Having recently visited Planet Myers, and his version of The Workers’ Party’s relationship to the eastern European socialist states, we are today treated to free entrance to The Imaginarium of Eoghan Harris on the same topic. Harris begins by arguing that in the coverage of the fall of the Berlin wall, the Irish media has missed its only significant impact on Irish politics – its effect on The Workers’ Party. This has been , he entertainingly says, an exercise in airbrushing history that Stalin could have learned from (and perhaps inspired by Myers’ concern over a missing file in the Irish Times archive?).

However, we might question Harris’ grasp on history (and given this load of nonsense about where Dev got his ideas on religious toleration from, that of his most recent acolyte too). What was it that meant that while other Communist and workers’ parties faced collapse, The WP had its best ever election result in 1989, overtaking Labour as the second biggest party in Dublin? Eamon Smullen’s Department of Economic Affairs had injected some social democratic ideas that vaccinated it against the consequences of the collapsing eastern regimes. The fact that the wall fell five months later is somehow ignored in this account, although he does say that De Rossa’s Presidential speech that year helped protect The WP from any backlash against events in China. I suspect myself, however, that the amazing WP result in Dublin reflected the hard work put in on the ground over two decades and the unashamed commitment to representing the interests of working people against the interest groups that dominated state and society. The reality of The Workers’ Party in community groups, trade unions, local government, and the Dáil is what people voted on: why would events elsewhere change that?

However, The WP missed its chance to overtake the Labour Party once and for all. Why was this? All because Eoghan’s now hard-to-get The Necessity of Social Democracy (Eoghan mustn’t be a fan of the CLR) was suppressed by the Party, and Eamon Smullen disciplined for publishing it. We are then treated to the Harris account of how the “Garland Old Guard” (interesting that Goulding is not mentioned – obviously he remains on the list of iconclastic heroes) and the Student Princes aligned to force De Rossa off the path of social democracy mapped out by Smullen (recte Harris) at the 1990 Ard Fheis. Thereafter, all the fresh thinkers, idealistic and imaginative people were forced out. Yes that’s right. No-one who has stayed loyal to The WP all these years is in any way motivated by ideology and a vision of a better future.

Eamon Smullen was subjected to two days of diatribes, “disciplined” and driven from the Workers’ Party — the name was his — which he had transformed from a narrow nationalist sect into a successful progressive workers’ party.

I could have sworn I’ve read something like this before.

Twenty years on, those who behaved badly should stop brazening it out. Had they published the Necessity of Social Democracy in 1990, Ireland would now have a powerful non-nationalist party of social democracy. But they blew it, they know they blew it, and they should admit they blew it.

And here we have the rub. The mere act of publishing Eoghan’s pamphlet would have made the last two decades entirely different in Irish politics. Although given that Senator Harris has been singing the praises of the Ireland created in the last two decades, I wonder why he would want such a party to exist?

Times Change. Oh, and by the way, Eamon, it’s the very nature of the economic and social system itself that means the Republic is facing “a dark abyss of serious social division”. Serious social division is a fact of life in this country. It didn’t just emerge with the current crisis. Just ask the children and their parents living in poverty. Labour – the Party of Connolly and Larkin.

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out

Following their recent victory in the Glasgow North East byelection, it seems from the picture at the top of the post that the British Labour Party might be showing signs of regaining some of the confidence, swagger, and slick presentation that helped them sweep to power in 1997. I’m far from convinced that holding a safe seat against a rival party that runs the devolved government in Scotland is a sign that Labour can put up a strong fight against Cameron’s Tories, but we can hope. I do like this poster though. An electoral campaign focussing on the class nature of Cameron’s Shadow Cabinet, and the hardline Thatcherite reality of the Tories, just might be enough to throw what looks like an inevitable Cameron victory into doubt, and possibly a hung parliament. Things could get interesting soon.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND

14th November

The Communist Party of Ireland is holding a series of open forums to provide people with an opportunity to come together to discuss their opinions and their solutions. The CPI will present its analysis of both the global and the national nature of the crisis and put forward some of its ideas about possible solutions and for a different way forward. These meetings are not for lecturing but for listening and learning, for people and their experiences.

