Irish elections disappoint Sinn Fein (PR5)

The elections in Southern Ireland in May returned Bertie Ahern and the Fianna Fail government to power. The result was close but with 78 seats in the 166 seat Dail and 41.6% of the vote Fianna Fail has now formed a government with the Greens, the PDs and Independents.

The main opposition party, the Christian Democrat Fine Gael, made important gains, winning twenty more seats. But the Labour Party which was committed to a coalition with Fine Gael made no gains, ending up with twenty seats.

After a faltering start to an election focusing around his dodgy finances, Bertie Ahern adopted a “shock and awe” approach, pressing Blair and Clinton into service, singing his praises as the man who brought peace to northern Ireland. While the opposition focused on health and crime Fianna Fail hammered away on the economy, uttering dire warnings of what would happen if the Celtic Tiger was taken from the safe hands of Fianna Fail/PD and placed into the slippery grip of a Fine Gael/Labour coalition.

The feel good factor from nearly a decade and a half of economic success means there is a general satisfaction with the way the country is being run, even though not everyone is feeling quite as good as everyone else; the gap between the rich and poor has widened enormously and the national debt has been reduced at the expense of a surge in personal debt. In the end it all boiled down to “the economy, stupid!” In a booming economy the electorate didn’t want to risk change.

The two main bosses’ parties mopped up the bulk of the vote, squeezing the smaller groups and parties. The neoliberal PDs were decimated, now down to two seats in the Dail and Michael McDowell, their leader, lost his seat and, in a fit of pique, resigned from politics completely. The Greens improved their vote slightly but didn’t make the gains they’d hoped for. On the left, Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party got 5,000-plus votes but lost his seat in Dublin West.

Richard Boyd Barrett, a member of the Irish SWP, standing on a platform of a “People Before Profit” front, also failed to gain a seat in Dun Laoghaire, although he came up with a 5,000 plus first preference votes. This good vote was due to his leadership of a mass campaign against the threat to the public seafront from private developers, a campaign that was successful.

But the main loser in these elections were Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein has been gaining strength in the south and was hoping to turn its governmental positions in the north to advantage, but it failed to gain the three seats in the capital it had desperately hoped for. Worse, it lost Sean Crowe’s seat in Dublin West. Caoimghin O Caolain retained his seat in Cavan-Monaghan as did Martin Ferris in Kerry North, and Arthur Morgan in Louth. But overall, Sinn Fein is down from five seats to four with only one – Aongus O Snodaigh – in the capital.

Bertie Ahern personally targeted constituencies where Sinn Fein was standing candidates in Dublin. But the failure of the republicans cannot be blamed on this alone. Sinn Fein tried to be a trustworthy reformist party for the bosses in the south. But the bosses don’t need an extra reformist party when they already have Labour.

On capital taxes, Sinn Fein’s programme started out as more radical than Labour’s with a demand that capital gains tax be raised again to 40%, but under pressure this was ditched. In the course of the campaign Sinn Fein accepted the arguments of all the bosses’ parties that Ireland’s economic miracle had to be sustained by keeping the 12.5% corporation tax level that’s so important to maintain and attract foreign investment into the south. On health, Sinn Fein advocates a free and comprehensive health service but is silent about the struggle to phase out private beds in public hospitals.

This election result is a big blow to Sinn Fein, fresh from its successes in its new power-sharing role. Although it has expressed a willingness to join a coalition, all the main parties continue to shun the republicans. They remain untrustworthy to the Irish bosses, not only because of their occasional radical economic policies in the south, but also because of the role they have long played in the national struggle in the North. It remains to be seen how many more of their principles they will jettison in the run up to the 2009 elections in the hope of winning more votes in the south.

Permanent Revolution members in Ireland argued for a critical vote for Richard Boyd Barrett in Dun Laoghaire as a candidate of struggle. We maintained our criticisms of his political shortcomings but recognised that support for him symbolised resistance to attacks on working class interests.

We also argued for a critical vote for the Labour Party because of the support and influence that Labour, unfortunately, still enjoys amongst the organised working class in Ireland. Of course while arguing for a Labour vote we attacked its leader, Pat Rabbitte, for going into a pre-election pact with the most right wing of the two bourgeois parties. Once again it had trampled on the key principle of the founder of the Labour Party, James Connolly, who said:

“The working class is never stronger than when it stands independent on its own two feet and doesn’t rely on any bourgeois forces but instead relies on militant class struggle.”

Our aim is to once again turn that principle into action.

Maureen Barrington

Tue 09, October 2007 @ 15:28