Hall named in honour of O'Reilly echoes to WP denunciations of capitalist wrongs

It was an incongruous setting for a two-day conference which heard repeated remarks about the evils of capitalism.

The venue for the Workers' Party annual ardfheis at the weekend was the O'Reilly Hall in Belvedere College, Dublin. It is named after a former star pupil and generous benefactor, Dr Tony O'Reilly, whom many of the delegates would view as the exemplar of international capitalism.

But clearly the going rate for renting the splendid hall was good value, and any reservations about the manner in which it venerates a Belvedere old boy, with a totally different ideology, were put aside.

Journalists from Dr O'Reilly's Independent Newspapers were among the media criticised by veteran activist and former leader and TD, Mr Tomas Mac Giolla, in his address to delegates. Mr Mac Giolla was particularly angry with RTE presenters for what he believed was the hard time they were giving the teachers.

Teachers, he declared, were in the low-pay bracket, at the very bottom of the professional pile.

"This Government does not even regard them as professional people - certainly not in the same highly esteemed bracket as the excessively highly paid lawyers and doctors.

"Even the media personalities, many of whom have no qualifications at all, regard themselves as having a higher status than teachers and take great pleasure in hammering the teachers and keeping them in their place.

"You have all heard Marion Finucane, Joe Duffy and Pat Kenny, in the past week, savagely tearing the teachers apart - details of their pay, the hours they work, only 22 hours per week, and their three-month summer holidays.

"The RTE people take at least three months' holidays every year, and their salaries are so high that they must be kept secret to save them from embarrassment."

The party's new president is another veteran activist, Mr Sean Garland. He suggested, in an address to delegates, that governments be forced to serve five-year mandatory terms. "It must not be within the privilege of any Taoiseach to use the Dail dissolution as a party political manoeuvre."

Mr Garland is probably glad to know that, although it is not mandatory, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, continues to insist that his Government will serve a five-year term.

According to a biographical note supplied to the media, Mr Garland joined the IRA in 1953 and, subsequently, the British army on IRA instructions. He was in Armagh barracks for the IRA raid in June, 1954, it added.

It recalled how he was shot and seriously wounded in 1975, recovered and went on to play a leading role in developing the party, adding that his part was pivotal "in defeating the attempt by the Proinsias De Rossa faction to liquidate the Workers' Party in 1992".

The scars from that split - which saw the formation of New Agenda, later Democratic Left, and then the amalgamation with Labour - are clearly still raw. Any reference to their one-time colleagues brings a scathing response, and everybody knew Tom French's target when he criticised individualism and rampant greed.