No ordinary Joe

Although Joe Higgins claims to be just like a character in a certain Christy Moore song, the reality is that he’s no ordinary Joe. When the TD for Dublin West, and the sole Socialist Party deputy in Dáil Eireann, stands to speak in the house, there’s generally an air of hushed expectancy. Occasionally, there’s even a vague whiff of fecal matter wafting around the government benches.

Although the 57-year-old Kerryman was famously described as a “nitwit” by an enraged and embarrassed Bertie Ahern, nothing could be further from the truth. Whether you agree with Higgins’ policies or not, nobody can deny that he’s one of the finest orators in contemporary Irish politics. Admittedly, he doesn’t have very much competition – but by anyone’s standards, he’s rarely dull. Sometimes, he’s even hilarious.
It’s hardly surprising that the Taoiseach doesn’t like him. Since his first election in 1997, Higgins has consistently been a thorn in Bertie’s side. Whether needling him about the corruption allegedly riddling Fianna Fáil, protesting against water, bin and other stealth taxes, or accusing the government of cosying up to the multinationals, Higgins generally hits the home truth bulls-eye with an economy of well chosen, acerbic and deftly delivered words.
He doesn’t just lighten the mood or score points, he also gets very real results. In early 2005, Higgins raised the issue of abuse of migrant Turkish labourers by the multinational construction company, GAMA. He described it as “a master fraud by a major entity in the construction industry in this country, a grand larceny of worker’s wage amounting to millions of euro each month, stolen from the from the workers, and tens of millions over the last year alone.”
GAMA had been invited into Ireland by the government, and awarded a number of extremely lucrative building contracts. Ahern reluctantly mumbled something non-committal about looking into it, and Ceann Comhairle Rory O’Hanlon admonished Higgins for naming the company. But the scandal didn’t go away, mainly because the feisty firebrand socialist never shut up about it.
Within a few months, Higgins’ allegations were proven right – and GAMA were forced to pay the Turkish workers all of their back wages (one of whom described it as “like winning the lottery”). To their collective shame, Ahern and Fianna Fáil were hugely exposed as multinational lackeys. Conor Lenihan stupidly shouting “Stick with the kebabs!” at Higgins, and then being forced to apologise just a couple of hours later, hardly helped their caring ‘party of the people’ image.
The whole sorry, scary and scandalous story can be seen in a recently released DVD documentary entitled The GAMA Strike. While the production values aren’t Top of the Range, and there’s a lot of SP propaganda, the documentary is eminently watchable and utterly compelling. A snapshot of the true cynical face of Celtic Tiger Ireland, it’s a film that every Irish voter should watch, whatever their politics. In years to come, it’ll undoubtedly be an important historical document.
Although this interview takes place in Leinster House on September 11th, your Hot Press reporter didn’t feel the need to raise the American question with him. Two years back, I sat beside Higgins at a televised press conference for the ‘When Bush Came To Shove’ campaign. I remember he arrived in about 100 seconds before the conference was due to begin, furiously scribbled out three pages of notes, seemingly off the top of his head, and then delivered a devastatingly effective speech. As soon as he’d finished, he rushed out the door to make another speech elsewhere.
Even today, he seems harassed, busy and stressed. His suit is rumpled, his tie is loosened and his shirt is opened up to reveal an overwashed vest that’s as graying as his hair. He’s carrying an overstuffed case and a precariously balanced tower of files and papers. Shaking hands becomes comical, almost more effort than it’s worth.
He asks would I mind giving him a chance to eat, before we get started and between loud slurps of unsweetened tea, he wolfs down a pair of plasticy-looking cheese sandwiches in about 60 seconds flat.
Then, a quick dab of the serviette later, he’s ready to go...

OLAF TYARANSEN: Do you always eat that quickly? Are you always grabbing a bite on the hop?
JOE HIGGINS: Yeah. It’s not too bad now. There’s not that much pressure, but it’s when the Dáil is sitting and you’re trying to cover all the angles, you just eat when you can.
As well as being the only Socialist Party TD in the house, you’re also the main spokesperson for all the independents, aren’t you?
The independents are all very varied in their ideological outlook, so there isn’t really a spokesperson or a united position. But there is a technical group, which has three parts to it – the independents and myself, the Green Party and Sinn Fein. It’s to allow you to get your rights in terms of speaking time and input into the Dail procedures. So the technical group have the same rights as any opposition political party.
