The Irish Left Archive: Times Change, Number 9 Winter 1996/7, Democratic Left June 22, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Democratic Left, Irish Left Online Document Archive.4 comments
The headline on this edition of Times Change, the Quarterly Political and Cultural Review from Democratic Left, is “What’s Left?” set beside an image of Marx. The subhead is “Transitions in Socialism”. It is an edition from the period when DL were in government with Fine Gael and Labour and therefore permits an insight into some of the issues that exercised the party during that period.
The issue of neutrality looms large in this issue, due to the then recent White Paper on Foreign Policy which contained a proposal to consider participation in the NATO “Partnership for Peace”. The editorial is certainly clear in its adherence to a traditional line on neutrality arguing that proponents of abandoning it ‘fail to make a convincing case’. And inside there is an article from Roger Cole underlining that. However the editorial also argues for ‘disentangling European defensive arrangements, conflict prevention and peace-keeping from NATO by basing these squarely in the UN, the OSCE and the EU’. An interesting paradox is aired by Cole who notes that… ‘the Fianna Fáil party, Democratic Left, the Greens, the Workers’ Party and other groups have opposed the Fine Gael/Labour decision to move closer to the nuclear armed WEU and NATO’. That DL was in coalition with FG/Labour is implicit but left unstated.
Meanwhile there is a further editorial that links to an article by Johan Lonnroth [of the Swedish Left Party] that discusses the ‘challenge to the left’. It asserts that ‘some socialists, will strongly disagree with Lonnroth’s statement that ‘the left is against capitalism, not against the market’.
As an example of a perennial concern of the party the article by Deirdre O’Connell on the Constitution Review Group attests to the strongly social liberal strand within DL.
Another concern, that with Unionism is expressed by Gary Kent’s article on David Trimble. Entertaining, at this remove, to see the line ‘some dissident liberal members [of the UUP]..maintain that [Trimble and his followers] are pushing the UUP towards a hard-right ideology of the Thatcherite type although Trimble votes twice as often with Labour as the Tories’. Remind me again where Trimble sits in the House of Lords? And there’s surely a telling analysis of the state of Ulster Unionism where Trimble’s ‘hard-line reputation could help win the rest of the party… this is why he is sometimes compared to Richard Nixon – the only US President who could recognise Communist China. Other comparisons might include Fianna Fáil as the only party that could intern the IRA..’ and then juxtaposes this with the following…
‘Some of Trimble’s conference themes may have gone over the heads of the audience – decent and solid farming folk in the main. The rhetoric involves inclusiveness – reaching out to the 85 per cent of Northern Catholics who are not what Trimble’s spin-doctor, David Burnside [oh how times change, indeed] called ‘rebels’, making a deal with John Hume, doing business with the South (without infringing sovereignty)…’
As an assessment of the willingness of Ulster Unionism in its then largest form this surely provides evidence that selling a deal to share power with Nationalism was a big ask alone, let alone with Republicanism further down the road.
There’s more – if I can be allowed to editorialise just a little – not least in an analysis of Sinn Féin that verges on the bizarre (given the nature of the events that had occurred already in drawing Republicanism away from armed conflict during the preceding half of the decade) during a review of Brendan O’Brien’s The Long War and M.L.R. Smith’s Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement.
‘The Provisionals are a long way from undertaking the sort of democratic transformation which would allow us to conclude with confidence that the restoration of a permanent cease-fire and the entrance of SF into non-violent , democratic politics are realistic prospects. It may be that a combination of fudge, wishful thinking and political miscalculation on the part of the current republican leadership has left them bereft of any coherent strategy at present – marooned in an unhappy limbo of non-identity. It will not help matters for democratic politicians in either Dublin or the SDLP to help perpetuate their self-delusions’.
That – contrary to this analysis – a permanent ceasefire would be restored within half a year and that the Good Friday Agreement would be signed a little over 18 months later, is indicative of the usual DL pessimism as to any potential progress, despite the fact that many within its ranks came from a movement that had charted a similar if not identical path away from the use of political violence (and many beyond the party could see that Republicanism had nowhere else to go but cessation and engagement).
