Ireland - Barry Finnegan

Interview Details

• Region: Europe - Ireland
• Language: English
• Interviewee: Barry Finnegan
• Interviewer: Mags Liddy
• Date: 2017
• PGA Affiliation: ATTAC Ireland
• Bio: Barry Finnegan works as a Programme Director and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications in Griffith College. He holds an MA in International Relations from Dublin City University and is currrently pursuing a PhD at Queens University Belfast entitled, ‘Embedded Neoliberalism and EU Trade and Investment Policy in the Anthropocene: an Ecosocialist Critique’ which will argue that the era of the Anthropocene requires that the European Union develops and implements a sustainable and ethical trade and investment policy. Prior to full-time lecturing, Barry worked as a magazine editor and freelance journalist.
  Through active membership of ATTAC (Ireland) [Association for the Taxation of Financial Transaction for the Aid of Citizens], the Irish Social Forum and now Comhlámh’s Trade Justice Group, Barry has spent over 20 years researching, and campaigining against, the anti-democratic and anti-environmental aspects of EU trade and investment policy. Over that time he has presented his research on European Union international trade poolicy to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs, to the Irish government’s civil service TTIP negotiating committee, at academic conferences, in journals, and at numerous presentations, meetings, and public debates around island of Ireland.
• Audio File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/86i567bllmtdndj/PGA%20Ireland%202%20-Barry%20Finnegan.m4a?dl=0
• Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wh14o5efphyv70ersct9x/PGA-Ireland-2-Barry-Finnegan-April-2017.docx?dl=0&rlkey=o23slj9494v4coyhdi18439sf

Transcript

Mags Liddy: That’s great stuff so thank you for agreeing to be interviewed.

Barry Finnegan: You are familiar with Manuela Cassells work and the cover of one his trilogy of his books. They have a mural from the first intergalactic Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neoliberalismo…

Mags Liddy: Oh a mural- I can, which book? The second book was it?

Barry Finnegan: I think it’s the second in the trilogy, … intergalactic encounter for humanity and against neoliberalism. He has about a page and half on the PGA

Mags Liddy: like a timeline, or more descriptive?

Barry Finnegan: Oh yeah descriptive and connecting it to the idea of global networks and that kind of thing. But you know I think, I went looking a few years ago and it was very few at that time, academic work on the PGA at that time…

Mags Liddy: Yeah there been a few journal articles, and there has been a good bit of journalism, New Internationalist. But I am not sure- a book on PGA. We are Everywhere maybe, but I guess that it broader than PGA…

Barry Finnegan: We are Everywhere, yeah the brick… anyway let’s crack on, crack on…

Mags Liddy: Yes, you were, you brought up the Encuentro, am I saying it correctly?

Barry Finnegan: are we on?

Mags Liddy: oh yes- the second encuentro, the one in Barcelona, that was the one you attended? Fill me, how did you hear about it, what was the background…

Barry Finnegan: I heard about it because I knew people in the Latin America Solidarity Center and they’d been to a few meetings and I was very excited about what the Zapatistas were up to, and when they weren’t slaughtered it was hugely uplifting. it was like oh my goodness global politics is changing and part of that interconnectivity because when in fact, on the first of January 1994 when the Free Trade Agreement came in and the Zapatistas launched the revolution. In my mind whether correctly or incorrectly in my mind, in 95, 96 the reason that they were not slaughtered was because so many civil society and nongovernmental organizations and social movements particularly in the western world have been contacted by solidarity groups who have been contacted by the Zapatistas. I remember ringing and faxing and emailing with the intention of closing down the capacity of the Mexican state to engage in its day-to-day bureaucracy.

Mags Liddy: oh- emailing and faxing Mexican government departments?

Barry Finnegan: the websites not working, the emails can’t get through, the phone lines are not working, to get their attention. Whitey is looking at you- you know middle class Western people are going to be looking at you, if you go in and kill a couple of thousand of these peasant farmers, or peasants. So when the peace talks started it was usually emboldening and it gives me a sense of globality, globalism, and holism. And obviously like 19th century communism, where you are -let’s just keep plugging away until you have developed consciousness and the idea of the people of the world develop its own consciousness was key to emancipation of humanity.

