The Irish Labour Party: A Coalition Partner For All Occasions
John Meehan's 1996 account of Labour's journey to disaster
The 1996 Dublin West by-election was a breakthrough for Irish Trotskyism: the Socialist Party’s Joe Higgins lost narrowly to Brian Lenihan Jr, and would be elected in the 1997 general election. Higgins’ electoral successes signalled a shift in the relationship between the Labour Party and the Irish working class. In this 1996 article, Fourth Internationalist John Meehan outlines Labour's rise and its fall. Some short news reports are appended to the article to give context.
A Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government was formed on January 26, 1993, in the 26 counties of Ireland. In the winter of 1994, following a series of by-elections and European Election reverses, this government collapsed, and Labour went into coalition with its usual partner, Fine Gael. The Democratic Left, led by Proinsias De Rossa, was added to guarantee a Dáil majority.
The last statewide General Election in November 1992 was a disaster for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two traditional bourgeois parties. Both went down to a humiliating defeat. Labour took its highest-ever share of the vote, doing particularly well in Dublin with 26%.
When the Dáil reassembled in December, no candidate for Taoiseach could secure a majority, and the outgoing FF minority government continued in an "acting" capacity.
Labour first negotiated with Fine Gael, its normal coalition partner. From 1932 to 1989, the pattern was either FF governing alone, or Labour making up the numbers (with others if necessary) to allow the other main right-wing party, FG, to govern. The 1989 government was FF's first coalition. Charles Haughey’s partners were the Progressive Democrats (themselves a split from FF led by Des O’Malley). After the November 1992 Election, many people thought that the old certainties would return and a right-wing Labour leadership would once again take the kamikaze path of coalition with the vampire of bourgeois politics, Fine Gael.
Immediately after the election, Labour negotiated with the FG. Party leader Dick Spring sought 2 conditions rejected by FG :
An FG/Labour/Democratic Left coalition (with the support of left Independent Tony Gregory and Trevor Sargent of the Greens, this was enough for a bare majority). FG insisted on a FG/Labour/PD's coalition.
Spring insisted on sharing the office of Taoiseach with FG, rotating it every 2 years. FG said No, as did the PD's.
From the Labour Leadership's point of view, these were not the real reasons for avoiding a coalition with FG. Once the talks with FG broke down, Spring did a deal with FF leader Albert Reynolds, and the "principle" of rotating Taoiseach was forgotten. Also, there was no mention of bringing the DL into the coalition.
The negotiations with FG leader John Bruton were conducted in a very bitter spirit. Labour had almost been wiped out during their de facto permanent coalition with FG from 1970 to 1987. Spring did not fancy another bite from the FG vampire (In 1987, following the collapse of an FG/Labour Coalition, Labour leader Spring only held his seat with 4 votes to spare - this followed a “targeting” of Spring’s seat by his “partners” Fine Gael).
It was easier, as a cosmetic Public Relations exercise, to paint up the FF/Labour government as something "new".
In Labour circles this was not a "Coalition" - it was a "Partnership Government".
Labour avoided "Bad News" Ministries like Finance and Justice.
Spring took the media-friendly Foreign Affairs post, and souped up the Tánaiste post.
Former anti-coalitionists were given Ministries or Mini-Ministries (Michael D Higgins, Mervyn Taylor, Emmet Stagg) so any threat of opposition to the government's right wing policies coming from the party's traditional left is almost eliminated.
The real reasons for the deal with FF begin with numbers. The FF/Labour government's parliamentary majority of 35 seats was the largest in the history of the State [99 seats against a combined opposition of 64 (2 vacancies existed at the outset: Mayo West and Dublin South-Central; eventually FF lost the Mayo seat to FG while Labour was humiliated by the DL victory in Dublin South-Central).
