When you’re in a state like this… March 8, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
…my first thought on reading the programme agreed between Labour and Fine Gael – or is it Fine Gael and Labour – is that this is such an evident hodge podge of their two election manifesto’s that it’s nearly laughable. Everything seems about splitting the difference. Public sector redundancies (voluntary – don’t you know)? 30,000 was the FG figure. 20,000 was the Labour one. So… with the wisdom of a Solomon let’s go for… 22,000, or is it 25,000.
As was noted elsewhere. This is arguably worse than the figures sought by Fianna Fáil. It’s that small level of contradiction that points up some of the absurdities that are taking place.
But let’s start with some caveats. This isn’t some great betrayal, at least not given that the Labour Party never seemed on course for anything but coalition with Fine Gael. Even by the terms of its own modestly social democratic outlook there’s not a huge contradiction in that. Nor has the LP been particularly courageous in the past on such matters, and one would doubt that it will be in the future either.
And as one person whose opinion I respect suggested to me, ‘we’ll [on the further left] complain loudly about it but everyone wants the Labour Party to go into government so we can hammer them next time out’. And why not? It’s not that cynical to suggest that this will be a boon to the left of Labour. And that’s more than fair enough.
But for many of us this will still have the sense of an opportunity lost and the retrospective readings of the vote to validate coalition seem to me to be as unconvincing as readings that see the opposite. Sure, some people no doubt voted for the LP to soften FG’s cough, or voted to ensure LP participation with FG (all those FG second preferences), or what of formerly FF voters who gave their vote to the LP and now see them in tandem with FG? But parties have to stand a little apart from such readings and stand on their own programmes. Which of course is where the trouble arises.
Underlying this is the sense that it is not ideology, though this is a right of centre document, that predominates, but rather a sort of snappy expedience. They want to be in government and with each other, given that that is the only feasible option (as they see it) so therefore this is what has been cooked up.
The areas dealing with the EU-IMF bailout seem to be very much open to question though as a negotiating gambit it’s no harm to open with dissent. Dan O’Brien has an interesting point on the supposed extension of the extension of the budget deficit to 2015.
The side-stepping of another big issue was presented as a compromise. Under Fine Gael’s manifesto plan, the budget deficit was to be cut to below 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2014. Labour wanted that timeframe pushed out to 2016. Yesterday, they split the difference and settled on 2015.
This in reality is a retreat by Labour, and the budget adjustments in 2012 and 2013 will be as already set out.
During the campaign, Labour had said it wanted to reduce the size of the budget adjustments from €9 billion over the next three years, to €7 billion. There is no mention of the €9 billion or €7 billion figures in yesterday’s programme. And it is the money amounts that matter much more because only they are mentioned in the terms of the EU-IMF bailout. The deficit:GDP ratio is not set out as a metric.
It’s surely not a social democratic document. We’re going to see the sale of up to €2bn worth of non-strategic assets.
Er… why? What logic is there in that other than assuaging a modish right of centre thinking? Particularly at a time when the sale of such assets makes little or no sense even from a right of centre perspective since the values will be depressed given the global market and the one-off revenues resulting will be almost infinitesimal in the context of our financial woes.
Sure, one could also argue that it’s not a Fine Gael document, at least not entirely. But it’s often forgotten that Fine Gael was as adept at doing the populist FF stuff when the need arose. So we’ll hear a lot about universal health insurance. But you’d wonder about the ‘payments based on ability to contribute’ bit.
The abolition of the Seanad suddenly looks a lot less assured than it did during the election campaign. That may be a good thing, indeed in my view it is, but why the crawl back from the position? Perhaps governing across two terms, which presumably is the objective, looks less certain without that as a support in terms of grooming candidates, placating those who failed at the election and so forth. Oh, and the small matter of a layer of oversight, however weak.
As interesting is just how muted the opposition to it in the Labour Party. One has to admire Tommy Broughan for daring to put his head above the parapet though he’s been doing that so long it’s remarkable he still has that full healthy head of hair left, and difficult to disagree with his analysis that this almost certainly puts the seal on Labour remaining in future a niche party with ‘support levels of 10 per cent – if we are lucky’. But with 95 per cent of the 1,000 delegates on message his is a near lone voice.
Indeed given that some in the LP who support going into coalition offer precisely the same analysis, that this will allow for the left and for FF to make gains at the LP’s expense you’d wonder why they were doing this?
To moderate FG? Well, that only goes so far, but in purely utilitarian terms they may be sacrificing the long term for the short term. A much weakened LP in 2016 may be in no position to soften the cough of the other party or any other party – we saw that with utter clarity during the 1997 to 2011 period.
It also has to be said that leftists of any stripe should be suspicious of calls to the ‘national interest’ or ‘putting the country before party’ – indeed the whole trope about ‘Labour must wait’ was surely borne of precisely this approach, though I was entertained by Ronan O’Brien’s inversion of that argument in the Sunday Business Post at the weekend – when such calls seem designed purely to sustain the right of centre and when such calls seem almost inevitably to lead to outcomes which will diminish even this softly softly social democratic left.
And even if I don’t see this as some sort of a betrayal because Labour never really hid their intention to enter an FG led coalition should that day arrive, I do wonder whether they’re reading the situation entirely clearly.
Reading Gilmore’s summation I couldn’t help but think of the Green Party who faced a not dissimilar situation and paid an enormous price for it:
Responding to the debate, Mr Gilmore rejected claims that the programme represented a continuation of previous failed policies. This was clearly not the case, he said, citing proposals on fiscal and banking policies, privatisation and taxation of the wealthy.
He said families in trouble now couldn’t wait for Labour to come into power in 2016. The “last place” people who voted for the party wanted it to be was in opposition. Mr Gilmore predicted difficulties and admitted he would have to walk through “forests of placards” on occasion. However, Labour couldn’t afford to fail because the stakes were so high. “If we fail, not only will we be punished electorally but the country will fail too.”
But perhaps it’s not about Labour failing, because the evidence of past coalitions suggests that they will be punished. And perhaps they, like the GP before them, overstate their ability to assist the country. And perhaps the programme isn’t enough even for families in 2011. But I guess we’ve yet to see a political party that recognised its own limitations.
And crucially, as with the GP, for all the rhetoric about entering coalition and its importance we see no metric provided as to why and how they might leave coalition, what would be the issues that would mark such a fundamental breach with this programme that they would walk away.
All is sweetness and light, right down to the joint FG/LP ‘Statement of Common Purpose’, complete with quote from…er… Einstein. So, no exit strategy.
That there’s no sign of that, I think, tells us something fundamental about this.
[...] For a broader analysis, see WorldByStorm’s exegesis on Cedar Lounge. [...]
Just a couple of points, the national interest, what a joke, after all which has occurred for Labour to claim that is like throwing excreta into the faces of all those who voted for them. How can it be n the national interest to make people unemployed, to push people towards penury, to support usury, for paying 6% plus on money to fill the whole after the government baled out bankers is just that..
On another thread some folk made much of the number of former OSF/WP people who are amongst the indies elected. How can we explain the rightward trajectory of former members of these party’s who later joined the LP?
Was their something in SFWP DNA which caused these people to sell out the working class? After all this was not a case of individual leftists disowning their youthful experimentation with leftist politics as often occurs. It was a conscious decision to take over part of the LP leadership and it succeeded, If they lived up to their early promise we could say fine, but they have proved with this deal to be well to the right of social democracy.
Where did all that leftist talk go?
As a former WP member who flirted with Labour for a while, I don’t think that it is correct of Mick Hall to draw sweeping conclusions. Those who have moved to the right did so because their careers stood to benefit from such a move – as have many others: former members of the anti-coalition Labour left, former members of Jim Kemmy’s group, former members of other radical groups. Not all have the strength of character or the unswerving idealism of Joe Higgins.
There is no doubt that the Labour Party, through its timidity and centrism has blown an historic political opportunity. First, by the tactics it adopted from last October, along with its acceptance of Fianna Fail’s budgetary parameters with the policy of cutbacks.
Secondly, it mounted a risible election campaign which appeared to be an attempt to imitate the 2002 Bertie ‘personality model’. Labour then grovelled and whined for the last week of the campaign about the need to ensure ‘fairness’ by allowing it to enter coalition!!