But there was a new departure a few years ago of a leader’s question on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, without notice to the Taoiseach. It could be the leader of Fianna Gael or the Labour Party, but the technical group doesn’t have a leader. So each section of the group can rotate in asking the leader’s question. And the independents selected myself to be the person to ask the questions. In fact, a lot of what you would have seen in that documentary in terms of trying to put pressure on the government in regard to GAMA, it was through the device of the leader’s question that I was able to get it in on a high level. So it was a big help in putting political pressure on them.
You were born in Kerry and grew up on a farm. Did you travel much as a kid or see much of Ireland outside of Kerry?
No. I was 17 before I ever stepped outside Kerry. It was the ‘50s or early ‘60s, so the mobility compared to today was quite different. You have school students going all over the world now, which is very good for them.
Was it a barefoot kind of existence?
All the children went to school barefoot in the summertime. Obviously in the winter, you couldn’t. It was a very Spartan and basic kind of life. My parents worked hard on a relatively small farm. We’d be on the same level as most of the other people in the area. But I think people had enough. There was certainly no hunger or malnourishment because we produced our own food, etcetera. But, you know, your spending money was a thrupenny bit on a Sunday morning and a few extra shillings at the Dingle Races and that was it.
Would you describe it as a happy childhood?
My memories of it are good. We were constantly occupied, really, with farm-work after school – before school, even. So your work blended in with everything else. So I suppose you could say it was a good preparation for later life.
I know you’re an atheist now, but you initially studied to be a priest.
Yeah. I was in the seminary for a number of years. But I revised my ideas during the course of that time.
You went to an American seminary, didn’t you?
Irish and American, yeah.
Did you see much of the kinds of activities we now know went on in seminaries?
Well, it was really for ideological reasons that I moved on. Vietnam was raging when I was in the United States and obviously I was very influenced by the youth movement of opposition to that. All sections of the establishment, including the Catholic Church, were backing that disastrous war, which hugely alienated the youth. I was young so I wouldn’t have been an organising figure or anything like that.
It must have been quite some culture shock for you, given that you’d spent most of your life in Kerry.
It was. I wasn’t in college here, for example, where you had a lot of radicalisation and activism going on. So I was in the United States without really having been exposed to that.
So America was a huge influence. Your religious beliefs must have been seriously challenged there. Free love and the hippies and all that...
It was really more political, to be honest. How do you change the world? How do you make a world where people can live freely? Free from hunger and poverty. Free from war and violence.
Have you always been a very serious-minded kind of character?
Well, you’re presuming that I’m always serious minded. Ha, ha!
I’m just trying to imagine this naïve young guy from Kerry arriving into liberated America in the ‘60s. So many new things happening...
I would’ve instinctively identified with the people in the United States – the youth who were opposing the Vietnam war. Fighting it and mobilising against it.
Did you drop any acid between peace rallies?
Acid? No. Ha, ha!
Well, that was the time that was in it!
Yeah, yeah.
Did you smoke any marijuana?
Well, I think... [pauses] I suppose in my student days, at various times, I wouldn’t have been very different from what most students did. Without going into any more detail now [smiles]. But the main motivator really in leaving the seminary was political. And over time, I was moved in the direction of Socialist and Marxist ideas. First to generally radical ideas and more defined Socialist/Marxist ideas. And then into a more organized political direction.
You went to Australia next.
Yeah. I was working in the buildings, doing construction in Australia – not for very long. And then I put myself through UCD, largely from construction work over the course of the summers. And it was there that I really became involved with people on the Left, and the militant group which was in the Labour Party at that time – here and in Britain and other countries.
Did you ever get involved in any violent protests?
It was really people power protests. Sit-downs and that kind of thing, but no violent protest.
I know that you’re extremely passionate in your beliefs, but are you an even-tempered kind of fellow generally?
I think you have to approach opposition to the present system, and the many evils within it, in a considered way, and with a view to where you’re going and how you advance an objective, which is the mobilization of people, of workers and youths, and the development of a a social and a working class consciousness. It’s really whatever moves that forward that decides your tactics and strategy.
What are your memories of the water charges campaign?
That was a very strong, historic campaign, really, where we forced a major change of government policy. That was a very intense campaign of people power, of mobilizing communities over three years from ‘94 to ‘96. I was the chairman of the all Dublin campaign. And it was really intense. We fought them in the courts, we fought them through a major boycott of the water charges and a major civil disobedience campaign. At that time the feeling of inequity in taxation was very strong among PAYE workers – quite rightly. And we know now much more even about the swindles that were going on with the establishment and within the golden circle. It was a complete rip-off. The fact that, in December of ’96, the then-government abolished water charges throughout the whole country was a huge achievement for that campaign, in terms of the tax reform.
You went to jail for the bin charges campaign.