So I was aware of the first encuentro, I believe Andrew Flood went to it

Mags Liddy: Yeah

Barry Finnegan: in the depths of Chiapas and when it came closer to home, ok you know okay I’m going.

Mags Liddy: And did you know that Andrew was going?

Barry Finnegan: oh yes I mean we you know we’ve spoken together various meetings about this or that. I have never joined the WSM, but I would be hugely respectful of you know theoretically they are always right about everything whether in short term or taking a practical approach to this suggested the lack there of

anyway leaving that aside, I would be hugely respectful of the position of the WSM. on pretty much everything. And I remember Andrew and myself, and 15000 when we got to Madrid and it split up between Madrid and Barcelona and this 200 hectare, 150 hectare squatted farm in far south west of Spain. Terribly poor, made 1850s west of Ireland look rich. I mean the Lord Mayor, 3 mile walk down the road, driving around in an old Honda 50. Just to give you an idea of the poverty of the place.

And these huge tents like that covered the place, and thousand people maybe 2000 people going to feminism, ecology, what was isn’t covered and global finance. And when I went for whatever it was four or five days. I just sat in awe of peoples struggles, the state peasant farmers’ union India and Professor Swami who’s he’s died since. He told me about the [unsure what he says here]’ Code of elementarius’ which is a private company. basically is if you want to trade packaged food, beverages, medicine, internationally and they are down on your health and safety standards you don’t get buy and sell it anywhere in the world. I/t is an agent of the WTO way but it’s completely autonomous and it’s owned by the pharmaceutical corporations. Well I sit there thinking oh my God no one in Ireland even knows this exists.

And he said to me it makes me laugh, standing outside McDonald’s and I was we do protesting in Ireland too you know – we stand outside McDonald’s on Grafton Street and sometimes someone might be really nasty and get off a stink bomb in the toilet-you make me laugh he said. We spoke- I won’t do the accent. We told Kentucky Fried chicken don’t come to Karnataka, and we told them and we told them and told them their food was poisonous etc… So when they came, we decided we would walk to them, and I think he said they walked for two months from the far part of the state, and as they walked the peasant and landless they joined them. So when they arrived there were thousands of them and we walked straight into Kentucky Fried chicken and we took all the chairs and tables and the cookers. We even took the tiles off the wall and we put it on the street and we put it on fire and we danced all night. We woke up in the morning and our work was done we were back to our farms. And that is how you can go confront globalisation boy. Wow yes…

Mags Liddy: eye opening!

Barry Finnegan: Hugely so and and talking to people from Mostof in Nigeria and the Macador trade unions in El Salvador and just really realizing that you know palpably that physically meeting and talking to people about their struggle is a wholly different thing to actually know reading something or watching a video

And so I had gone early because I spoke Spanish, I had lived in Spain for two years and they asked for solidarity help and I’d gone a week early so I spent a week going in and out to the airport, meeting people who didn’t have Spanish, some people I meet were Zapatistas. My understanding was that some of them travelled on false passports because obviously they used to be going around guns in their hands to achieve the objectives of Zapatistas. Some of them didn’t even speak Spanish despite being from Chiapas you know.

So that disparity of power and that asymmetry was very very prevalent to me, and educational for me and it was fantastic offer some basic assistance to your organization of it.

so fast forward then, we spent a night in Madrid and then everyone split between Barcelona and Madrid or into Indiano, the squatted farm. After five days of talks down here the first thing was it’s like any of us. Everybody is. But people from Mozzat, from macadores, from… – what? we refuse to go home. We’re not going home until there is a network of cooperation communication and action plans to move this thing forward. We didn’t risk our lives to travel Literally halfway around the world. And so 50 people stayed behind.

So there was Earth first from London and Holland and USA and everybody else. And me- the little guy from … who used to hang out in Glen of the Downs and help with the press releases and whatnot and organise talks and press conferences which no one ever came to.

So it was very, very clear and the objective was to have coordinated action in cities around the world. in the first instance wherever the IMF World Bank were meeting, we were going to shut the city down. We need to shut them down, with our bodies we need to block them from getting into the building cos they are they are illegitimate, they are destroying the planet and destroying hopes and dreams of the people of the earth. And the idea was then wouldn’t it be great if it happened in every city in the world and we just shut the cities down everywhere. And let them know that we are not going to let this planet be destroyed and we want active meaningful democracy everywhere.