And an almost atavistic fear of Sinn Féin is reflected in a review of the film Michael Collins which losing all proportion argues that it is ‘fascist art’ (according to Paul Bew) and ‘at best [it] is an action movie with Blarney; at worst – I hope I am wrong – it is a symptom of the growing cultural power of Sinn Féin’.
Indeed.
The Éamon Gilmore Fan Club June 21, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Labour Party.add a comment
Spotted this recently over at Your Friend in the North. Looks like Gilmore’s fan club has got over excited.
Clontarf Traffic School – update… June 21, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Social History, Social Policy.1 comment so far
Following on from the shameless nostalgia of this… Leveller has pointed me to the following news…
…[the] traffic school for children on Dublin’s northside is to be replaced by three new all-weather sports pitches.
The €2.7m development is expected to be completed before the end of the year and will include a full-size GAA pitch, a full-size soccer and rugby pitch, along with a pitch for seven-a-side games.
And…
In the past, the huge site also boasted an athletics track and a football pitch dating back but the new development will be the most up-to-date of its kind in the city.
The project is being funded by Dublin City Council, along with the Department of Sport.
There has been a contribution from the GAA.
While the pitches are aimed at training, each will meet the full requirements of the playing code for each of the games.
The pitches will be floodlit and surrounded by a see-through perimeter fence.
Also…
In the past, the huge site also boasted an athletics track and a football pitch dating back but the new development will be the most up-to-date of its kind in the city.
The project is being funded by Dublin City Council, along with the Department of Sport.
There has been a contribution from the GAA.
While the pitches are aimed at training, each will meet the full requirements of the playing code for each of the games.
The pitches will be floodlit and surrounded by a see-through perimeter fence.
Interesting though to note that…
Four years ago, Dublin City Council announced plans for a major revamp of the traffic school, to include lecture halls and an indoor arena for use in bad weather.
It was also planned to double the size of the road track, complete with traffic signals, road markings, pedestrian crossings, corners and road signs.
Pending the revamp, the school closed and road safety aught by a team from the Council’s Road Safety unit visiting schools with portable equipment.
A council spokeswoman said it had since been decided to replace the traffic school with the football pitches, while the road safety team would continue to visit schools.
While in no way dismissing the the sports complex I can’t help but wonder if doing away with the Traffic School is such a great idea. It certainly caught the imagination of generations of Dublin school children and school visits? Not sure that’ll work in quite the same way.
In the meantime here are some photographs of the site as it currently is.
This weekend I’m mostly listening to… Cornelius. June 21, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to....7 comments
Cornelius, or Keigo Oyamada, is a Japanese musician who appropriated the name of one of the main characters (who happened to be an ape) in Planet of the Apes. I’m not sure whether that illuminates the music which is a fairly exhaustive crushing together of musical genres from shoe-gaze, hip hop, dance and pop.
I got hold of his 1997 album Fantasma a year or two later. It’s a remarkably eclectic mix which is held together only by a strong melodic thread that can somehow combine near-punk with electronica, soundtrack instrumentals and sampled sounds and snippets of music. Add to that the way in which it is wrapped up in a strongly and rightly unapologetic Japanese approach – it’s all sung in a strong Japanese accent, kudos to that man for standing his own cultural ground – and here is something that offers a unique insight into the collision of different but overlapping popular cultures.
God Only Knows manages to be both a characteristically fond tribute to the wilder shores explored by the Beach Boys and the Jesus and Mary Chain (with a sample from the chorus of their “Just Like Honey”). It’s great entertaining stuff which I suspect people will either love or hate.
Star Fruits Surf Rider
Free Fall
God Only Knows
Not the right sort of far-right… the BNP’s curious inability to win friends and influence people in Europe. June 20, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Politics, European Politics.5 comments
Thanks to Leveller for drawing my attention to this…
The British National party’s (BNP) efforts to form a coalition with other extremist groups in Europe have ended in failure.
Party leader Nick Griffin had hoped to form a grouping with parties such as Italy’s Northern League and France’s Front National.
Parliamentary groupings require 25 MEPs from at least seven countries, which triggers up to a million euros funding for staff and office costs.
“It appears at present we are below the threshold,” Mr Griffin said after talks at the European parliament in Brussels.
