The Cedar Lounge Revolution

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1. D_D - December 21, 2010

Whatever about ‘The Generation Game’ by David McWilliams ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’ by Marc Coleman going for £1 is a hoot. When reading him now it should be kept in mind that he published a book in 2007 about how the best was yet to come! He has gone on to publish ‘Back From The Brink: Ireland’s Road To Recovery’, which demonstrates adaptability and illustrates the brass neck that is a characteristic of much of the Irish commentariat. There are new copies of ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’on sale on Amazon for one penny. You can throw copies at the radio the next time you are infuriated by The Marian Finucane Show.

He is no shrinking violet: according to Wikipedia, “Coleman became Newstalk’s Economics Editor in 2007 after working for the Irish Times between 2005 and 2007. He now also writes for Ireland’s largest Sunday paper, the Sunday Independent, broadcasts a weekly current affairs programme “Coleman at Large” on Newstalk 106-108fm and regularly speaks at public events.

A graduate of the Kiel Institute of World Economics, Coleman also holds both a scholarship MBA and Master’s degree from University College Dublin and a primary degree from Trinity College Dublin.

Coleman’s publications prior to joining the Irish Times included articles in the ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary, the Jesuit publication Studies, Administration magazine and Magill magazine.”

To be fair to him, “‘The Best is Yet to Come’…forecast that the Irish economy would experience a downturn [see chapter 4, including prediction that 140,000 construction workers could lose their jobs (page 46)] but that, by 2020, growth would resume.” 2020!!!

Actually the ICTU and associates have their own publishing embarassments arising from their own pre-slump hubris. Also published in 2007 was ‘Saving the Future: How Social Partnership Shaped Ireland’s Economic Success’ by Tim Hastings, Brian Sheehan & Padraig Yeates (Blackhall Publishing) http://www.made4design.com/IRN_HSR/BS_Colour_Ad.pdf

This study was commissioned by IMPACT whose then general secretary, Peter McLoone, a key figure in many of the partnership agreements, provides the foreword.

It is in many ways an extraordinary interesting and useful book. It is a tribute to the alleged part played by social partnership in the prosperity of the boom, and as such it was always going to be the delicious hostage to fortune it has become. It’s wealth of information is matched by a mammoth and intimidatorily erudite review essay by Philip O’Connor (aka Manus O’Riordan?) in the Dublin Review of Bools: http://www.drb.ie/more_details/08-09-25/Lifting_the_Boats.aspx

This laudatory review is itself a hostage to fortune. E.g. “While the FDI strategy for economic recovery was built with great skill, ingenuity, a rare sense of self-belief and – as the authors of Saving the Future make clear – a degree of sheer gamble in the hope that the wage/tax deal would produce economic take-off, none of it in retrospect is imaginable without the social pact, or deal between the social classes, which lay at the base of it. And this is the aspect of the whole which commentators have found hardest to grapple with. Many critics of the “Celtic Tiger” from the left of the spectrum have simply ignored the role of social partnership…”

And, “During these years of “jobless growth” [the early and mid-1990s] the left made several resurgences, with significant support being achieved by Socialist Workers Party-based oppositionist candidates in internal elections in the major trade union, SIPTU. The leadership of SIPTU at the time, headed by Des Geraghty, kept its nerve and through forceful leadership steered the movement through to the more successful years of the late 1990s and early 2000s.”

One of my dear mother’s sayings was, “little apples will grow again”.

This most interesting review and the most interesting book it reviews take on yet a new interest in the new debate, initiated from the right, on the role of social partnership in, not the boom but, the slump.

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2. Terry McDemott - December 21, 2010

‘It’s wealth of information is matched by a mammoth and intimidatorily erudite review essay by Philip O’Connor (aka Manus O’Riordan?) in the Dublin Review of Books’
Well spotted. The IPR’s line on industrial relations does seem to mirror these views.

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