Mags Liddy: so the call for action came out of the second encuentro?

Barry Finnegan: Yeah yeah. And so a framework a draft framework for cooperation communication dialogue and moving forward and calling days of action. And so that was August 97 and we decided then to meet up in February 1998 in Geneva to continue to work as a network and to actively protest against the WTO and the head of the WTO’s car was turned over at that, and McDonalds’ was smashed and all that stuff that took place as well. But on the afternoon of the last day of day, people were a bit more relaxed and so the journey was worth it. And so what are we going to call it?

We had a bit of a laugh talking about it and it ended up being there are three names and the names that was picked was the Peoples Global Action against Free Trade and Neoliberalism, and it was me who came up with that name…

Mags Liddy: really?

Barry Finnegan: Yeah.

Mags Liddy: well done

Barry Finnegan: Yes. In the intervening years it shortened to PGA obviously you know I’m not known for my short titles and anyway we won’t go into that. so Peoples Global Action against free trade one trade organisation

And so I came back to Ireland. [funny noise] The world is on fire and we’re going to fight it out and everything is going to change. Even my good friends who were politically active were like seriously Barry, you need to chill out man, just calm down. No one understands what you’re talking about. So the euphoria of the day the consciousness shifted I’d experience by actually you know is not reading about books of physically meeting people who took a huge risk to come here. It was difficult making the transition to …so you know …

Mags Liddy: Why do you think that was? Why wasn’t there kind of more understanding? understanding of the struggles and hadn’t heard the story, or was it the media- let’s face the media in Ireland lack global coverage.

Barry Finnegan: The media by its very nature is a capitalist media. You know if you don’t defend protect the interests of imperialism capitalism anti trade unionism suspicion of environmentalists. You don’t get the ads and you don’t exist and if you are the state broadcasting authority, and you don’t have those policies you get lambasted, hounded ridiculed and you know sent to the Varco you know Siberia ah you know it really. Despite now that I teach sociology of media and I demonstrate through academic papers, [00:13:26] how uni- media is and how it is not the public sphere and you know it doesn’t exist in the people’s interest in public good and inappropriate in democratic society. Quite the contrary. I still get upset when the newspapers don’t put in the truth about the funding of Irish pubic transport. You know it’s 4-12% while in Europe the average is 60 and that’s the story and it’s not being covered. I get emotionally upset still the fact that intellectually I know that job is to ignore that

But to get back to work to of the matter at hand. So I remember talking to people at the Glen of the Downs, talking to people at the catalyst gigs we used to do every week. public talks I remember talking in Teachers’ Club. I remember it you know participating in a thing with Andrew telling people what happened. And even from people they were committed aware of the WTO, you know a capitalist, or anti-capitalist sensibility. It was just like it was the other. It was always like the PGA was very cool in an abstract kind of way and that it was almost like oh my God this is really freaky. I remember reading the theory in Marx, I remember feeling at the time that people were a little intimidated by the fact that we’ve been cursed they’ve been born in the generation who actually are people that Marx is talking about that in the future are going to have global consciousness and they’re going to have to fight the struggle at a global level.

And I remember feeling that people will again be intimidated by this show and the Postal Workers Union in Canada were instrumental in maintaining the framework of faxing and emailing and websiting which allowed to obviously stay in touch with us and you know you have Schnews did a little on this and An Dulra [check name]. Do you remember An Dulra, it was trying emulate Schnews and it was the usual one guy busting his ass, but he got it out every week for three quarters of a year every ear two four years and he used to keep up with the PGA stuff as well. I wrote a couple of articles about it in micro-left papers magazines – its important to call it the micro-left

So basically the PGA has left the overwhelming impression on me as an activist. I still engage with it- the multilateral agreement on investments in 97 we found out about this at the encuentro in Spain Elinda in India. People who I thought were kept incapable of being shocked were actually shocked. I remember a lady giving a presentation on it saying you know I have just travelled from Holland and I got a pirated copy from a civil servant. And the idea that we are going to set up his investor state dispute settlement court at a global level to bar democratic governments from implementing policies for the public good. It was like the dystopian nightmare science fiction movie that middle-class activists in the West love to watch almost dystopian porn- here it is.

