The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Okay, the last post on this subject was addressing the need for some blue sky thinking on the means by which Fine Gael and Labour might take on Fianna Fáil at the next election, and the suggestion was that the big tent should be extended further in line with the Inter-Party Coalitions of the 1940s and 1950s.

It’s a great idea and I’ve been heartened by the fulsome support for it from all points of the political spectrum – well, not quite…

Since then we’ve had today’s RedC Poll which continues the downward trend for the opposition with FG now on 23% and Labour on 10% with FF alone on 39%. Even if we throw the Greens into the mix, well we’ll see how the numbers come out anyhow…

But I have another idea.

One so counter-intuitive that it can’t happen – can it? What if Fine Gael and the Labour Party and the Greens were willing to take the big step, one taken some four months earlier in Northern Ireland if (and it remains a big if) Sinn Féin and the DUP sit together in government. What if they were to say to Sinn Féin, ‘we do not entirely consider you suitable for government at this point, but as you now sit in government with the DUP we will accept support from you for a minority government or coalition and in return for that support we will work the institutions established under the GFA and underpinned by the St. Andrews Agreement as fully as we can’? It’s inconceivable, isn’t it – on both sides – arguably insulting to SF, and perhaps only those with a circuitous political background – such as myself – can suggest it with a straight face, but I have to ask, why not?

Of course, I know the answer to that. There is a visceral antipathy on the part of both FG and SF to each other (notwithstanding a number of ‘technical’ political arrangements in local government) one largely shared by the Labour Party. I find that understandable on one level, some of that antipathy framed my political makeup in the past and has always left me cautious about SF, but also curious on another. After all, if one takes the logic of the Good Friday Agreement the objective was always to bring together Republicanism and Unionism in a peaceful and agreed context. Sinn Féín in the context of a decommissioned IRA was inevitably going to move further into politics, where else could it go? And as it did so it was going to become more popular rather than less (if one were to judge by the soft SF vote that characterized elections in the North throughout the period of armed conflict). The population within the Six Counties was to make their own minds up about their representation. They clearly have. It’s not music to my ears how it’s gone on the Unionist side, but if a deal is struck between Paisley and McGuinness so be it. Yet here, where the actual sacrifices made during thirty years of conflict have been so much less on all sides, and the injuries while no less painful and I think particularly of those Gardai who lost their lives at the hands of PIRA, vastly less often inflicted. Yet we ask that SF and DUP sit around a table, we demand that in the context of decommissioning and a lack of criminality that they do a deal. And down here? The rhetoric from some FG members on P.ie and elsewhere is as if it’s 1986.

Let me be a little bit honest – and perhaps give an example of hypocrisy in politics – mine. The first election I gave a preference to SF (and full disclosure: I have never given any more than a preference if only because I have a Republican Socialist alternative in the constituency I live in and Socialist alternatives (of Labour, Green and other stripes) in the previous ones) was in 1997. I remember the night before actually lying awake thinking about the ramifications of that preference. My judgement was – in all it’s narcissistic glory – that I might be assisting in the development of a peaceful transition by that party to exclusively democratic politics. Yet, hold on. Was this me, the former member of a political party that had never seen it’s own paramilitary wing decommission, had never really enquired into the nature of that wing (had indeed ignored Vincent Brownes excellent exposes in Magill during the 1980s), and yet I had not merely voted for them, but done it time and again and encouraged all I knew to vote for them. Better yet, Fine Gael had, admittedly with some prompting (all of 24 months worth) encouraged former members of that party, those at the highest level of that party, to join them and the Labour government in power in 1994. Better yet the Labour Party had encouraged those same members and the successor party to join them in a single organisation in 1999. And it is that very same Fine Gael who is working on shared proposals and platforms with those very same people. Incidentally, neither do I recall any particular worries on the part of Fine Gael in the 1990s about former and influential members of the Workers’ Party working with them as advisors and consultants – although frankly knowing the individuals concerned, I’d have done the job for less money and perhaps twice as well…

Would a Sinn Féin linked to an IRA that has been through an internationally recognised decommissioning process, that has overseen the essential decommissioning of that IRA, that has accepted the constitutional status of the two polities on the island as underwritten by international treaty, and that is on the brink of accepting and overseeing the PSNI, be a less legitimate partner than Sean MacBride and Clann na Poblachta, or my erstwhile comrades who never had to (or never saw the necessity to) go through the unpleasantness of decommissioning at all? Really? And we think we were wrestling with ethical quandries the last number of weeks over payments and Manchester?

I don’t believe for one minute that either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin would countenance working with each other – even in the hands off way I suggest – not at present anyhow. It is in neither of their perceived interests, particularly that of SF. For Fine Gael it is disturbing how much part of their self-image is bound up in antagonism to Sinn Féin. This is problematic if only because so much of Irish politics, including their good selves is littered with the debris of various incarnations of Sinn Féin impacting with constitutional politics. But it’s also problematic as the Troubles recede into history. In the not too distant future cohorts of voters will appear with no more interest in who did what when than I have in the minutiae of the Lynch governments. ‘Hey, that’s not the same thing at all! Look what Sinn Féin and PIRA supported/did…’ I hear. And perhaps it isn’t, and perhaps the charge is accurate. But the past is the past and ultimately everything winds up in it. Ultimately for all the loathing Fine Gael will wind up with a unique selling point that is largely irrelevant as Sinn Féin slips into the mantle of another left of left of centre party, a sort of slightly harder edged alternative to Labour…

For Sinn Féin such an arrangement is equally tricky. Hard to square left of left of centre oppositional Republican politics with support – even at arms length – for Fine Gael. But then if the issue is power and influence and the maintenance of the St. Andrew’s Agreement or the GFA, then external support for Fine Gael should be easier than support for the DUP in a power sharing executive – shouldn’t it?

In any case, with my realistic hat on again as distinct from my self-indulgent and provocative hat (or perhaps just the pointy one with the big D on the front of it), I can see a different future develop. One where Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats just barely (possibly with the help of some of the Independents) make it back in in 2007. One where Sinn Féin, excluded by FG/Labour at the election and basking in their marginal status gain seats and become an even stronger oppositional voice. One where they are nicely lined up for coalition with Fianna Fáil (and the Greens with who they work reasonably well) at any point subsequently, but most likely in 2012, riding high on the successful implementation of the Northern Institutions. One where they, not the Labour Party, are positioned as the growing left opposition throughout the next five years (After all, it took a mere fifteen years from the OIRA’s “ceasefire” to the widespread acceptance by the electorate of the Workers’ Party. Already we’re twelve or so years beyond the first PIRA cessation). And ultimately Fine Gael will be left facing an unpalatable reality that they too have a date with destiny and will have to deal with Sinn Féin, Irish political history already shows that. So I’m (only half-jokingly) suggesting we cut out the intervening and, frankly, politically useless intervening ten years and let’s cut to the chase.

How badly do Fine Gael and Labour want to see Fianna Fáil out of office?

Option one – broaden the tent – is good… but if they’re really really serious…

How badly do Fine Gael and Labour want to see Fianna Fáil out of power?