Garret FitzGerald - Radical intellect and cautious instinct
An analysis of the politics of Garret FitzGerald.
AT THE COMMENCEMENT of his tour of the constituencies on September 19, in Cork, Garret Fitzgerald delivered a keynote address entitled "The Role of Fine Gael". The speech summarised most of his recent political thinking on the kind of society we should be trying to create. It has been published and circulated throughout the country and thus it merits special analysis.
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Precis
The Western World has evolved a certain type of political organisation known as pluralist democracy in which alternative groups with different political concepts offer themselves for election. The system has imperfections such as the tendency of competing groups to promise more than they can perform and to appeal to the materialism of the electorate.
However grave though these defects may be any alternative system will become tyrannical and corrupt. But should the pluralist democratic system fail to provide sound justice and full employment then people may be encouraged to opt for a tyranny of either the Left or the Right.
Unemployment is now the greatest challenge to the Western society and "if, as is possible, (this) unemployment...is not just a product of a serious 'but temporary downturn in the economic cycle, but reflects a structure deriving from a combination of techhnological progress and inflexibility in our social structures, then this problem may not be capable of being solved without major changes in our structures.
"Voluntary work sharing, involving shorter hours and a sharing in total employment income amongst the whole labour force, perhaps organised on a European scale, could eventually turn out to be the only answer to this problem of surplus labour. "
This challenge demands something more than the Tweedledum/Tweedledee type of political alternatives but not a Left/Right conflict. What we need is more idealism to challenge the pervasive materialism. "We need new solutions to the avoidable conflict between the economic need for incentives to effort, and the social need to care for those who cannot look after themselves".
Ireland needs a party system which reflects the tension between idealism and materialism and without Fine Gael we would not have this. Labour relies too much on the State and Fianna Fáil is a bizarre combination of idealist pragmatism and a residue of doctrinaire republicanism.
Fine Gael on the other hand stands for the concept of self-reliance which is closely linked to that of personal development and participating democracy at all levels. This concept provides a basis for economic dynamism - we have been more inclined to feather-bed inefficiency than to encourage self-reliance or enterprise ... Fine Gael is best placed of the three parties to implement a policy of industrial democracy.
But Fine Gael's emphasis on self-reliance in no way conflicts with the State playing a significant economic role in our society but it is necessary to ensure a high degree of independence of State intervention in other areas - the independence of the economic unit or of the individual must not be admired.
Socially conscious people, environmentalists, educationalists, devolutionists and youth must be brought into the political process to affect the kind of changes that are needed ... Fine Gael is open to them.
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Critique
The analysis of the inadequacies in the pluralist democratic Western political structure is incomplete. Surely the defects are more profound than the auction room atmosphere it engenders. For instance: the class structure which characterises all these Western democratic systems and the poverty and economic exploitation endemic to them.
A recurrent theme in Garret FitzGerald's speeches nowadays is the dichotomous juxtaposition of Western democracy versus tyranny. Are there not other options such as the democratic socialist model which offers far more meaningful "participation" in the workings of society than that postulated later in his speech?
The acknowledgement that the current unemployment problem in the Western World may be due to structural inadequacies in the system would seem to call for very radical changes in the structure. But all Dr. FitzGerald calls for is more "participation" and "idealism". That is apart from the suggestion that there should be voluntary work sharing and a sharing of total employment income. In a society where human need goes unsatisfied in so many respects such "suggestions are purely superfluous or, rather, such suggestions' tend to throw the burden of solving the structural unemployment problem on the working class. Why not build more houses, hospitals, schools etc?
In a recent interview with Magill, FitzGerald elaborated on his work sharing proposal: the EEC Commission is currently considering such proposals for countries with much lower unemployment rates than Ireland, therefore it is unlikely that Ireland can avoid at least consideration of them:' Also there is a limit to the number of jobs one can create through social enterprise, such as building more houses etc., without seriously disrupting the commercial sector - both public and private - from where the real dynamism for job creation comes.
True, within the context of the present economic system. But surely the radical analysis of the endemic defects of that system calls for a radical substitution of that system?
Another recurrent theme in his speeches is the need for more idealism to combat the growing materialism. It is at least arguable that what Ireland needs least is more idealism, and most more materialism. Irish society is shot through and through with idealism from Catholicism to green nationalism. This idealism has been partly responsible for pacifying the poor and the exploited. The 25% of our population who live below the poverty line do not need more idealism, they need material things such as houses, better food etc.
As for the conflict between the need for incentives on the one hand and on the other, '''the social need to care for those who cannot look after themselves", It is one that preoccupies mainly not progressives but Tories. There is the hint of more selective social welfare benefits and the phase "those who cannot look after themselves" is revealing. Those who cannot look after themselves could well do so in the main if they had the economic means of doing so. The phrase conveys a personal inadequacy rather than an exploitative relationship.
The conclusion that only Fine Gael can provide the radical answer to the country's problems is derived from an analysis of the other parties' shortcomings - since they can't provide the answers, by a process of elimination, Fine Gael must be the party with them!
In all, the speech is a reflection of an adventurous intellect but a cautious instinct. The analysis is radical in part but the solutions are conservative: structural inadequacies are perceived in our society but injections of idealism are the only solutions offered.
Elsewhere, Garret FitzGerald insists on the priority of a radical redistribution of wealth, an objective sincerely held since the beginning of his political career. However, the urgency of this task is curtailed firstly by confirming re-distribution to future increases in wealth and, secondly, the objective is postponed entirely when there is no economic growth. In addition, there is the constraint of operating within a party with strong vested interests to prevent redistribution, relying only on whatever generosity can be mustered to advance it.
