Saving us from – er – fascism…the ICTU way.

As was noted to me yesterday by a long time contributor to the site, the Irish Times account of David Begg at the TASC conference about the trades union response to the crisis is quite astounding.

He believes we’re not like the French.

“Irish people are much more conservative. Social democracy has never taken root in Ireland.”
He said “most Irish workers would not thank me for creating havoc in Ireland as they would see it.”

Well, yes. Social democracy certainly hasn’t taken root in Ireland. But whether union activism is the same as social democracy is a different issue. And granted there’s some truth in the following:

It was “absolutely important for any trade union movement, if it purports to lead social movements, to align itself as far as it can with what the people of the country are willing to do.”

But, let’s not get carried away. What was the old WP saying, something along the lines of never be more than a step ahead of the people – something like that. But note that the crucial distinction is about being ‘ahead’, in other words leading, not staying at the same point, or even somewhat behind.

But it gets stranger if possible.

He said if trade unions pushed “what is perceived by the population to be a narrow class interest beyond what is good for the whole population, what you will create is a fascist backlash”.

Now this is remarkable. A fascist backlash? Really? From where? The state itself? The risen hordes of ISME and IBEC? The private sector? Don’t unions still organize there? Isn’t that where I joined SIPTU? Isn’t that where I remain in a fairly precarious situation, and fully dependent upon SIPTU to ensure my rights are upheld when and if my job goes to the wall?

And that despite the fact that unions have been all too slow to argue for the extension of conditions from the public sector into the private sector. And look now where that’s left us, that particularly craven and supine approach? A place where Eoghan Harris, tongue lodged firmly in cheek, but seemingly straightfaced to the none discerning observer, can suggest that Connolly were he here today would be arguing for conditions of some workers to be disimproved rather than arguing that the conditions of all workers should be improved.

And it gets better, in an ironic EH sort of a way…

They were engaged in “innovative ways of trying to get a message to Government that people are not happy with this direction without necessarily doing it in any destructive sense”.

Semaphore? Ouija board? Just what are these innovative ways, and what metric do we use to judge their effectivity?

Responding to criticism from the floor at a conference in Croke Park organised by social policy think tank Tasc, Mr Begg said that they campaigned for a “better, fairer way of approaching” the crisis with a 2017 target to reach a 3 per cent deficit. There were also “three major demonstrations, involving about 120,000 people on the street on each occasion”.

Which achieved precisely what? And he overstates entirely the current situation in terms of the discourse.

The problem “up to now was that almost all options were foreclosed on except this kind of four-year austerity plan”. He said “it has taken a long time to build on that but we have built to the point now where there is a debate in society about two alternatives”.

This was why the Taoiseach responded in The Irish Times on Saturday, “because he feels it is necessary to answer the question of why the four-year programme is the only available option”. But what was “most disturbing” was Government saying “well we have to start it like this anyway, and sure if it goes wrong maybe we can change”. He warned, however, that Irish citizens were confronted with “an austerity plan which is nasty, mean, brutish and short” and to stick to this course was “not only economically dangerous but politically unwise”.

Except that a discourse where the weight is on one side, or where the weight exercised is all on one side, is no discourse at all.

And in a way to posit this as a choice between France and nothing is as much an evasion as the idea that there is only a four year path of austerity or nothing. Glib certainty from the economic right is no surprise – even when such certainty is belied by a litany of policy failures. Hesitant but equal certainty from the unions… well, y’know.