battle against non-collection in Fingal wasn’t going to be a small skirmish but was going to be a real battle, that the campaign was going to do everything in its power to cause disruption to the service and create massive political pressure. The Fingal campaign decided that we would aim to ground the whole refuse collection service and that the best way to do this was to blockade the trucks for as long as possible inside the working class estates. As it turned out many communities held trucks for days and in some cases weeks. This tactic was also aimed at involving as many people as possible in the struggle. If our disruption was successful we hoped it would give people confidence and in turn get many more actively involved in the struggle.

We knew the council and the management had to be put under pressure. They had stated that they would provide a refuse service to those who had paid the bin tax. We resolved that if they imposed non-collection, we would try to stop the council providing any services at all. "All bins or no bins!" Our action was predicated on the belief, justified as it turned out, that in the working class communities, people were prepared to boycott the tag and the service for many weeks to try to give the campaign a real chance. Disrupting the service and exerting massive political pressure from the working class communities was the basis of our approach to try and force the council back. We knew that at some point the police and the courts would get involved. Our attitude was not to allow their intervention to cut across the blockades and the disruption, we wanted to give the campaign the best chance to succeed and that meant testing the resolve of the council and the courts.

In the first week a huge battle raged each day in Fingal and the disruption to the service was massive across the whole area. The approach of the council was to try to maintain the service to payers and to use the courts and the Gardai to stifle the protests. A High Court injunction was granted to prevent the blockading of the bin trucks. Two days after non-collection started, Socialist Party Councillor Clare Daly and Joe Higgins TD were served with injunctions and within another week they had been imprisoned in Mountjoy. As this was going on, very limited non-collection was being implemented in a couple of areas in Dublin city council where as Dermot Connolly himself says, the campaign "was weaker, and indeed didn’t exist in places". Some in the city ABTC focused more on this extremely limited move by Dublin city council than on Fingal and the overall battle.

Using Fingal as the battleground, the councils backed up by the government and the full force of the state was attempting to smash the ABTC. Their strategy was simple - all forces of the political establishment, the media and the state should be thrown at Fingal because if we defeat them, then we can deal a fatal blow against the whole ABTC movement in all areas. The imposition of non-collection followed by the outlawing of the right to protest was a dramatic escalation of the battle by the capitalist establishment. The Socialist Party argued that the whole of the ABTC movement had to decisively respond to this assault by the ruling class.

Before the imprisonment of Clare and Joe, blockades in solidarity with the campaign in Fingal were organised in parts of the city council campaign area under the initiative of the best activists and our party members. These were generally of a limited character, causing limited disruption compared to what was happening in Fingal. That was the situation in Dublin, both in Fingal and the city council area, between 10 September and 19 September 2003.

Important differences emerge about how to fight non-collection

Below are some quotes from the early part of Dermot Connolly's article that also deal with this situation:

(a) "The position of the Dublin City campaign on this question has always been quite clear. We would respond to non-collection with mass protests to block the bin lorries in the estates. This position was put forward without disagreement by the leadership of the campaign in a resolution to the conference in 2003 proposed by Joan Collins and agreed unanimously."

(b) "Dublin City Council did not however attempt to introduce non-collection across the city, as this would most likely have unleashed a massive response in the working class estates. They started, in their words, in the "more affluent" south east, where the campaign was weaker, and indeed didn't exist in places like Ballsbridge, Ranelagh, Rathmines, etc."

(c) "There were only two areas where the campaign could respond with community protests. In Ringsend the truck was blocked and non-collection was dropped, winning an important victory for the campaign."

(d) "The battle in Fingal was of extreme importance, and in the overall terms more important but to make no response at all to the attack in the city, whatever the difficulties, would have been a major mistake."

(e) He continued: "The other tactical question that came up was after about two weeks into the struggle in Fingal, whether the solidarity blockades should be stepped up into all out blockades in the city. This position was advocated by the Socialist Party leadership at an activist meeting of the campaign. A very lively discussion took place. Dermot Connolly argued for caution, as the bins were being collected in the working class estates, all out action, preventing the bins from being collected, might split working class support for the campaign. If however, as was very likely, Joe Higgins and Clare Daly were jailed, it would be possible then to win mass support for all out action. This position was voted for by a big majority of the activists at the meeting. While this approach could be said to be conservative, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as a fundamental, principled opposition to the tactic of blockades, as is now claimed. Joe Higgins and Clare Daly were jailed within a short time, as were Dermot Connolly and 13 other activists from the city for stepping up the protests and defying the courts."

When these quotes are actually looked at in the actual time frame of developments, they unfortunately display a dishonest approach on this important issue.

Dermot says it was agreed in general to respond to non-collection "with mass protests to block the bin lorries." However, when limited non-collection was implemented in the city he says: "There was only two areas where the campaign could respond with community protests". Why could the campaign only respond in two areas? It wasn’t because the campaign in the city council area only had a base in two areas. Dermot himself decided to amend, interpret or limit the general position on blockades and disruption to say - that the campaign in the Dublin city council area can in reality only protest in areas where actual non-collection takes place! The support for blockades against non-collection by the city council campaign was changed in favour of limited action in only the areas immediately affected by non-collection. This was also the position of the SWP.