Pity them their plight…
The BNP grouping has only attracted 12 MEPs, despite wide gains for the far-right in the recent elections.
As the piece notes, for some curious reason…
The far-right often struggles to work together across national boundaries.
Who’d thunk it? That far-right political entities basing their platforms on often xenophobic and reactionary policies towards others beyond their self-defined concepts of nationality and ethnicity might find it difficult to reach out and engage…er… like… er… minds… How does it work in practice?
Well, perhaps like this…
In the last parliament the Greater Romania party broke up the far-right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group after a spat with Mussolini’s daughter, Alessandro, who said all Romanians were criminals.
And why should that be a surprise?
What’s fascinating is the way in which there is an effort, perhaps not dissimilar to that of Libertas, to carve out a space between mainstream conservatism of the EPP mode and the further right… note that…
Geert Wilder’s Dutch Freedom party, which mostly sells itself on an extreme variant of anti-Muslim thought, also rejected the BNP, despite being sufficiently extreme to be banned from entering Britain.
Mr Wilder is understood to be attempting to appeal to mainstream Dutch voters, and is furiously avoiding associations with the likes of the BNP or the National Front.
A bid, yet again for a ‘respectable’ far-right. And not only Wilder’s faction, but also…
The Danish People’s party is also avoiding Mr Griffin. It has also tried to avoid Jean Marie Le-Pen’s National Front, after he again denied the Holocaust at the parliament.
One may have reservations about some aspects of the left and further left policies on Europe, but generally they’ve managed to operate well together within their groupings. Let’s be thankful the far right hasn’t quite got there yet.
J.G. Ballard… June 20, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.1 comment so far
I was surprised at how sorry I was to hear that J.G. Ballard had died. And thinking about it it struck me that Ballard was one of those people who, in a way a bit like Tony Wilson (and let’s not even think about the links to Joy Division in terms of their lyrics) a couple of years back, one thought would never die. He just seemed to be so perfectly a part of the background landscape of life.
I wouldn’t say I was a huge fan, but I’d read most of his books. Ironically I preferred his later – supposedly – more literary novels to his earlier more clearly science fiction novels. Nor did I find Crash and other mid-period work that enjoyable. Interesting, certainly, but not as compelling as others writing at the same time in what was called the New Wave of science fiction (and there’s a topic for another day). These are minor details, though. He was a fine writer with great scope and a unique sensibility.
If I had a favourite piece by him it would be the brilliantly concise The Index, a short story collected in War Fever (1990), which purports to be the index from a previously undiscovered book. It deals with a figure who, from the entries in the index, would appear to be almost Christ-like in his significance to world history and yet who is completely unknown. There’s a good overview of the story here, should you wish to spoil it for yourself before reading it – or alternatively should you have read it and want to be reminded of its central theme.
Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall… Luke Haines takes the blame… sort of. June 20, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.12 comments
It’s funny, I’ve been thinking in light of what D.J.P O’Kane wrote last week about popular culture, at least in its musical form, that there was a parallel if not identical approach in Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall... by Luke Haines of the Auteurs (for which many thanks to smiffy) and it’s quite a read. Perhaps the most entertainingly bitter book I’ve ever had the opportunity to consider. And, a bit like Sweat, thankfully a world away from most books about music which are hardly worth the effort. Or strike ‘hardly’ and insert ‘almost never’.
Where to start? Misanthropic character believes that he’s a genius. And… whisper it… he may be, at least in a minor key. Goes through a hardly-successful and fading band before eventually starting his own. Said band is lauded as part of the first wave of Britpop before being pushed aside in the Oasis/Blur nonsense. Said band reinvents itself as the more experimental wing of indie in the 1990s. Eventually band winds up.
The book doesn’t quite cover the ground to the end of the story, I’d have liked some of his thoughts on …. which was meant to be the ‘commercial’ album… but it goes a fair old way.
So what’s it like? Well, here’s a brief extract of his approach to HR in the band on a flight home from a Japanese tour…
Then I turn my attention to Chalker, seated a few rows behind me. Chalker has definitely not got it all ahead of him.In the last letter that lovely Suki presented me with, she included, amongst some of her more outre sexual rambingls, a psychotic review of the Osaka gig. Steeve Walker is sat quietly minding his own business, listening to his Walkman. Sometimes Chalker’s stoicism in the face of downright hostility is a provocation in itself. The man is an immoveable object who somehow represents the entire stuck-in-the-mud stupidity of the music industry.