Thirdly, having failed to even win 40 seats with FF in meltdown, Labour declared victory and accepted its historic mudguard role. What the Labour Party has actually done, is to refuse to deposit FF in a lead-lined coffin. Labour by going into coalition has left the door ajar for a Fianna Fail revival.
And yes – there is no left-wing in the Labour Party. So it is time to cease analysing Labour and time to build the alternative. It would appear to me, from my rural fastness, that it is critical for the ULA to evolve into a properly organised movement. For example, at present somebody like me is not in a position to support the ULA, without becoming involved in one of the constituent groups. Individual members cannot affiliate or have an involvement.
If the ULA can evolve – will the SP, SWP, PBP etc. dissolve or continue?
The constituent units will have some form of autonomy and will continue to exist in some form. As I’ve mentioned before, it is quite possible to reconcile that with a mass based party via a platform system. The PRC in Italy operated on that basis before it committed suicide as did the SSP while SYRIZA and the New Anti-capitalist party in France operate on this basis.
Individual members can be involved. Take Jim Monaghan for example. There was supposed to be a national ULA supporters meeting in February but it was cancelled when the election date got brought forward. Presumably one will be called quite soon, to lay the basis for membership structures beyond the constituent groupings.
I’ve said it before. I like the platform idea. And I think that an individual membership idea is going to be attractive ot a lot of leftists.
The calm after the play-fighting during the election feels strange indeed.
You are right to point what the junior coalition party has in common with the erstwhile GP; in a nutshell, a largely aspirational program for government and an willingness (indeed eagerness) to be beaten back into obscurity in the next election. They also share an overestimate of their power; they will part of a government that is little more than managers of a programme for wealth transfer from the poorer to the rich which has been decided elsewhere.
Will the government last a full term? I’m not at all sure. Certainly Labour will not leave and, as you point out, there are no triggers for exit even hinted at in the programme for government.
But don’t forget that the external forces acting on this government will be enormous. If the banks continue to be prioritised over the needs of the people, the state will be out of funds withing 18 months. We are severely exposed to fossil fuel price rises and shortage, and the consequent wide-spread price inflation. Nothing will be resolved, excepting the case of a precipitate collapse, in the European banking system, until after the German round of Länder elections this year. Another 10 months closer to sovereign default.
And there is a the question of more and more desperate people aligning with the real opposition.
As for Gilmore’s regrets, a sign of the real opposition working will be when things are considerably more difficult for former comrade Gilmore than merely walking home through a forest of placards.
You have to wonder at this stage why the handful of left-wingers in the Labour Party remain, other than masochism.
About the only interesting thing about the Labour conference is the numbers involved.
Labour claim a paper membership of in or around 5,000. This is a very small number by comparison with social democratic parties elsewhere, but it is also substantially larger than the real membership, by which I mean members who have some fleeting involvement in the party beyond signing a bit of paper and bunging them a tenner.
When the Greens were holding their own conferences on the same issue, virtually their entire real membership attended. Labour were claiming 1,000 at their conference, which even allowing for a bit of rounding up on their part, we can take as at least half of their active or semi-active membership (probably more in fact).
And out of that, perhaps 50 people voted against the programme for government. The most right wing programme for government presented by any prospective government at least since the 1920s and possibly ever. 50 people. And, of course, that intrepid band of 50 includes people who were not voting against coalition for left reasons but for simple, straightforward, obvious reasons of party interest.
I’ve pointed out a few times that at the last Labour conference to discuss the issue of coalition, the issue which was always totemic in left-right arguments in the party, not one single delegate argued against coalition with the right in principle. That, however, was an annual delegate conference, smaller and conceivably a little less representative of the membership than last weekend’s outing. Sunday saw an enormous gathering by Labour’s standards, including the bulk of the party’s rank and file activists.
It’s worth noting that even that portion of the 50 which argued against the programme for government for “left” reasons did not argue against coalition in principle but against going into coalition as the smaller party in current circumstances. But leaving that important aspect aside for a moment, we now seem to have reached a stage where the Labour left, by which we mean people who are left enough to oppose the kind of large scale privatisation and a public sector jobs massacre, is down to at most 50 people nationwide.
Another way of putting this is that the Labour left in the broadest most inclusive sense is about the size of the Workers Solidarity Movement, or more likely smaller.
Remember that the next time someone tells you that the socialist left need to be “open” to the rank and file of Labour and to genuine left activists in that party, or that we need to take a softer, less aggressive, stance to that party to avoid alienating these people. THERE IS NO FUCKING LABOUR LEFT.
Trying to appeal to “healthy” rank and file elements in Labour or to “genuine” left activists in that party in this day and age is the strategic equivalent of trying to work out a way to appeal to the Seraphim and Cherubim. They are figments of the imagination.
Mark P – it was a delegate conference. Some left wing anti-FG former NEC members were not let in. Think it was one delegte per five active paid up members
Why were they not let in?
That’s interesting if it was a delegate conference.
However, I don’t know how you get to the idea that it was one delegate per five active members as opposed to one delegate per five members. In fact that seems extraordinarily unlikely – Labour do not keep two sets of membership figures, one for the active and one for the inactive and they have always based delegate numbers for their conferences on their paper membership. The paper membership claim is in the region of 5,000. The claimed attendance was in the region of 1,000. The numbers fit pretty much exactly with delegation per paper member.
1,000 is more than half of the meaningfully active Labour membership, whether they were formally “delegates” or not. And 50 was the total number of people voting against the programme for government. 50, including both those voting for “left” reasons and those voting for party interest reasons.
I’m assuming here that you are not claiming that any substantial number of would-be anti-coalition delegates turned up and were refused access? There were no angry scenes as hundreds of thus far invisible left Labourites clamoured to get in but were refused entry by a fearful leadership?
When I talk about a Labour left of 50 people nationwide, I’m actually being generous when you consider the numbers. My own suspicion is that more than half of the 50 were not ideologically opposed to coalition with Fine Gael and were voting in the bloody obvious self interest of the party. However, I’m putting all of them in the nominally “left” camp so as to account for any anti-coalition activists who couldn’t be there. 95% of the rank and file delegates voted for the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state.
The lesson from this conference is simply a louder version of the lesson from every Labour conference in years. The Labour left is dead. It isn’t even like the bewildered rump of the Labour left in the UK, which is a shattered remnant, a fraction of its previous size, but still visibly exists. It’s gone.
And there are strategic conclusions to draw from this. There is absolutely no point in making appeals to an allegedly “healthy”, “genuine” or “left” rank and file in Labour because these people do not exist. Or to be more precise about it, they exist on a similar scale to the Workers Solidarity Movement but are less organised.
If you hear people on the left talking about winning over or “not alienating” rank and file members of the Labour Party, you can be fairly sure that they are importing an (probably mistaken even in its original context) analysis from elsewhere and haven’t actually analysed the Irish Labour Party. It isn’t a mass party. It’s active membership is in real terms tiny. And has almost to a man and woman backed massive job cuts, privatisation and water taxes.
There is nobody to appeal to.
I don’t think that being the same size as the WSM is the equivalent of being non-existent. It’s also likely that this tiny opposition to the coalition in Labour will grow as this government reveals its true treacherous colours. Yes, that doesn’t mean trimming to appeal to them. But it does mean remaining open to working alongside them.
Just out of interest, what was the vote when the Socialist Party held its special delegate conference on whether to join the ULA?
Being the same size as the WSM but also being spread out in a much bigger organisation and also being entirely disorganised is much the same thing as being non-existent. The impact a relatively tightly knit organisation of 50 can have is wildly out of proportion with the impact 50 scattered, disorganised, individuals can have.
More importantly in terms of strategic implications for the socialist left – ie should they be tailoring their approach to appeal to rank and file Labour members – it’s certainly the same thing as being non-existent. There is no audience there at all.
As for the ULA, it was discussed (as a prospective alliance rather than the ULA itself) at Socialist Party conference and in aggregate members meetings in the run up the election. Its future development will be discussed throughout the organisation over the next weeks in quite considerable detail.
I’m not entirely sure what point you think you’re making here by the way. I’m not criticising the Labour Party’s internal democracy above. Far from it. I’m saying that the right wing leadership and right wing policies accurately reflect the views of the right wing membership. The only people I’m criticising are those misguided enough to think that there’s some significant left or leftish rank and file Labour Party membership to work with or influence or win over. There is not. They are a figment of lurid imaginations.