Labour got its increased support because it was seen as an anti-government left force. This, for example, is an extract from Dick Spring's speech in the Dáil during the November 5 1992 debate on the "No Confidence" motion that brought down the FF minority government :
"Given these three things - the low standards exemplified by past and present members of the Government; the policy of forcing the most vulnerable members of our community to carry the burden of financial adjustment and modernisation; and the undermining of some of the country's most important assets - it must surely be considered amazing that any party would consider coalescing with them" (Irish Times, December 18 1992)
Labour workers in both Dublin North-West and Dublin North-East stated they got an anti-Fianna Fáil vote. More than one canvasser was told in traditional FF areas that Labour was getting the Nº1 this time, but not to come back if there was a coalition government. In Dublin South-Central, where a by-election was caused by the resignation by FF TD John O'Connell, problems mounted. FF wanted a transfer deal. Labour TD for the area Pat Upton opposed it. Why? Because, in his own words, "90% of the people who gave me a Nº1 voted against FF with their lower preferences". So, what mandate did Upton have for supporting the coalition......?!?
It did not take a genius to work out that Labour's entry into a Coalition with FF was fraught with danger for them. Once the realisation sank in that, despite the PR hype, this government represented more or less exactly the same as the old shoddy FF/PD's Coalition, a mighty backlash was unavoidable. The big Dáil majority was a sort of insurance policy against this happening - a big number of the 22 backbench Labour TDs either voted against the Government or abstained on high-profile issues (for example, the savage cuts in Aer Lingus), and the Coalition remained in office. These demonstrations of mild parliamentary defiance were not a serious worry to the Labour leadership - all the TD’s who broke the Aer Lingus whip were re-admitted into the Labour party a few months later. One of them, Joe Costello, was even elected parliamentary party chairperson.
LABOUR - A PRODUCT OF THE PRE-PARTITION POLITICAL SYSTEM
The Labour Party, from the outset, based itself on the socio-economic illnesses of Ireland, cutting these off from their political source, which they left to the "constitutional politicians" and Republicans.
They abhorred the stress laid on the North and consequently won a large sector of ex-Redmondite (Home Rule) support in the 1920s. These voters saw both Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedhal as different brands of Republicanism and, therefore, sought a third choice.
In the April 1977 issue of the Economic and Social Review, Tom Garvin analysed Labour's support historically. He found that it was never an urban party, but a rural one concentrated in the Eastern and Midlands region. "Its attitude on the National Question was uneasy" he says "The Irish Labour Elite was secularist...and British in outlook and in many cases origin". He also says that the LP was very much a product of the pre-partition political system. This explains their support in the "Pale" outside Dublin and in the garrison counties of the Midlands. In the border areas, the LP between 1923 and 1934 got a mean vote of 2%, stretching from 0 to 7%. FF got 30-53% of votes in these areas with C na G taking 12-39% of the votes.
The only exception to this trend was 1943, when National Labour, an ITGWU-inspired split led by William O'Brien, polled 11.3%.
Until their expulsion from the party, the Militant (and others favouring an orientation to the Labour Party) regularly argued that the working class would inevitably turn to Labour. History is against this type of approach : examine the only example of the fusion of the National and Socio-Economic questions at a parliamentary level. This fusion, in the late 1940's, led to the establishment of a new party Clann na Poblachta. In other periods it has led to a split in the Labour vote with some grimacing and voting Labour and others grimacing and voting FF. Since late 1992 (the experiences of FF/Labour and FG/Labour/DL coalitions) the Labour vote has collapsed to the DL (Dublin South Central and Cork North Central by-elections), to the Greens in the Euro-Elections.
After the formation of the FG/Labour/DL coalition, there was a disturbing swing to a right-wing independent candidate (Mildred Fox) in the Wicklow by-election, a decay of the DL and Labour votes, and a strong showing also for the ex-political prisoner Nicky Kelly (running as an independent). Joe Higgins of Militant benefited from disillusionment with Labour in the April 1996 Dublin West by-election.
Any increased awareness of the "National" issue usually accounted for some of Labour's losses, for example, in the 1977 Election. In late 1976, the IRA successfully killed the then British Ambassador Ewart-Biggs. The FG/Labour government declared a “State of Emergency”. This provoked constitutional turmoil - President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh blocked and delayed the passage of new repressive legislation. O Dálaigh then resigned his post in protest at public attacks on him by Government Minister Patrick Donegan (the “thundering disgrace/fucking disgrace” speech to an Irish Army parade). At the same time, the Labour Left, led by Matt Merrigan and Noel Browne, publicly campaigned against the government’s repressive legislation. In the subsequent June 1977 General Election, Merrigan and Browne ran independent campaigns, pulling in substantial support. The main winner of the humiliation of the FG/Labour coalition was Fianna Fáil.
