Max McGuinness on the future of the Labour Party.
Over the past two weeks, debate has been fizzling across the op-ed and letters pages of the Irish Times about prospects for the Irish Labour Party following last month's disappointing election result, where Labour lost one seat and saw its share of the vote dip to just above 10%.
The antagonists fall roughly into two camps. On the one hand, the likes of Labour Party International Secretary Michael McLoughlin, who wrote an op-ed last Tuesday, insist that the party has to modernise – code for ditching the Trade Unions, Socialism and the rest while explicitly targeting middle-class voters.
McLoughlin's opponents maintain that the working-class is alive and well in Ireland and that Labour just has to concentrate on achieving what it has always failed to do - taking a majority of working-class votes away from Fianna Fáil.
The example of the Labour Party in Britain provides no clear instruction. Yes, Blair ditched Clause 4 – the part in the Labour Party constitution about nationalising the Solar System – shut up about socialism and made himself and everything around him appear all new and shiny. But he did all this while retaining mass working-class support, whereas since the Iraq War, metropolitan middle class voters have typically defected to the Liberal Democrats. Labour in Britain still relies on the Trade Unions for the bulk of its funding but the these aren't as keen to shell out as they used to be. Labour thus has to go begging to rich men which is the cause of the ongoing cash for peerages row.
In Ireland, the argument about Labour's future revolves around pre-election pacts and coalition. In 2002, Labour went it alone and got nowhere. In 2007, they hooked up with Fine Gael and lost a seat. Catch 22?
The left and opportunist wings of the party tend to unite against coalition pacts for different reasons. The former are too principled to hitch their wagon to a train of conservatives whilst the latter know that coalition with Fianna Fáil will always be on the cards after every election.
Labour has tried swinging to the Left and tried pitching to the Centre (and indeed the Right with Rabbitte's "40 million Poles" remark last year).
The problem derives from the nature of the party within the Irish political system. Fine Gael is an anachronism. The only thing Fine Gael can ever hope to offer the electorate is coalition with Labour. So the only logical course for Fine Gael to adopt is to merge with Labour and rename itself The Social Democratic Party. Those who don't like it can join Fianna Fáil - where they belong.
If it is not to remain forever marginal, Labour either has to eliminate Fine Gael - unlikely because of the power of political inertia - or join Fine Gael. Otherwise, the same insoluble dispute will be carried out every five years as party members pore over the message of their miserable 200,000 votes.
This is the best analysis of the Labour Party's problems that I have read - much better than all the bleating in the Times last week. Well done.
Posted by: Tom Fielding | June 25, 2007 at 15:23
Whilst I would agree it is a good analysis there are a couple of points that could be laboured more (if youll excuse the pun)
In answer to the question that is oft asked "why can the Irish Labour Party never capitalise on the left vote in Ireland" the answer is simple. Fianna Fail do capitalise on it. It is often said that FF is a broad church and critical component of that congregation is the working class membership. This membership has been built up from obvious historical factors but also because FF have delivered and continues to do so for this constituencey while the Labour Party have been lecturing us on what should be done for these communities and this is not exclusive to the last election.
In contrast to the broad memberhsip of FF it has been my experience that the memberhsip of the Labour party (particularlly in Dublin) are drawn from much narrower elements of thr social strata. It led a friend of mine to comment recently that he "was not wealthy enough to join the Lab party".
This is not to say there is not a working class memberhsip in the Lab party however there is a lack of understaning (as your writer has somewhat illustrated) between these two diverse memberships and thus the party (not unlike the PD's) do not know what they stand for in the face of not having enough members to stand for everything like FF.
Every ten or fifteen years there is an opportunity to rebalance Irish politics and there are a couple of options, one being as your writer has pointed out, the other being FG actually deciding they stand for something other than being anti FF and assuming the vacant space on the right and seeking to grow their vote there (together wtih the left overs of the PD's). The benefit for Lab would be they could assert their "left" values and be a natural coalition party with FF!
Will Pat be judged to have missed the same opportunity as Dick..... Only time will tell!
Posted by: Complete Dub | June 26, 2007 at 15:30
Where does Max McGuinness’s commonplace analysis fall down?
Max, like Ed Brophy before him, does not wish to recognise that Fianna Fail is in effect the Irish Social Democratic Party. It has fulfilled this role since its foundation in 1927, as reflected both in its membership, policies and Governmental programme. I could argue that it has demonstrated over and again that it is one of the most sophisticated and successful Social Democratic parties in Europe, mistakes and setbacks notwithstanding
The founders and drivers of FF were familiar with the Bolshevik and Menshevik choices which dominated the Socialist International at the time. But unlike many other European revolutionaries, FF did not see Men of Property and Men of the Cloth as the enemy. Instead, like other Social Democrats, they alligned with both Capital and Church to tackle poverty and ignorance; and to strengthen our new democracy through social justice.
As British Labour discovered when it swopped the Red Flag for a red business tie, such alliances can be corrupting. The politics of compromise, association and persuasion can also take decades. Democracy is a very slow process, and inefficient - not at all as fast and effective as rule by diktat. But without popular countervailing forces; strong special interests; and institutional checks and balances, Socialism is just a fast track to economic and social collapse
Labour is a failed Socialist Party because FF is a successful Social Democratic one. All Labour has ever really shared with the Christian Democratic Fine Gael is a visceral, distracting and self-destructive loathing of FF, and all its works and pomps. It is easy for junior pundits whose political memory does not stretch much beyond 2002 to ignore the many choices Labour has had in the past 90 years. Thrice it could have defined FF’s ‘socialism’ as its own. Pat Rabbitte's anti-FF stance in 2005/ 07 was a fatal choice in the circumstances.
Labour today have nowhere to go except up their own ageing, ever-tightening, political orifice in Opposition. Their only electoral hope, (and it is a measure of their wrong-headed desperation that they are already talking it up) is an economic and social crisis which leaves everyone worse off and radically disaffected. With all Fianna Fail’ s many faults and failings, it has never been that cynical. Prosperity and social cohesion are still the goal, no matter how elusive and uneven so far.
Even In a situation of social and electoral protest, Labour would have to cope with a flanking, resurgent Sinn Fein and Independent Socialists. So they won’t be without further mistaken choices to make; though one choice that is not available in 21st century Ireland is a Socialist one. By the time the authoritarian demagogue Hugo Chavez has finished with Venezuala, Labour here will be too embarrassed even to mention the word. (Bar, possibly, that silly vain populist Michael D. and his right-on Fan Club.)
Sooner or later the notion that it would be mere "opportunism" for Labour to co-alesce with Fianna Fail will be recognised as a trite idee recu without ideological or practical justification. So it is deeply irritating for old leftist justice and peace FFers like me to read the same old canard repeated without challenge by tyro PolCorrs in a magazine which prides itself on fresh thinking. When it comes to Irish politics, The Dubliner continues to smell stale and taste derivative. Must be that old anti-FF flavouring you still use!
Posted by: John Stephenson | November 18, 2007 at 19:36