After the CAHWT

Some time soon, perhaps, it will be time to have an analysis on why the property tax campaign ran into the ground, but that’s another day’s work.

I’ve already mentioned how I think that there is a need for the campaign against the property tax to make some effort to communicate with those who may have taken its advice to heart and not registered. Granted there’s a grace period where the sanctions from Revenue won’t kick in, including reminder letters and warnings, but even so. There may be a cohort, not a very large one – or so it would appear – but one nonetheless who have decided to sit it out. And I say all this as one not merely sympathetic to the campaign, even if critical of aspects of it, but also fairly heavily involved in a specific part of it.

Even so, things move on. The compliance rate?

Local Property Tax returns have now been filed in respect of some 1,517,902 properties — a compliance rate in the order of 90%.

And as one person said to me yesterday, there’s no getting around it, the campaign failed.

The Examiner brings news that:

Cork City Fine Gael councillor Joe O’Callaghan called on the campaigners to follow through on their threat and unveil the candidates they say they will run in next year’s local elections.

“I am sick and tired of their blathering and buffonery,” Mr O’Callaghan said. “Most of these guys have no mandate. I want them and the other loudmouths in this campaign in Cork to stand for election.”

Well… interesting. For some would say that his wish is about to be granted. Indeed some would say this was quite an explicit aspect of the campaign from the off.

O’Callaghan continued:

He was speaking after a group of about 30 anti-property and water tax campaigners heckled Environment Minister Phil Hogan during his visit to Cork last week to announce 400 jobs as part of the national water metering programme.

He pointed to one of the campaigners, who spat at a bank official after the recent occupation of the AIB branch of Cork’s St Patrick’s St, and who was also accused of verbally abusing another Fine Gael councillor, Emmet O’Halloran, as he shopped in the centre with his young child.

A campaign member has denied any knowledge of those events… And:

John Lonergan… hit back at Mr O’Callaghan, accusing him of headline grabbing. “He must be worried about his seat if he is concerned about ordinary people standing up for themselves. He and the others are afraid of their lives that ordinary people are going to take them out of their nice cushy jobs.

Difficult not to agree with him on the following:

“As long as we’re free people, then we’re entitled to say and do what we want, within reason.

“If he and the others can’t handle the heckling and barracking, then they should get out of the job.”

Mr Lonergan said he is one of several campaign members nationwide who are actively considering standing as independent single-issue candidates in next year’s local election.

But let’s go back to the seeming failure of the campaign. This is more in the way of raising a warning flag than a prediction, but I’m wondering how the manner in which the campaign has failed on this issue will play out. There’s been an attitude that the campaign was in and of itself a good thing, but as was put to me, now Labour – in particular – will be able to turn around and say that in the end people ignored it.

Now that’s very similar – perhaps not coincidentally – to the Stephen Collins line we heard at the weekend where compliance with the property tax was interpreted by him as indicating acquiescence with government policy. The two clearly are not the same, but… it’s a clear political attack and it’s fair enough to wonder whether the distinction will be easily combatted. And particularly since to some degree the campaign bet the house on a single way forward, i.e. a boycott, and indeed on the website was arguing – indeed still is since it hasn’t been revised – that the Labour Party was the weak link in the coalition and that the government could be brought down by the campaign.

That hasn’t come to pass, obviously. And the danger is the activity around the campaign is flipped from being a positive to a negative i.e. ‘unrealistic goals’, ‘waste of time’, ‘marched people to the top of the hill’. We can all supply the script.

Worse again, as was put to me, next up will be LP local election candidates running partially against the property tax calling for it to be lowered, etc, etc. It’s all ahead of us.

But it indicates that virtue is not necessarily its own reward, that being right isn’t either, or at least not inevitably. I genuinely hope that people have been thinking about this long and hard, because one successful campaign and one failed campaign doesn’t necessarily add up to a definite gain for our side.

The Examiner report is interesting too, Lonergan is talking about running as an Independent, and I can’t tell you if he would be closer to CAHWT mainstream thinking or not, others will know. But unintended consequence. Consider this quote:

Diarmuid Ó Cadhla, a member of The People’s Convention, who was also part of the protest targeting the environment minister in Cork last week, has said his organisation is also planning to run candidates in next year’s local elections.

What unlikely spin-offs from the CAHWT are contemplating slouching towards polling stations across this land? And what sort of competitive environment is likely to be in place where there may be multiple candidates of varying political provenances all claiming an CAHWT heritage but facing off against one another for seats?

There’s another point too. The ULA was said to be a vehicle unfit for purpose in relation to forwarding a left project. Enormous effort was placed (and very real effort too, I’ve noted previously how the SP was actually very supportive) in the CAHWT. But that too has foundered. Currently there’s a limbo-like state. The CAHWT is defunct, there’s no clear path forward other than making it to the next goal of the locals and the water charges. But if the property tax didn’t work, and didn’t work in a particularly obvious way, then why should a campaign refocused around water charges? And with an history now of failed projects what impact will that have on future projects?

These are hard questions, but they have to be addressed and something very solid and credible has to be placed before people and communities before the next steps are taken.