That was another way to put an underhand local tax on top of working people. So when the councils came out quite crudely to smash the campaign by declaring that they would not collect the bins of taxpayers, again we mounted a firm opposition to that. And very quickly we were landed in the High Court by the council – so it was a question of fighting it or just walking away without a fight – which would’ve been very wrong.
You wound up spending a month in Mountjoy in 2003. How did you cope with that?
I was in the Training Unit, which would be much better than the older part of the prison in terms of the conditions and so on. It’s a bit like living in a youth hostel of 40 years ago. You have your own room, with a sink in it, where you are locked in at night and stuff. It was okay. The main problem was just being denied your freedom – and the freedom to agitate and to organise and to be involved in the movement as well.
How do you usually spend your free time? Movies? Books? Football?
Well, over the years, I have to be honest, there has been very little free time. It’s been a very consuming commitment. Being in a small party and being the only parliamentary representative, there’s been a huge number of demands including constituency issues and people’s individual problems which they want you to help them with. Some academics pour scorn on this – calling it clientalism, etcetera. In my view, if working people elect you and then seek your assistance in trying to negotiate their way through the political system or the bureaucracy then you’re duty bound to assist. Always from the point of view of trying to help them empower themselves and so on. So there hasn’t been a lot of free time, to be honest.
You never got married?
No, no.
Do you regret that? Or do you have a partner?
I never used my private life as a political prop, which a lot of politicians do. It just doesn’t wear well with me. Putting your children out there as part of your campaign, on the literature, etcetera. I believe that your private life is your private life, and provided you’re not being massively hypocritical in the sense of maybe opposing speculation and profiteering and rack-renting – which I’ve done, very strongly – and then secretly doing it yourself. If something like that emerges in a political person’s life, it should be outed absolutely. Otherwise, I believe that a person’s private life is a person’s private life. That’s where I’d leave it, really.
Is politics a 24/7 thing with you, then?
Well, I don’t want to appear like a monk or a martyr or something like that, no. But any Socialist activist – like my colleagues in the Socialist Party – will understand the demands that are there. Now, obviously you do have to take downtime, sometimes.
Do you drink?
Well, obviously you have to drink to survive, you know.
Yeah. Do you drink alcohol?
Ah yeah. I take a social drink.
Do you smoke cigarettes?
I don’t smoke, no. Thankfully. Maybe at very rare and particular occasions, I might have a cigar. But I don’t smoke, really.
Do you support the smoking ban, then?
Yeah. Because a lot of your time is spent at meetings or in venues where people are gathered. It was sometimes quite a strain when you were in rooms choked up with smoke.
Bertie Ahern once commented that he hadn’t heard you say anything positive in 20 years. Do you think you have a positive outlook on life?
I think I’m very positive, yeah. Very, very positive. What he means is I’m constantly opposing what he and Fianna Fáil stand for, but that opposition is entirely positive in my view. I mean, the last time he lost the rag was when I was tackling them over having allowed carte blanche to the speculators to have the price of a home for an ordinary working person not double or treble, but in Dublin quadrupled in nine years. And he never lifted a finger against them. And a situation now where young workers now have to get mortgages over 40 years. And, statistically, since many of them are in their early thirties before they can afford now to buy a house, they’ll still be paying that mortgage in their seventies. And for what? Just to satisfy the greed and the profiteering of the people who’ve manipulated this market. What we wanted was to control the price of building land and that a home should be a human right, not something that something that people have to struggle and kill themselves to get. So that’s all very positive.
He called you a “nitwit”. So what’s your impression of him?
I don’t really get involved in the personalities of the government. I see them as political persons representing something political. And for nine years this has been an extremely right-wing government that has facilitated the speculators, the profiteers, the privatisers. I see the opening up of a whole swathe of private hospitals as a very regressive step, which this government is responsible for. And Bertie Ahern tries to make himself out to be a man of the people. In fact, he represents big business and the establishment and the speculator. And that’s politically the role he plays.
Do you admire him in any way?
I don’t, no. I don’t admire any political party or any political personage that would be responsible for the kind of society that this government has created.
What do you think of the standard of debate in the Dail?
It’s very poor in general – unfortunately. There’s a tendency on the government’s side – not a tendency but a practice – where everything is just read from scripts. So, you know, it’s presented in a very dead and boring way.
Do the Socialist Party have a spin doctor or a speechwriter?
