Conor McCabe - Raymond Crotty Memorial Lecture 2011

dublin | anti-capitalism | event notice Tuesday September 27, 2011 14:31 by O.O'C - People's Movement post at people dot ie Pearse Centre, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin City 087-2308330

"Rancher & Banking Interests in the Irish Economy"

Dr. Conor McCabe will deliver the Raymond Crotty Memorial Lecture for 2011 in the Pearse Centre (27 Pearse Street), Dublin, at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday 15 October.

Raymond Crotty. Farmer, economist, development theorist, historian, and political activist, Raymond Crotty (1925-94) was one of the most original thinkers to come out of modern Ireland.

He made history with his successful constitutional action in 1987 against the Government’s attempt to ratify the EU’s Single European Act Treaty by simple Dail majority vote instead of by popular referendum.

Holding strong radical views, his advocacy of a land tax as a means of putting pressure on Irish landowners to use their land more productively pitted him against powerful vested interests.

In 1974 he wrote, “Recent developments highlight the remarkable contrast which has existed for almost a century-and-a-half between the fortunes of the Irish banking system and of Irish society. Few banking systems in the world have enjoyed such protracted, unbroken prosperity as the Irish banking system. By contrast no country in the world can match Ireland’s record of political and social decay-with its population less than half what it was 130 years ago, and its workforce 30% less than it was when the State was founded fifty years ago. The Irish banking system has grown rich and powerful as Irish society has shrunk and decayed” (Crotty, The cattle crisis and the small farmer 1974)

Irish Agricultural Production (1962), his first book, was described by Professor Joe Lee as ‘a monument of the Irish intellect.’.

His posthumously published book, When Histories Collide: the Development and Impact of Individualistic Capitalism explored the role of Indo-European pastoralist peoples in the creation of the modern world.

All through his active life, he highlighted the fact that his study of the Third World had brought home to him that Ireland’s traditional economic problem of high unemployment and emigration had analogies in most former colonies of the European powers.