So basically you’re unfamiliar with the TITIP I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life trying to explain to people that Given that it was the French parliament that vetoed the MAI, the purpose of European Union Treason’s goes forward into the future was to specifically to allow them to sign a MAI without going back to the 28 member state parliaments. Which is exactly what happened in February this year with the singing of CITPP?? The comprehensive trade agreement

But for me, the PGA was the network that created the dialogue between NGOs and social movements in North America and Europe between the people who were struggling and risking their lives in Central and South America in Asia in Africa and that allowed us to have a structure of Dialogue structured communication and May 98 protest. Oh yes so in five days after the second encuentro, there was a thing in February and then was there another in Geneva where another WTO event in May of that year, May 98.

The whole list of them catalogued in the article I sent you. We had about 200 people at Reclaim the streets back when Reclaim the streets was still a radical thing. Don’t tell the cops we are here…

Mags Liddy: In the summer of 98

Barry Finnegan: yeah and we had a rinky dink in which was you know de riguer for all anarcho-activity at a time and there cops gave us no hassle at all, it was the weirdest thing. I think they were more confused than anything else. And given that we were only 200 people, and they hadn’t had any training in how to batter the living daylights out of protestors at that point. So we were more of a novelty than anything else.

But there was a huge awareness among those 200 people and we would go down to Glen of the Downs, sleep there and bring food, guitars, do solitary sleepovers and all the rest. There was a vague awareness that there was a global network it was going to make everything okay. you might not know it was called PGA but the word was an awareness of it And I travelled the country for Nice 1 and 2, for Lisbon and the fiscal treaty, and TiTipp and FIFFa

I think I’ve given 40-50 public talks both north and south, both sides of the border. Here in Ireland I presented to medical students in this year presents the UCD Medical students I’ve given three presentations, I’ve talked to my old friend George Hook, gas man altogether. He doesn’t like TITIPP and CETA. He really doesn’t like fracking and he can see intellectually that if you have ISDS, then you’re gonna have fracking and so we’re best buddies on that, I’ve been in a few times talking about it.

But you know we are still at the same point as we were 20 years ago with there’s no we’re not, we are at a fundamentally very different points as what they were trying to do with the MAI is now set up. Having been said though it remains to be seen whether they can do the ISDS. Yes, there is a professionalised committed organizations based in Brussels your friends of the Earth your Greenpeace you know and huge trade unions in Germany and the Labour councils in Austria and various movements and obviously I am still a member of ATTAC Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens. I remember giving a talk to a group of trade unionists in Belfast a few year ago, and they said this is Barry Finnegan from Attac Ireland- calm down, it is not some loyalist paramilitary group. You know sometimes I have only 2 minutes to speak and I spent 45 seconds giving the name of the organisation, geeks together and all that. and you will always find me in the kitchen talking about tax at parties, still to this day.

So yeah for me it’s been in the back of my head that we in West need to actively engage in communication with organisations in the majority World. But it hasn’t actually physically happened from me since 2001, 2003, it fell off my radar because I realized my struggle and my usefulness to the movement of human emancipation is to actually physically do things in Ireland and if I have an opportunity to introduce a global solidarity element to it if I can. It’s about doing what I can in not allowing the Liberals to establish a legal framework that drives him to history to Democratic gains last two hundred years in Europe and that the purpose of these trade agreements. And I think intellectually obviously the Zapatistas, were very much on that Ah. There’s a monster coming to the edge of the forest, the NAFTA, a disaster and it’s coming

And for meeting Indigenous people who didn’t speak Spanish getting on an airplane and you know getting on an airplane for the first time. I’ve also got vision in my head about no matter how bad things are getting in Ireland, I’m not in the middle of the jungle you know what I mean, utterly powerless and having to pick up a Kalashnikov to change it. And that is my little rant.

Mags Liddy: That’s not a rant at all Barry. There’s a couple of things that I wanted to pick up on though.

Mags Liddy: you describe PGA as a loose network, you describe the days of action and stuff, you talk a lot about communication, hearing people’s stories and struggles from all over the world, and a lot of solidarity work. Is that… and out of that, some of those stories are very negative and very violent, and the difficulties people have in their communities, stories of how capitalism and free trade has affected their lives and livelihoods. Yet you get a great sense of optimism out of that, working together… well is it working together, or is it working the sense of sharing something, and this as you say this consciousness, of change and for the future

Barry Finnegan: There is a pigheaded doggedness to it, that I think Gramsci summarised brilliantly even his pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. It’s a phrase you know if I had a tattoo, that’s what it would be.