The second meeting is on this coming Monday 16th November on the north side of Dublin will take place in Cabra in St Fionnbharr’s GAA Club, Faussagh Road at 8-00pm. All welcome.

Kevin Myers is exercised by the past this week. It’s the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and so… celebrating that event he decides there’s no time like the present to attack the… er… Labour Party and …er… the Workers’ Party.

Historians will wonder at it but the simple truth is that the Labour Party was, in effect, taken over by the relics of the Workers Party

Intriguing stuff, tell us more Mr. Myers.

Twenty years ago this week, the Berlin Wall fell, and shortly thereafter, communism collapsed across the subject countries of the Soviet empire. We now know this happened: but we did not know it was going to happen back then. Some days after the wall was demolished by capering youngsters, I was in Prague to report on events there. No one at that point realised what a hall of mirrors communism really was, a few commissars with their power magnified within the minds of the audience simply by the reflective power of the state. But then I saw the communist edifice collapse before my eyes: it was one of the most wonderful moments in my entire life.

Very good… me too as it happens. I hoped at the time that this would be distinctive shift in the history of socialism. I’m still optimistic… as the joke goes, it’s too soon to tell.

The Irish Workers Party [sic] indeed, now incorporated into the Labour Party, can truly count themselves lucky at the poor memory of the media classes, aided no doubt, by the influence of well-placed party-sympathisers. The Czech people had been crushed by the tanks of Soviet imperialism in 1968. Twenty years on, Czechoslovakia had fewer graduates than Nepal and had a growth rate below that of Peru. Before the Nazis had rolled over its democracy in 1938, Czechoslovakia was the third richest country in the world. By 1988, it was the 50th, and almost worse still, it had to endure these fraternal delegations from despised foreign pro-Soviet parties, most especially the Irish Workers Party, telling them how lucky they were.

Now I hate to be the first to break it to him but the ‘Irish’ Workers’ Party continues to exist and while not necessarily in rude good health remains pretty chipper across the island, has a councillor or two and is doing some useful research. Moreover there’s the small but not insignificant detail that the WP was never incorporated in the LP.

What an honour. And with the wall gone, and with the Soviet smiles fading on their WP faces to be replaced by smiles of the EU — the new official party loyalty — all was soon forgotten. Men and women in an open, and relatively free, western European society, who had voluntarily sided with the last imperial oppressors in Europe, against the downtrodden and the dispossessed people of the east, stayed silent, trusting in the benign amnesia of a left-biased media to ignore their role in supporting the Soviet Empire. And by God, they were justified in their trust.

Good stuff, but surely he’s aware that the WP was actually ahead of many other Marxist and further left parties in accepting a role for private enterprise, that it was supportive throughout the period of Perestroika and Glasnost of those policies and that this was reflected in documents which, should he so wish, can be consulted in the Left Archive. That’s not to say it was not supportive of the USSR, but this wasn’t uncritical support. Which makes his next comment simply pointless…

After the wall had fallen, no one challenged the Workers Party about their faithful support for a continent-wide communist dictatorship, with its vast armies of secret police, that had reached from Vladivostok to Riga.

You’d find no one more critical than me of many aspects of actually existing socialism. Hard to believe though that the WP’s critical support was much of a motive force in holding up the USSR.

But there’s more…

And where laziness and cowardice might not have sufficed to ensure journalistic silence about the true history of the Workers Party, why, the old Stalinist trick of fixing the historical archive might just do.

When in the 1990s and working for the ‘Irish Times’ I went to write about the Workers Party, I found the party file had been removed from the library, presumably by one of the party faithful working in the newspaper. All the annual ard fheiseanna votes in support of the Soviet Union were thus gone from the record.