“I’ve got a review that you’re mentioned in,’ I hiss, dragging him away from his Who tape. he reads the scrawled letter excidtely, anticipating his name check. I register his confusion as he realises the agitated state of the reviewer’s mind, until he gets to the penultimate line: ‘And please you should get rid of spare guitar player. He is useless.
The ‘spare’ guitarist is crestfallen.
‘It’s the fans,’ I console, ‘who can be the harshest of critics. John Lennon found that out’.
It’s a cruel book in its own way, but also extremely honest as regards Haines own failings and inabilities to deal with others. From self-inflicted injury to willfull attempts to sabotage his own band it’s all here in lavish detail. In fact there’s quite a touching moment where at the point where he eventually breaks up the Auteurs when he realises that a fellow band member, mentioned throughout near contemptuously only as the ‘Cellist’, is actually gutted.
There’s a fantastic description, in every sense of the word, of a meeting between Haines and Chris Evans on the latter’s TFI Friday (let’s just say that Haines is no fan…) and another one of a conversation with Alan McGee that goes…
‘You. You’re Tom Verlaine,’ it [sic] says, utterly unbecoming. I fix the fool with a dead-eyed stare. Say nothing, say nothing. You, Alan McGee, will pay for this transgression. You will pay.
…or from the same meeting he notes that “Pete Astor [of the Weather Prophets] delivered a lecture on why all Robert [Forster's] new songs are merely ‘filler material’. Yeah, yeah, Pete. Whatever you say.”
And it’s fair to say that Haines is not entirely blind to the idea that others might be better than him. Forster and McLennan loom large in his affections, as does Jarvis Cocker of Pulp. As it happens I’ve always been a bit agnostic when it comes to Pulp, for my money their finest moment was the song “My Legendary Girlfriend” from their album Separations which long pre-dated their “Different Class” phase and something approaching general fame.
This odd balance somehow smooths away the worst of what he admits is a very difficult personality. One that it is hard to like, but which I found a sort of grudging respect, and even admiration for. as the book continued.
I can’t really recommend it enough as a snapshot of a certain time…
The Sunday Tribune analysis of the Local and European elections and potential General Election outcomes June 19, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.6 comments
I came late to the electoral analysis and projections made by Shane Coleman and Conor McMorrow in the Sunday Tribune this weekend, and with a few caveats I have to admit that it made for intriguing reading. Coleman and McMorrow took the votes from the local elections and mapped them onto a general election.
The Sunday Tribune study involves strictly applying voting across all electoral districts into Dáil constituencies to assess how the parties would fare in a general election scenario. No allowance is made for high-profile names – it is a straight mathematical exercise of applying the local election figures to a general election setting. The study represents a de-facto general election opinion poll of over 1.85 million voters.
Strict, but not absolutely strict.
The one compromise we have made is with regard to the votes of independents. Independents always poll better in local elections and often the independent vote can be scattered across a plethora of candidates. So unless there is an obvious Dáil candidate emerging from the independent vote – which is the case in some constituencies – the votes are adjusted to take account of likely dominance of the main parties come general election time.
Now look, I’m as aware as the next person that this is in some respects an exercise in futility. A General Election is made up of many many different and competing factors. The votes at a local election, as dealt with here, are clearly not easily mapped onto general elections (albeit for parties other than Fianna Fáil first preference votes have been reasonably similar at locals to general). And personality plays an enormous part in this.
But all that said it is a most interesting result that they arrive at after the number crunching.
They propose that Fianna Fáil would gain 52 seats, losing big in most constituencies where it now holds 2 seats. Fine Gael would have 69 seats, Labour would be on 30.
Beyond them the Green Party would be wiped out, with only the slight possibility that Trevor Sargent would make it back in. Sinn Féin would gain two seats but lose one (that of Martin Ferris) bringing them up a seat to 5. The Socialist Party would bring back 2 seats, one in Dublin and one in Cork, while Richard Boyd Barrett would have one seat for People Before Profit Alliance. Seamus Healy would retake his seat for the WUAG and then there would be seven other Independents, including perhaps James Breen in Clare and Noel Grealish in Galway. Hmmm… that doesn’t sound so bad.