It is just a pigheaded doggedness to refuse to go down you know and sometimes there may not actually be the evidence that the solidarity is having any effect at all when you see people in Columbia and Ecuador just being shot by state agents for standing up against the dam standing up against you know.

In my naiveté of being a young man in my late twenties in the late Nineties I really thought that these people wouldn’t do in 20 years didn’t wouldn’t be shot and tortured anymore

And that somehow the bonds of solidarity from the West to the majority world would be so real rather than illusionary and you know … but they still are being shot

There is a part of me is afraid to go and look if there are see less of them it being shot than there was 20 30 years ago because I don’t want to go down into that you know and then is numbers an important thing? Is the fact that they are still being shot not an optimistic thing? let’s not get caught up with the body count you know as defenses.

It’s interesting people are still so traumatized by the French Revolution and actually in Wexford alone in 1798 after the British had achieved military superiority the pogrom other did the revenge slaughter in Wexford County alone there was more people killed in 1788 than the entire period of French terror. So you know our emotional, our emotional connection to kill or slaughter is usually informed by where I’m coming from individuals’ human experience and so one tries not to embrace the darkness and the bleakness and just never given up.

Mags Liddy: do you get a sense that there’s any organizations, groups, networks that have the same kind that global connection today. Are we a bit more siloised geographically, or by type of struggle even?

Barry Finnegan: Yeah I mean I’ve got five and eight-year-old child happily married and a rather busy 45 hours a week of lecture, so you know I haven’t been able to go to Mayo, and interact with the whole Shell to Sea thing there. But I would imagine any twenty something like me now, or like me then in the 90s that’s where they are …. I don’t know enough about Shell, but I do know in Dublin has an awareness of connectivity you know to Spain and to America and to Detroit in his housing and in the water so that’s there.

And I think you know probably in terms of the TiTip and MAI, the single the social group single most well informed group of people in the country about TITIP working class water protestors. And that’s the way it’s always gonna be if humanity going to win. It’s not the liberals driving the Prius and recycling on Saturday who don’t understand why everybody is recycling em.

You know- Marion I know we all partied in the Cetlic Tiger [laugh].

You know and more and more, I see that liberal middle class aesthetic despises the poor when they have no agency and then hates them when they do. we see that with the water thing here.

So I think it’s one of these things. I mean I really thought we would go global, all the action in Europe is going to have a global dimension and of course it was just poppycock really.

I remember telling people in Genoa in 2001, I said the Italians are going to shoot people and they’re going to go into the solidarity centers and they’re going to crack skulls and break hundreds of people’s bones. Not only have the powers that be decided these protests going go ahead anyway. But there’s lots of fascist racists in the Italian police and it’s going to be horrendous and to be honest I’ve been beaten up a few times by Spanish police out on strikes and various protests and I really really didn’t want to get beaten up again and I felt cowardly and then the horror of Genoa happened and you know and obviously in context one has to watch Eamonn Croydon’s classic Mousetrap you know it was weird the way RTE didn’t show that. Obviously that’s a joke- I’m not that thick

Mags Liddy: and from the media lecturer [laughter].

Barry Finnegan: So to be honest here I’ve I bet you’re going to ATTAC meetings within Ireland, we built up Information Network in Ireland. We had 16 to 20 civil society groups from trade unions have Presentation nuns, friends of the earth and the usual groups and that was fantastic because young people who came I mean did 20 somethings who came…. it’s not an exciting new thing for them to have a global perspective whereas I think from my generation it was an exciting new day.

Mags Liddy: that’s an interesting point.

Barry Finnegan: And I think it’s not that they are more cynical they’re more skeptical. They know …what I love about activism now is when you enter the room, at least half of the people are women and if it’s on debt and the environment probably more than half. which is massively liberating for me as you don’t have to sit there and listen to men going- I’m a man and I just like to say louder than the last guy exactly the last guy just said I can’t quit anymore and bang and there’s women in the room and just men go on less like that cause you know whether it’s their mammy or their sister or their girlfriend or just the boring the hell out of people are really trying to impress the eyes rolled up in the air and the men go hmmm and they sit down again we get through the business much quicker. I think it’s a global phenomenon. You know it’s not that there’s more rape and sexual violence in it you know 10 years ago things men women really want to have this anymore.

