IRELAND: Labour’s ambiguity

As the Irish General Election approaches, the Labour Party
leadership continues getting rid of the most radical aspects of its
election programme. And, Labour Party members only get to know about
these changes through the media. The Irish Times revealed the
last of such policy modifications on Monday, 31 Jan. The commitment to
introduce a top rate 48 per cent personal income tax band (now 41 per
cent) for those on over €100,000 per year was to be abandoned because
the Universal Social Charge (USC) introduced by the government ‘had done
the job’.

There is, however, a big
difference between the USC and the 48 percent personal income tax band
when it comes to redistribution of wealth. The USC affects everyone
while the 48 percent income tax would affect only the higher incomes.
This surrendering of one of the most progressive aspects in Labour’s
programme could be just aimed at facilitating a coalition government
with Fine Gael (FG), a party that is completely against the introduction
of higher taxation to the well off. The previous week, Fianna Fáil (FF)
new leader, Micheál Martin, reiterated that the election programmes of
FG and FF were remarkably similar and that FF would support a minority
FG government. Therefore, the Labour Party has started making
concessions even before the Election. According to the latest poll, a
left wing government (Labour, SF and left-independent TDs) could be
feasible, but the Labour Party has never entertained that possibility.

Another
worrying sign was the anxiety of the Labour Parliamentary Party (LPP) to
facilitate the passing of the Government’s Finance Bill. They argued
that the reason was to allow a date for the General Election to be
fixed. Formally the LPP opposed the Finance Bill, so it made more sense
to push for a planned motion of no confidence and make all efforts to
avoid the passing of the Bill. This contradictory strategy can only
spread confusion among rank-and-file supporters and those likely to vote
for the Labour Party. All this seems to indicate that the priority of
the LPP is not policy change but getting in office at any price,
regardless of the concessions to be made.

These
sudden turns don’t go unnoticed among rank-and-file members. A recent
U-turn of the LPP party on water charges went against a motion passed at
the last party conference, which unanimously rejected them. This
infuriated many Labour Party members, which in the end made the LPP to
temporary oppose water changers on the grounds that water metering could
not be introduced in a ‘timely, fair and affordable manner’.

The
sudden policy changes adopted by the LPP, with disregard to motions
passed at Labour Party conferences, are populist attempts to win votes
led more by media pressure than by the interests of working people.
There is an urge to get in office, to hold power, which constitute to
most important aim of the professional politicians of the establishment.
In that regard, the LPP is part of the establishment and in favour of
mild ‘reforms’ only in so far as they can present themselves as a slight
different political brand in respect to FG or FF.

Populist
tendencies were reinforced two years ago after the reform of the party
constitution. Head Office, among other things, wanted to closely control
the process of selection of candidates for elections and plan campaigns
according to what policies were more likely to be voted. Some argued
that Head Office was trying to introduce a centralist Leninist model,
but nothing was further from the truth. The aim was to run the party as a
private company led by a board of directors exclusively concerned with
electoral success.

On the
other hand, the legitimacy of the LPP is grounded on individual election
teams, normally competing among each other, which in turn are normally
based on personal loyalties. Since the 1990s, after the retreat of
rank-and-file activism and ‘old reformism’, Labour Party branches and
constituencies almost exclusively exist to support TDs and Local
Councillors. Political differences and alternatives, when they exist,
are articulated around Local Councillors and their teams to a larger
extent than around TDs, who present fewer differences among each other
for the time being.

The
annual Labour Party conferences have little influence on the party
leadership, but in the last few years there has been a growing gap
between the policies proposed by the conferences and what the LPP would
implement. Motions that are not considered adequate, normally the most
left wing, are ‘referred back’, which means that they are killed off.

There
are in fact two Labour parties, but while one (the LPP) is highly
organised and possesses all the resources, the other one constitutes an
amorphous mass that would need of a rank-and-file organising committee
to start articulating the discontent that there is among many ordinary
members and present an organised alternative to the sell out of the
party leadership. The ambiguities of Labour Parliamentary Party reflect
the existence of the two parties and the different interests that they
represent.

It is
highly likely that the Labour Party will go into a coalition government
with FG, although we cannot take it for granted. This coalition
government will be based on a programme not fundamentally different from
that of the previous government. Their hopes are that they will be
better ‘managers’ and that the global crisis of capitalism will end
soon. While it is likely that they will be better managers, the
perspectives of a quick economic recovery, particularly one involving
the creation of jobs, is remote. On the other hand, it is highly
probably that the state won’t be able to pay its debt. Therefore, in the
future we are likely to see further polarisation between ‘old
reformist’ and Keynesian alternatives to stimulate the economy and
further and drastic cuts to avoid state default.. The fact that these
alternatives within capitalism have shown to fail in the end won’t stop
their return. A new layer of potential activists will have to relearn
that the problem is capitalism itself.