Who exactly are you suggesting we “remain open to working alongside”? 50 scattered, disorganised, bewildered, political masochists? In what arena do you think that’s going to matter in the slightest?
‘It’s also likely that this tiny opposition to the coalition in Labour will grow as this government reveals its true treacherous colours’
The problem with that statement Shay is that it has already revealed its ‘true treacherous colours’ in the programme for government. The programme sets forth, as Mark rightly pointed out, the most right-wing programme for government since the 1920s. Unless Labour members are illiterate they are well aware of what 95% of them have committed to. It’s true that some might grow to oppose coalition, but it will only be based on the realisation that their support is being eroded by their policies. It will be an opposition based on self-interest rather than any principled opposition to the policies THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY AGREED TO. The other problem is that Labour, even before the talks started, were in favour of a 3 year private sector pay freeze and 4.5 billion worth of cuts. Even without entering government their own programme was right-wing (describing Labour as social-democratic in anything but name is frankly ludicrous) and a particularly dank shade of those treacherous colours you mentioned.
In terms of working with them, what are we working with? A group the size of the WSM but without the WSM’s campaigning record? If they want to achieve anything it’s abundantly clear that they cannot do so in the Labour Party. The much more likely scenario is that the actual Labour left will shrink as its members depart the LP due to its participation in a right-wing, austerity driven government.
As regards the ULA, the decision to enter talks with the PBPA and TWAG was agreed to overwhelmingly at conference and the minimum programme on which it is based arrived at through months of democratic discussion with the constituent groups. The result being that the ULA have 5 TDs, 1 MEP and 17 or so councillors while the Laabour Left has 2 councillors and, being generous, a few dozen supporters who have had little impact and are likely to continue to have little impact. Meanwhile the genuine left will make gains as Labour voters and supporters desert them.
Which isn’t, by the way, to say that I’m opposed to working with the occasional Labour leftist who shows up to some campaign meeting. If they agree with a campaign’s goals I have no problem working with them at all.
What I am saying is that they are strategically irrelevant. There’s no significant number of them. They are not a significant part of our potential audience. We should not in any way water down our political message or our criticisms of Labour in order to appeal to them.
For that matter, I actually think that there’s more chance of winning over one or two of the handful of Labour lefts by taking an extremely hard line on Labour than there is by telling them that at some mystical level Labour is better than it really is. I don’t think it’s strategically significant either way however. There just aren’t enough of them to matter.
Active – as in fully paid up for 2010.
The post coital election period seems overly extended and subdued this time around. I suspect for many the outcome and the so-called negotiations between FG and Lab have had more than a hint of business as usual (BAU). Nothing special was exected, and nothing special has been delivered. The pre-ordained neo-liberal capitalist (NLC) script remains extant.
It’s all been a very missionary experience.
Reading about Labour’s contribution to the deal for govt I get the feeling that workers, the poor and un/underemployed have only been promised a couple of dozen lashes rather than the three dozen we were told to expect. Yipee. Although there seems to be ‘get-out-clauses’ in many proposals and threat of more pain is always lurking. I suppose conditions and the visissitudes of daily existence will determine what measures and messages Labour will have to pursue in the future within existing socio-economic orthodoxy they’ve accepted.
It’s obvious Labour don’t have a different socio-economic project for Ireland in the 21st century. Their role, as defined by their policies and broad utterances, is that of a party whose sole function is to been seen as alleviating the worst excesses of NLC.
Labour is the party that delivers crumbs. The party that delivers just enough crumbs often enough that workers hopefully won’t notice how they are being dissected by a thousand cuts.
The re-emerging Left need to highlight Labour’s lack of vision. The MSM will try to use the Labour party ‘brand’ to define what the Left are or should be in the coming years. The Labour party, and the policies its pursues in tandem with FG, will be used to persuade Labour/Workers what they can expect in the future, and we’ll be told to expect less and less.
Those who’ve championed and implemented the debacle of NLC, including FG and now the Labour Party, are portrayed as worthy. The workers are portrayed as patsies and parasites – the unwashed and the unworthy. We need to turn this twisted story on its head.
It’s important for the actual Left to now get coherent message(s) out into their communities. The ULA will have to flesh out a comprehensive economic platform. One that is seen as understood and workable by ordinary people. The ULA meeting taking place is encouraging.
(I’d also cite Monbiot’s thoughts on how the broad anti-Capitalist cohort must address their opponents. His article is about a mass demo on 26 March in England, but many of his proposal (lifted from other as he cites) are well worth considering in our own contexts: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/06/what-we-are-for/ )
In reply to Mark P, I think it’s more than possible for self-respecting socialists to work alongside people like the 2 Labour councillors who came out last week, and the rather large trade union that agreed with them. But, as is obvious from what I wrote, I’m thinking more of a potential, larger opposition over the next while, rather than just the little which exists at present (again, tiny rather than non-existent).
One factor in such an opposition emerging may well be frustration with lack of democracy within the Labour Party. For example, the programme for government was obviously ready early last week, but was held back until the last minute. This gave members no more than an hour or two to read and discuss the final document. Scandalous!
If an EU treaty was published on the morning of a referendum, Mark P would join me in being up in arms. But he can’t join me in deploring undemocratic processes in the Labour Party, because he is happy enough with the members of his own party approving some vague possible alliance without having a vote on the programme itself. Surely some mistake?
This is descending into silly sniping, like your comments on Rob Connolly and Gino Kenny a few weeks back. The negotiations were discussed at branch level throughout the whole process. If there was any opposition to the minimum programme that was agreed to then a branch could have voted to call a regional conference to discuss the issue. They didn’t because it wasn’t necessary. People were satisfied with the minimum programme as a way of establishing the ULA on a principled basis while allowing the constituent groupings to put forward their own programmes.
Frankly in terms of internal democracy within Labour, I haven’t seen any signs of it being particularly lacking, though I stand to be corrected. Labour Youth and the Labour Party itself did, in the 1980s for example, go out of their way to block delegate attending conference, shut down branches etc. but that was in the context of an actual threat to the right-wing leadership. That doesn’t exist now and there isn’t a need to protect Labour’s right-wing leadership from a threat that is frankly non-existent. If Labour Party’s internal democracy is faulty then I don’t see why we should take any more interest in it than the selection process for FF or FG.
What rather large trade union agreed with them? Don’t you mean that the appointed regional leader of one trade union agreed with them?
I have no objection to working with those 2 councillors (I think that there are actually 3 who could be counted as “leftish”), or with the rest of the 50. What I object to is woolly thinking and confused strategy based on the incorrect assumption that they represent something more than 50 scattered and disorganised people.
The Labour left are tiny. They do not constitute a significant audience and should not be a factor in the strategies of the socialist left. That does not mean that I’m in favour of casting the four dozen of them into the outer darkness or barring them from campaigns, any more than I’m in favour of doing the same to the WSM.
Glad to hear the last bit. At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t think they represent any more than the tiny number they do. Nor do I think we should tailor anything to them (I think “trimming” was the word I used). But don’t rule out in advance the possibility of that small group growing. It just might happen, and then you’ll be stuck denying that it’s really happening.
As far as the ULA is concerned, what would be the thoughts of Mark P (and his friend) on the kind of internal structures it should move towards? Should they be closer to Labour’s or the SP’s?
*rolls eyes*
I can’t comment as the process of discussion os going to involve agreement by the supporters, the constituent organisations etc has only really just begun. My own feeling would be that it should move towards being a political party but which would allow the SP, PBPA and TWAG some autonomy within that, maybe something along the lines of the platform system that existed in the SSP or currently exists in SYRIZA, though for that to work would require a lot of new supporters and members signing up, which I think seems likely.
I’m curious though Shay, you’ve been sniping at socialist activists like the SP, Rob Connolly and Gino Kenny who have puts years of work into building a left-wing alternative through involvement in strikes, protests, campaigns etc. I was curious as to whether you are actually involved in any grouping or if your political activity is isolated to sniping on this site?
I’m not ruling anything out.
I’m talking about what the Labour left are NOW (next to nothing) and who the Labour rank and file are NOW (right wingers who’ve just voted nearly unanimously for the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state).
What may happen or may not happen in the future is another question. I’d tend towards the view that opposition in the Labour Party coming from people who voted for the programme will be purely tactical and will lack any real credibility and also towards the view that any more genuine opposition which arises will funnel people straight out of Labour rather than into a reborn Labour left (see under: Green Party). However, those are only assessments based on incomplete information and time will tell.