Well now, who can say why the file vanished, and more to the point why it wasn’t replace? Perhaps some sub-editor or journalist left it down and forgot about it. So perhaps conspiracy or perhaps cock-up. Who can tell, I can’t but then I’m not hazarding semi-paranoid theories about this stuff.

And it’s not as if the data has vanished. Again, the CLR has put together a lovely archive of stuff which again he could consult. And the party itself, no doubt, could also be consulted and I’m certain they’d be happy to assist if he’s really keen on pursuing this. Which makes the rest also a little… trite…

The wonderful search engine which today can reveal the archival truth did not then exist, and no doubt the Stalinists thought they had got away with the Big Lie.
And then, in a fabulous elision one of the most dramatic and wrenching experiences of many a political life, including mine, where the WP splintered is glossed over as follows…

And actually, in the shorter term, at least for the duration of their careers, they had. Historians will wonder at it, but the simple truth is that the Labour Party was, in effect, taken over by the relics of the Workers Party, and all that dreary WP reiteration of Soviet 10-year planning was forgotten. No one now remembers Eamon Gilmore forcefully demanding economic policies that rejected private enterprise in favour of state-run industries.

I do believe I see a red scare before me.

Twenty years ago, when tyranny and armies of secret police oppressed the peoples of eastern Europe, where stood the Irish left? And does it make them feel proud today, that in the one great example of right and wrong in European politics in their entire lifetimes, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the apparatchiks of the Soviet Union?
So, what precisely is the enlightened, socialist, principle which causes a “democrat” to defend foreign, autocratic regimes from demands from democrats for democracy within their own countries? Which begs this further question of course: what does this term “left-wing” actually mean?

As it happens – and again if he consults the materials in the Archive he’ll see a range of opinions expressed in WP publications from cautious to enthusiastic welcomes. That’s where almost all the Irish left stood. Because, if he troubled himself to look it up unthinking fans of the USSR were thin enough on the ground on the mainstream and further left by the 1980s. And I’d hazard a guess that those on the left who were overtly critical were a majority, and a large one than otherwise during this period.

But speaking of the ‘poor memory of the media classes’ how odd then to read this from a national newspaper columnist from earlier in the decade…

This [decommissioning by PIRA] is not like the Workers’ Party and Democratic Left, which not merely forsook the gun, but over time forsook the entire republican witchcraft which underlay it. To be sure, for a while, they continued the macabre and incomprehensible dance with Soviet-style communism, but in time they rid themselves of that – and in due course became among the most courageous and insightful critics of a Provisional fascism they knew all too well. Friday October 7 2005

Let us skip back some years previous to that…

Two parties in Government support our involvement in the Partnership for Peace. Democratic Left does not. We shouldn’t blame it for that. It is just about the last relic of its old identity from the days when it was the Workers’ Party, Moscow’s favourite bunch of comrades in Ireland. I’d love to remind you of the ringing endorsements for “socialism” i.e. Soviet style communism which were passed annually party conferences, but I can’t, alas, for the Workers’ Party file for that period is missing from The Irish Times library. What a shame. [note that no conspiracy theory is aired at this point]

Anyway, Democratic Left is squeaky clean these days, having pupated twice from having an armed wing which bumped off Marcus McCausland and Ranger Best in Derry, and which blew a few gardeners, some serving women and a Catholic priest to pieces in Aldershot, through to being faithful followers of the party line emanating from the Politburo, through to being the suited democrats that they are today.

DL consistency.

That’s fine. We all have our journeys to make in life: I just don’t want to hear any moral superiority lectures from that quarter, all right?

Saturday January 25, 1997

Squeaky clean? Rid themselves (plural) of that? Courageous and insightful critics of Provisional fascism. Whoever it is likes the WP and DL a lot. An awful lot – eh? I mean these must be paragons of moral and political virtue. They must be… quite literally… anti-fascists.

And who is this columnist, this fan of the courageous and insightful?

