08 - Clare Daly on Politics, Power & Not Being Afraid of Speaking Out

This week we sit down with Clare Daly, former TD and MEP for Dublin, and one of the most recognisable independent voices in Irish and European politics. Expelled from the Labour Party as a teenager, she went on to spend over 25 years in public life, from her years as a shop steward at Dublin Airport to 12 years on Fingal County Council, eight as a TD and five as an MEP.  We trace her politics back to the 1980s: the divorce referendum, the anti-apartheid movement, college activism and beyond. We talk about the mass campaign against water charges she organised in north Dublin in the 1990s, which led her into electoral politics almost by accident, and what she found when she got to the European Parliament, including her account of EU militarisation, Irish neutrality and the war in Ukraine. We also put her trip to Iraq to her directly, along with the photographs that were used against her, and ask how she squares her own politics with the treatment of women in Iran.  Find Clare I4C Trouble with Daly and Wallace (podcast, with Mick Wallace) Referenced in this episode Vijay Prashad, historian and director of the Tricontinental Institute · Abby Martin and The Empire Files · Medea Benjamin and Code Pink · Lowkey, the British-Iraqi rapper and activist If you've enjoyed this episode, why not support the show? Find us over at patreon.com/wigsonthegreenpod Or follow us on Instagram & TikTok