Labour: The Cutting Edge of Coalition
The double-week bonus paid at Christmas to long-term social welfare recipients is to be withheld this year, according to an official source. Fergus O'Brien, junior Minister at the Department of Social Welfare, has also confirmed that the scrapping ofthe payments is being "contemplated".
There has also been a decision not to renew the September double-week payment which was paid by the Haughey government last year as part of the commitment to Tony Gregory.
The Christmas bonus last year was paid to 62,000 people. Payments totalling £16.4 million were made, affecting a total of 1,120,000 people - pensioners, adult dependants and child dependants.
The September bonus, paid to help long-term social welfare recipients meet the extra costs of the new school term, was paid to 127 ,000 adults on behalf of 341 ,000 children.
As the payments are a bonus on top of the usual benefit there is no obligation on the government to submit the decision to a vote or to otherwise take any positive action to scrap the measures. They merely refrain from implementing them.
"Labour indicts the inherent cowardice of the main parties when faced with the challenge of expanding the taxation base in areas of accumulated wealth, property, speculative gains and unearned surpluses generally. Labour opposes cuts in necessary socially sensitive areas of expen. diture that relate to the lack of political will to broaden the taxation base": Dick Spring, November 9 1982, at the launch of the Labour Party general election campaign.
There is an accepted ritual Labour Party general election campaigns. They begin with a press conference at which the party leader puts forward policies based on the party programme and conference decisions. Then the media push the party leader to own up to which policies are to be jettisoned should there be negotiations for coalition with Fine Gael. And the party leader says that he wants to "maximise the Labour vote" based on these policies and coalition doesn't enter into it at this stage - and generally tries to wriggle out of a straight answer.
"I am putting the policies of the Labour Party before you in a straightforward and honest manner. I can state that I will not abdicate from the policies in this document."
Question: "Irrespective of what happens in the election?"
Answer: "Irrespective of what happens in the election campaign." (Dick Spring, November 9,1982.)
While Dick Spring was more forthright than previous Labour leaders in stressing his party's independence (he initially left Frank Cluskey to wriggle into a coalition-is-a-possibility stance) events proceeded as per the established ritual, wherein differences are ignored and points of agreement stressed. The fact that Labour's manifesto was based on a fundamentally different economic and social vision was, in accordance with the ritual, overridden by the electoral strategy's inexorable progress towards coalition.
When the time came for negotiations between Dick Spring and Garret FitzGerald the Labour parliamentry party met to put forward its views on what should be sought. The meeting was general and vague, as in the circumstances it was bound to be. The shock of Michael O'leary's defection, followed by the generally favourable response to Dick Spring's assumption of the leadership in turn followed by an election in which the party had a creditable showing - produced a euphoria in which there was little pressure on Labour's new cool clean hero. Although there were some doubts about Spring's lack of experience (one Kerry supporter supposedly cracked, "The only thing Dick's negotiated up to now is a mortgage for his house") he was at various times in the negotiations accompanied by Barry Desmond and Frank Cluskey, providing some experienced counsel.
The TDs were brought together for a meeting during the negotiations and some expected a report on the areas of agreement reached or at least an indication of general progress. However, the meeting was not consultative and again Spring merely listened to "the views" of the TDs, put forward in a vacuum. As subsequent events have shown, the ritual of negotiating a joint programme had at least as much to do with producing a document which could be sold to Labour Party delegates at the Limerick conference as with mating the two very different animals which were the parties' programmes.
The euphoria carried over onto the Limerick conference and a majority had no problem accepting the final, inevitable step in the coalition ritual. Even Frank Prendergast, even Michael Bell.
Michael Bell dug in his heels five minutes after reading the Social Welfare Bill. It didn't accord with Labour policy, it didn't accord with the Joint Programme. And it didn't accord with what Barry Desmond told the electorate they were voting for if they voted Labour: "We're proposing a total recasting of the PRSI system to bring in the public service, to bring in the self-employed, to bring in all forms of income - for example, dividends and rents would be liable in that regard. And that does not postulate that there should be an overall increase imposed on people. Rather, I think, would it be possible to reduce the average for those on lower incomes." (November 9, 1982.)
Michael Bell raised objections to the Bill at a parliamentary party meeting, as did Frank Prendergast, Sean Tracey and Seamus Pattison. No TD, apart from Barry Desmond, spoke in favour of the Bill. The drift of the meeting was that the Bill was objectionable - but that the alternative was even more objectionable. The first consequence would be a general election, and no TD wanted that. Then, Fianna Fail might get back and implement measures that were similar or worse. This was on the one hand - on the other hand there was only Labour's pretensions of being different from the major parties, of having a different aim, a different social vision.
The choice was no choice. Having accepted the logic of coalition, Labour had to swallow its pride and its principles. The meeting agreed to keep the dissent secret - perhaps some concessions could be negotiated. Within an hour of the meeting ending the story had been leaked, reporters were phoning around to get confirmation that Bell and Prendergast would not support the Bill. Now, the prospect of meaningful concessions receded as the image of determined government was at stake. Few among the Labour leadership believed that Frank Prendergast's heart was really in the fight. The pressure was put on.
Michael Bell was a different matter. There was a genuine belief that his dissent was in large part motivated by his position as im ITGWU official. The union's new general Secretary, Christy Kirwan, was now a Labour senator and was strongly opposing the Bill within the parliamentary party. The fact that Frank Prendergast was an official of the same union and that John Carroll was making militant noises offstage fueled the belief.