Why step forward Mr. Kevin Myers.

That’s fine. We all have our journeys to make in life: I just don’t want to hear any moral superiority lectures from that quarter, all right?

Me neither, pal.

Clearly for him, when the opportunity arises, any old stick will do to beat someone else with… (including themselves).

I’ll get my coat.

Monaco. Peter Hook of New Order, Pottsy (David Potts), a sort of home away from home for those of us who love New Order, at least during the late 1990s when what was a hiatus became a void. Now, the first album, Music for Pleasure, was great. The second, the eponymous Monaco, well I liked it.

The key features? Hook playing New Order like basslines, and sure why not? Potts singing… well some said he sounded like Bernard Sumner. In truth his voice was different but not dissimilar. The combination, something that was New Order like but to my ears warmer, more welcoming, perhaps a little less in love with itself (and I say that as an NO fan from the beginning). Maybe a little like Hook, maybe a little like Potts. Some not so great attempts at something close to Britpop, but generally better than that.

So the basslines lope out with a vivid energy and the vocals, shared – so it would seem – between Potts and Hook, are both familiar and yet different, Hook singing bass (how appropriate), Potts singing not so bass.

Of all the side-projects this was to my mind the best. Sumner’s project with Johnny Marr, Electronic, had its moments but I’d be hard pressed to say that I liked all three of those albums in the way that I like the Monaco ones. Sure, Hook on occasion had the air of your Dad at a disco, but feck it, that’s what we all seem to have turned into (those of us over 40) so… that’s hardly a surprise.

And given the somewhat minimal output from NO both then and now, who can blame us NO fans for taking what we can get.

What do you want from me?

Sweet Lips

Shine

Given the week that’s in it here is an interesting document from the Research Section, Department of Economic Affairs of Official Sinn Féin from 1975.

WP The Public Sector and the Profit Makers

I’ll add it into the Left Archive soon. Thanks to the WP for the document.

AK has a fine collection this week of materials… As he says:

I started a little ‘project‘ to identify ‘Others/ Independents’ from previous General Elections.
If someone was classed as an Independent on electionsireland.org, I’m trying to classify them by party, former party, politics or issue etc.
Amongst what I’ve classified to date, who the Army Wives, Gay and Lesbian Equality Campaign, Rod Licence, DSP, TRL, Ecology and CPI candidates were.

I’ve four General Elections up at the minute November 1982, 1987, 1989 and 1992 and would be glad if anyone could expand on the details already there.

Its actally tricky as a daughter of a particular candidate hadn’t a notion why he stood!

I’ve also noticed a small gap in the 1991 Local Election and the 1994 Urban District Council/Town Commission Elections on ElectionsIreland.org.

So If anyone wants first count details of these gaps, I’ve started a separate section to oblige.

Also posted is the usual array of Flyers
A smiling Communist Noel Murphy – CPI 2002

A 1991 Thank You letter to Voters from Marian White in Blackrock, She lost out on a seat by just 28 votes!

whilst on the reverse ‘In Dun Laoghaire The Workers Party are Winning’. Also here another of her Flyers from that election.

A Letter regarding who voted for Service Charges from ARCA in 1985. Was ARCA connected to the WP?

A few old Sinn Fein ones,
Gerry Adams singing Christy Burkes praises in 1997

Kevin Fitzpatrick, Dun Laoghaire 1989

Owen Poole of the Anti Water Charges Campaign in 1997.

I’m curious about this as it uses a Socialist Party Template. Were all the other Water Charges candidates from the Socialist Party?

November 1983 and Labours Jimmy Somers announces that The Social Welfare Christmas Bonus will be paid thanks to Barry Desmond.

And last but not least the Labour Youth Summer Festival 1989.

Up until now I hadn’t really looked closely at some aspects of the renewed Programme for Government, but I have to say, it makes for illuminating reading. Aspirational. But illuminating. Patchy. But still illuminating.

