The following is a statement on the crisis in the Labour Party in the Republic of Ireland, issued by the Labour Left Alliance Northern Ireland. The latter is a grouping of Labour Party NI members and supporters who defend Labour, trade union and socialist principles and policies. April 13, 2020
The Irish Labour Party recently elected Alan Kelly as its leader, following the resignation of Brendan Howlin. With a mere six TDs [MPs] to its name, the ILP did not have much choice and has ended up with a leader who will be long associated with the brutal austerity measures of the 2011-2016 Irish coalition government. He will remain particularly tainted with his gung-ho enthusiasm for water charges when he was Environment Minister. Both Kelly and the Tánaiste of the time, Joan “Jobstown” Bruton, are remembered for giving two fingers to the popular movement against those charges.
Unfit to be a Labour Party minister
Brendan Ogle, co-founder of the Right2Change movement which grew out of the anti-water charges protests, described Mr Kelly’s comments on water as “arrogant”. “At a time when people are struggling, at historic levels, to provide for their families, for him to dismiss the biggest social protest movement in decades shows he is completely unfit to be a Labour Party minister,” he said.
Alan Kelly has been dubbed, “The Denis O’Brien Foreman”. O’Brien is Ireland’s leading business tycoon and part-owned GMC Sierra which made a fortune out of installing Irish Water meters.
But what of the party that Kelly now leads? In 1964 the American historian Emmet Larkin described the Irish Labour Party as: “The most opportunistically conservative Labour Party anywhere in the known world”. Ten years earlier, journalist Jack White was asked to explain the absence of a left-right cleavage in Irish politics and replied that all the parties were on the right. When asked about the ILP, White responded: “Put them furthest right of all!”
ILP vote reduced to 4.4%
In the 2020 Irish General Election, the ILP lost one of its seven TDs and saw its overall vote share fall from 6.6% to 4.4% . That is fringe party territory and the ILP seems destined to remain there. Only 2% of 18-24 year old voters opted for the Labour Party, despite the party presenting a manifesto that moved it towards something more closely resembling Labour territory.
This is no surprise. Irish voters who might at one time have seen Labour as a progressive alternative to Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael will not forget or forgive its recent record in government any time soon. They will be disinclined to afford a so-called “Labour” party, led by Alan Kelly, any significant level of trust. Labour’s shocking record in aiding and abetting anti-working class policies created the vacuum on the left , which Sinn Fein would eventually fill in 2020.
The ILP cannot be regarded as a bona fide “Labour” party in any meaningful sense. It has now disaffiliated itself from trade unions and when challenged about this, pathetically boasts its “Trade Union Section”. But of course, there are right wing parties the world over which have such “sections”. The British Conservative Party boasts “Conservatives At Work” – formerly “Conservative Workers and Trade Unionists”.
LPNI treated as political pariahs
Despite all this, there are some in the Labour Party Northern Ireland (a CLP of the UK Labour Party) who would aspire to a future for LPNI as a Northern party under the joint umbrella of ILP and UKLP. There is no evidence that the ILP and UKLP would buy into this. Their strategy is to continue to treat LPNI as political pariahs in the hope that it disappears.
Historically the UKLP and ILP are “sister parties”, at one in banning their members in Northern Ireland from challenging the sectarian status quo in the North by standing as candidates in elections. They partly justify this by claiming a sister party relationship with the tribal SDLP, which has never had the capacity or inclination to become party of cross-community Labour that could help unite working class people. Two of the SDLP’s founding members, Gerry Fitt and Paddy Devlin, abandoned it for that reason.
Scraped in as a TD
It is reported that at the LPNI’s fringe meeting at UK Labour Conference in 2019 , ILP’s Ged Nash (who scraped in as a TD) stated that UKLP’s Northern Irish electoral ban was, “like a golf club accepting you as a member but not allowing you to play”. But Ged Nash did not say that his party has been steadfast in supporting that electoral ban and the likes of himself has never seriously challenged it, out of deference to the SDLP.
The UK and Irish Labour parties were presented with a dilemma in February 2019 when the SDLP, which they have regarded as a surrogate in the North of Ireland, voted heavily to enter into political alliance with the right wing Fianna Fáil. This led Irish Labour to protest to the Party of European Socialists (PES) and to even suggest the expulsion of the SDLP from that pan-national grouping. In response, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood stated that if the SDLP was to be expelled from PES, then so should Irish Labour, on the grounds of its having served in a governing coalition with Fine Gael. In short, what was good for the sham socialist Southern goose was good for the sham socialist Northern gander!
Since then, the Irish Labour Party has backed off and in the UK General Election [of December 2019] leading members of the ILP backed SDLP candidates. In South Belfast, Ged Nash canvassed for the SDLP’s Claire Hanna. Other ILP figures campaigned in Foyle for Colum Eastwood. Later in February 2020, during the Irish general election, Claire Hanna canvassed for a Fine Gael candidate!
What is to be made of these convolutions? Well, despite earlier protestations, Irish Labour seems content to canvass for a party that is hitched to Fianna Fáil . And Claire Hanna is content to canvass for Fine Gael even though her party is linked politically to Fianna Fail, whilst at the same time masquerading in the North as a “sister party” to UK and Irish Labour!
Emmet Larkin and Jack White would make perfect sense of it!
April 14, 2020