No. I mean, maybe when the Socialist Party has a bigger parliamentary party – we hope to get our councilor in North Dublin, Claire Daly, elected, and we have two other councilors, Mick Murphy in Dublin South West and Mick Barry in Cork, who are very strong, credible candidates – we’ll need more political back-up in that sense. But for now, really, colleagues help me with research and with the constituency work very effectively. But in terms of the questions to the Taoiseach and the government, the issues and the fights, that would be mostly my own creation.
Do you still give most of your salary back to the party?
Yes. Our policy, which I have implemented from the very beginning, was to live on the equivalent of the average industrial wage. So my take-home pay would be around thirty thousand euros. The rest of it goes some to the Socialist Party, some to campaigns and a whole range of different issues right across the board. Now, if I travel for the party, those expenses would be covered quite legitimately.
Do you think TDs are overpaid?
Well, in my view, if TDs were on the average wage, they would be much closer to the life of working people. But obviously TDs in the parties that represent big business... they’re in it for something completely different than how the Socialist Party approaches it. It’s no wonder government Ministers get divorced from the feelings and the views of ordinary people, because they’re living on these hugely inflated wages and salaries. Government ministers are well over the €100,000 mark, and the prime minister or the Taoiseach is on €200,000 plus. That’s light years removed from the lives of most working people who, despite all the propaganda about the Celtic Tiger and all that, are still finding it tough enough.
Do you think we have too many TDs in this country? Or too few?
Well, we have too many right wing TDs, but if there was an attempt to change the constituency and proportional representation, we would oppose that because it would really be a blow against the smaller parties, independent people and community campaigns, and the left in particular. Because the present system does reflect the forces that are at work in society, even down to a local level. And I think that’s the way it should be.
Do you think abortion should be legalised in Ireland?
I think that women should have the right to terminate their pregnancy, yes. I think it’s a woman’s choice.
Do you support gay marriage?
Yes, of course. But what puzzles me a little bit is why some gay people want to replicate the establishment of marriage in heterosexual relationships.
I’d imagine tax status would be one of the major reasons.
Ah well, any of the procedures put in place should obviously give all those rights in the same way, but I would’ve thought that people would find new ways of... [pauses]. You know, if they want some kind of institutional expression of commitment or something, that there would’ve been other ways to do it, rather than seeking simply a replication of what happens in the heterosexual world. Works for a lot of people and that’s great, but obviously there’s a lot of pressure and unhappiness on people.
Do you support the right of gay couples to adopt?
Well, why not? Why not? Why should it be any different, really, to... Why should gay people not be assessed for whatever qualifications are needed for adoptive parents in general? And obviously the most important thing there is that the children would have a secure and loving environment in which to grow up and be educated and live? So that’s the only criteria really.
Do you think that marijuana should be legalised?
I certainly think that the present situation is not sustainable, where a whole potentially significant section of the population is criminalised. That’s not sustainable. Legal or illegal, drugs are such a part of society that the only question about drugs really is how do you develop a policy that does the most good and the least harm in people’s lives. Vis-à-vis dependency, vis-à-vis use. And in my view we need a very thorough and honest debate, without being abused by intolerant people, as to how could a drug like marijuana be part of society and not cause a lot of problems like alcohol.
There is, of course, an enormous hypocrisy in that huge empires of big business have been built on alcohol, which is really a very, very dangerous drug. And the same people will absolutely denounce people who smoke marijuana. One thing I would certainly be categorical about is that you should never ever have a situation where any new drug, or any drug that becomes legal according to the establishment law, should be in the hands of private companies – national or multinational – as a source of profiteering and profit. Like cigarettes, like drink. That should not be the case. Like, I believe that all advertising for alcohol should be completely banned. Drugs of any kind should not be portrayed the way alcohol is portrayed on television.
You never see a drunk person in an alcohol advertisement.
Yeah. The overuse or wrong use or whatever you call it does enormous damage. It’s not an easy one to answer straight, to be honest.
What’s your opinion of Michael McDowell?
I don’t think that there will be a dramatic change, with him as leader, in either PD policy or government policy because they’re all of a type really. The problem is really that working people do not now have a major party as ideologically committed to them and to social solutions and a different way completely of organising a society than the capitalists have in the PDs and in Fianna Fail. Labour and Social Democratic parties all over Europe have gone away to the right. They’re really parties that embrace capitalism and the market now, and therefore we do have the challenge in the years ahead of constructing a mass party for working people, young people. And I think that will be one of the major challenges that people who want to build an alternative society have to face up to.
What do you think of Bono’s efforts on AIDS and Drop The Debt?