The key issue is how we relate to the Labour left which actually exists and the Labour rank and file which actually exists not how we might relate to some imaginary future versions of these bodies. Or rather, the key issue is that we shouldn’t tailor our message or our criticism in any way to especially appeal to them because the Labour left are tiny and the Labour rank and file about as unpromising an audience as you could imagine.
As for ULA structures, an enormous amount remains to be discussed and the process will take time. In general I wouldn’t favour structures like those of either the Socialist Party or the Labour Party as both assume a much greater political unity than in fact exists in the ULA. The ULA will have to combine giving otherwise unaffiliated members their say in the internal democracy of the organisation with giving affiliated political currents the freedom to operate and argue their particular views. There are a wide range of ways in which these goals can be achieved.
I was curious as to whether you are actually involved in any grouping or if your political activity is isolated to sniping on this site
For what it’s worth, my political actvity is pretty much restricted to sniping on a variety of sites.
To be fair EJH, I wouldn’t characterise your contributions as sniping. Shay’s record in this regard is somewhat less glowing, given his trolling on other posts.
Mark P,
Am bizzarely interested in your comments in relation to the WSM. Are you referring the Labour ‘left’ to them because you see both as failed entities or is it simply for numerical similiarity that you’re comparing the two?
Ta.
As you can tell by reading Mark’s posts, it is terms of numerical similarity though as Mark and I have both pointed out, the WSM as an organised grouping and with a solid campaigning record, are far more significant than 50 or so disorganised Labour Leftists.
I’m comparing them purely in terms of numbers, to give a sense of what sort of scale we are talking about.
Nobody would suggest that the WSM are a strategic factor that the socialist left have to take into account or that their members constitute a significant part of our potential audience. Not because they are bad people or personal or political failures, but because they are made up of a very small number of people.
I’d actually hold out more hope of the WSM growing than the Labour left growing, and I think that working with them on individual issues is more purposeful because they are actually organised. But I’m still not going to turn up to some campaign and argue that we need to tailor our approach to winning over rank and file WSMers.
There are human motives too. Gilmore’s and Rabbitt’s generation won’t have another chance of office. The ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ posters were sad not so much because they showed delusion but because of the excitement they suggested – and it would be asking too much of ambitious people to climb down from that to, well, more opposition and no more office, ever.
‘Vote Labour and you get Fine Gael’ rings very true now. There’s not even a tinge of Social Democracy to this programme: Garret’s Fine Gael were further left than Gilmore’s Labour.
My issue was always ‘Vote Labour and you get Labour’ but that’s how it goes.
It’s worth saying also that I’m not pointing out the almost complete non-existence of the Labour left so as to pick on people who’ve surely had a hard enough week already.
The people I’m trying to get through to are the people on sites like this one and the other Irish left blogs, the people in campaign meetings, the people in other left groups, who continuously, without reflection, talk of the importance of “working with the Labour left” or the Labour rank and file, winning them over or avoiding alienating them as if this was some significant strategic issue.
The Labour left are tiny to the point of complete irrelevance. The Labour rank and file? Look at the programme for government, look at the special conference vote. Those are the politics of the Labour rank and file. That’s what they want. That. And it isn’t as if Labour was a mass membership party anyway.
On the other hand that was two TDs that voted agin. The ULA has five and had none in the last Dáil. So it’s not entirely tiny to the point of irrelevance. Not that I expect the TDs to break ranks with the LP, but one presumes they represent more than just themselves.
The two TDs represent nothing in terms of Labour activists, as thoroughly demonstrated by the fact that practically nobody else voted for them. And they are themselves no radicals, just slightly brighter than some of their contemporaries in figuring out the party’s best interest.
You’d be a man yourself I vaguely recall talking about knowing some Labour activists who were themselves of the left. Did they vote for the programme for government or did they number amongst the 50?
Most of those I know would be against the deal.
But as Blissett notes further down, it’s early days yet. It may not be the first time that people within the LP take note of coalition and what it means and act accordingly.
So your friends are amongst those few, those happy few.
If you think about it, if you know five Labour people who were against the deal for left wing reasons then you know at least 10% of the whole Labour left.
There is an element of crystal gazing about thsi discussion. The coalition is a fact. As yet no significant element said they would leave nor even fight on.If an elemnet like this arises then ULA should orientate a little towards it. But for now it does not exist. But for ULA there are many activists who mobilised in the election. Getting them or a substantial element in a permanent formation is the challenge.I don’t think it should rush blindly but neither should it dilly dally.
We need an ULA in each union (branch in SIPTU) we need to open up to other left formations who will now take ULA seriously.
I would guess that by the time the locals come around the penny will have dropped about ths coalition. In the meantime there is plenty to do.
I agree that winning Labour over to the left is a fools errand. Having come into contact with several of the youth members in my college ive come to the concluscion that much of the next generation are frankly terrifying.
However i think it should be noted that two of its TDs Tommy Broughan and Joanna Tuffy voted against the deal as well as the two councillors I presume that was Looney and who else?
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/general-election/labours-deal-with-fg-was-opposed-by-second-td-15106750.html
The thing is with those TDs is whether it was common sense / self-interest or a principled position? We’d need to look at their records before making a call.
Fair point. Broughan has always been somewhat to the left of the LP I’d have thought, and certainly not towed the line. Is that positioning? I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know.
Joanna Tuffy would not be regarded by anyone as being on the Labour left.
Well fair play to her nevertheless.
I doubt there was anything principled about her vote. She knows full well Labour are going to be as popular as syphilis at the next election. Note her comment in that article about how there are no opposition TDs in her constituency. One of those seats is going to Sinn Féin next time around and she wants to make sure it isn’t hers.
Patrick Nulty , who ran with Joan Burton in Dublin West spoke against the deal at the delegate conference. Dont know if Dermot Looney spoke but he had a post on his blog against the deal
http://thelooneyleft.blogspot.com/2011/03/press-release-grassroots-should-reject.html
“Dont know if Dermot Looney spoke ”
He did. (The video of the conference is on the Labour website.)
I watched it on Sunday. Arguments against boiled down to two types: (a) this deal is wrong and will do harm to the people (Tommy Broughan and Cian O’Callaghan would have been among those) and (b) Labour will be punished for going into coalition / Labour will come back bigger if it stays out this time.
In a way it doesn’t really matter if Tuffy is left or not, she made a public expression of dissent. And it’s perhaps a little early to be certain as to motivation, even if self-interest (as with almost all politicians) is a factor. But having personally seen the dynamic of coalition closely in various parties now across the last twenty years it wouldn’t surprise me to see the logic of opposition at the start pushing someone towards the left, however mildly.
BTW, there’s more than one TD like Tuffy who is in the same boat re SF, I’d have thought there’d be many more, and yet they didn’t speak out.
I think Broughan has a track record one of the worst for going against party discipline in the last dail.
Tuffy would be on the left in Labour. Prehaps not saying much
(This is meant to follow from Tomboktu’s comment, but it’s not working for me!)
I must say, putting up the conference on your website so that the world can hear all the arguments – including the minority opposition – is quite admirable. Any chance of the left transacting its debates as openly, I wonder?
If Tuffy is regarded as “on the left” that tells you everything you need to know about how left the band of 50 are.
BTW, there’s more than one TD like Tuffy who is in the same boat re SF, I’d have thought there’d be many more, and yet they didn’t speak out.
So what? That doesn’t mean it wasn’t her motivation.
I don’t actually think there are many more though. The challenge from SF in her constituency was particularly strong, there are few others where you’d be as close to certain that SF will gain a seat in the next election at the expense of Labour. In fact the only other constituency that even seems to me to come close is … Tommy Broughan’s.
Cork south central, cork north central where the LP candidate didn’t get in but the sf candidate on contention I’d think for next time. Cork sourh west where though on a lower base Paul Hayes might have a serious shot if the LP vote collapses. Dublin north central, Meath east on a very good day. And so on and sure these are long shots but who knows how things are in 2016 and how unpopular LP are.
In Cork South Central there is only one Labour TD and we didn’t poll anywhere near him. In Cork North Central we took the seat. For the others you mention, it would have to be a very bad day for Labour and a very good day for SF. To be honest they aren’t even on our radar at the moment. None of those TDs are going to feel anywhere near as threatened as the DMW ones.