Mags Liddy: so gender is a change.

Barry Finnegan: gender is a massive change, the Zapatistas were on that, and I think has informed in the infrastructure and in the threads of the global movement and I think there was a little bit of egg on face embarrassment among a lot of you know left wing men older than me, I’m in the mid-40s, kinda going like what do we think we were doing at the second international. There were hardly any women in the room. What did we think we were trying to do, to emancipate the world when half of them were missing? You can be gay, [00:32:16] You can be wheelchair user you can admit to being depressed, you can be a woman and you can go to be activist meeting.

I remember writing an essay in my masters in international relations in DCU in the early 90s where I was …beautiful five thousand words on how the neoliberal term had reversed Democratic gains in the 20th century health education privatization … and then the conclusion was actually no. the women. You know we know that women should be treated the same as men and we know that we should be sensitive to people with mental health and physical disabilities, mental health issues. That’s the Democratic gain of the twentieth century.

So would you privatize a transport system or privatize a hospital or have a 50-euro fee for this. You know that’s flimflamming money shenanigans yes hope makes a difference to the day to day level but ontologically knowing that you should be treated equally and that you should be embarrassed if you don’t treat those people equally.

I mean I’ve found that a profound change in the last 20 years … and I don’t know if that’s. [00:33:17] To be honest I think it’s just woven into people who have a global consciousness and who act globally. [00:33:24] You know so so I don’t really know – you would have to talk to young people as to global consciousness

Mags Liddy: Yes. … Yeah. So you’ve covered a lot of things to us, things I don’t need to ask about now. You said a lot of positive things about PGA. I’m just wondering are there any other things that you found the organisation, the network was doing badly and the challenges faced.

Barry Finnegan: Yeah absolutely. had to spend my early thirties telling myself what what did you really expect. Because we were what I thought was that we were going to give money to MOSOFF and Karnataka firms peasants union. The maquedores from Central America.

I thought we were going to club in, go give them money so they could have a full time member of staff working on the global communications dimension. I completely misinterpreted it. Because you know what it’s like when you’re working on an individual campaign and then you really protest and you realise no one’s made those five phone calls to the sympathetic journalist, no one has followed through the press release, that guy in the Irish Independent who did a brilliant article two years ago and you know where I went on the Irish Right to change toward a website and the protest wasn’t on the home page. It wasn’t on the slider. You had to go to events and that’s the reality of activism. so so hard to just get one thing up and running like a protest where we’re all in the same place at the same time we’ve got the agreed press release and then we forget to put the thing on the bloody website and there’s no one available to make the 27 phone calls you know …

and there are public relations firms who will give you a little bit of a dig out but you have to spend the time and the effort to go and contact them have a coffee, and give them six months

And I realized and like we’re so busy and so while there was a massive asymmetry of power between you know between you know activists in the majority world and us in Europe –really? it showed to me that we have more in common with activists from Africa and Asia and South America. That we do with IBEC [laugh]

And you know it was like oh shit I really I really thought it was going to be a big web site and I really thought that there was going to be money for a professional PR team and I thought that sure it was all in me head. That was hugely -I remember just taken just taken six months a year or whatever eight months out and just go ….I’m just really going to try and watch telly in the evenings like normal people and go to the pub and try and not talk about the fact that the world is on fire because you know I mean you really think like you losing it sometimes cos you’re so conscious of these environmental cataclysmic slaughter that is going to happen you know it looks like we’re still doing nothing about climate change.

I think if we still do nothing in 20 years I think it’s easy to see that to two and a half billion people are going to die. I remember going back then that if we did nothing but climate change, then we would helicopter gunships shooting people trying to get across the Mediterranean. We’re going to have to have five kilometers of mines encircling the EU to stop them coming. You know just the realizations yeah, Here we are you know

and I had to retrain myself because cos in my 20s I used to bore people even if you didn’t want to hear it, banging on like that at a social event and you know realising that the PGA didn’t become a household name and a force for solidarity actions on the same day. We couldn’t even organise protest in five Irish towns and cities at the same time as the Genoa were happening. You know and we’ve got food and shelter and yeah you know… people who don’t have food and shelter in the majority world.