First up let’s look at the preamble Public Sector Reform.

Public Service Reform
The public sector reform agenda is set out in two reports on Public Sector
transformation; the OECD Review of the Irish Public Service – “Towards an
Integrated Public Service”, April 2008 and the Report of the Task Force on the Public
Service “Transforming Public Services – citizen centred – performance focused”,
November 2008.
The core message of the OECD report was that by working in new ways, the Irish
Public Service has the potential to deliver significantly improved services and
outcomes. The Task Force concludes that better services for the citizen, now more
than ever, require prioritization, efficiency and effectiveness measures, the use of
technology and the effective mobilisation and application of resources across a more
integrated public service.
Specific recommended actions of the Task Force are:
• Achieving improved performance by organisations and individuals.
• Creating flexibility in deployment of people, assets and other resources.
• Identifying the precise transformation agenda in each sector.
• Achieving greater efficiency, effectiveness and economy.
• Promoting a shared identity, ethos and vision by focusing on the joint
achievement of societal goals.
• Developing performance metrics which are meaningful to the citizen.
• Increasing organizational and individual accountability for achieving performance
targets.
• Promoting longer term planning.
• Innovation, shared governance, networks and collaborative working.
• Sharing infrastructure and new technologies
The Government will implement the following specific actions in order to implement
the findings and recommendations of the OECD Report and the Task Force on the
Public Service.

Okay, and now to the meat…

Performance Measurement & Reward
• Create a performance culture based on achieving outcomes rather than compliance
with processes, including a requirement to measure performance year by year and
against international standards.
• Ensure better use of public funds for capital projects by developing an improved
capacity within the civil service for performing ex ante Cost Benefit Analyses
including environmental impact and valuation.
• We will ensure that Value For Money reviews are performed by the C&AG on all
large capital projects in a timely fashion.
• Require that the results of Value for Money Reviews be explicitly factored into
budgetary and resource allocation decisions with an accountability obligation for
exceptional cases where this is not done.
• Thoroughly review the current systems for expenses, to achieve significant
savings, including a comprehensive vouched basis for all expenses and enforcing
the necessity for use of public transport and car pooling.

Sounds good, but how does one measure those outcomes? I’ve seen this in the private sector where grand targets are set and then the means to actually meet them subsequently seems curiously elusive. And this seems to be true not just of Ireland but further afield in terms of public sector ‘reform’.

Performance Related Pay in Public Service
• We will implement an independent review of the current Performance
Management & Development System (PMDS) in the public system with a view to
allowing for a new system of performance related pay in the public sector.

This too sounds good. But taking real world examples, how does one map PRP onto many public sector jobs? Social Welfare Offices? Health Service? The mind boggles. Given that in the private sector it’s rare enough to see clerical or administrative staff getting such pay (except as a sort of camouflage for annual wage increases) what precisely is the rationale?

Integrated Public Sector
• We will remove existing demarcations which prevent certain staff applying for
internal positions.
• We will create an integrated public service workforce where the barriers to
mobility between sections of the public service are removed such that all members
of the public service are eligible to apply for promotions in all areas of the service.
Establish a Senior Public Service open to all sections of the public sector
including local authorities, HSE etc.
• We will make greater use of expert advisory/peer review panels such as the expert
advisory panel on climate change (which reports to the Cabinet Committee on
Climate Change and Energy Security) to enhance the technical and specialist
knowledge available to Government.
• We will appoint a Chief Information Officer (CIO) (see Enterprise & jobs
section).

Well, the demarcations point is a good one. There’s little reason why staff in one area shouldn’t be able to move reasonably easily. In fact I’d go further and suggest that such movement should be encouraged after a certain period. The sclerotic effects on both capability and personality of too long a time embedded in a single role are quite obvious.