Pesky mobile, I meant Cork North West, not Cork North Central, as regards Brougham clearly it’s Kenny who should feel the pressure not Broughan and a lot depends on who the SF candidate is but none of this contradicts the central point that given five years, a series if tough budgets and who knows what a significant number of LP sears should be in play, and it’s hard to see why Tuffy who by the way also was well ahead of the second LP candidate Keating who was also elected should be too concerned of it’s onlypersonalmotivation. Indeed the two one would think would make the running were that the case would be Keating and Kenny. And on a slight tangent while I have no knowledge of Keating/Tuffys relationship Kenny and Broughan’s never struck me as close.
1. We’re nowhere near a seat in Cork North West. And Labour don’t have a TD there either, so they didn’t have one to vote for or against the deal.
2. Labour’s other DMW TD is Dowds, not Keating. She was always going to be ahead of him but was reportedly apoplectic that he was put on the ticket to split the Labour vote. She’ll be even more concerned when the Labour vote is reduced by as much as it will be after a few years of this government.
3. I don’t actually think Broughan’s opposition was mainly self-motivated. But it is an interesting coincidence.
Tuffy is the senior TD, so I’m not sure why she’d be under greater threat than the other one.
Re CNW, true. All others I mentioned still stand.
“second LP candidate Keating”
Your pesky mobile is acting up again. Keating is FG (via independence, the PDs, and FF; Gogarty did speak sense when he described Keating a politically promiscuous). Dowds is the second Labour TD in Dublin Mid West, a constituency with no opposition TD.
It’s a small small screen and I was looking at it on the fly…
“Tuffy is the senior TD, so I’m not sure why she’d be under greater threat than the other one”
The main reason, if there is one, is that she is dead lazy and he is hard working.
Whether she is under greater threat than the other one is not the issue, the issue is whether she personally feels under threat. She did when Dowds was added to her ticket and that was at a time when Labour were flying in the polls, so why on earth wouldn’t she now.
The local LP branch in my area has a paper membership of 20 and 2 ‘active’ members – the two ‘active’ members do little more than attend various ‘community’ meetings. One of them actually said to me that he was thinking of joining the ULA and a couple of days later appeared in a photo in the local paper smiling over Gilmore’s shoulder as he did his whistlestop tour through the constituency. Last Saturday the LP branch had 5 delegates at the conference – the 2 ‘active’ members, their two wives and one of their kids.
Some unsorted observations
1 – While I agree with much Mark P has to say, im not sure its necessarilly all that revealing that the speakers against coalition spoke more on practical grounds rather than in opposition to coalition in principle. Surely knowing your audience is to be taken in to consideration, and its not a crime to pitch your message to a particular audience. In the context of a labour conference, i think far more would be likely to listen to ‘this is strategically a mistake’ than ‘this is a contradiction to everything we purport to stand for.
2 – The point was made that the LP isnt a mass party. I think the left needs to stop labouring under the illusion that such a party exists anywhere on the political spectrum in this country or indeed in western europe. There is no longer any such thing IMO. So while there are various reasons why people on the left should weigh up working with larger outfits such as the LP in ireland or the UK, i dont believe thats a criteria worthy of consideration any longer.
Further to that, its worth noting that its not really left labour activists who we need to focus on, but left labour passive supporters, and left labour voters.
3 I was very surprised at how the cameras at the conference made the opposition to the coalition look. anecdotally I would have come across many in the LP opposed, although i add the caveat that they would have been largely, though not exclusively) 3rd level students. Perhaps some of that can be put down to the nature of a delegate conference. You could have 20-40 pc of a branch against it, but thats going to manifest itself in the same way as a branch which unanimously supported it. Sort of like first past the post. I was also, mildly encoruaged by Labour Youths statement. (emphasis on mildly) Im not sure that the opposition was as weak as it appears, which brings me on to..
4 I do think some opposition will manifest itself over the medium term, and perhaps, perversly enough, being in government will be conducive to producing a labour left. We should be open to working with it.
However, on the whole I accept the general point that the left ought not tailor its message for the Labour Left activists, but Im not sure i would write its epitaph yet either.
On what basis would you avoid writing it’s epitaph, other than vague hope? The reality is expressed in the numbers: There is no Labour left worth noticing.
But the situation isn’t static. It’s a very dynamic one. Coalition will as Blissett notes change the situation. We’ve three budgets in succession that will remove €3bn each time from the economy. That’s easy to say in advance, but when it impacts on the ground we’ll see.
Now you are back to talking about some future Labour left arising, because there isn’t one in the here and now.
Many things may happen in the future. We may all be swallowed by a vast sheet of ice, marching South from the Pole. We may be wiped out by a meteorite. We may upload our consciousness into a new silicon world. I’m not willing to rule out anything.
But in the here and now, there is no Labour left. And it’s absolutely vital that everyone on the socialist left understand that before they start talking about strategy.
There may be a Labour left in the future and if such a thing is reborn, then that would require further analysis. Personally, I’m of the view that (a) discontent amongst people who voted for the deal will be purely of the “what about my seat” or “oh shit the party is screwed” variety and will have no credibility. And that (b) more genuine discontent will end up funnelling people out of Labour rather than recreating a Labour left. That was certainly the experience of the Green Party.
But for now, there is no Labour left to appeal to, influence, win over or work with.
1798Mike
Thanks for your reply, my thoughts on the ULA are it would be wise to pitch a left reformist programe and not become embroiled in internal spats about who are the better socialists, etc, it should also be very careful about how it deals with the question of leader/leaders. It would also be wise to take the working classes as they are not as some comrades expect them to be.
Whilst they may be few socialist within todays ILP, their electorate is somewhat more complex. So it is well worth while pitching a left reformist platform in their direction, Surly?
I think the Irish left can be pretty chuffed about this result and rightly so;
I think Mark P is being a little short-sighted. An opposition emerging within Labour is of a far higher degree of probability than the end of humanity due to a meteor strike or glacier shift. And focussing exclusively on the “here and now”, excluding the likelihood of change and development is fierce un-dialectical, so it is.
I think we’re agreed that there should be no trimming, adapting, tailoring of left politics to accommodate to disappointed Labour politicians. It may well be that the development of opposition within Labour could result in that opposition moving outside of Labour, to another left-wing formation.
But that would mean remaining open to them making that leap, providing somewhere for them to leap to. Not accommodating to them, but making clear that they can have a role. In that context, it won’t do to say (as I think Mark P is) “Well, they can come if they want. They know where we are, if they want to come and find us.” It would mean actually making an effort to win them away from Labour’s bad traditions. And I don’t think you do that by calling them a shower of 50 bewildered wasters (or words to that effect).
The point I’m making Shay, is that the shower of 50 isolated, disorganised Labour lefts are entirely irrelevant. Whether they leave or stay or join something else matters less than whatever decisions the WSM make this week. There is no point in “making an effort to win them away from Labour” because there is nobody there to win away. There is no Labour left worth mentioning. It’s like advocating making an effort to win the Seraphim over to the third choir of angels.
As for being agreed that there should be no political concessions made to them, you and I may be agreed on that but I think you’ll find that many people on the left are still labouring under the illusion that (a) there actually is a Labour left and that (b) consequently the left should in some ways moderate its voice so as to allow us to “work with them” or so as to “avoid alienating them”. You will find people expressing that view inside just about any campaign.
You will also see the view expressed on most Irish left wing blogs from time to time – based mostly on a lazy differentiation between the Labour leadership (bad) and the ordinary rank and file member (good). Such a distinction is based on wishful thinking. The far from massive ranks of the Labour Party are made up of people who almost to a man and woman support the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state and support coalition with Fine Gael to implement that programme. They are donkeys led by donkeys.
That there is no Labour left is an absolutely vital thing to hammer home, again and again and again, until it finally sinks in. Once it has sunk in, we may have some more useful discussions about strategy on the left.
Perhaps so, but I’d wonder about a position that seems to imply that the largest group of self described leftists however much that may be a misperception are immune to any sort of upset at what’s coming down the line?
If that’s so then where on earth is there any real prospect for the left beyond that? Who are the people who are going to vote left, etc in 2016, or be activist or whatever?
It’s not that I think that there’s no hope of clawing some LP voters, and maybe even activists, to more left wing positions. But the numbers would suggest that that would take years, decades even. And if not them then who?
