Left alliance essential to overcome crisis of its own success

The unhappy end of Dick Spring's long reign as the pivotal figure in Irish politics dramatises something that has been clear for a while now: the Irish Left is in crisis. His astuteness will be missed, and his achievements will finally be given their due. But for some time he was at the head of a movement in very bad trouble, and he didn't seem to know what to do.

The presidential campaign, offering a chance for the Left to fight on its strongest ground - the public values and aspirations articulated by Mary Robinson - was a last chance to re-group. Instead, the Left slipped further to the margins than at any time in 20 years. It is hard to argue with Dick Spring's evident belief that something was over.

For Dick Spring the defeat contained inevitable reminders of the 1990 election and the hopes then of a historic breakthrough. I have argued here that the left-wing parties needed to respond to the mood of change that Mrs Robinson had crystallised by forming a new, united movement. That didn't happen, and the consequences are now apparent. A new civil war politics, re-polarising a greatly diminished public realm between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, has taken hold.

It would be absurd to blame Adi Roche, Dick Spring, or Fergus Finlay for this - the trends were evident in the June election. And both reflected deeper developments, each of them, paradoxically, the result of left-wing success.

The first is the emergence of social consensus - itself a huge achievement for the reformist Left. The idea of national bargaining by the social partners has now won an almost complete victory in the Republic. The economic fruits have been so succulent that even Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats have now bitten the apple.

This is a good thing. But it presents the party political Left with severe problems. Modern socialism's base is in industrial conflict and local activism. If the conflict is bargained out of existence, and the local activist's role replaced by the high-level negotiator, then the reformist Left's traditional base is undermined.

And what remains is, increasingly, ceded to those who oppose the partnership process. Thus the relative success in recent times of revolutionary Marxists like the Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins and of the SIPTU grassroots activist Carol Ann Duffy.

The second problem is the victory of the so-called liberal agenda. Much of the fuel for left-wing ideals in Ireland was harvested from the bog of authoritarian, repressive conservatism. The desire for change was driven by a general and widespread feeling that the old order was not merely unjust but in any case unsustainable. The Left may often have been in a minority on issues of social and sexual freedom, but it was a large, growing minority.

Now, there is no longer a single Dail party that represents with any consistency the conservative values that were, until so recently, the national orthodoxy. Liberals are no longer pushed into the orbit of the Left - there are comfortable places for them within the big mainstream parties. And the church-state issues which remain - education and health in particular - are tough, messy ones on which it is very much more difficult to build broad coalitions.

The third problem has to do with politics itself. Again, it results in part from socialist success. The Left has done a spectacularly good job (though not alone, of course - the Progressive Democrats must also take much of the credit) in exposing the corruption of the old order.

The contention of socialists that elements of big business and of conservative politics were joined in an unholy alliance has been borne out. The hypocrisy of right-wing rhetoric, especially that of Fianna Fail's pseudo-patriotism, has been laid bare.

It has been a double-edged success. The exposure of corruption has created in the public a mood of contempt for politics. The poor turnout at the last general election and the appalling turnout for the presidential election are but symptoms of a huge loss of faith in politics. And the Left suffers disproportionately from that repugnance.

For one thing, it doesn't have the kind of electoral machine that can bring out a core vote regardless of cynicism. And, for another, the Left itself is fundamentally dependent on the belief that politics can work. These are fundamental problems, and a new face at the top of the Labour Party will not even begin to solve them. Electing Ruairi Quinn, Brendan Howlin or anyone else is not going to make the slightest difference to the plight of the Left as a whole. Instead of throwing itself into a frenetic internal contest, Labour would be better off holding back, reflecting on where socialist and radical ideas lie in Ireland now, and trying to answer some very basic questions. Every assumption should be examined.

The first question is ideological: what does socialism mean at the end of the 20th century? If the Left is to have a future it has to develop a distinctive economic vision. It has to figure out how the new buzz-words of inclusiveness and consensus can make sense in what is still a fiercely unequal society.

Arguably, one of the big tasks for the Left is to reclaim the economic support base which is currently wrapped up in Catholic conservatism. With the big divide in Irish society being along moral and religious lines, many natural supporters of the Left - economically marginalised people left behind by the modernisation process - have ended up on the opposite side of that divide to the one occupied by the socialist parties. Should there be a truce in the religious war in order to seek common ground on economic issues?

The second question is institutional. How does Labour relate to Democratic Left and the Greens, and how do all three of them relate to Fine Gael? There is simply no future in the Left continuing the contradictory role it has played in relation to the big civil war parties, first inflicting serious damage on them and then proving emergency rescue in return for a slice of power.

At the very least, the Left parties have to form a coherent alliance among themselves. At most, they have to consider whether, if they are tied to Fine Gael in practice, they might not be better to seek a more formal, coherent arrangement.

And the third question is organisational. How do party politics relate to civil society? How can politics themselves be re-invented in a cynical, individualistic culture? What kind of alliances can be built between the parliamentary Left and the religious, voluntary and civic movements with most of the activists and many of the ideas?

If there is no engagement with these questions, Labour's leadership contest will be no more than a symptom of the crisis that precipitated it.