I also think it makes good sense to promote centres of excellence within the public sector, and not just for technical and specialist knowledge, although God knows it’s crying out for that, but also for purchasing and tenders. Any of us who’ve worked with it for any length of time will know of examples of excessively highly specified equipment brought in due to external consultants recommendations. Or patchy provision of equipment inappropriate to the needs of those using it.

Hiring & Promotion Criteria
• We will ensure current hiring and promotion criteria are reviewed by an
independent body so they are not defined by established public service criteria and
competences, but extended to include professional and technical qualifications
where relevant to particular roles.
• We will ensure that all promotions within the Public Service are on the basis of
merit, eliminating seniority as a determining factor in any public sector
appointment.

That too sounds like a positive idea or two. Seniority simply shouldn’t be the over-riding factor in appointments. And professional and technical qualifications do have a bearing on the suitability of candidates beyond narrow work definitions.

But… well, I’ll return to that.

Reform of Top Level Appointments Commission
• We will reform the way that the most senior positions in the Civil Service are
filled by reconstituting the Top Level Appointments Committee (TLAC) so that in
future, it will be chaired by a suitable, independent representative from outside the
Civil Service on each occasion that it meets to nominate a candidate for
appointment by a Minister or Government.

• The Top Level Appointments Committee should be constituted equally by civil
service members and non-civil service members.

Interesting to see if that works out. I’d have thought the inevitable tug of war between politicians and Civil Service would stymie this. But perhaps not.

Senior Positions
• We will open all senior Public Service appointments to public servants from
Principal Officer or equivalent grade upwards and applicants from the private and
other sectors.

Again, this sounds good. But… given that the cry is for wages to fall in the PS, and given that the conditions of those working within it are about to take a knock you’d wonder whether it’s going to be an attractive place for private sector applicants.

This isn’t just musings on my part. We know from the data available that higher level employees in the private sector are seeing wage increases. Any significant wage cuts in the PS will open up a gap between the two to the detriment of the latter. How this is squared I do not know.

“Cooling Off Period”
• We will extend the provisions of the Code of Conduct for Civil Servants in
relation to the acceptance of outside appointments and of consultancy engagement
following resignation or retirement to all Public Servants in designated posts so asto ensure that they shall not, within twelve months of resigning or retiring from
the service:
(a) accept an offer of appointment from an employer outside the Civil Service
where it is deemed to create a conflict of interest;
(b) accept an engagement in a particular consultancy project, where the nature and
terms of such appointment or engagement could lead to a conflict of interest,
without first obtaining approval from the Outside Appointments Board.

To be honest I think that twelve months is too short. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. And this is an issue that all the talk about interconnectedness seems to have missed, that there are good reasons why one might wish to have a certain distance and level of detachment between state and commerce.

State Agencies
• We will ensure a firm basis for the creation and operation of State Agencies. We
will develop clear guidelines setting out the criteria which should be used when
the possibility of creating a new agency and when the possibility of rationalising
agencies are being considered. As part of the current move to rationalise
agencies, we will ensure that such moves do not unduly affect services for the
most marginalised and vulnerable in society.
• We will implement the provisions of the new Code of Practice for state bodies,
especially regarding the role of audit committees.

Hmmm… unduly affect… such a … nebulous term.

Public Interest Disclosures
• We will legislate to prevent employers in the public and private sector from
retaliating against employees who, in the public interest, disclose misconduct.

Absolutely crucial, albeit I can think of one whistleblowers facility currently available that might require another look…

Meanwhile, given the emphasis on cutting numbers in the PS, what to make of this, also from the PfG (and tellingly cut almost verbatim from the Fianna Fáil Local Election Manifesto earlier this year)?

We will provide places in Local Authorities for participants on the new Work Experience Scheme to ensure that each town, city or county area can benefit from the skills of participants as they gain valuable work experience.

And not only, but also (I see checking that progressive-economy got there before me but it’s worth making the point again):

We will take on 1,000 Third and Fourth level graduates to provide additional capacity and skills across the public service and in Government Departments and provide valuable work experience.

Shurely shome mishtake? No?