THE LATE 1960's
The late 1960s were a period of expansion for Irish capitalism. This growth was the high point of the Free Trade policy initiated by Lemass in 1958, which eagerly anticipated Ireland's entry into the EEC.
The policy of protection in the 1930s brought with it the nationally minded petty bourgeois entrepreneur and prevented the further starvation and emigration of thousands of small farmers. But national economic growth could not be sustained because of Ireland's domination by British Imperialism and the fact that much of the most potentially prosperous industry existed in the 6 Counties—under direct British control.
But just as the 1930s economic policy fostered certain strata of Irish society, so too did the Free Trade Area. A new breed of intellectuals, bureaucrats, and technicians dominated this new industry. They adopted the political traditions of British liberalism, prided themselves on their outward-looking viewpoint, secularism, and complete antipathy to the National Question.
They visualised Ireland falling into the political divisions that characterise Britain and Scandinavia - the Conservative/Labour divide. In practice, this meant detaching themselves from the central question in Irish politics - the National Question. In fact just as this stratum was orienting itself politically (1968 -1970) a new and internal phase of that struggle was opening, particularly in the 6 Counties.
The LP was the natural historical choice of this stratum. It was proven to be the party that did sully its hands with "the North" and represented their cosmopolitan views. This stratum was shocked by the Arms Crisis and its effect on the FF Cabinet in 1969-1970.
Tempered by the short-term boom of the 1960's and the influx of these cosmopolitan radicals the LP turned left - adopting the slogan "The Seventies will be Socialist".
Members of the LP in the South were involved in the mobilisations of the time (e.g. Dublin Housing Action Group, Anti-Apartheid Movement and GRILLE, the Radical Christian Movement).
Labour began to attract another kind of member, young humanistic socialists, who saw the LP as the only alternative to FF and FG. These young people were not part of the revolutionary tradition of the Labour Movement but did represent the anti-authoritarian socialism so prevalent in the 1960's Youth Culture. It was to this audience that Brendan Corish stated he would retire to the back benches rather than participate in a coalition with FG.
THE LABOUR PARTY IN THE 1970's
In 1971, the LP briefly appeared capable of impressing significant sections of the working class, who held all the optimism about the future their leaders encouraged. But even at this point, the LP's political links with the Trade Unions were practically non-existent.
A number of far left groups which were active in the LP at the time (the most prominent being the League for a Workers' Republic (LWR)/Young Socialists (YS) attempted to unite the most progressive sectors of the LP with similarly minded people outside it. This was the Socialist Labour Alliance (SLA).
The prominence of the National Question was reflected in the narrowly defeated proposal to call the grouping the Socialist Republican Alliance.
The LP leadership quickly moved against the SLA by using the party constitution, stating no member of the LP could belong to another organisation. Instead of beginning a political fight on the right of different currents of opinion to exist in the party the SLA counter-manoeuvred by claiming that it was not a party but a local alliance. The undemocratic procedures of the LP went unchallenged leaving a real political confusion about the methods adopted by the party Head Office.
When the SLA left the LP it took a small number of militants with it who remained politically active. But a number of things should be pointed out :
1. Because the SLA was conceived as a grouping to work within the LP, and because its orientation was electoralist, it could not maintain under its banner the numbers of militants it originally attracted to the LP.
2. The left groups in the SLA had the major perspective of winning recruits, rather than building an alternative democratic Labour Party with roots in the organised Labour Movement.
THE EFFECTS OF THE 1970's DOWNTURN
The effects of the downturn on the political struggle and of the economic recession showed the Labour Party up as the amalgam it really was (and is). In the debate on coalition at the 1973 Conference, 3 positions were upheld - those opposed to coalition per se, those who wanted to demand "key industries" as the price of their participation in government, and those who favoured coalition at any cost. It was the latter who won the day, showing the right-wing stance of most of the delegates. At the same conference, Conor Cruise O'Brien received a standing ovation for decrying the Provisional IRA as the main cause of the violence in the 6 Counties.
