Noel Browne: an end to the one-man band

THEY DON'T NEED ME,' says Noel Browne, TD. He says it with no mock modesty, a hint of satisfaction and a perceivable measure of hope. He is explaining that the recently formed Socialist Labour Party 'is not, repeat not, Noel Browne's New Party'. By Gene Kerrigan

'It mustn't be my one man band, not even Mattie Merrigan's band hit's more deeply rooted than that. There are a lot of able, talented young people involved who must take control from the beginning. I'll help in whattever way I can, of course, and I regret that I'm not ten years younger, but they don't need me. A younger generaation has come along, they're children of their time. One of the problems with Irish politics has been the old men hanging on.'

Whatever about the depth of the SLP's roots, they are certainly varied. The core of the Labour Party dissidents who steered the Independent Labour campaign of Browne and Merrigan last June were joined by scores of other socialists, some from the Labour Party, others unattached. After a period of uncertainty following the General Election, the push began for the creation of a new party. The Labour Party decision to give Browne and Merrigan the boot clinched it.

The founding conference of the SLP showed the wide divergence of views among those who make up the party. From the ex-Liason of the Left, stallwarts with their stable of old political warhorses such as state enterprise, natural resources and emphasis on the parliamentary struggle, to those who learnt their politics through direct action on the job, in the unions and on the streets. The main difference is between those who would see the activities of the party geared towards building an electoral base and those who believe that the role of a sociallist party is to support and lead, through direct action, the fight against wage restraint and repression, and the fight for jobs.

What gives the new party its specific gravity is its number of independent socialists who are open to ideas. It is they who will ultimately determine the course of the SLP. There was eviidence at the founding conference of a willingness on all sides to let the ideas clash and to maintain strict standards

of democracy. Few are so naive as to think that such a breadth of views can be contained indefinitely within a single party. But the signs are that the presence of a large, democratic, openly anti-capitalist party, something lacking for so long in Irish politics, will provide a focus for the increasing number of workers who are being forced to question the limits of the present system. In the long run, the SLP may settle down to become a small electoral party. It may even disinteggrate, but meanwhile it has the potential to spawn a dynamic left wing force.

It has members in Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary, Galway, Laois, Limerick and Clare. Its greatest weakkness is in the North, and the Party's position on the British presence will be one of its central debates.

Certainly the Labour Party leaders are worried. Just hours before the SLP was formed, Michael O'Leary issued a ringing call for the Labour Party to take a 'vanguard position' to fight for a 'democratic workers' state,' for fear that that position might fall 'to new groupings of the Left - if these were intelligently led'. It is probably too late for O'Leary and company to revive the 'Seventies Will Be Socialist' slogan to rally their troups. But can it be long before they suggest that the 'Eighties Will Be Egalitarian'?

Noel Browne is sixty three. At least one voter in Artane supported him because 'his father did great work in the Dail in the 'fifties'.

When Browne speaks of the Dail and of his own long years in politics, it is with regret tempered with resignation. He describes the atmosphere of the years when you couldn't even use socialist terms publicly without being ostracised and expresses admiraation for the Communist Party stalwarts such as Mick O'Riordan who 'pinned their colours to the mast' and took the consequences. 'Over the years, I tried to move forward a little bit, each time a little bit forward of my last position.'

'We are facing the inevitability of serious crisis', says Browne, 'and these will be threatening, frightening years. And there's always the possibility that the Cooney position will win out. Remember his speech in St. Anne's where he said that everyone who threatened the stability of the state was subversive? There were neoofascist inclinations in the Coalition, and they're certainly there in Fianna Fail. It will be a dangerous time for radicalism. The demands of the next ten years will be different from those of the last decade.

In June, 1973, in a bulletin circullated to Labour Party members, Browne stated his belief that 'We could, as with the Marxist Allende in Chile, use the parliamentary system to destroy capitalism.' Just three months later Allende was machine gunned to death and the butchering of thousands of workers began. These days Browne is more wary amd explicit about the power of the state. He SPeaks of 'the tanks, the guns and the armoured cars which we so cleverly devised for the Kitsons of this world.' He still believes that parliament can be used as a plattform for spreading socialist ideas, but accepts that the fight which determines the future will probably be fought outside. If he does so reluctantly, it is because he is only too aware of the forces which can be unleashed against those who attempt to change society.

The past decade has been a frustrating one for the Irish Left. Unable to harness the industrial conflict or the housing agitation of the sixties, the leadership of the massive upsurge in the North slipping through its fingers, the Left has had to run very fast just to stand still. Massive unemployment, reduction of living standards and a wave of political repression gave sociaalist groups plenty to fight. But it didn't bring in the recruits.

The Left has been fragmented.

There are reasons, both historical and ideological, and whatever about joint activity and united fronts, there is little hope that the much touted 'unity of the Left' could be maintained organisationally over an indefinite period. But a rallying point which can draw in large numbers of workers who would otherwise be confused or disillusioned by the disunity of the Left can serve a useful function. Browne, tentatively, and at times reluctantly, has played an important part in providing that rallying point.