Vestas gains support from Ireland’s Socialist MEP

Message of support for Vestas from Joe Higgins, Ireland’s Socialist MEP

I wish to express my solidarity with your occupation and campaign to save Vestas. The disgusting attempts of Vestas to force you out through starvation, intimidation and injunctions demonstrate that you are having a significant impact.

Your struggle is an inspiration to me and to socialists and activists across the world.

In Ireland, hundreds of thousands have lost, their jobs in the last months as the burden for the economic crisis is heaped onto working people. It is largely the same the world over.

Your determined occupation provides a vital, lesson for those faced with similar factory closures. By occupying you have prevented the factory being shut and have created the necessary conditions for a potential historic victory.

Similarly the call for the nationalisation of Vestas, is crucial in my opinion. If the governments of the world can afford to bail out the banks, why can Vestas workers and others in similar situations not be bailed out?

Your struggle is a vital one for workers not only in Britain, but across Europe and indeed the world. A victory would be a massive inspiration and lesson to those who campaign against climate change and the millions who face redundancy.

Let me know of any way I can be of help.

Joe Higgins MEP, Socialist Party in Ireland, sister party of the Socialist Party (England and Wales)