Some thoughts on the election – Part 4: the enduring political legacy of the Workers’ Party

Okay, this is a little off the point, but as I noted at the beginning of the week, this is all about stray musings on the election, so here goes. It’s an odd one, but how many have noted the remarkable fact that the political descendants of Official Sinn Féin/Workers’ Party and successor groups have done rather well in this election?

Now, in fairness, that’s a given since the Labour Party is led by a former OSF/WP member, there are rumours that another may get the Minister for Finance job (and if it does go to an LP member what does that tell us about the state of the economy?) and even today there remains a cohort of TDs from the Labour Party with OSF or WP backgrounds, though that band is now diminished. Still, one is back – again. I remember meeting Eric Byrne in the mid 1980s in the Liberties about one issue or another when he was representing the WP.

But then look a bit further afield and you begin to see that others can also be traced at least in part to that lineage. One could be mischievous and suggest that Gerry Adams learned an awful lot from the strand that became OSF and the WP and by some accounts there was disappointment on the part of those who went with OSF that young Adams chose the PSF route, particularly after his enthusiasm for political activism.

Catherine Murphy was also a WP representative before going the DL/LP course and finally winding up as a successful independent, twice now! And I should add it’s good to see her back in the Dáil.

John Halligan, of Waterford, is perhaps a more intriguing prospect having only left the WP in the relatively recent past. It’s interesting to read his website and see his continued aversion to privatization even though the issue he broke with the WP on was charges for services. Will independence at national level and surrounded by leftish others strengthen that aspect of his approach or weaken it?

Am I missing anyone?

Tony Gregory once told a few of us how he had learned everything he knew about election campaigns while in OSF and in that sense the election of Maureen O’Sullivan may represent an echo, for in truth she did fight this election with much less of a play on the Gregory name, of that heritage.

To me what is remarkable is that that store of political capital has yet to run out. It’s irritating to have to point to the fact that the high profile of Eoghan Harris was built initially on the bedrock of the WP.

And it’s perhaps telling that while most of those mentioned above have tilted rightwards only Harris can be said to have gone over to the right.

More gloomily one has to note that the WP didn’t exactly sparkle at this election. The results could, at best, be described as mixed. And yet, for all that the environment wasn’t positive with extremely strong competitors in all electoral contests, it seems to me that there remains a good prospect for the next local election in a range of areas.

Indeed the less good than expected showing of Independent Cieran Perry perhaps suggests that as ever it requires not just years, but decades of work to build a base for individual candidates, even in the seemingly most hospitable of constituencies. Interesting too to reflect that both Perry and Ted Tynan of the WP are both sitting councillors.

But that too was a lesson Tony Gregory took from OSF. And it’s a lesson that many inside Sinn Féin also took to heart over the years (though spare a thought for those who ducked out from that party in 2007 and 2009 and consider whether that seems like such a clever move in retrospect). It took a decade and a half, or a little over, for SF to move from single to double figures. But we’ll look in greater detail at that next week.

Nothing happens quickly, well…nothing bar the collapse of Fianna Fáil, and its political partners. All those I’ve mentioned who did less well than might have been expected will get another chance, and another.

BTW, Tomboktu pointed out that former members of the Democratic Socialist Party have a slightly increased representation in this Dáil too.