The LP is a clear example of how any radical force not against British occupation and partition will get sucked into more conservative policies as time goes on. The Liberal O'Brien called for more repressive legislation and even the censorship of letters in the bourgeois press.
Throughout the period of coalition, the Militant Tendency remained in the LP, announcing that the coalition would show up the inefficiency of the Fine Gaelers and strengthen the LP as the party of the working class, the only possible party they would turn to. Instead, the 1977 elections showed the LP to be the only national party which (proportionately to the number of new voters) lost votes. The party which gained the most votes, notably in working-class areas, was Fianna Fáil, sociologically the party of the working class.
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN IRELAND
The importance of a classical Social Democratic Party is that it gives political expression to the economic organisations of the working class - the Trade Unions.
Historically this was never the case in Ireland. The links which existed were purely formal, primarily consisting of a one-way flow of funds from the Trade Unions to the Labour Party. This fact is shown in the very low representation of Trade Unions at LP conferences.
The Irish LP has been further marked by the heterogenous nature of its TD's. In the 1970's Dan Spring (father of the current Labour Leader) and Limerick's Stevie Coughlan represented a right wing sector of the population, while Mary Robinson and Conor Cruise O'Brien appealed to a narrow stream of the liberal intelligentsia.
A solid bloc of rural TD's (Joe Bermingham [Kildare], John Ryan [Tipperary North], Dan Spring [Kerry North]) depended mainly on constituency work. A few maverick TD's in Dublin with a tinge of urban radicalism (John O'Connell, Noel Browne) completed the picture. Their votes were largely personal.
Of these, only Noel Browne ran a social democratic campaign. Spring and Coughlan were hard to distinguish from FF TD's, and were to the right of them on many issues. O'Brien and Robinson were in Labour only due to the absence of a Liberal Party.
Finally, there is a powerful electoralist effect on Labour as the third party in the State. The LP is a governmental party with no hope of governing alone. Yet it has gradually centred itself solely around its parliamentary base. That poses formidable problems for opposition currents within it, particularly if a threat of a split arises.
Traditional Labour left-wing currents concentrated on a governmental programme. Their only difference from the leadership was the more radical bent of their proposals. Accordingly, it is always necessary to fight for any such currents to get directly involved in the class struggle.
SOME PARALLELS WITH THE PAST
The electoral recovery of the Labour Party between 1987 and 1993 is quite remarkable.(1)
It is sociologically significant because the level of support attained in urban areas is only equalled in the 1960's. But, as we know, the 1970's heralded an equally deep drop in the party's support and by 1987 the party barely survived as a real parliamentary force (6.4% of the Statewide vote, 12 seats). In fact the LP got less support than the Progressive Democrats, and dropped to being the fourth largest parliamentary party.
Plenty of signs indicate that Humpty Dumpty Labour is heading for another big fall - and Spring's men and women will be trying to put together an awful lot of pieces.
Labour has no electoral mandate for a Coalition with either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. The vote it got was anti-government, anti-Fianna Fáil, and, in a very soft way, anti the right-wing trend of recent years. But it was not very positive or coherently left-wing. There was no noticeably big transfer to the Democratic Left, for example.
This means disillusionment is running very deep, showing itself dramatically in elections, and does not have any obvious left-wing home to go to. The right-wing opposition is preparing to get what they can out of this inevitable debacle.
John Meehan April 12, 1996
Source Material
Arthur Mitchell's book "Labour in Irish Politics 1890 - 1930" is an excellent source on the origins of the Labour Party in Ireland, and interested comrades are urged to read it. Most of the background material is taken from a paper written by Betty Purcell for the then Irish Section of the Fourth International, the Movement for a Socialist Republic [MSR] in 1977/78)
Footnote
(1) Of interest, it was predicted since at least the June 1989 Election in articles published in An Réabhlóid and International Viewpoint. when the first signs were just barely visible.