They have a useful breakdown of their analysis constituency by constituency here and although I’d quibble about the weight they give to one candidate or another it seems credible.
I’m a little leery of predicting such an outright collapse of Fianna Fáil. I’d suspect they’d do slightly better than 52. I’d hazard a guess that Fine Gael would do slightly worse than 69 and 30 for Labour seems overly generous. In that context it is possible that Independents and small parties might fare better. Consider that as recently as 2002 there were 13 Independents, 5 Sinn Féin and 6 Green Party TDs, not to mention 8 PDs. There that brace of TDs was carved in large part from Fine Gael which dipped to 31 seats and Labour on 20, while Fianna Fáil achieved it’s best result in decades on 81. So it’s all plausible stuff.
Except. Except.
As Coleman himself notes:
Despite everything, Fianna Fáil is less than seven percentage points behind Fine Gael in terms of first- preference votes. Of course, the very notion of Fianna Fáil being behind Fine Gael at all is hugely significant. But the cold figures suggest the Soldiers of Destiny’s position is dire, not completely hopeless.
And…
And it might also be surprising that the two main opposition parties are not even higher in the polls. Obviously 69 seats – as our analysis of the local elections suggests – would be a huge achievement for Fine Gael. But that figure involves a huge seat bonus for Fine Gael. And there is an argument that, given the circumstances, Fine Gael should be polling higher than 32% and Labour better than 14.6% – increases of just 3.8% and 2.76% on five years ago.
It certainly is surprising. I think though that that is a crucial fact. He also notes that…
Fine Gael certainly boobed when, high on the adrenaline of its election victories on Saturday night, it rushed headlong into a motion of no-confidence against the government. It certainly didn’t look good that the debate on the Ryan report – an issue far more important than party politics – had to be delayed for a couple of days because of Fine Gael’s move. The motion also ensured that potential Fianna Fáil and Green dissidents rallied around the government in its hour of need. Taoiseach Brian Cowen actually had a few good days and the odds on a general election before the end of the year lengthened considerably in just a week.
And there is the thing. There won’t be an election tomorrow. Or next week. Or indeed before the end of the Summer, short of utter catastrophe (and granted, who can discount that these days?). As the year lengthens the potential for an election increases… Coleman points to this…
That is not to say there won’t be an election before the end of the year. Because of the still desperate state of the public finances, more tough decisions lie ahead for the government. Can it survive the inevitable revolt – both from within its own ranks and from the public – over a new property tax or the reintroduction of third-level fees or the taxation/means-testing of child benefit?
All three measures might be desirable in terms of social equity, but that doesn’t mean the middle classes won’t go ballistic. Political expediency might demand a rethink on behalf of the government.
Maybe it’s me, and maybe it’s indicative of the softening up process that has already taken place. But, bloody awful as they are and they have to be resisted all the way, those measures don’t strike me as the sort to necessarily bring down the government. And from talking to people I have the impression that many are already resigned to the reintroduction of third-level fees. Which is not in any sense to say that these are good things, but simply that their political effect may be lesser than imagined. That sense of resignation is as much a product of a belief that there is no alternative as it is due to an acceptance of the basic propositions.
Meanwhile what precisely does he mean by ‘political expediency might demand a rethink on behalf of the government’?
And Coleman puts forward an analysis which I suspect might be broadly correct…
But, regardless of what it decides, there is no getting away from the fact that the spending estimates process and the December budget are going to be savage and will seriously test the government’s stability.
However, if it is still in place come Christmas, then there is every reason to believe the coalition will then last until 2012.
That could mean no general election for three years – an eternity in politics and, perhaps more significantly, a long, long time in economics. Certainly, really tough times lie ahead – unemployment is going to continue to rise for some time and our national debt will continue to soar. But in three years’ time, the global economy should have recovered and it is very possible that people here will be able to feel an improvement on the ground. If that is the case, Fianna Fáil probably won’t be at 25% in the opinion polls.
No argument there. We have to prepare for that as well.