In fact, Bell is probably the most independent official within the ITGWU. When he led his shoe and leather workers' union into amalgamation with the ITGWU he got a written agreement preserving his independence and he would be therefore less susceptible to pressure from the union leadership than would most officials. Frank Prendergast had not received any pressure from the officials or executive of the ITGWU. Apart from the routine notification to Labour TDs of the union's position on impending political matters John Carroll had not intervened. If there was any complaint to be made about the union's behaviour it might be from members who. 'felt that the leade'rship should have put more pressure on the party to which it supplies finance, facilities and, moral support.
Frank Prendergast's decision to vote for the Bill was motivated primarily by local pressure in Limerick East. He could have lived with exclusion from the parliamentary party, but the constituency was something else. Having won back the seat from Jim Kemmy the Labour Party has been making determined efforts to see that it stays that way. And the surest method, apparently, is not by making principled stands but by building up the machine. Since the election Prendergast has worked hard to stabilise the constituency organisation, with the help of Senator Jack Harte. Fourteen branches, either new or revived, have been established recently and in the days leading up to the vote on the Social Welfare Bill a meeting of fifty members in the Drumkeen Ballroom set up a new Divisional Council.
While there was some constituency and local trade union pressure on Prendergast not to support the Bill the most telling argument came from party officials. Several leading, long-serving Labour members approached Prendergast and warned him flatly that if he didn't support the government he would be ditched. In about three months time it will be Prendergast's "turn" to be Mayor of Limerick again (he was Mayor in 1977) under the agreement between the six Fianna Fail and four Labour councillors (there was a disagreement with Fine Gael some years ago and the usual Coalition carve-up doesn't apply here). While no direct threat was made to deprive Prendergast of the Mayoralty the fact is that without Labour support he was in the wilderness.
While the stick was being applied by the locals Dick Spring and Barry Desmond provided a carrot. Spring divulged some details of plans on spreading the taxation net and Desmond showed Prendergast a list of names to be appointed to review the Social Welfare system. Prendergast was also impressed by Desmond's sincerity on the issue of reform of the system. Prendergast weighed up the hard work he had put in, the urge to keep Kemmy out and the knowledge that the Bill would probably go through even without his support - and against that a grand gesture, a stand on principle. He buckled.
This year it's also Michael Bell's "turn" to be Mayor. In the course of the controversy he received indirect word that should he vote against the government Fine Gael will not support him as Mayor of Drogheda. Supposedly his reply was contained in two words often heard in the Dail bar but not in the Chamber. Bell has been plugging away on and off as a councillor since 1974. Initially he was a member of Fianna Fail. Last November he made a spectacular leap in first preferences from 3,474 in February to 6,435, to reach the Dail at the third try. His first two attempts were dogged by the large support for hunger striker Paddy Agnew and later for Sinn Fein member Fra Browne - also by the split in the local Labour camp on the H Block issue. Feeling secure in his constituency support, and with local trade unionists lobbying him, organising petitions and delegations, he held firm. He claims to have received fifty applications for membership of Labour within a twentyfour hour period.
In the day after Michael Bell voted against the Social Welfare Bill Labour's Administrative Council held a routine meeting. There was vociferous protest from the left wing of the AC but a motion opposing the leadership's line was defeated 20-8. Had the full complement of the AC been in attendance the extra ten votes would probably have split fiftyfifty. So far, the parliamentary leadership has two-to-one support from the AC, which drifted to the right at the last election, for its behaviour in government.
Dissent within the parliamentary party is kept at a murmuring level - going any further will provoke removal of the whip. Worse still, if dissent was successful it might provoke a general election. Within the Cabinet Labour is working well with Fine Gael. A Fine Gael source says there is little conflict between the two parties, "there's no us-and-them". Labour TDs point out that it's early days yet. Even those uneasy about the extent to which the coalition has cut into working class pockets and conspicuously failed to implement any radical measures in the area of taxation console themselves with the belief that it would probably be "worse under Fianna Fail". The recurring phrase is "you have to take the rough with the smooth", but although the rough is all too obvious there is little they can point to that is smooth. They claim that Labour's participation in government preserved the food subsidies, but beyond that there is silence.
Faced with further examples of Labour as the cutting edge of coalition, party members have few options. Under the "three-year-rule" conference cannot discuss withdrawal from coalition until 1985. The party conference in the autumn could suspend Standing Orders for an emergency discussion but this is unlikely. Government concessions to pressure to stick to commitments made in the Joint Programme are (as was the case with the commitment on remedial teachers) far more likely to result from public anger than from Labour muscle. (Governments, while tending towards rectitude at this time of the year, tend to get sentimental as Christmas approaches - particularly if there are substantial protests about the scrapping of pensioners' seasonal bonus.)
At the AC meeting which supported the leadership's line the correspondence file was passed around from member to member. It contained a pile of letters several inches thick of complaints from party units around the country. The grassroots are uneasy. And given the peculiar nature of Irish politics the unease is unlikely to find expression in the Dail. Within the ICTU there is talk of protest, of marches, of strikes. But even those who called for the tax marches of 1979 never knew where the massive swell of militancy came from, couldn't hold onto it and don't know where it disappeared to. A re-run is considered unlikely. Far more likely is that the spontaneity which spawned the tax marches will find another form - perhaps the PRSI protests, withholding payments, with the possible explosive consequences.
Most of the Labour TDs knew how Frank Prendergast felt, faced with preserving something which he had worked for, built up - or making a grand gesture of principle. They suspected he would buckle, understood it when he did.