A Final Word :
This document was completed on February 29 1996. It has been altered slightly to take account of the Dublin West by-election held on April 2 1996. The result there – the huge support given to Joe Higgins of Militant – is another sign of the coming electoral collapse of the Irish Labour Party. It is a deserved price for the politics of coalition with right wing bourgeois parties.
Labour should eschew coalition temptation
The Labour Party should turn a deaf ear to the coalition blandishments of the two major parties, argues Mick O'Reilly
While the Government has two years to run, most people expect an election to be called some time in the next nine months. Already, the electoral foreplay has begun, with John Bruton making amorous soundings to everybody from Labour to the Greens, and anonymous Labour and Sinn Féin sources are quoted as saying they will not enter a coalition government with Fianna Fáil.
Earlier this summer The Irish Times gave extensive coverage to reports that a number of people were going to establish a new anti- corruption party. Some may disregard all this as the normal stuff of the silly season, except that this year we are too close to the next election and formation of a new government to dismiss such activities as froth.
My union, the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union, is affiliated to the Labour Party. We contribute to and believe in building up a strong Labour Party that represents the interests of working people. This brings me to the nub of the current debate, or rather the lack of it, within the labour movement, over the likelihood of Labour re-entering government.
There is a fear among many trade unionists and Labour supporters that Labour will enter some government with either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael without thinking of the medium- to long-term goals of the labour movement. Short-term opportunism by a few individuals who regard being in government as the pinnacle of their politics should not be allowed to dominate Labour thinking.
For years, Labour has acted as a prop for one or other of the two main conservative parties. The debate after every election seems to centre on how many ministers and junior ministries Labour will get. Labour can appoint its own people to boards and quangos just as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael do and then at subsequent elections Labour is hammered by the electorate. This historical fact seems to be forgotten once government negotiations begin, and could lead one to believe that the lure of the ministerial Merc is just too much for the Labour leadership.
The recent call by John Bruton for a pre-election pact between Labour and Fine Gael is symptomatic of the paralysis that grips Labour in the run-up to elections. Instead of rebuffing Mr Bruton and sending him and the electorate the clear message that Labour is not prepared to do for John Bruton and Fine Gael what the electorate has consistently refused to do, there is hardly a murmur from Labour.
Is it any wonder, then, that the electorate is becoming increasingly disenchanted and cynical about opportunistic and cronyist politics?
As a contribution to ending this cynicism and to help restore confidence in the supremacy of politics, the Labour leadership should take a principled lead and give a clear, unambiguous pre-election commitment to the electorate that Labour will not enter any conservative-dominated government and, more importantly, will stick to this promise prior to the formation of the next government.
Instead of being a mere prop Labour, and indeed the whole trade union movement, should look to other parties and progressive independents rather than the two main parties as potential allies. For too long Labour has regarded smaller parties and independents on the left as bitter enemies and rivals rather than allies.
We should examine the possibilities of election pacts and vote-transfer arrangements with parties other than the traditional big two. The trade union movement should support other progressive parties and independents apart from official Labour candidates.
It is in the interests of the trade union movement that a strong alternative bloc be developed. With a peace of sorts beginning to take root in the North, the need to have two essentially conservative parties with their roots in the divisions of 80 years ago will no longer matter.
It is Labour's job to speed up this process by not supporting either but by seeking actively to supplant and replace them in new alliances. But we cannot create this vital new democratic force by jumping into bed with spent and discredited parties. It is time to put our two political dinosaurs with their fossilised attitudes and self-serving manners into our museum of political history.
A debate needs to take place now regarding the kind of Irish society modern politics should help create and facilitate. The Labour movement should be at the heart of that debate which I hope will lead to a realignment of Irish politics.
There is an urgent need to have a root-and-branch cleansing of the entire political, business and legal establishment in Ireland. It is clear that tinkering around with minor reforms of the system will not suffice.
In A modern democratic Republic, power should not be vested in the hands of a privileged few. Questions have to be asked regarding how such a group came to possess, hold on to and abuse so much power.
