Resisting austerity? The case of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed

Abstract:

This article considers the issue of resistance to austerity in recent years in Ireland and focuses specifically on the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU). The article notes that the Irish Government’s post-2008 austerity policies had devastating effects on unemployed people, but that the INOU’s stance and responses to such policies were timid and cautious.

The argument is that the INOU’s position is the result of long-established relations of dependency with respect to the state and to the trade union movement which contributed strongly to reduce its militancy in general and facilitated its caution and ambiguous responses to austerity in the post-2008 period in particular.