Diarmaid Ferriter: Labour Party not entitled to survive but would be missed

Exactly a century ago, the Irish Labour Party was scrambling to make itself ready and relevant as a general election approached. Having stood aside from the transformative 1918 election, it was under pressure to do so again, from within and without, as Civil War clouds gathered. But a special meeting of the party and the Trades Union Congress it was tied to voted 115 to 82 in favour of participation.

That general election held in June 1922 was Labour’s best day; it achieved 21.4 per cent of first preference votes, a feat not repeated. Seventeen of its 18 candidates were elected, and this newspaper declared the party had “arrived as an important and highly organised factor in national affairs”.

The optimism was short-lived. Civil War squeezed Labour, and it was to endure constant angst about its role and identity in subsequent decades. Labour TDs contributed handsomely to State building in the 1920s through ensuring some form of parliamentary opposition and highlighting social and economic inequalities, but the party also had to contend with a new Fianna Fáil party that stole many of its political clothes. By 1932, it was reduced to just seven seats, the same as it has today.

Striking a balance between being an independent political force and joining other opposition parties to remove Fianna Fáil from power remained a dilemma, alongside quarrels and defensiveness born of Red Scares, internal rifts, rural-urban tensions, the conservatism of members and leaders, and its fractious relationship with the trade unions.

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It eventually came out of the political closet in 1966 to announce “a coherent socialist philosophy” and then declared the 1970s would be socialist, but the hoped-for breakthrough remained elusive.

While the party obtained only 9 per cent of the vote, it got
90 per cent of the blame when things go wrong in government

Committed members were sometimes wry in reflecting on the perpetual tribulations and navel gazing: for many on the left, it was the party, according to John Horgan in his 1986 book Labour: The Price of Power, “one would never dream of joining, the party one is thinking of leaving or the party one has just left”. Horgan devoted a whole chapter to “Rebels and Outcasts” and noted the common perception of it as “a tattered remnant of something that might have been”. He characterised it as “staggering from one vicissitude to the next, often down but never quite out” and there was to be another quarter century of the same.

In 1983 its leader, Dick Spring, complained that while it obtained only 9 per cent of the vote, it got “90 per cent of the blame when things go wrong in government”. At that point, the party was in power with Fine Gael and by early 1986 opinion polls had the party’s support as low as 4 per cent. Spring kept his own seat by only four votes in the subsequent general election. Yet he led the party in 1992 to 33 seats with over 19 per cent of first preferences, before entering coalition with Fianna Fáil.

Labour Party optimists, if there are any left, might take some comfort from the experiences of this sweep of history. The soon-to-be-appointed leader Ivana Bacik has noted that during 14 years in opposition in 1997-2011 it “developed a more distinctly radical social agenda than at any time previously”. Some now use that as a stick with which to beat it, suggesting it highlights how narrowly focused it became. History, however, may be kinder; the death of Mervyn Taylor last year brought reminders that as a Labour minister for equality and law reform from 1993-1997, he enacted 17 Acts in family law reform and significant equality legislation. Historians of the future may also conclude that it put national before party interest in entering government in 2011 after a record 37 TDs were elected.

It is often maintained the party, given its miserable polling figures, receives disproportionate attention. But that is partly because of the depth of its history and its contribution during various difficult periods that, collectively, amounts to something substantial. That does not entitle it to survive or thrive, but it does suggest its disappearance would be a sad day for Irish politics.

Sinn Féin’s devouring of much of Labour’s traditional vote might indicate the damage is terminal, but committed supporters may hope that if the gloss comes off Sinn Féin when making the likely transition from constant outrage to onerous governing, Labour could regain some momentum. That assumes, however, it will still have enough of a presence to build on.

It would appear that coalition governments are here for the long term. The Labour Party has never satisfactorily resolved its coalition dilemma, but if its contemporary predicament is about survival rather than power, it needs to look not just within, but at how it can build alliances with other smaller parties. The divisions between them are self-defeating. Is there really much difference between the Labour Party and the Social Democrats and would it not make sense for them to coalesce?