Well you know I’m still as optimistic as ever. Probably makes me mad, but one has to live in the world and has to get on it. it’s fantastic that this is getting written up at some level and it will inspire future generations of activists to just keep on keeping on.

You know I remember, I am reminded of late by an old friend of mine, Fuey our English teacher in secondary school you-[funny voice] Gentlemen you’ve got it all wrong no no no, People don’t change don’t just get older.. [laughter] is that a good thing?

Is there anything else? Is there anything else?

I suppose … no one saw.. Nobody except leftwing minded, a small group of Left-Wing interpersonal relations theorists saw 39:25] The Berlin Wall coming down, nobody except a small group of left wing economists saw the global financial catastrophe of September 2008 who predicted occupy?. And who predicted you know this fourth wave of feminism were are currently experiencing ? Hugely inspiring the confidence

I see my students in first year, and you’re doing a debate or topic on sociology of the media from a feminis t perspective, or whatever. And literally they are looking at you, going why why why would somebody not hire someone who’s gay. why why would anybody want to pay a woman less?

They are looking at you like you have two heads. And you are telling them about the first divorce referendum failing in 1996 - it might as well be 1740 you are talking about..

And that’s massively inspiring you know. You see this is where the problem for the Liberals begin, because you know because oh yes women’s rights, gay rights and that’s grand there love. Yeah yeah. But the next step then yeah you do realise that the reason this guy doesn’t have a job is because have the houses in his street are boarded and cars in the green every time and when the cops go in they’re going in their riot gear. That’s why he doesn’t go to the recycling bank you know. So yeah I think there’s reasons to be optimistic. And I think you know you can do environmentalism if you’re sexist and racist and you can do socialism if you’re sexist and racist

I think .. because it’s the only thing the liberals have going for them that because it’s so viscerally palpable and evident that the fairness and equitable distribution resources and equality of choice in terms of the education and employment just isn’t there for working class people and the more intelligent middle class educated youth are staring at what you want me to do two degrees, a masters and then live at home with me ma for five years while I work for free an internship. Well Fuck you.

And so what I find talking to students in Griffith College and talking to colleagues in other universities is there’s a generation gap. There are massively disrespectable of authority. They hate Facebook and Bono and Google because they don’t pay any tax and there are charlatans and hypocrites They still use Facebook and Google because they’re like what are you known or there is no privacy will be stupid if you try to get privacy, the CIA is all over your arse- don’t even try it.

when you go to a meeting the natural orientation is to sit in the circle . whereas when we were doing that in the 90s, What do you do that stupid hand signals, and sit around the circle giving everybody their point of view .

You go to a meeting now and .. this is Zapatista [hard to hear]

It may just come naturally to people there but it doesn’t come naturally in terms of organizational structure.

I think the Zapatistas and the PGA have achieved huge in that they have permeated the consciousness of activists and now it’s just … We must empower each other to take turns being facilitator or taking notes, being timekeeper organising the next meeting, write up the minutes and planning the next meeting convening- Jonathan you haven’t convened a meeting Yet this year. would you like to. No I’ll give you a hand

It’s not about the cult of the loud man with the big voice that everybody looks up to anymore. I have a feeling it’s coming from the majority world. The feeling is coming from the old Zapatista vibe and within that organizational structure emulating the values of PGA and the original inspiration of the simply new organizational structure

I mean you know other people are organizing against Trump, the kids organizing against Trump, the people organizing the Black Action, Black Lives Matter and all that stuff in the States.

I mean I was at the European Attac meeting in Madrid in January- people of my generation you know mid-40s to mid-50s were just like kind of go wow is it the same in Germany? Yes is it the same in Italy. It’s the same and in France it’s the same in Norway. You go into a room with 20 something, it doesn’t matter what the issue was. They are Sitting in a circle there are empowering each other, they are making sure everybody has a chance to speak. Its hugely optimistic and I have a feeling it’s come from the south, from the Majority world.

Mags Liddy: That’s great. Thanks a million, much appreciated.