The “if not them then who” question would be more worrying if the Labour Party membership wasn’t, in the greater scheme of things, so tiny. Their paper membership is 0.1% of the population. Their active membership is perhaps 0.03% of the population.
As we’ve discussed before, my view of who is meaningfully on “the left” is bleaker than that of many people here. But I think that there’s value in avoiding self-delusion, even if the self-delusion is comforting. And, as with the Greens some time ago, the behaviour of the Labour membership last weekend should have made a lot of things clearer.
Sure, but all the left membership is small. So that too is a bleak point. And note I didn’t just point to LP activists as a pool to draw from but also voters.
In a way i’m just shooting the breeze on all this. I don’t believe that we’ll see any rupture in the LP and where individuals do detach I suspect they’ll drift out of politics, over to SF in very small numbers or over to Independents or the ULA in equally small numbers.
Perhaps I’m wrong and I’d love to be proven so.
Mark P’s full position, or at least the expression he sometimes gives to it, on how the ULA should regard and relate to the very few ‘lefter’ activists in the Labour Party, would not be entirely unanimous among supporters of the ULA.
Over on the Tomás Ó Flaharta blog, Tomás, myself and (indirectly)Paddy Healy, differed in various ways with Mark P in discussing the issue.
Followers of this thread might be interested in this from January:
http://tomasoflatharta.com/2011/01/25/labour-leadership-offensive-to-the-left-offensive-against-the-left/
and this from February:
http://tomasoflatharta.com/2011/02/23/why-does-the-irish-labour-party-seek-fine-gaels-kiss-of-death/#comment-133
I must say that Shay Guevara’s position of “not accommodating to them, but making clear that they can have a role” strikes a chord with any view of the ULA as building a broad fighting party that is a coalition of revolutionaries, left social democrats and new activists.
D_D is of course correct that there are disagreements within the ULA and indeed within the broader socialist left on the subject.
I’m a bit disappointed however that he doesn’t engage with the central point I’ve been making, which isn’t an argument about the nature of the Labour Left, but an argument that we should recognise that for all intents and purposes there is no Labour Left.
Arguing about how to relate to the Labour Left is akin to arguing about how to separate the goblins from the elves. We are dealing with fictional beings.
As an organised entity at this point in time, you’re correct. It doesn’t exist. But it may well begin to do so as the situation changes/worsens over the next few years.
Or to put it another way:
From this moment on, every single time some fool starts waffling on about the “need to relate to the rank and file of the Labour Party”, they should be firmly reminded that the Labour Party rank and file is every bit as right wing as the Labour Party leadership. And they’ve proved it by voting for the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state, almost to a man and woman, and voting for coalition with Fine Gael to implement it.
THAT is the Labour rank and file. The real Laour Party rank and file, not the better Labour Party rank and file some determinedly self-deluding leftists like to imagine.
The issue WBS is that the LP membership, as it currently exists, knows full well what they’re signing up for and have voted for it regardless. If any of them get second thoughts it’s likely to be out of self-interest / common sense than any left-criticisms of the Labour Party. Even if they (the Labour left micro-group) did become more organised, it’s a tiny minority that will probably shrink due to the exit of principled leftists and the entry of more carrerists into the Labour Party ranks.
WbS:
If evidence emerges that a Labour Left is starting to exist, and exist on a scale bigger than the likes of the WSM, I’ll be more then willing to discuss how to relate to them, work with them or win them over.
But at the moment they don’t exist and the Labour rank and file is every bit as right wing as the Labour leadership. What I want to see is a socialist left which actually understands and acknowledges this reality and stops introducing fantasy beings into its strategic thinking.
To be honest DD, there isn’t a major gulf between those two positions. Though frankly, the only realistic message to send to the handful of Labour Lefts is that they’re wasting their time in that party and to leave.
Though Mark is correct, the Labour Left is numerically similar to a sect. It’s clear there is no mass rank and file opposition to what is likely to be the most right-wing governments in the history of the state. The very question of how to relate to the Labour Left isn’t a particularly important one due to it’s size. We might as well be talking about winning over the Sparts or the IBT in terms of numerical significance.
Those of us who remember being told, and told again, and told again, and on, and on, and on, and on, (and on), that Labour was the ONLY place for socialists to be by Militant in the 1980s, and that anyone outside was a ‘sect on the fringes of the labour movement’ are a bit amused by this. (To all intents and purposes I agree with Mark, but pots and kettles etc).
It’s a silly point you raise Kevin. The difference is that in the 1980s there WAS rank and file opposition to coalition and an actual left-wing inside the Labour Party. If you’re interested you can check the Irish Times archives to see just how contentious an issue it was at the time. The difference now is the fact that the rank and file are quite clearly right-wing through and through and there are no gain to be made by socialists, reformist, revolutionary or otherwise inside the Labour Party.
Though I suppose awareness of the historical reality has to take second place to an ill-informed dig on your part.
I think that you are perhaps confusing the attitude of the British Militant with that of the Irish Militant, which had its criticisms of the Workers Party but did not dismiss it as a “sect on the fringes of the Labour movement”.
As for the more general point about Labour in the 1970s and 1980s, situations change as do political forces. Back when the Labour left was fighting it out on a more or less even basis with the right for control of the party, you’d have to be willfully myopic to avoid seeing that there was a strong left within the party. Just as you’d have to be a fool of the highest order to take a look at last weekend’s Labour conference and think that there’s still a left there.
Good to see that you agree with me, however.
I see that Labour have been restricted to 5 cabinet positions, and there were reports on the radio that there were serious squabbles amongst them over the spoils.
Gilmore is Minister for begging the EU for mercy.
Burton is Minister for persecuting the unemployed.
Howlin is Minister for laying off public servants.
Quinn is Minister for education cuts.
Rabbitte is Minister for privatising the ESB.
This evening’s speculation of some kind of rumpus among Labour’s cabinet hopefuls was comical, with any luck it’ll turn up on youtube! They’re not having to wait long to get what they deserve. It looks like FG’s first priority was to shaft Labour and put them in their place. The composition of the new cabinet is testament to FG’s obvious determination to ensure that Labour will have to beat the bejasus out of huge parts of it’s support base: social welfare recipients, the public sector, students & and semi-state workers.
It puts an interesting perspective on this debate. Labour are getting closer to their deserved place on scrap heap alongside the PDs and the Greens.
I like Mark P’s outline.
CMK, where was the reports of a rumpus? I’m mighty intrigued.
Well there was speculation on Drivetime as to why there was a 30 minute delay in the cabinet being announced. Gerry Adams and Michael Martin were giving the FG whip Paul Keogh a bit of grief about the delay. The RTE reporter on the scene seemed to be giving informed speculation of some kind of ‘difficulty’ behind the scenes where the jobs were being handed out after Enda returned from the Park. It being intimated that possibly Burton was unhappy, given her longstanding economics spokespersons role, to be given the social welfare portfolio. It may well be filed under ‘too good to be true’ or it may have legs, no doubt the papers will have more on it in coming days, if there is anything to it.
Of course you should be amused – and of course the character and composition of political parties never cahnges – does it ?
I agree with Budapestkick that “there isn’t a major gulf between those two positions”. I don’t think Shay Guevara’s position is actually that far away from them either when you look behind the mischievous glint in his eye.
I think Mark P that both Shay Guevara and myself “recognise that for all intents and purposes there is no Labour Left”. I think we are talking about the handful of unorganised lefter members and the need to reach a hand out to them with “no trimming, adapting, tailoring of left politics” by the ULA.
These lefter members of the Labour Party may be similar to a sect “in terms of numerical significance” (and I presume the worthy WSM is not being included in a derogatory sense among the sects) but not in terms of qualitative significance. Whatever the varying views of them we could not dismiss as insignificant Jimmy Kelly, Mick O’Reilly, Michael Taft, Sam Nolan, Helena Sheehan, Mags O’Brien, Cllr Cian O’Callaghan and his fellow councillor, the Chair of Labour Youth, some esteemed bloggers who until recently had some critical allegiance to Labour
, the small cohort that broke in Laois/Offaly and any similar shavings to come.
Surely Ray Fitzpatrick (Loais/ Offaly), who joined not just the ULA but the Socialist Party is a good example of why a soft approach is not needed for left-wing members of the LP to join the ULA.
The overall point is that if the ULA can develop, grow and become a pole of attraction for the best workers and youth moving into activity, then the best members of the LP will follow – if they don’t, then they’re probably not that good.