Again in a recent in interview, FitzGerald argued that in a democracy where only a minority (25.1%) were "have-riots", it was unrealistic to expect the majority (75.1%) to drop their existing living standards to help the poor. Courageous political leadership could persuade them to divert part of their future increments of wealth but this is all that can be achieved realistically.
The insistence on the juxtaposition of the 75.1% "haves" versus the 25.1% "have nots" is surely mistaken. In the first place more than a majority of the population is denied access to more than 70% of the wealth; and whereas the re-distribution of the wealth held by the top 51% would not seriously effect the condition of the bottom 25%, the re-distribution of the wealth of the top 25% would.
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FitzGerald: a light green patriot
FINE GAEL IS proclaimed to have tagged along recently with Fianna Fáil's hard line on Irish unity, and abandoned its pro-British posture while in Government.
It is an unfair characterisation of Fine Gael's policy on Northern Ireland but they themselves are largely to blame for the public confusion.
Garret FitzGerald himself has long been a "light-green" nationalist and has nurtured an abiding "aspiration" for Irish unity, in contrast with his colleague in Government, Conor Cruise O'Brien.
In a recently published bibliography on Northern Ireland, John Whyte of Queens University has contrasted the divergent attitudes of FitzGerald and O'Brien on Irish unity. Writing about the nationalist analysis of the Northern situation he observes "in recent scholarly writing the traditional Nationalist view has become almost extinct", Whyte goes on to comment: "the only important author to support it (the Nationalist view) even partially has been FitzGerald (in his book, "Towards A New Ireland"), FitzGerald concedes that British interference in Irish affairs is no longer the crucial problem; but he maintains the other part of the nationalist interpretation, claiming that Ireland is still 'one nation' despite the existence within it of different cultures".
Whyte goes on to point out: "an elaborate critique of the traditional Nationalist view is provided by Conor Cruise O'Brien (in his book, "States of Ireland"). O'Brien and FitzGerald are sometimes linked as representatives of a common school of thought, but anyone who reads their books together will see that the differences between them are sharper than the similarities.
"FitzGerald still hopes, in 1972 at any rate, for a united Ireland; O'Brien thinks that in the forseeable future this is unrealistic. He argues that Irish nationalists have never believed their own dogma: by countless unguarded m words and actions they have shown that they do not consider the Unionists to be one nation with themselves."
However, this difference of view wasn't always apparent while FitzGerald and O'Brien were in Government together, and in practice it was the O'Brien line which seemed to prevail and certainly in the Fine Gael opinion poll, it was this view which made greatest impact with the electorate, thereby doing considerable harm to the coalition in the election.
FitzGerald rationalises this today on the grounds that as they were in, or on the verge of, negotiation with the unionists for such long periods during the coalition's four year term of office, it was unhelpful to be talking publicly about a United Ireland. But now when there are no negotiations in the offering - and therefore, presumably, it doesn't now matter offending unionist susceptibilities - talk about unity is permissable.
At a week-end meeting of Fine Gael spokesmen in mid-January, more than half the time was devoted to discussing Northern Ireland and several of the new recruits pressed strongly for an unequivocal statement in favour of Irish unity ¸at the constituency meetings there was a lot of resentment expressed with the impression given in Government that Fine Gael was no longer the "United Ireland" party.
Shortly after that meeting, John Hume, Austin Currie and Hugh Logue, all of the SDLP, asked Southern politicians to spell out what they meant by unity and in response to that and in an attempt to pre-empt any new Northern initiative, which Jack Lynch might have announced at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, FitzGerald issued a statement on Northern policy.
The statement is curiously defensive. While it is headed "Statement on Northern Ireland Policy by Fine Gael" it dissolves into a personal statement by FitzGerald - "my own personal commitment to seeking a basis for Irish political unity, deriving in part from my own personal background, is well known .." etc.
It invokes the SDLP to oppose the demand for a British commitment to withdraw and then hastily states that this is not the same as approving Britain's role in Northern Ireland. "On the contrary the objective of this party is to achieve a solution which will enable the Irish people to govern themselves without any involvement by Great Britain in Irish affairs", it goes on.
This latter comment is more unequivocal than anything the party has stated since 1969 and certainly justifies the observation that there has been a switch of emphasis on Northern policy, since the election. This is particularly evident when one recalls Liam Cosgrave's statement in the Dáil on March 13, 1974 when he said: "I now solemnly reaffirm that the factual position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom cannot be changed except by a decision of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland".
True, the two statements are not necessarily irreconcilable, but the emphasis is clearly different.
While in Government, Fine Gael was concerned with the creation of structures within Northern Ireland which would make it governable, now the concern has switched to defining a united Ireland which would be appealing to the Northerners.
Fine Gael has established a working party to prepare a full statement on Northern policy, which is expected to be available within a year. Included in the committee are FitzGerald himself, Peter Barry, Jim O'Keeffe, Paddy Harte, Richie Ryan, Mark Clinton and Alexis FitzGerald.
This committee will attempt to define the shape of a prospective united Ireland in its constitutional, structural, economic, social and cultural contexts, though again, curiously, the statement does not say that the committee will attempt such an analysis.
There is an impression of haste and some confusion in Fine Gael on Northern policy, suggesting perhaps that it was the response at the polls which is dictating a re-think rather than any objective calculation of its desirability.