Leaning left may bring a real future for Labour

Radical change might be possible if Labour was open to an alternative
strategy of joining leftist groups and individuals. By Vincent Browne.

Eamon Gilmore, Pat Rabbitte, Liz
McManus, Ruairí Quinn, Joan Burton, Michael D Higgins, Jan O’Sullivan,
Proinsias De Rossa and many others in the Labour Party are not venal.
They are able, decent, honourable people committed to the idea of a
fairer society. They believe, with some justification, that if Labour
were the lead party in the next government, Ireland would be a better
place: fairer, less violent, more tolerant.

They accept, however,
that the prospects of Labour being the lead party in the next government
are close to zero, and see the next government as a coalition of Labour
and Fine Gael. They believe, again with some justification, that a Fine
Gael-Labour government would be a better government than the current
one.

Is that enough? Aren’t the objectives of the Labour Party
more ambitious than partaking in a government that is an improvement on
the current lot? Isn’t Labour supposed to be about changing the
structure of society, to make it more equal in terms of distribution of
wealth, income, power and status, and making it more democratic?

Aside
from Fianna Fáil, Labour has been in office longer than any other
political party since the foundation of the State. In the last 37 years,
Labour has been in office for almost 16 years, and I don’t think even
Labour members themselves would claim that Ireland was a significantly
more equal society than it was before any of the stints Labour had in
government during that time.

Isn’t there something curious about
the fact that, after a period in office, Labour never examined how
effective it had been in promoting the Labour agenda and, in so far as
that agenda was not significantly advanced, why that was so?

One
of the governments of which Labour was a part, that in power from 1973
to 1977, was broadly reactionary. Its next long stint in office, from
1982 to 1987, was a deeply unhappy time for the party and, I think, it
would acknowledge that little progress of any significance was made on
what might be described as the Labour agenda. Similarly, in its last
period in office, from 1992 to 1997, first with Fianna Fáil and then
with Fine Gael and Democratic Left, some reforming measures and
improvements on social welfare were achieved. But what about changing
the structure of Irish society to make it significantly more equal?

A
report I quote with repetitive monotony in these columns – because I
think it is so telling of Irish society – is Inequalities in Mortality,
which relates to the period 1990 to 1998, and it shows that for all the
main causes of death, the mortality rate for people in the lower
occupational groups was a multiple of the mortality for people in the
higher occupational groups.

Labour was in office longer than any
other political party in the period relevant to that report’s findings
(1982-1997), and the report shows that after Labour left office,
inequality was so embedded that more than 5,000 people were dying
prematurely every year.

How then is Labour content to go into
another government with Fine Gael when it is a virtual certainty that
after a further period in office with that party, embedded inequality
will be as entrenched as ever? Shouldn’t reflection on the legacy of
previous coalitions with the main parties suggest that some different
strategy be adopted?

There is another plausible strategy now: that
Labour looks to its left and seeks alliances with left-wing parties,
movements, non-governmental organisations, community groups and
citizens.

This is a period of extraordinary flux. People, I think,
are appalled by what has happened in the last decade and a half, and
are open to a break from the culture of voracious wealth creation and
accumulation.

People are open to a fairer redistribution of wealth
and income, status and the rest. Were Labour and Sinn Féin to join with
other left-leaning groups and individuals, a radical change might be
possible.

Yes, I did mention Sinn Féin. There are indications that
Sinn Féin is gagging to go into office with whoever (Fianna Fáil or
Fine Gael) will have them, but they could be coaxed into a left
alliance, I think.

Labour and Sinn Féin, along with the other
parties, groups and citizens of the left would form a critical mass that
could be transformative.

I appreciate that for many in the Labour
leadership, the next election offers a last prospect of government
office (the average age of the most likely Labour ministers in 2012 will
be 63), and even if such a government is to be with Fine Gael in the
lead role, the prospect is better than yet more years in the political
wilderness.

Maybe at this weekend’s conference there will be some
debate about this alternative option, given the proven failure of the
other one.