Exactly.
The approach we should have to the band of 50 is to bluntly tell them that they are wasting their time in Labour and that they should leave immediately, not to encourage them to waste their time further.
Not a soft approach, but an approach. Joe went up to meet them, and a good day’s work he did too.
D_D said:
I think Mark P that both Shay Guevara and myself “recognise that for all intents and purposes there is no Labour Left”.
Well that’s the first step.
And the next step is to recognise that there are a handful of lefter members of the LP that may be pushed beyond their tether. They should be related to positively and not merely by setting out our stall and thinking ‘you can come over us – your traditional far left rivals – if you feel like it and shag off if you don’t’.
That’s just the point, D_D: What you correctly call “a handful of people” anywhere are not a significant priority, not because they are left Labour People but because they are a handful of people.
The only approach which needs to be made to such people is to say (a) that they are wasting their time in Labour and should leave immediately and (b) that if they do and if they accept the political basis of the ULA, they would be welcome to get involved. That’s it. One sentence.
I would also mention that to focus solely on people who are currently activists of one form or another as the main constituency from where the ULA can be built is a mistake. The main targets should be workers, young people and so on who are being politicised by the crisis and who are open to becoming active in a new left formation. The success of the ULA will be determined, more than anything, by its ability to appeal to these people.
Absolutely agree.
Relatively agree.
“The main targets should be workers, young people and so on who are being politicised by the crisis and who are open to becoming active in a new left formation.”
This does not entail not targetting already active people on the left or reactivating lapsed people. Actually the ULA has spread to date by attracting these types. And the initial impulse of the ULA is precisely that it brought together a large sector of the existing left. There was some scepticism about the value of this preceding the birth of the ULA, it being argued that uniting the left would not produce much. That the thing was to bring in newly politicised people. The alloy of the ULA – the chemistry that is greater than the sum of its parts – produced the magnet for the new supporters, the media and for many of the votes.
We are into the debate here about the extent to which the left is developed through new raw workers or through new raw workers brought in through left regroupment and the re-organisation of relatively experienced activists and former activists.
It’s a simple matter of numbers D_D.
Nobody is against involving existing activists, but as compared to the working class as a whole and as compared even to the numbers required to make a new party viable and useful, there aren’t anything like enough of them.
The involvement of new people, in large numbers, is what will make or break any attempt to build a new party.
Uniting the existing left in the absence of wider involvement is a mug’s game.
Well here in my part of the country – over the years, innumerable people have come into the local Labour Party and drifted away in utter disillusionment. Those who might have constituted a left-wing just left. They gave up – they found no outlet for their idealism and they refused to be retainers to the local TD. No one doubts there are some good decent left-wingers in the Labour Party – but just not enough to constitute any kind of a credible left-wing.
If the ULA as Mick Hall previously stated, pitched a well-worked out radical platform then there are people all over the country who might affiliate.
Mark P says: “The only approach which needs to be made to such people is to say (a) that they are wasting their time in Labour and should leave immediately…”
“Such people” let us remember are the projected 50 genuine leftists in the Labour Party. Why would we treat these people with such dismissal? We would not risk offending, and repulsing, the ‘average’ person we meet on the doorstep or hand a leaflet to on the street by telling them they are wasting their time doing what they do. Why would we not make an effort with the 50?
Mark P says, ‘What you correctly call “a handful of people” anywhere are not a significant priority, not because they are left Labour People but because they are a handful of people.’
and,
‘It’s a simple matter of numbers’
I’ll reheat what I said elsewhere (http://tomasoflatharta.com/2011/01/25/labour-leadership-offensive-to-the-left-offensive-against-the-left/):
“We are DEALING IN small numbers. It has turned out after all that the sum of the ULA is indeed greater than its parts … But let’s not be moved to think that a jump from cents to ten cent pieces, with twenty cent pieces in view, means that we already have a wad of notes in our pockets. … there were a hundred plus at the recent ULA activists meeting in Dublin…we being in the small numbers game itself for the time being, it is worth considering how to relate to and perhaps reach some of the few, perhaps a few dozen, Labour supporters who are unhappy with the Party’s stance at present and open to considering a political alternative.”
Mark P says, “The involvement of new people, in large numbers, is what will make or break any attempt to build a new party. Uniting the existing left in the absence of wider involvement is a mug’s game.”
The first sentence is very true. The second, though long an argument against uniting the existing left, is the opposite of what has actually occurred. The wider involvement has happened though it has not yet even reached the stage of people taking out membership. The new movement has yet to be built. But even that wider involvement happened after uniting the existing left. The ULA came first and then the wider support which flocked to it because it was united, viable, broad, hopeful, tolerant and pluralistic as well as active, principled and combative.
1) The average person on the street or at the doors isn’t engaged in political activity within a right wing government party.
And in any case it’s more respectful to the small number of people concerned to tell them accurately fully what you think rather than to attempt to sweeten the pill by masking your views. Labour left activists are wasting their time. We should tell them so rather than say anything which could be construed as backhanded encouragement to continue wasting their time.
2) We are dealing in small numbers in the greater scheme of things. But there are small numbers and small numbers. Labour and the International Bolshevik Tendency are dealing in small numbers in the greater scheme of things, that doesn’t mean that the difference in scale is insignificant.
When we talk about there being 50 or so Labour lefts, or Labour rank and file members who oppose coalition for somewhat leftish reasons, we are not talking about there being a group of 50 potential recruits. Some will be loyalists who will stick it out in Labour no matter what. Some will be demoralised by the experience of this government and won’t be open to any other formation. Some will be genuine moderate social democrats who might be repulsed by Labour’s neoliberalism but equally aren’t going to have any truck with the ULA’s radicalism. The number of people who might, even in a best case scenario, be amenable to joining the ULA is substantially below the already tiny level of 50.
Somewhere well over 1,000, perhaps over 1,500 people came to ULA launch meetings around the country. Also small numbers in the greater scheme of things, but a potential audience vastly more significant than a handful of isolated Labour lefts.
Once again, I’m not at all advocating casting that handful into the outer darkness. If there are still people in Labour who are willing to consider leaving for the ULA, well and good. I’d welcome them. I’m advocating focusing on the significant opportunities open to the ULA rather than on semi-fictitious groups of people (eg the Labour left) parts of the socialist left all too often talks about “engaging with” out of a kind of habit and tradition rather than as a result of useful analysis of whether there’s anything much there to engage with.
3) I think that you are wrong about the success of the ULA. The success, small scale as it has been so far, has stemmed largely from good timing, launching in a period of crisis when more people were looking for answers outside of the right wing mainstream.
There is nothing magical about “unity” or “the left getting its act together” or any of the other cliches some people like to throw out. A small number of additional people will turn out for a “unity” operation no matter what, but again we are talking about the small end of small numbers. You yourself have been through how many unity operations that never took on flesh at this point? We can look right back to the SLP if you like, with its half dozen frenetically competing factions and hardly anybody else at all. I was in the English Socialist Alliance and it was a complete waste of everyone’s time, which actually set the left back.
Something changed in Irish society with the economic collapse. The left has the opportunity to speak to a greater audience and it has the opportunity to start moving towards a party which can organise and represent a significant part of the working class. Collaboration amongst some existing groups of socialists has been and will continue to be a necessary part of this process. But collaboration without the context provided by that potential audience and that potential expansion simply wouldn’t be worth that much.
Our perspective should be that over the life of this government, the ULA will have unprecedented opportunities to reach out to new activists, to people taking industrial action, to people defending their communities. That’s what makes the process worthwhile, not the opportunity to work more closely with other small left groups for the sake of doing so.
Thanks for that and with that, Mark P, you can have the last word (or the last word if you reply to this). I think our positions have been sufficiently elaborated for interested CLR readers to make up their minds on which side they come down on.
For the record I never regarded the Labour Party as a socalist party and never, except for a short association at 16 with the never-officialised Young Labour League (look it up but don’t rely completely on Wikipedia), supported or joined it.
You say, “You yourself have been through how many unity operations that never took on flesh at this point?” Au contraire I am very happy that after so long a stop-start process the word has been made flesh in the ULA.
I often read the blogs on The Cedar Lounge Revolution, as I do other politics blogs, and have referred to the site on other blogs as an example of a good politics blog. I noticed this latest discussion in which I am mentioned and I hope if it is ok that I respond to some of the assertions made about me.
