Co Alternative to Labour Need

FOR THE fourth General Election in a row the vote of the Irish Labour Party has dropped. The main aim of the the party’s leader, Michael O'Leary, during the campaign was to hold on to his seat. This he managed with a great deal of effort, money and without ‘ reaching the quota. The party is ina coimplete shambles, politically, financially and organisationally. Labour’s Administrative Council is split down the middle on the issue of Coalition. Michael O’Leary and the chairperson of the party, Michael D. Higgins spent most of the election campaign issuing contradictory statements on whether Labour was standing on its own programme or whether it was running second fiddle to to Fine Gael.

Of course this hasn’t prevented O'Leary from attempting to maintain a brave face. The usual rhetoric about how “until the day Labour is in a majority and can form a government” it will have to cast about in order to decide which capitalist party to hang on to the coattails of has been bandied about as a justification for Labour’s performance.

That this strategy is responsible for the steady decline in Labour support is blithely ignored by O'Leary. !nstead of appearing as a socialist party, Labour now gives the impression of an imitation capitalist party. When confronted by this masquerade it is not surprising that voters plump for the real capitalists rather than the Labour imitation.

If this spectacle were not so serious it would be simply pathetic. The need for a socialist alternative to the parties that sell out to international capital and British imperialism has never been greater. So why has the Labour Party failed this test and what are the chances for it being squarely confronted by the other socialist and anti-imperialist forces in this country?

Put simply, the Labour Party thinks the same conditions apply in Ireland as apply in the major capitalist countries in Europe where there are large social democratic parties with, in the main, majority working class support. We will put aside the question of whether even these European parties are capable of solving the needs of European workers and concentrate solely on the Irish Labour Party.

In the 1960s the southern economy experienced a significant period of industrialisation, increase in living standards and steady economic growth. For the layer of intellectuals and skilled workers that were attracted to the Labour Party this economic growth was seen as unending. For them it meant an end to what they saw as divisive and irrelevant “civil war politics’’ between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and a beginning of “real’’ class politics. By concentrating simply on the obvious social and economic backwardness of Irish society could be reformed away and had attracted a significant bility could be imagined.

euphoria. It was obvious to them round of electing a few TDs and joining a government as a junior highest ever number of votes but, ominiously, lost seats. The left consensus began to crumble, the infighting and expulsions began. Despair, disillusionment and an society the working class would come to them. The inadequacies of Irish and paid for by the increasing wealth and affluence of the Irish economy, the most important parts of which could be nationalised by a majority Labour government. The reactionary social power of the Church would simply wither away, swept carelessly aside by the forward march of the better educated and aware masses.

By the 1969 General Election, Labour had a very left sounding programme number of youth and intellectual support. Labour stood on its own and proclaimed “‘the seventies will be socialist” as their rallying cry. The election outcome was bound to be a victory for Labour, no other possiThe right wing in the party stayed silent in the face of this sustained that they should bide their time and await the inevitable crash before they could return things to the normal partner when the opportunity arose. When the results of the 1969 election were announced, Labour had got its opportunity for those with an eye to the main chance was the end result. A sustained assault on the left began and coalition was put forward as the only alternative. The youth of the party were the first to get out, Most of the supposedly new left TDs like Connor Cruise O’Brien, Michael O’Leary, Barry Desmond and Frank Cluskey ran to Fine Gael with offers of a Labour alliance. A caucus of left -independents on the Administrative Council, the ‘‘Left Liaison Committee”’, were rendered ineffectual. They devoted themselves to party infighting until they left or were expelled in 1977 to form the SLP.

The seventies turned rather sour instead of socialist for Labour. Upon entering coalition with Fine Gael in 1973 they were to become known as the party of rising prices, unemployment, capitulation to Britain and to repression - the very opposite to what most socialists would consider socialist policies.

Of course this is to explain what happened rather than why. If socialists and anti-imperialists want to avoid these mistakes in the future we must start to understand Labour’s basic political failure rather than just reduce it to the dishonesty of Labour TDs or the party’s failure of nerve. If in the sixties Labour thought that economic growth would be untroubled then basically they thought that British imperialism no longer played’a role in Ireland, and that the national question was n4t the major question holding back social progress in Ireland. Of course the strategy collapsed under the weight of events. The capitalist economic boom, whose crumbs the southern economy fe The rotten northern st exposed worldwide by 1 rights movement and By! dirty deeds became the res for attention. In answer tu 1 problems Labour had 1: than its left sounding \ troubled conscience. A gramme was found to bs without a left wing st mobilises those that ar and gives them the be tunity to defeat thet Having no faith in the rev potential of the working | reformist outlook retreats | bd prevailing Free State cc Britain’s political conti through its military grip c Counties is the key to | wardness, politically, soci economically. This is the «i between Ireland and the ist economies of Europ years of repression it ous! obvious to even the mos Labour social democrat.

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The Labour Party is cle vehicle for that strateg major anti—imperialis their history and traci: ing imperialism are th that process. Principled | sectarian preconditions major political problen inequality and austerity

PAGE 4 SOCIALIST REPUBLIC es amma ae agreement on an overall analysis and method by which to analyse Ireland’s SOCIALIST REPUBLIC PAGE 5 THE “HUNG DAIL” of June 1981 showed up especially in the performance