The Cedar Lounge Revolution

The last six weeks or so I’ve been out socially with groups which have been made up in whole or large part from our leading left wing parties. And in a way these have been revealing for what they say about the culture of Irish left politics as much as the individual parties.

One aspect that intrigued me was that I found both the Labour Party and Sinn Féin groups most engaging on the political (and personal) level. There are many possible reasons for this. Primarily I’d suggest that it is the result of a shared political language. We all know the reference points even if we don’t actually share them precisely. So therefore while one may disagree with individual positions the basics are understood. I found by contrast that the Green Party groups I was out with tended to speak a substantially different political language.

Firstly there was the modernity of their project. The Green Party as we know it is barely twenty years old. People may say that Green philosophies have deep roots, and this is entirely true. But, unlike SF or Labour their party organisations are relatively recent – indeed can I suggest that it is this as much as anything else which allowed them to make the transition to government so easily? With a relatively short history theirs has been a rapid journey from periphery to centre. Where Labour and Sinn Féin might expend considerable energies (and angst) on the issue of coalition they simply didn’t have to face up to it in quite the same way. Indeed I recall some years ago suggesting to a long time GP member that if they were serious about influencing such matters they would contemplate coalition with FF. His aversion was entirely genuine, but clearly also – in retrospect – quite shallow. In truth I suspect he simply hadn’t thought about it that much one way or another and Fine Gael and Labour were the default option right up until the point where they weren’t. No hard feelings one way or another when they did jump across to FF. And that was probably writ large from the evidence of last year.

Their concerns in the GP were extremely similar, but their starting point was quite radically different. There might be a small s ’socialist’ element, or ‘left-wing’ to use a term bandied about, but it was far from the dominant element in their thinking. Indeed many of those I talked to were almost indifferent to it. For me coming from a background where people such as Andre Gorz and Rudolf Bahro, who forged aspects of Red/Green political thinking, are central to my own political beliefs this was – well, strange. More interesting again I found that those names weren’t widely known amongst the Green party members I met (although fair dues soubresauts). Now on one level that is a small thing. Gorz and Bahro are far from household names, even on the broader left. But it reinforced a sense that my green thinking was very much an outgrowth of socialism rather than the other way around. And that, I think, is a crucial distinction. It’s not that I see green policies as being lesser, but as being parallel. Whereas – entirely naturally – those within the GP see, for the most part, them being preeminent. And that being the case Labour could, to an extent, wait. Hence the reality that the GP has strands of left, centre and right. And to some degree overlaying this a remarkably pragmatic approach which, on reflection, makes them an interestingly fitting partner for Fianna Fáil.

A further observation. There’s a curious, albeit more muted, echo of this within SF, but the distinction there is not left/Green but… left/not left. Those I was talking to tended by their own admission to be socialists. Which is good. But with that there was also a further, implicit, admission that this was not the only strain within SF. I found that hard to read. What was the internal balance of forces? Who had the power? Who didn’t? How would this resolve – particularly (and this is something anyone from the WP would be at least partially conscious of, whatever way they lined up on the issue back in the day) in relation to the parliamentary party or elected representatives? And how did political partition in the broader political environment impact upon the party itself? But, here a shared Republicanism was another reference point in addition to leftism. In many ways they were most similar to the WP. Granted, on a policy level a WP from an alternate universe, but the same sense of being a small and embattled minority in a broadly antipathetic society. Now, it was ever thus in SF (having known quite a few members across the years), but the concentration on the left aspect was considerably more accentuated than in the past, at least to my ears (not to say that it wasn’t there previously, but now it was of central importance and crucial to forwarding the national project – at least to some).

One interesting aspect of discussing various matters with SF people was the sense that they were open to alliances across the left. Whether that is a function of size or necessity is a further interesting question. In the era of the Peace Process, and in the wake of electoral setbacks (and some victories as with a Seanad seat) continued isolation might not be the most attractive strategy. But the interesting thing is, and go check out Irish Left Review, this is reciprocated, albeit hesitantly from other left poles. A cheering development considering that for many the idea that SF might be left took a considerable time to germinate. Again, that reciprocity may be making a virtue of necessity, but if necessity is the engine to drive these processes forward, well, so be it.

And what of the mostly Labour leaning crowd? Well, it is interesting, considering how in a previous piece over on the ILR I noted that I found it unlikely that I would ever join Labour (or Sinn Féin), how many shared reference points there were. This too was a shared language, one very much rooted in the left. That may well be down to a self-selecting group and unrepresentative of the party as a whole…

Does this amount to anything much one way or another? Probably not. But, communication is based on a shared and mutually comprehensible vocabulary, whatever the nature of that vocabulary. Building trust, and after that building alliances necessitates some common reference points. Alex Klemm on the ILR has suggested some starting points that are worthy of consideration by our larger left wing parties. A pity if such groups of reasonably like-minded people who share much the same goals even if the paths towards them differ are not to work together. The Irish left is far far too small for an overly competitive dynamic (although competition between left formations may, counterintuitively, reap rewards). And the Greens, clearly some way distant?

Who knows? They remain not merely distant, but now detached. They believe their agenda is being fulfilled even to a limited extent in this coalition of all the talents. They may well have a point as regards some aspects of that agenda. But each day that passes puts them some political distance further away from the rest of the left (and in doing so remarkably assists in incrementally building that left as it languishes in opposition). Their own ideologies sustain them in government in a way that even this time last year would have been almost unbelievable. And that too is sobering, the thought that it has been one year. Persuading them of the commonality of purpose of the broad centre left is a project almost as large as that of building a serious broad centre left. But, it’s going to have to be done, one way or another…isn’t it?