I didn’t vote against the motion to go in to Government with Fine Gael for personal motivation. I took the vote seriously and voted in accordance with my belief that for Labour to forego leading the opposition the Programme for Government needed to be a Labour driven one. In that regard I felt the Programme did not go far enough. I made my outlook about the need for the Government to be a Labour Driven on rather than a Fine Gael driven one clear in comments I made to the Irish Times when phoned immediately after my election, and these comments were published the Monday before the Special Conference. However I accept the democratic decision of the conference, but was glad that a fair few voted the same way as me, at least 100 and 10 per cent, as far as I could see, and not the 5 per cent estimated in the Irish Times. Many people in my constituency voted against the motion, though not all.
I am not lazy, particularly in relation to politics, which I have taken an interest in since childhood, joing Labour when I was 16. I spend almost every working hour thinking about and working in politics. For the record, I hold clinics, attend meetings, follow up queries, bring to bear what I learn from my constituency work to my work as legislator, ask Parliamentary Questions, have an input in to party policy, write a blog (which I confess needs to be updated since the election), meet interest groups, liaise with local Labour councillors on their work. I try to work as hard at being a TD as I can, but much work is not high profile media stuff, which is obviously the bench mark some commentators go by.
Am I on the left of Labour? I would think I am on the left. The main issue for me is income equality. Reduction in the gap in incomes should be the priority for a democratic socialist party in my view, the redistribution of incomes to be used for the benefit of all in our society.
I was not apoplectic that two candidates were selected to run by Dublin Mid West in accordance with the decision by the Organisation Committee that two candidates should run. 3 candidates contested the convention by the way, 5 having have put their names forward initially. Myself and Robert were selected. Of course my primary aim was to be reelected and after that to win a second seat for Labour.
Hi Joanna. In your personal opinion how would the government in the present circumstances move to reduce income inequality, and particualrly will the cut in the minimum wage be reversed, given that IBEC, ISME etc are going to try and assert it is key to our economy?
Terry,
One of the committments in the Programme for Government, is to reverse the cut in the minimum wage. Another is that there be not cuts in the Social Welfare rates. These are welcome inclusions. What I will seek is that every budget change will be progressive, not regressive.
Ps that should be waking hour not working hour.
Hi Joanna,
I’m glad to see that you voted against the extremely right wing Programme for Government. Perhaps you could clarify a couple of things for me, however?
1) Am I correct in thinking that you have no objection in principle to Labour entering coalition with Fine Gael, but instead object to the contents of this particular Programme?
2) As one of only two Labour TDs who voted against the Programme, will you give a commitment to vote in the Dail against the deeply regressive measures it contains? For instance the introduction of a water tax, large scale job cuts or the privatisation of state assets?
Mark,
The answer to 1) is no I don’t object in principle.
2) I accept the decision taken by the Conference which I voted at, under our party constitution. However, as a Labour TD, I would be prepared to vote against measures that I believe go against my principles. I will do my best to persuade my colleagues in Government not to implement such measures in the first place though, and to ensure Labour in Government does deliver on the progressive commitments the Party had included in the Programme for Government in relation to social welfare, the health system, the minimum wage and job creation.
Thanks for giving straight answers to my questions, Joanna. That’s appreciated.
Just to clarify your second answer, do the commitments to any of the following three things in the Programme for Government go against your principles to such an extent that you would be prepared to vote against them (assuming that you have already tried and failed to persuade your Labour colleagues and that the government presses on with them anyway):
1: The introduction of a water tax.
2: The privatisation of 2bn euro of state assets?
3: A public service job cuts programme, involving 25,000 job cuts.
Mark,
It depends on the proposal that comes under those headings. Public service job cuts are already happening due to the embargo plus the incentivised early retirement schemes, so that 12,000 have gone since the beginning of 2009, without any recourse to the Dail to vote on these losses. If there was a proposal to privatise Dublin Bus for example I would vote against any such proposal. If there was a proposal to reintroduce third levrel fees I would oppose that.
Fair dues to you Joanna for coming on line and making your case. A very welcome contribution and it’s refreshing that a TD will make the effort to engage.
WBS
Fair dues my arse, she is just doing what all parliamentarians should be doing, engaging with the people they are their to serve.
The fact is, the ILP has thrown in its lot with reactionary FG. As the LP is both unwilling and unable to offer the Irish people a real alternative and an opposition worthy of the name at a time when the country is crying out for one.
Mark P’s question deserves an answer, at a time when millions of people throughout Europe are looking for a centre left reformist alternative to the failed neo-conservative economic model, the LP is betraying them by joining with FG in an attempt to shore up the failed model which led to the economic meltdown.
If Joanna wishes to engage she can start by answering Mark P’s questions as it lays at the core of the debate.
Mickhall,
Don’t disagree with you there. Have just done so.
Mick, again in fairness there are 36 other TDs from the LP who are prominent by their absence.
You’re right, of course, all should be engaging, but we’ve only one here who is doing so and making clear her position.
“in fairness there are 36 other TDs from the LP who are prominent by their absence”
And TDs from Sinn Fein, from the WUAG, PBPA, and SP are prominent in that way here too.
(Mind you, it would be unreasonable to expect a wollop of them to be reading this particular blog and engaging in discussion.)
It’s hard enough getting TDs to use Twitter or Facebook, never mind keep up with CLR (although reading CLR should be compulsory for any candidate of the Left).
Can I add one further question to the three posed by Mark P. above -
4. Johanna, do you support the implementation of universal health insurance?
If it is the Labour policy on it, which is based on the German model, with a state insurer central to it, I do.
Johanna, you do realise that the German model of UHI is on the verge of collapse after running up a deficit of €11billion last year.
A study from the German Medical Association from last September showed massive gaps have opened up in outpatient and GP care.
Older patients and those with chronic or long-term illnesses are dumped off of the private insurance system onto the public insurance system causing rising costs for public UHI.
Patients with private health insurance (rather than UHI) are automatically seen before UHI patients – even in a GP’s surgery.
German Health Minister, Philipp Rösler, plans on switching from health premiums based on a percentage of income to premiums based on a flat rate charge, thereby further hitting those on low incomes.
Joanna
Even though I am unhappy with your reply you have indeed answered it,so thanks for that. The fact WBS thought it unusual for a LP TD to engage with the left, shows just how far to the right your party has moved since its foundation, as you clearly have no problem with engaging with those who advocate the continuation of neo liberal economics, i e FG. Indeed, ‘your’ comrades seem so comfortable in bed with them they remind me of the greens.
My problem is I cannot see how you can moderate FG, as your party do not have an alternative, it is simply a matter of degrees, do we cut today or tomorrow, here or there, pay the ‘debt’ off quickly or slower. Whatever the coalition does it will hit the most disadvantaged hardest.
We are not back in the days when Labour could gain the odd reform by being in government with the gofers of capital. Capitalism has pulled off the three card trick and come hell or high water it intends to make the people pay for its crises.
The LP had a choice, a real opportunity to attempt a serious realignment of Irish politics, at a time when the Irish people are in a frame of mind to listen. Instead it decided to help shore up a totally discredited system which got as where we are.
It is not the 1960-70-etc-etc, as far as doing deals with reaction the clock has stopped ticking, those of us who consider ourselves to be on the left need to realign the mechanism and reset it on people time. Otherwise we just become part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Many people throughout the EU, are prepared to put their dreams aside and work for a left reformist platform, but it seems sadly many reformists, for all their talk about changing the way politics is done, cannot see a life without working in tandem with the bosses men.
All the best
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Labour Voters – How Cool Are They About Coalition With the Right?
A large minority of Labour Party voters transferred left in the General Election – band news for Eamon Gilmore.
Research is here :
http://tomasoflatharta.com/2011/03/15/labour-voters-how-cool-are-they-about-coalition-with-the-right/
This might be of interest to some
http://sluggerotoole.com/2011/03/16/labours-prospects/
Makes the point that people perhaps voted for coalition despite their inclination on the grounds of party loyalty or what have you.
It makes that point based on no evidence other than the fact that there were 16 or so speakers against coalition, which strikes me as tenuous in the extreme.
If someone is such a leadership loyalist that they voted (a) against their allegedly “leftist” principles and (b) against any strategic sense just because of that loyalty, then I can only point out that the left can expect even less from them than if they genuinely thought that they were going to be moderating Fine Gael.