The Executive Committee of the Bourgeoisie: Fianna Fáil and the Boom Years June 19, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Capitalism, Irish Politics, Workers' Party.15 comments
Interesting analysis over at the Irish Left Review of how Fianna Fáil used state power in the interests of the super-rich during the boom years from the Research Section of The Workers’ Party. I recommend that everyone read it. The Research Section of The Workers’ Party was a major force in the Irish left during the 1970s and 1980s, exposing the squalid reality of the banking system, the surrendering of natural resources to private capital, and other inequities in Irish society, while also offering detailed alternative socialist economic policies. It brought a level of sophistication to the Irish Left that had no parallel, and helped give The Workers’ Party its radical and disctinctive vision for Irish society. Let’s hope that this early effort marks a first step on the path towards recreating a serious Irish left vision for a different Ireland.
John Waters writes about Independents… June 18, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.9 comments
John Waters had a piece last week that was, for once, thought provoking. Of course, this being Waters there was no end to the emoting… for example you may be intrigued to hear that the local and European elections were…
…no sea change, no new dawn. There was nothing but an outpouring of grief, rage and, ultimately, impotence.
Steady on John… I will allow that the results were not uniformly a cause of ecstatic pleasure to me, but there was sufficient, a good showing by the left at local and European level, Joe Higgins becoming an MEP, Maureen O’Sullivan winning the byelection, Libertas not quite making it and so forth, to leave one relatively pleased (and if I have to admit to anything approaching a cause for sleepless nights it was learning early in the morning that the BNP had taken two seats). But rage and grief he says? In a way, and this is an aside, doesn’t Waters undermine almost every argument he makes by pointless tilting into this sort of language. I mean, it’s sort of a very slightly higher brow equivalent of a headline I saw in the Irish Independent last week about ‘fury’ over Ministerial pensions. Irritation. Anger even. But… fury?
Anyhow, ever onwards… the sage opines…
Once again this week we have been hearing phrases like “sea change” and “new dawn” to describe the implications of last weekend’s elections. Mostly, such enthusiasm comes not from the young but from the veteran commentators afflicted by an inability to detach themselves from the practitioner’s logic that leads them once again to speak of the fine weave of the emperor’s tunic. Younger people, seeking hope, and not having been around to hear the same phrases used in 1982 or 1987 or 1990 or 1992, are likely to be taken in. Such delusion appears hopeful but really they postpone any possibility of understanding how badly our democracy works.
He continues…
There is no new dawn and no sea change. Nobody but the wilfully blind could stand back from observing Irish politics over the past while and declare that there is now a surge of enthusiasm for Fine Gael. People vote for Fine Gael because it is not Fianna Fáil. This was a win for Tweedledum at the expense of Tweedledee.
I think he’s right as it happens. Still, he has to tip into knowing how we all feel.
If there is an election, someone has to “win” it. Political analysts, because of their infatuation with mental arithmetic, always overlook the fact that ballot papers offer limited options, and that any form of expression outside of these will amount to a spoiled vote. Either you vote for one “side” or you vote against it and end up endorsing the other “side” by accident – or else you vote for someone on the margin.
Erm… seems to me that might be a structural problem with democracy, but surely he isn’t arguing… well…
And yet, afterwards, the analysts pore over the figures as though they must represent, by definition, an affirmation, which in turn bespeaks some new pattern or ideological subtext.
Although they frequently announce the end of civil war politics, analysts still largely adhere to the tribal model, in which sentiments are defined by a positive affinity with one or other “side”. In the past, political emotions tended to be tribal – intense loyalty based on the historical struggle for independence. But as this dissolved, a new set of emotions manifested, these tending to be individualistic and self-centred.
That’s a pretty huge leap to make, as if ‘tribal’ loyalties weren’t self-centred in themselves. And note that the ‘struggle for independence’ is taken as read as an event or construct devoid of ideological ‘subtext’ when in truth it was a vastly more complex and contradictory than he posits.
The political system is not as well adapted to these emotions as it was to the tribal kind. When you employ a ballot paper to express a “selfish” emotion, you often end up not actually voting “for” anyone, but, in a sense, “against” those who have displeased you. Often, people seeking to express anger at a government will vote for the least-worst alternative, or the one that will send the strongest signal of disapproval, though such an approach can achieve only a puny semblance of what they seek to say. The outcomes of such voting need to be read as default statements, characteristic of what they denounce rather than what they announce or approve.