The complex matrix of relationships which mesh our various establishments together in complementarity and mutual satis faction must be the first step in a thorough examination whose aim will be to ensure the primacy of people power, as opposed to that of wealthy vested interests.
The trade union movement helped found the Labour Party to bring about real economic and social change. If Labour is to bring about that change in a modern context we need to do so building on new alliances and rejecting the Tammany Hall politics of a discredited past.
Labour and the trade union movement are the alternative to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are our rivals, not our allies. To grow, develop and be in a position to offer a real alternative government to the electorate, Labour must be committed to totally opposing them and be capable of offering different policies and priorities for the new era we have embarked upon.
The aim of the ATGWU is to ensure that at long last we can elect an effective government which has social justice, equity, the protection of our environment, the promotion of our national talents and quality services in health, education, and community at the core of public bodies.
Mick O'Reilly is general secretary of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union
Irish Times, Friday August 25 2000
Labour advised never to go into coalition
By Eithne Donnellan
The Labour Party will be urged to never again go into coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, in a discussion document being sent to the party tomorrow by the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union (ATGWU).
The document argues that Labour can become the main opposition to Fianna Fáil by adopting a new strategy for the millennium with four key elements.
These include preventing Fine Gael from ever forming a coalition government with a cabinet majority under a Fine Gael Taoiseach by refusing to become a junior partner, and rejecting coalition with Fianna Fáil.
Other steps advised by the ATGWU are to develop an alternative national programme with affiliated trade unions and build alliances with other progressive parties, independents and the voters they represent.
This would include working out a way of forging alliances with supporters of Sinn Féin, "people who vote not out of any republican agenda but out of frustration with a political system that has trapped them in chronic poverty and deprivation".
The alternative national programme, it suggests, would focus on real wage increases, increased participation of workers in economic decision-making, wealth redistribution and a crusade against social exclusion, tax reform and making available low cost childcare. The document states that Labour's decision to go into government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in the past only weakened the party.
It advises the party to declare what its intentions are before elections. Not doing so risks creating a cynicism among voters, it suggests. "If it says it will wait and see, voters will be asked to buy the proverbial pig in a poke and suspect a secret agenda".
Mr Michael O'Reilly, regional secretary of the ATGWU, said that with the first general election of the millennium looming, it was imperative to consider what strategies could propel the left and the Labour Party to a position of major political influence.
The party leader, Mr Ruairí Quinn, recently ruled out preelection pacts.
He said Labour would be campaigning as an independent party on its own policies, and any decision about entering government would not be made until after a general election when a special delegate conference of members would make that decision.
Irish Times, November 1 2000
WUAG calls Protest at Labour Commemoration in Clonmel Next Sunday
The sole Labour Party representative on Clonmel Borough Council will unveil a plaque in the Town Hall at 12 mid-day next Sunday, May 27 to mark the centenary of the successful proposal of James Connolly and Jim Larkin to the Irish TUC AGM to form a 32-county All-Ireland Labour Party.
The Workers and Unemployed Action Group led by Seamus Healy TD is the largest party on the Council having 5 elected members on the 12 member Council. WUAG is an affiliate of the UNITED LEFT ALLIANCE.
WUAG takes the view that the austerity policy being imposed by the Labour Party in Government is the direct opposite of the policies advocated by Connolly and Larkin which led them to propose the formation of a Labour Party in 1912. This policy includes wage reductions (JLC BILL), cuts in child benefit, reduction of heating allowances to the poor and the old, the imposition of household charges and water charges, refusal to tax the incomes and assets of the very rich and at a local level the closure of Kickham Military Barracks and the Psychiatric Unit of South Tipperary General Hospital.
The unveiling of the plaque is an act of gross hypocrisy on the part of the Labour Party.
Accordingly, the Workers and Unemployed Action Group has called a protest meeting at 11 am on Sunday next, May 27, at Parnell St Clonmel outside the Town Hall. The meeting will be addressed by Seamus Healy TD, WUAG Councillors and other invited speakers.
All those wishing to oppose austerity and to vindicate the traditions of Connolly and Larkin are invited to attend.
Paddy Healy 086-4183732
on behalf of Workers And Unemployed Action Group (South Tipperary)