Well, appealing to imperialist governments and these major institutions which created the problem, which have hundreds of millions of the Third World people in bondage, is not going to resolve the problem. I mean, they are the problem, they’re not the solution. Look at the people whose sleeves he was tugging – Blair and Bush: look at the catastrophe they visit on the people of Iraq. Look at the criminal waste of resources there – hundreds of billions in the last three years alone. Really it’s the overthrow of capitalism – the multinationals and their system – and ordinary working people, poor people, peasant people, in the ex-colonial world taking control of the resources and democratically organizing their society, that’s the solution.
But would they not soon become just as corrupt as the present leaders?
The society that we want to see would be one where the major levers of the economy, the major financial institutions and industry is in public ownership, but under the democratic control and management of working people. And similarly political institutions. It isn’t a question of, like now, electing people to the Dail and five years later they’re back again. It’s a question of putting in place structures whereby people are answerable to those who elect them, live on the same wage, and so on. And where power, if you like, is devolved into society rather than concentrated in the hands of small minorities of powerful companies and individuals and their political voices.
Do you think the Gardaí are corrupt?
Well, obviously the reports and the investigations and what has come out in recent years has shown huge corruption among some elements and certain sections of the Gardai Siochana. A huge shake-up is needed. To our view, at community level, the Gardai should be under the democratic control of the local community.

I think it’s policing on the cheap. A cynical manoeuver by Mr. McDowell and the government to pretend to honour election promises they made for extra Guards, etc.
Do you hold out much hope for the future of Ireland?
I’m extremely optimistic for the future, but that’s on the basis of a changing society, of a democratic socialist society. I think that the present position, particularly the huge dependence on construction, is not sustainable. Capitalism never goes on a straight line like that. The laws of the system itself will unfortunately inevitably mean that there will be a cycle of recession. And the people who will get hurt and burned are ordinary working people and young people. The people who have made the absolute fortunes and the speculators will walk away, of course, at that stage – leaving ordinary people to pick up the pieces.
Do you have any wealthy friends?
No. Obviously, I know people who are self-employed – be they plumbers or carpenters or taxi drivers or that type of thing – and some of them would be doing alright for themselves. But do I mix with millionaires? No.
Do you socialise with other politicians?
I have a very friendly working relationship with most of the independent TDs in the Dáil. But I don’t drink in the bar with right wing politicians, no.
Do you not think that you’d achieve more by sleeping – or drinking – with the enemy, so to speak?
No.
Do you see them as the enemy?
Yes, they are. Ideologically and in terms of the society that they have created and stand over, yeah. My life is dedicated to changing that society to a democratic socialist society.
Can you give me an example of where a society like that has worked?
There is no socialist society. And there hasn’t been. The Russian revolution in 1917 was a massive event in human history when the first time working people and poor farmers took power against enormous odds. That was a huge achievement. Unfortunately, for very definite factors, which we don’t have time to go into now, it degenerated into Stalinism in the 1920s. Between genuine socialism and revolutionary ideals that Lenin and Trotsky stood for and the Bolshevik Party stood for, a river of blood divided that from what was created by Stalin and the subsequent bureaucracies that emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe, and from the very beginning in China actually.
What about Cuba?
Well, in the case of Cuba the ending of the Batista dictatorship and the public ownership of key sectors of the economy made a huge difference to the lives of people. But we don’t believe that Cuba is a worker’s democracy. And that’s what needs to be achieved. That workers have full democratic rights in Cuba. Because, for us, democratic rights are as essential to socialism and a publicly owned economy as oxygen is to the human body.
What’s your greatest extravagance?
In terms of what?
Well, do you have a weakness for Charvet shirts or anything like that?
Ha, ha! No! As you can see, my shirts are very modest! A bit like most of the people I represent in Dublin West and elsewhere, I just have an ordinary life really. You know, in terms of living standards.
Is there anything you desire to own?
Not really. I have a modest home on the mortgage, which fortunately I was able to buy before the prices went crazy. But that’s it really. I find it a little bit difficult to see how or why... Em, I don’t understand this acquisitive greed that drives a certain section of people – the speculators. I mean, where does it lead? And where they’re prepared to walk over people in the most ruthless and disgusting fashion to accumulate this massive wealth that they’ll never be able to spend. That’s capitalism for you.
Do you have a motto in life?
A motto? No, not a motto as such. I think the general outlook would be that on this globe if society was organized and run for the benefit of the majority of people rather than the greed of a few, you could construct almost a paradise, in the sense of no war, no conflict, people being able to achieve their potential. And then at the same time, because you wouldn’t be at the mercy of the profiteers, to save the environment and save our ecosystems from the destruction that is now threatening. That’s why, in my view, socialism is the way to achieve that.

The Gama Strike DVD can be purchased online from www.socialistparty.net