I don’t know. I really don’t. This sounds almost persuasive, but it ignores a number of points. Firstly who is to say the vote is not as well adapted to these ‘emotions’? It works, doesn’t it? We remain within a remarkably stable polity by international standards. And when, at local elections and European elections, has it really been otherwise than an opportunity for people to take a tilt against the government of the day. Moreover, what proof can he offer that voting against the government is not voting ‘for’ someone. There’s not mutual incompatibility in that. I could vote ‘for’ a non Fianna Fáil because of her many fine qualities and yet be voting against Fianna Fáil in government. How can Waters parse that out? In other words how can he be sure? To be honest Waters thoughts come across as close to an implicit assertion for the status quo.
There is nothing forcing one to vote further down a ballot paper than those choices which one wishes to make. Indeed I never do – why should I put a cross beside a candidate I dislike? No one has ever forced me to. And I think of that as a positive. I think that that is being ‘for’ something. And I don’t see it as a ‘puny’ thing at all. Governments do take into account popularity and vote share even if they affect to think otherwise.
But then, the reality is that the only elections that truly count, dismal as this may seem, are General Elections because it is only they which shape directly Government. This doesn’t make other elections irrelevant, far from it… Fianna Fáil is about to discover how difficult it is to retain TDs when it has lost a tranche of Councillors. But they are of a lesser scale of relevance.
Anyhow, it’s the next bit which really struck me…
Nearly 20 years ago, I made much of extolling the rise of single-issue Independents and community politics. Anyone looking at the figures over the past couple of decades might precipitately say that I was correct in my broad prediction of a decided shift away from the main parties. And last weekend’s results seemed to carry that message in spades. But when you stand a little further back, you realise that all this amounts to nothing. If you observe the Independents’ enclosure over time, it is obvious that, although the phenomenon appears to grow, the personnel constantly changes. Over the past couple of decades, Independents have come and gone, tending to either enter into private chauvinistic arrangements with governing parties or to flounder around in a fog of impotence for a few years before fading away. Not only has no coherent movement emerged from this phenomenon, but, right around Ireland, communities are still fighting the central bureaucracy for essential services, such as hospitals and transport facilities.
Well, one could ask, what else would he expect with Independents? I’ve known more than my fair share of them over the years, from left to right on the political spectrum, and for me the key issue hasn’t been independent status, but whether they are left wing and community based or not. To me the only coherent movement of Independents that could emerge would be one rooted in left/community politics. But, the very nature of independents is such that it predicates against such movements emerging. If every woman or man is chieftain in their own constituency, whether at local level or Dáil level, the chances of an agreed programme amongst them will be minimal. And when it comes to the allocation of spoils, as any astute government will know, the potential for Independents to swing behind them in support is not quite as minimal as once might have been thought. And even within the left camp the divisions between competing independent candidates can be fierce.
Which means that, just as with candidates for political parties, it depends on the Independent, not that they’re Independent.
But that cuts to the heart of his contention, which I don’t entirely disagree with, in the second part of his last sentence in the paragraph above, and in particular when he continues…
Each new gesture by a particular community is headed off or defused, and the power, one way or another, eventually returns to the big parties, who always end up winning because they are able to sit and wait for the emotions to wane or shift.
This is about a left/right ideological divide, between different conceptions of the state and resource allocation. And he can try to square the right populist circle through eliding ‘fighting the central bureaucracy’ with ‘for essential services, such as hospitals and transport facilities’, but this isn’t just about courageous individuals and groups (although on the micro level it is often they who lead the charge) dealing with some sort of monstrous bureaucracy that is denying such services for the sheer hell of it, a sort of pointed ‘us and them’. It is about those around him, and us, in the very community he refers to, who make clear political choices themselves to vote for political formations that argue that only a low tax low service economy will deliver growth and employment. And all the rage and grief he mentions and the, actually more compelling, impotence he argues that that results in is a direct function of the fact that seven out of every ten people in this state have voted and continue to vote for the centre right.
