Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Is there room for Labour in Northern Ireland?
Bertie Ahern’s announcement yesterday that his party will be looking into organising in Northern Ireland leaves open some interesting questions for both British and Irish Labour, not least if they find themselves with no ‘partner’ party in Northern Ireland. Slugger is convening a modest discussion group in a pub in Bournemouth next week during the British Labour Party’s annual conference. If you are going to the conference or you know someone who is, let us know you’re coming by ‘booking’ your place here. Or you can ‘book’ through Facebook.
Mick Fealty @ 11:31 AM
Mick Hall, no disagreement about name change and general horribleness of the 2I and I know about Comintern but I’m talkking about pre-Russian revolution. Lenin’s Russian SDLP was active in the second international. Both factions were, in fact, as the RSDLP survived from 1900 until 1912, before the 2I ended. Lenin was a member from 1905. The 3I wasn’t formed until 1919.
Phew, all that for a joke about the SDLP’s name…
Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 04:40 PMJW
Sorry, I have had a bug for the last two days, I am in that stage of not yet well enough to get out etc, but can manage the keyboard thus I am as bad tempered as hell.
Your post brought me up sharp and perhaps I was also a bit hard on the chap who was defending his Queen.
Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 04:51 PMMH, bah, no worries.
I’m still left wondering why anyone other, presumably, than some kind of left-unionist would want British Labour to organise?
Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 04:55 PMJW
Me to, I feel some people, without meaning to be arrogant still view Labour [UK] as some form of progressive party, sadly myself I just do not see it. Whilst I never thought it was great, it always provided when in government that half inch of space through which progressive legislation could get on the Statue book. Not under Blair when the opposite became true, indeed NL attempted to close down progressive opinion both within the party and outside and with some success.It is interesting no one has posted on why the UKLP does not organize in the north, we know why the Tories do not and the fact that LP does not is because they support a United Ireland historically and it was thought that to organize in the north would legitimize partition. Which in my view is as true today as it was when it first became party policy. The question that needs to be asked is what has changed and the answer is nowt as far as the constitutional position is concerned.
Partition was wrong in the past and it still is, and for the LP to organize in the north would be to endorse partition.
Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 05:16 PMMick Hall, the queen of Britain is not called ‘Betty Windsor’ her married name is Elizabeth Oldenburg, given her age I believe it is only showing respect to call he Mrs. Oldenburg.
Is MisePosted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 05:57 PMJW
Here are two quotes from a UUP health minister and SF spokesperson in the Dail.
We need to get back to a health service from the craidle to the grave.
What Ireland needs is not tinkering with health but a universal service free at the point of use.
When it comes to real issues flag wavers are surplus to requirements.Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 07:00 PM“Partition was wrong in the past and it still is, and for the LP to organize in the north would be to endorse partition.”
The people of Ireland North and South have now endorsed partition, so Labour can fairly do as they please, even if they have their work cut out convincing the local electorate that they should trust anything beyond their chequebook and coloured flag.
There is an inner moral vacuity about class politics in these latitudes. Globalisation means that the worst off class who operate the means of material production now tend to live somewhere else.
Labour can stand for trying to narrow the widening economic ensecurity gap, but when they neglect education, training, and housing and abandon people to permanent welfare it is hard to take them seriously, except as cynical if effective careerists.
Identifying insecurity as the basis of much inequality is useful however, as Guardian reading social democratic apparatchiks and local government bureaucrats are some of the most privileged people the world has ever seen. With constant reward for often limited risk, they are socially segregated from a welfare class of enforced idleness or illness and from the casualised or specialist private sector.
As a philosophy, Thatcherism was inclusive after a fashion. Nobody was safe from her. If monetarism destroyed your job, it was not personal.
And there was collusion. The GB Unions’ refusal to recognise unions of the unemployed licensed the Tories to turn down the economy and destroy the organised labour movement.
What the betting though that our own political miserablists park the poor as sectarian ballot fodder, forget enterprise, and keep the public sector fat and busy producing press releases. How would labour get a lever in then? As part of UK labour you could at least ask for Peter Mandelson’s advice.
Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 08:50 PMCormac,
seem to recall the Stickies referring to what came to be known as chuckys as pinheads fadó fadó in Éirinn
Posted by on Sep 19, 2007 @ 11:38 PM“Official Sinn Féin became ‘Official Sinn Féin - The Workers Party’, which became The Workers Party, most of whom became Democratic Left and were eventually merged with/swallowed up by Labour.”
Posted by Cormac on Sep 19, 2007 @ 02:21 PM
Think it was DL that swallowed up Labour. Rabbitte, McManus,Gilmore have taken the big jobs in the party since.
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 12:47 AM“The problem with the Irish Labour Party now is that nearly all of it’s TD’s are middle class. This is very off-putting to those that are of a disadvantaged social class. There is no social bond or understanding between the two.
James Connolly would no doubt be disappointed if he could see the current stock of wannabees, including the last leader, the smug Past Rabitte.”
Posted by Gréagóir O’ FrainclÃn on Sep 19, 2007 @ 01:51 PM
Someone in the 1970s referred to their front bench as “The College Of Surgeons”. Sums them up really. Bertie is far more comfortable canvassing in a council estate than GP’s wife McManus or private rugby school educated Quinn or Spring. Don’t know off hand what private rugby school Fergus Findlay or legal eagle John Rogers went too but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to defile himself by sharing a room with “skangers”. A daughter of a recent “socialist” front bencher was sent to an exclusive 4k a year grind school to repeat her leaving.
