IRELAND:: Vote Labour and fight for socialist policies

The posters are going up on the lamp posts
and the tourists and the European lorry drivers are starting to drive
round in circles looking for road signs obliterated by the airbrushed
smiles of party hopefuls. But this is no ordinary election. The election
on February 25th will represent a snapshot of the political fallout
from the economic collapse and the farcical slide into chaos of the
Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition. Farcical that is, except
for the calamity that the government’s policies have created for the
working class people of Ireland.

The key issue in the election will be the economy and the
political and social crisis in the state. The Irish bourgeois have a
series problem. It’s clear that they can’t continue to rule through
Fianna Fáil, the party is too discredited. But the prospect
of a Fine Gael and Labour coalition is not their ideal choice either.
An FG/Labour coalition is by far and away the most likely outcome of the
election and Eamon Gilmore and Enda Kenny might well be able to cobble
together a programme for government. But this programme would be based
on a sorry compromise between two divergent political positions the
reality is that there is a country mile between an agreement between two
leaders and the expectations and hopes of the working people and the
middle class layers that vote for them.

In the long term it will be the different class
basis of Fine Gael and the Labour Party which will be decisive in a
coalition. The bourgeois will want their pound of flesh, while working
people will demand reforms and radical change from the Labour Party.
Over a period of time the Labour leaders will be come under increasing
pressure and an opposition will develop to the policies of coalition.
This was the experience of the 1980’s. If anything the pressures will be
worse.

A new FG/Labour coalition will inevitably be a
government of crisis. While the bailout might take some of the immediate
pressures off the state in the bond markets the reality on the ground
will be very different. The economy is still crawling along and the
strictures of the EU/IMF small print means that the public sector will
be in the front line once again. Trotsky once made the point that a cube
of metal and ball of metal might appear different, but if you put them
under massive pressure they both end up flat. In other words the
pressure affected them in more or less the same way.

This will put the Labour Party leaders under
pressure. From the point of view of the bourgeois that isn’t a good
sign, it adds uncertainty to an already serious situation. It helps to
explain Michéal Martin’s comments that Fianna Fáil
would be willing to support a minority Fine Gael government. This isn’t
the first time that the FF leaders have touted the idea of some sort of
national government. The recent discussions prior to the announcement
of the four year budget plan reflected the statements of Olli Rehn that
the various parties needed to sort themselves out. The ruling class want
stability, but not for the same reasons that workers do. The bosses
want a stable united government that is prepared to do their bidding
down to the letter, that means making the workers pay for the crisis.

While a national government might not be the
immediate perspective, the collapse of FF and the exit of a large part
of the leadership from the Dáil has put the party into
crisis. There have been examples internationally of once dominant
parties imploding, not least in Italy where the Christian Democrats, the
Socialist Party and the Communist Party have all disappeared over time.
In Ireland the Progressive Democrats survived for over 20 years after a
split in both FF and FG. Doubtless the possibility of a formal alliance
between FF and FG might be too much for some.

The experience of the past period in Ireland is
that the battle lines have been drawn between the bosses and the working
class. Class tensions have risen, the public sector workers have been
scapegoated and attacked time and time again, while the private sector
bosses have been given free reign by the government. The sight of Thomas
Cook workers being manhandled down Grafton Street and thrown in Jail
angered many workers. The repeated struggles at Aer Lingus, the
Waterford Crystal occupation, the TEEU and Electrical Contractors
dispute and particularly the collapse of the building industry are all
examples of the bosses’ assault on the working class.

The new government will be thrown into this
maelstrom, and the Trade union movement will come under massive pressure
to defend working people. The state has entered an age of austerity,
the same impasse that affects Europe and the US and the masses in the ex
colonial countries. The ideas of Marxism and of militant trade union
action will become increasingly relevant over the next few years.

We make no apologies for calling for a vote for
Labour in the election. Individuals to the left of the party might make a
breakthrough in one or two places. But without a programme of
transforming the Labour Party and the trade unions, defeating the ideas
of reformism and winning the mass of the working class to the
perspective of the socialist transformation of society there are serious
limits to the possibilities for small “independent” left groups. The
Irish working class have demonstrated time and time again that they have
the capacity to struggle to defend their jobs, wages and conditions. That needs to be combined with a clear sighted Marxist leadership. There are no short cuts.