Disruption needed to be escalated not limited

Forget for a moment about the overall battle, the events in Fingal and the jailings. Even from the point of view of the Dublin city council campaign the position of Dermot and the SWP makes no sense. They argued for blockades only where bins are not being collected and to let the truck go if an agreement is reached that the truck will lift all bins in that area at that time. The city council was testing the city council campaign. In a struggle a weak, indecisive response to an attack invites more attacks and aggression. It is necessary to hit back hard and indicate that you are prepared to go further. The best way to stop even limited non-collection would have been for the campaign in the city council area to organise serious disruption in its stronger areas or at the depots. Anyone intent on fighting the battle to its fullest would have advocated such a course of action.

However the situation in the city could not be separated from the developments in Fingal. Put in the context of events in Fingal and the jailings in both Fingal and the City, the support by some leaders in the city campaign and the SWP generally for only token blockades made no sense and seriously weakened the struggle at the crucial time. If workers involved in serious industrial action adopted a similar approach, it would have terrible consequences.

In fact the city campaign had a vested interest in doing everything in its power to assist in Fingal. The two were completely interdependent. The situation regarding the bin tax in Dublin could be compared to a boss who divides his company into four separate sections each with a separate management but all at the same location. The workers are located in separate parts of the building but are fundamentally connected and have the same pay and conditions. It is known to all the workers that the boss and the management are intent on imposing a drastic pay cut for all the workers. It transpires that they decide to take on the most militant section of the workforce first, who in turn engage the management in a huge battle. Should the other workers just verbally or in some other tokenistic way support the workers who are on strike but continue to work themselves or should they take serious action and possibly strike themselves in solidarity and in defence of their own conditions? Of course the mood of the other workers would have to be taken into account but it is clear what course of action the leaders of the workers should fight for.

Giving any credence to the idea that working class people should only act when they themselves are immediately and directly affected by an attack goes against the basic lessons of working class struggle. But by their arguments and actions at that crucial time in the campaign, the SWP and Dermot Connolly caused confusion and tail ended the struggle. Why they adopted such a position is dealt with later. Their position brought a geographical, parochial element into a class struggle. You blockade when non-collection is imposed in your area. Is that anywhere in your council area, is it your broader community area, your estate or on your own road? When exactly do you take militant action?

At the same time in the height of battle in Fingal bin trucks were being stopped everywhere. What Dermot Connolly and the SWP argued when the battle was on was actually a step back from the solidarity blockades that some activists in the city had already been implementing in support of Fingal at the time. The campaign and the disruption needed to be pushed forward not back.

This position was a terrible revision of basic aspects of class struggle. In saying that, the Socialist Party doesn't at all want to give the impression that we are never in favour of tactical retreats in struggles. That would be absurd. Sometimes you don't have any choice. But at this stage of the bin tax battle, offensive action was required, not retreat.

"Leaders" in the city campaign hold back the action

As mentioned by Dermot Connolly, whether the city campaign should escalate their actions in the context of events in Fingal was discussed at a city campaign activists meeting a week after the start of non-collection in Fingal. At the meeting the Socialist Party put forward its view very clearly. The establishment was trying to isolate Fingal, defeat it and then move on to take on non-payers in the other council areas. They held back from imposing full-scale non-collection in all the areas in order to help isolate Fingal. The councils and the government were fearful of the effect that widespread disruption to the refuse collection service could have at that decisive moment of the battle. On that basis and certainly in the context of the imminent jailing of Joe and Clare, the city campaign should try to give them precisely what they didn’t want, and move to do what was necessary in order to cause maximum disruption to the refuse collection service. Not to do so would be a mistake and play into the hands of the councils.

One of the main issues debated was if it would be possible to get people to support more serious disruption in the city area when their bins were still being collected? How would you justify continuing to blockade a truck when a commitment had been given to collect all the bins in the immediate area? These were important issues.

The opposition of people in the city to the bin tax was as strong as it was in Fingal. People’s bins being uncollected for a week or two is a manageable situation even in normal times. In Fingal it was clear that working class communities were committed to boycotting the refuse service for a considerable time. If the divide and rule tactics that the councils and government were outlining and the importance for the campaign to respond with serious action had been explained, undoubtedly much more serious blockades and disruption could have been organised in the city. The possibility of going far beyond token blockades was shown when residents in Palmerstown in South Dublin held one bin truck for nearly two days.

As quoted above Dermot says he was cautious about "all out action" but was in favour of it if Joe and Clare were jailed. In our opinion increased disruption was necessary either way. It is completely false for Dermot to claim in his article that the big majority of activists at the meeting supported his approach. A number of different options were put forward but when Dermot’s didn’t get majority support, as chair he was very hesitant to put forward other options. In the end the meeting didn’t come to any decision or agreement. That meeting made it absolutely clear that a section of the leadership of the city campaign were going to walk away from the chance to strengthen the battle against the bin tax. It was obvious that Dermot Connolly and the SWP would try to resist any escalation of action.