Give me Tony Gregory any day. Lives among the ordinary people of Dublin’s inner city. Not a bullsh*tter.Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 01:05 AMMick:
Bertie Ahern’s announcement yesterday that his party will be looking into organising in Northern Ireland leaves open some interesting questions for both British and Irish Labour, not least if they find themselves with no ‘partner’ party in Northern Ireland.
This argument and all the other ones on this matter are all red herrings. The fact is that the people of NI will not vote outside of their comfortable tribal vote. We have had plenty of opportunity to do so in the past. There is an NI Labour Party which declared itself as being in the vein of the British Labour Party. Nobody voted for it. Likewise, there’s the Conservative Party - who unlike Labour are actually official. They get no votes worth mentioning either, not even in in North Down which under normal circumstances would be a heartland for them. We’ve had communist parties, socialist parties, Natural Law, Greens, Alliance, and so on. All of them have had to struggle against the odds, running to stay still almost, to get what vote they have.
I don’t understand at all why people seem to wallow in this fantasy that if only the UK parties organized here, people would magically give up their tribal vote. Well, they won’t, and they have demonstrated that in stark terms, time and time again, for the past three or four decades. If Bertie or Gordon organize here, they’ll get their arses kicked, and if anyone wants to bet otherwise I’ll take them on.
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 02:01 AMGood to see Labour organisation causing such consternation.
Labour will be standing in elections. There will be a surge of interest when the electorate have an opportunity to vote for the party. It is our responsibility to turn that into seats.
Frankly, I do not expect the likes of Mick Hall or JW to agree with us. I assume that they will be standing themselves somewhere.
I’m intereted in seeing Labour Party canvassing systems being given an outing in NI.
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 06:46 AMBertie Ahern’s announcement yesterday that his party will be looking into organising in Northern Ireland leaves open some interesting questions for both British and Irish Labour, not least if they find themselves with no ‘partner’ party in Northern Ireland. Slugger is convening a modest discussion group in a pub in Bournemouth next week during the British Labour Party’s annual conference. If you are going to the conference or you know someone who is, let us know you’re coming by ‘booking’ your place here. Or you can ‘book’ through Facebook.
So much for FF or the Irish Labour party organising in the six counties, looks like old DUP/uda/uvf are setting up in Moygashel anyway with another party. God bless them.
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 08:08 AMMick Hall: How have I insulted Betty Windsor, is that not here name. Lets be clear you can call her what you choose but I have no right to do the same.
And has PAJ not noticed that you use the short form of your own name! Indeed; references to Betty Windsor are no more offensive than references to Jimmy Connolly, Paddy Pearse and Micky Collins.
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 01:10 PMAquifer
As often an interesting post, however whilst you may be correct in that there was a vote north and south that could be interpreted as endorsing partition, in all honesty I do not feel a fair minded person would take it as read.
The only vote on this which could carry real weight, [for me at least] would be an all Ireland vote which asked whether the island of Ireland should return to being a single political entity or remain partitioned. Any thing less is an attempt to maintain the status quo by throwing a veil over the issue
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 03:31 PM“The likes of” me, eh? Sorry, old bean, you don’t know anything about me. All I’ve stated is that the national question trumps others at election time. That’s a fairly straightforward observation. I didn’t say it was a good thing. Nonetheless, what it means is that the British Labour party in the North will be viewed as just that: British. Ergo, left-unionism. And for good reason, because that is what they would be.
To tell you the truth, I think the unionist/nationalist fight has pretty much become a pantomime - lots of shouting about symbols and esteem and not much in the way of real politics but to imagine that it’s an irrelevance is an exercise in self-delusion. In fact, I am strongly of the opinion that the sectarianism built-in to the Agreement and its communal voting block nonsense, can only deepen the divide.
Noel Adams presents two quotes about health services to indicate that “flag waving” is, as he so charmingly puts is, “surplus to requirements” – a rather reductionist view of the purpose of politics. Somehow I think that Sinn Féin and the unionist parties will find plenty to squabble over, Mr. Adams. Show me some concrete evidence that there is a new dispensation at work and people will be attracted to the likes of Labour. Of course, I fully expect the various parties to get together on various social and economic issues, but singing from the same hymn sheet doesn’t suddenly mean that nationalists and republicans will somehow be magically transformed into unionists. I point you in the direction of those delightful, well-heeled jokers in the “non-sectarian” Alliance party.
You’re right on one count, though, Labourman I wouldn’t vote for Labour if you paid me to. Atilla the Stockbroker said it all: “Aneurin Bevan, your party is dead/And the time for a new one is nigh/Will the last person Left please turn out the lights?/New Labour, just fuck off and die. “
Frankly I’d be delighted if Labour voters stopped harping on about nasty Tony’s changes have destroyed their party and examined their party’s horrendous history.
Pip, pip.
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 04:40 PMAddendum: does no-one remember the NILP or the Commonwealth Labour party?
Posted by on Sep 20, 2007 @ 04:44 PMIn Scotland and the rest of Britain, the British Labour party are hardline unionists who hate the SNP and the idea of Scottish independence with a passion.
It’s probably incorrect to equate Scottish politics with Northern Irish politics, but how this philosophy would fit in with cross-border alliances between British Labour and the main Irish parties is an interesting thought.
Posted by on Sep 21, 2007 @ 12:45 PM
