IRELAND: While the political arithmetic of the next Dáil won’t be clear until after February the 25th,
the battle lines in the state have been drawn for some time. The Irish
bourgeois are well aware that Fianna Fáil are a dead duck. Now Enda
Kenny has decided to concentrate his fire on the Labour Party. There is
one reason alone for this. The bourgeois want full control of the levers
of power and to all intents and purposes they want a continuation of
Cowen and Lenihan’s austerity programme, regardless of whoever leads the
government.
Labour must represent the interests of the working class
No coalition with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil
While the political arithmetic of the next Dáil won’t be clear until after February the 25th,
the battle lines in the state have been drawn for some time. The Irish
bourgeois are well aware that Fianna Fáil are a dead duck. Now Enda
Kenny has decided to concentrate his fire on the Labour Party. There is
one reason alone for this. The bourgeois want full control of the levers
of power and to all intents and purposes they want a continuation of
Cowen and Lenihan’s austerity programme, regardless of whoever leads the
government.
Over the past few months there have been
periodic references to joint talks, round table discussions and the need
for all parties to pull together. Micheál Martin has even gone as far
as to say that FF would support a minority Fine Gael government from the
opposition benches. It’s clear that sections of the bourgeois and no
doubt the EU and IMF who initiated some of this discussion would favour
some sort of Grand Coalition or national government, which in practice
would mean a coalition without the Labour Party.
That might well be too much to bare for
sections of FG and FF who after all have a "history" of rivalry going
back to the formation of the state. But under the present conditions,
the interests of the bourgeoisie could easily become more important. Its
not ruled out that a new formation akin to the Progressive Democrats
might emerge. Certainly the prospects for FF are particularly grim at
this stage, according to the latest Red C poll they remain on 15%.
The impasse in the state has reached a crisis
over the last few months and from the point of view of the bourgeois,
the idea of an FG/Labour Coalition leaves the door open for pressure
from below from the working class. What is evident is that
there will be no return of the Celtic Tiger on the 26th February. The
next Dáil will be racked with crisis and the Bourgeois would prefer not
to leave the door open to Labour.
The latest opinion polls which give Fine Gael
around 38% of the vote seems to have altered the perspective of the
Fine Gael leadership who now think they might win enough seats to rule either alone or with some Independent TD’s.This
would give the bosses an opportunity to push through more austerity and
more attacks on working people. Hence the attacks on the Labour Party
and hence also the remarks in today’s Independent:
“Yesterday Fine Gael TD Phil Hogan told the
Sunday Independent that its "favoured option" would be to form a
government on its own or with "like-minded" independent TDs.
"Obviously it is a matter for the people to
decide," Mr Hogan said, but he added that Fine Gael would only negotiate
with Labour on the basis of the mandate received for Fine Gael’s
five-point plan "to keep taxes low, to eliminate waste and put jobs at
the centre of policy".
As if to underline the belief that Fine Gael
would prefer to go it alone after the election, finance spokesman
Michael Noonan has called on Labour to break its link with the trade
union movement.
In effect, Mr Noonan laid down a marker
yesterday when he said the trade unions had wielded disproportionate
"influence and power" in Government Buildings in the last 10 years.
In what amounts to a dramatic escalation of the
row between the prospective coalition partners, he placed the unions in
a category of a "golden circle" of "vested interests".
"It’s time for a complete break with the past
in Irish politics. The golden circle of influence and inside dealing has
to end," Mr Noonan told the Sunday Independent.”
While
most of the attacks on Labour Party are populist gestures by bourgeois
politicians, it’s interesting to note that they are framed in more or
less the same terms as those used by the right wing of the Labour Party
against the left. This begs the question as to the influence of right
wing pro capitalist ideas in the tops of the Labour Party. But it also
demonstrates the real fear of the bourgeois that the Labour Party does
have a direct link with the Trade Unions. After all, it would clearly be
a disaster to allow working people any voice in the running of the
state. Best leave that to our betters no doubt.
Labour needs to develop a clear socialist position. A farsighted leadership
basing itself on the interests of the working class would make
mincemeat of the miserable bunch of petit bourgeois careerists, and
lickspittles in the ranks of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. But
instead the Labour leadership and the Labour Parliamentary Party (LPP)
have consistently avoided taking a clear position on the economic and
political issues. As we have explained recently the leadership have made
big changes to the party programme also:
“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. Labour’s ambiguity 3/2/11
The
problem for Eamon Gilmore however is that far from solving his
problems, watering down Labour’s programme weakens the Party. If there
is no distinction between Labour’s position and that of FG, then what
does the party stand for? Gilmore is squandering the important positions
that the party seemed to have won over the last couple of years. The
party’s vote is down to 20% according to Red C, high by the standards of
2007, but poor in comparison to what could and should have been
possible. Gilmore’s personal support seems to be on the slide also. The
image of "electability" seems to be fading somewhat. This means that it
will be more difficult for him to justify his political vacillation and
meandering to the Labour Party rank and file. Increasingly this will
lead to tensions within the party and it’s likely that a left wing will
develop at a certain stage. Workers in both the Public and Private
sectors will be looking for answers and will want to see the party
taking up their struggles.
It is
interesting that already there is opposition within the party to a
coalition with Fine Gael. This reflects the understanding of a layer of
particularly younger activists. The question has to be asked; What is
the point of tail ending a right wing government led by Fine Gael?
Working people deserve better than that. We have raised the idea of a
Labour and Left coalition as an alternative. The battle lines have
already been drawn with the EU/IMF Deal, Croke Park and the Finance
Bill. The question for the right wing leadership of the Labour Party is
straightforward:
“What side are you on boys?”
