Seaside tide turns to the left as reds crawl outfrom under the bed

NEWTON'S OPTIC:THE POLL-TOPPING performance by Trotskyite Richard Boyd Barrett in the Dún Laoghaire council election is only the latest example of far-left success in Ireland's affluent seaside towns.

Stalinist councillor Pat “The Uncle” Joseph has represented Bray for 15 years, or three five-year plans. A strong believer in socialism in one county, as long as the county is Wicklow, he often applies the theory of aggravating class struggle for the suppression of counter-revolutionary elements by standing on the promenade and shouting at the swans.

“Bray is known for its sandy beaches but our campsites also have a lot to offer,” Joseph says. “Anyone who disagrees should go to the camps. That would soon change their minds.”

In Greystones, just a few miles down the coast, Marxist-Leninist councillors are fighting to keep the two towns apart, although nobody else can tell where one merges into the other.

Maoist councillor Naomi Long-March represents Bangor in Co Down, where she campaigned for a great leap forward from an agrarian to a developed economy by setting up an organic farmers’ market beside the marina.

She also inspired the town’s notorious Shining Cycle-Path. However, all calls for a cultural revolution in Bangor have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Hoxhaist councillor Otto Mann represents Lahinch in Co Clare.

“People sometimes ask why Lahinch needs a uniquely Albanian form of Stalinism,” Mann says. “I tell them to come back out of season. Then it all makes perfect sense.”

A uniquely Korean form of Stalinism has proved popular in Rosslare, where Cllr Kim O’Rea jnr recently inherited a seat from her Dear Mother, Kim O’Rea snr.

“People often assume we’re a Fianna Fáil family on account of the hereditary business,” O’Rea says. “But, in fact, I support the Juche Idea of eliminating dogmatism and establishing ideological work for self-reliance and self-defence to realise the will of the masses.”

Sources across the border in Co Waterford confirm that Rosslare has now quietly built its long-threatened nuclear reactor at Carnsore Point, although O’Rea insists that this is purely for “research purposes”.

Titoist councillors Donna Mace, Monty Black and Bosco Herzegovina represent Baltimore in west Cork, Kinsale in south Cork and Youghal in east Cork respectively. They want a patriotic new anarcho-syndicalism based on worker-owned industries and self-management under the theory of associated labour. Mostly, however, they just want to stop the county breaking up.

Castroist-Guevarist councillor Muriel Boatlift has represented Bundoran for almost 50 years. Her theoretical positing of small guerrilla groups as the vanguard of anti-imperialist revolution has always been popular in west Belfast’s favourite bucket-and-spade resort.

Boatlift is also quick to defend Bundoran’s inclusion in this list of affluent seaside towns.

“The mafia money is still here if you know where to look,” she said.

In Co Galway, the latest thinking in South American socialism has come to Kinvara thanks to Bolivarian councillor Charlie Dealer. His Kinvara Bolivarianism, or Bolikinvarianism, combines Colombian collective farming with Galway Bay’s small-craft expertise, and is definitely not to be sniffed at.

With so much far-left support in pleasant places around the coast, it is really no surprise that the People Before Profit Alliance has triumphed in Dún Laoghaire. May the struggle continue.

Until people start making a profit on their houses again, obviously.