Labour Pains: The Irish Labour Party:

labouring under an illusion:

No matter how many times Labour enters coalition government, breaks its election promises and fails to defend working people on even the most basic level, the party seems to recover after few years in the wilderness. The reasons for this pattern are complex, although the lack of a radical workers party to the left of Labour certainly plays a role in its cyclical recovery. The local election results of June 2004 were a partial victory for Labour despite the breakthrough for Sinn Fein and it is possible that the party may be in a position to form a government with FG and the Greens after the next general election. So it is important for socialists to analyse Ireland’s primary social democratic party.

Critical Marxists attempt to look behind the façade of election propaganda and media spin to dissect the real nature of a political movement. We look at its ideology and the policies that flow from this ideology, the class composition of its membership and voters, its activities on the ground and within the political and social institutions of capitalist society and its broader relationship to the various classes in that society.

Class Politics:

The Labour Party today is largely a ‘middle class’ organisation, in the commonly used (and inaccurate) sense of that word. Most of its members belong to the middle and upper strata of the working class i.e. white collar or professional workers. In terms of electoral support, the most recent data available reveals that Labour has roughly the same level of support amongst middle class and working class voters, contrasting sharply with Sinn Fein whose vote is almost exclusively working class. This class composition is reflected in the politics of the membership (as opposed to the cautious leadership) of the party. They are willing to take a radical stance on issues that are not overtly (though in truth these are profoundly tied to class struggle) linked to questions of class: a woman’s right to choose, the citizenship referendum, the anti-war movement etc. These same members are entirely absent from struggles that represent more obvious manifestations of class struggle, such as the Anti-Bin Tax campaign. The popularity of the darling of the Irish Times set, Ivana Bacik, amongst the grassroots is an indication of the true nature of the party: a left liberal organisation.

In most traditional urban working class areas, the party is almost non-existent in terms of active members, even in areas such as Finglas where they have public representatives. In these areas the party relies on a network of contacts in the community sector to pull out the vote when the time comes, but has close to zero visibility on the ground in between elections. The primary way Labour maintains a connection with the ‘traditional’ or blue collar working class is through its bureaucratic domination of the main unions. This is done largely through mafia-like anti-democratic practices: one only need recall the stolen election for SIPTU president that Carol Ann Duggan of the SWP won, and the (happily unsuccessful) plot by SIPTU leaders and Bill Morris of New Labour to oust left-winger Mick O’Reilly in the ATGWU.

What is the relationship of Labour to the capitalist class? Again it would be mistaken to see this relationship in too deterministic a way, but surely it is significant that Pat Rabbitte and others have gone out of their way to reassure the business elite that Labour is a safe pair of hands. They are trying to gain the confidence of the ruling class by assuring them that there will be no rise in corporation tax. Their message is: there’s no need to worry, Labour is not dogmatic about public services and privatisation - all that matters is the quality of service provided! This is classic Blairism: we can provide a better, more streamlined environment for business and as an added bonus we can keep the uppity workers in place through our control of the trade unions.

The Unfair Economy:

It is not possible in the space available to deal with the policies of the Labour Party. In any case paper policies are often nothing more than electoral hooks to attract voters which often bear little relationship to what a party actually does in practice. However Pat Rabbitte has done us a favour by recently outlining his ‘philosophy’ (and presumably that of the Labour leadership) in the document ‘The Fair Economy’. In essence Rabbitte argues for the ‘social market’ model long promoted by the ideologues of Blair and Clinton: it’s all about individuals being ‘enabled’ to find a useful role in the market economy. No radical transformation of society is possible, indeed there is no alternative to neo-liberalism so the best we can do is to ‘civilise global capitalism’ through the EU and give everyone the necessary rain gear to weather the storm (In the next issue of Leftline ‘The Fair Economy’ will be analysed in more detail).

A Labour Left?

The Irish Labour Party is experiencing a strange phenomenon which has occurred in many social democratic parties: as the party shifts to the right the timid centre leftists such as Michael D. Higgins (remember the tax amnesties?) and Declan Bree appear extremely radical. Even more bizarrely the old ‘Springite’ right such as Ruairi Quinn and Brendan Howlin also move to the left by standing still. The emergence of old-style social democrats as guardians of the left arises out of the fact that Rabbitte and the old DL grouping value ‘pragmatism’ (i.e. short term political gain) over all else. This ruthless pragmatism is all they have inherited from the old WP tradition.

The absence of an organised left in the party is clearly shown by the lack of any open dissension on the question of coalition with Fine Gael. Of course in a party where power is seen as exclusively located in government, one could hardly expect any opposition to the idea of presenting an ‘alternative government’ in the next election. We can get a sneak preview of what the alternative programme will be by perusing the famous ‘Westmeath Accord’ drawn up by Labour and Fine Gael now that they control the council in that county: It is nothing but generalised waffle about better services which any politician left of Mc Dowell’s stromtroopers could subscribe to. Basically it proposes to make the Council more efficient and to lobby government for more funding. The few crumbs thrown at the ‘socially excluded’ along with other ‘reforms’ are to be financed from the Development Levy Fund and ‘more focused value for money approach’. There’s nothing there that Bertie or indeed any other Fianna Fail populist couldn’t subscribe to.

Unlike the parent organisation, Labour Youth has managed to win some genuine young activists over by its use of radical rhetoric. The fact that Labour Youth seems to be democratic in organisational terms, contrasting strongly with the authoritarian structure of the Leninist parties and their youth movements, is an added pull. The reality, however, is that what passes for “revolutionary” in Labour Youth is plain old-fashioned social democracy. This is not to denigrate those genuine socialists in that organisation; it is simply to indicate the results of the milieu they operate in. If LY members from T.C.D think poor people are lazy sods who should be forced to work, other members who simply defend the idea of a welfare state naturally believe that they are on the extreme left. Equally the idea that adopting the Starry Plough as a LY symbol automatically renders the organisation radical, or challenges the right wing leadership, indicates a great degree of political naiveté.

Radical Socialists & Labour:

What should the attitude of radical socialists be towards the Labour Party? Firstly we must have no illusions: the Labour Party can never be an instrument for the transformation of society. We must work incessantly to build a broad, democratic party of the working class which will expose, challenge and overtake Labour. We must draw a clear line in the sand between socialism and social democracy. We do this not by preaching purity from the sidelines but by engaging in struggle for changes in the here and now, but in a manner that exposes the limitations of reforms. The emergence of such a movement would have the added bonus of forcing the Labour leadership to take positions which are more radical than they would wish to.

It would be mistaken however to dismiss all members of the party as Blairites. Many are genuine socialists, even if they still view socialism as a return to the Welfare State or a reforming government dominated by Labour. We need to convince this element to break with Labour, to help build a new party which would have space for them even if we disagree fundamentally on certain issues. Such a party will only succeed if it operates as a fully democratic space where the various strands of left thinking can compete openly to convince the members of the merits of their ideas. In such an atmosphere we are confident that the revolutionary, democratic and participatory socialist ideology espoused by the ISN would win over by strength of argument and by active example many of those who identified with either ‘Old Labourism’ and authoritarian Leninism, but most importantly the mass of people which such a party would bring into political activity for the first time.

ISN, 2004