Dermot then goes on to say, "Joe Higgins and Clare Daly were jailed within a short time, as were Dermot Connolly and 13 other activists from the city for stepping up the protests and defying the courts." The Socialist Party without reservation accepts the significant personal sacrifice that all the 22 anti-bin tax prisoners made in battle, including Dermot Connolly. However people reading this who were not involved in the campaign would get the impression, that after Joe and Clare were jailed, Dermot tried to implement "all out action" and quickly ended up in prison for his efforts. Unfortunately this is not true.

In the heat of a battle issues of timing can be crucial. It wasn't such a short time after Joe and Clare were jailed but a full 21 days before Dermot and the nine activists from Finglas were imprisoned. Many things happened in the three weeks after Clare and Joe were imprisoned. 5,000 demonstrated to Mountjoy on Monday 22 September; 1,500 protested at the reopening of the Dail; the case against a large group of activists from Mulhuddart for breaking the injunction was thrown out of court; disruption in Fingal remained very significant but was quite sporadic and limited in other areas of Dublin, concentrated in stronger campaign areas; the Dublin Trades Council called a protest demonstration on Saturday 11 October attended by around 3,000.

The fact that the case against the activists from Mulhuddart was thrown out and that it was a full three weeks before the next batch of people were jailed indicated that the establishment was nervous of the support that existed for the battle. There were many opportunities to try to organise and escalate disruption at that time. But Dermot Connolly, Brid Smith and the whole of the SWP in the city council area and Dun Laoghaire, played an extremely conservative role at this decisive time. Dermot Connolly and Brid Smith were jailed for activities in the areas affected by the very limited non-collection mentioned earlier. They were not jailed for activities related to escalating and developing "all out action" in the key working class districts. The fact is that while they went to prison, they didn't participate in any serious action or try to escalate the disruption and blockades in the most crucial weeks of the campaign.

Union leaders abandon the struggle and bear the responsibility as the campaign is pushed back

The actions that did take place in the city were driven along by members of the Socialist Party, Working Class Action (WCA), the Irish Socialist Network (ISN) and most importantly, many individual activists from all over the city, who responded brilliantly in difficult circumstances. The campaigns in South Dublin and in Rathdown also took significant action in the areas and at their depots. It was clear that the trade union leadership, particularly SIPTU, was coming under considerable pressure to support the campaign. While it was unlikely that they could just ignore the pressure, it was also clear that they were trying their best to delay and diminish any action so that its effect would be limited. The Socialist Party correctly thought that the trade union leadership would want nothing to flow from the Dublin Council of Trades Unions demonstration on the 11th, so we initiated the idea of calling Tuesday 14th as a co-ordinated anti bin tax day of action in all council areas at least to point a way forward to the activists who wanted to fight.

The DCTU demonstration marked the end of any verbal support of the anti bin-tax campaign from within the leadership of the trade union movement. Subsequently either they condemned the campaigns or called on us to suspend our actions, which was rejected as it would simply have assisted the councils in imposing their agenda.

Campaign activists, including the Socialist Party, organised the blockades on all the depots throughout the whole city, which covered all the four councils on the 14th and then continued the blockades through the 15th and this caused a virtual closedown of the whole service. After two days we decided to call off the action from a position of strength, and to "hold our fire" with a warning that we would repeat this form of protest if non-collection or jailings continued.

At this stage in the struggle the situation was contradictory. The campaigns had just organised massive disruption and on that basis support had increased within the depots, in particular in the city council area. The action undoubtedly put the government and the councils under a lot of pressure. What exactly their private attitude was at that time was impossible to say. On the other hand, we were only able to hold the blockades for two days because of a weakness in the numbers of activists. The size of the trades’ council demonstration did not indicate at that stage a momentum for the campaign as we entered the sixth week of the battle. In these circumstances we felt it would be completely wrong just to allow things to fizzle out after the two-day shut down. The attitude of the workers needed to be tested again to see if a section of workers might take an independent stand on the issue. In that context we also needed to test the resolve of the council management and possibly see if one council could be identified as a weaker link and specifically targeted.

While many understood that more disruption was necessary, the lack of activists and threats from the state were serious difficulties. There was nervousness about organising more depot blockades, as activists sensed that the momentum was moving away from us. A long time could not be allowed to open up between the blockades on 14 and 15 of October and the next action. It wasn’t possible to organise blockades for the following week, but more blockades took place, the week after, on 29 and 30 October. Unfortunately, given that the trade union bureaucracy had intervened in the depots to attack the campaign and the weak numbers of activists, these blockades only lasted a matter of hours before the trucks were forced out. Seven activists from South Dublin were jailed for these activities, which proved to be the last flash points of that battle.

<-Next->