The question of participation in coalition government looms as ever over the Irish Labour Party. For many members it is a matter of identity and they’d be disconcerted without it. It has been thus for more than half a century. For all those decades it has been next to impossible to discuss, evaluate and learn because one or both sides tends to repudiate as dishonest anything that threatens their old, familiar row.
Labour’s coalition ambitions have always been to ameliorate the most objectionable policies of the larger party and to implement some Labour policies. Fundamentally, it is policies, always policies, trading in policies. At election time each party has their manifesto or policy menu and while media feed the news with changing “red-line issues/policies”, the thoughtful citizen knows that newsworthiness and reality are not the same, that policy negotiations will follow the election result.
It could of course be different if Labour learned from past experience and decided that there would be a precondition or two to be accepted before opening policy talks/negotiations.
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Moreover, it is relatively easy to set out the criteria which a precondition for talks on government must satisfy.
1. A precondition cannot concern mere policy. Remember that those who want to strike a deal will concede easily on policy – especially ones that will make them look good. They will be well aware of history, knowing that they will have years of government to frustrate or take credit for implementation and ensure that Labour emerges damaged from the period of government.
2. A precondition must involve a fundamental change.
3. A precondition must change public discourse, allowing Labour to set the new debate. It must push media coverage of government formation so that it returns again and again to the radical change demanded.
4. A precondition must run counter to the interests of the larger party seeking a deal.
5. A precondition must be programmatic and measurable over the lifetime of a government.
6. A precondition must offer citizens something concrete for which to vote. They must know that a precondition is not negotiable. Rather it is the door to negotiations, i.e. that negotiations on policy will begin after entry.
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Interestingly, a Labour conference has already set a precondition that meets these criteria and which would drive FG, FF and likely SF nuts. It would certainly question them on how serious they are about getting into government.
Here’s the Conference Resolution proposed by Joanna Tuffy and unanimously adopted on April 23rd 2017 which set down Labour’s precondition for entering talks on government:
“That Labour make measurable reduction of income inequality our basic objective. All policy proposals are then to be at least compatible with this objective and a year-on-year, measurable reduction in income inequality is to become a precondition for any talks on participation in government or on support for minority government. It is accepted that alterations in pay structures within the public service and/or within companies and organisations dependent on the state for finance or contracts may be implemented before more general changes in the wider economy.”
Lest there be any doubt, the contentious matter here is gross income, i.e. pay, bonus, benefits etc. That is to say, reducing income inequality in an organisation refers to narrowing the gap in payroll cost between the top earner and the bottom earner.
That decision had three components.
The first changed the position of the Labour Party not to anything revolutionary but nevertheless to the start of something very different and radical: the reduction of income inequality. Top to bottom pay differentials – indeed, multiples – stripped of layers of taxation talk could at last become a topic of public controversy. Why? Because Labour had made it salient, something necessarily considered when a new government is in the offing.
The second component addressed voters seeking dramatic change. It said to potential voters that if you are offended by glaring income inequality, Labour wants to begin reductions, that regardless of other compromises, without a commitment to have a year on year, measurable decrease in inequality of income, without a commitment to narrowing top-to-bottom pay differentials within organisations subject to state controls, there will be no talks on government formation.
The third component anticipated the whatabouters, the conservative messers, who always try to prevent change by claiming that each and every move is “unfair”, that the whole nasty structure from, say, 15,000 per annum to 300,000 per annum must be maintained because to change any part of it would be – as usual – “unfair”.
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Unfortunately it’s likely that most people and even many Labour Party members will be surprised to discover that this is the Party’s position. How such a clear and basic decision was managed by well meaning staff and office holders so as to absorb it into existing practice/convention and thereby drain it of import is a case study in the conservative power of a bureau. It remains nevertheless a lucid conference decision.
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The rise of SF makes the adoption of a second equally lucid precondition essential.
SF say that the Provo. IRA is gone and their intention now is merely to honour those who recently fought for independence just like previous IRAs. Therein, however, is their problem. Most armies and, it is certain, previous IRAs and their opponents committed atrocities which are quietly forgotten in order to portray the rest of their fight as heroic and honourable. That is not a course open to today’s SF because the Provo. IRA’s fight was largely carried by choosing to attack civilians. Bluntly, there were too many car bombs, proxy bombs, beatings, torture and civilian bodies to leave sufficient heroics that they might plausibly commemorate.
It must not happen that SF in government drag the republic into commemorating atrocities. Targeting civilians by bullet or public bomb is an unambiguous crime against humanity/war crime. Ireland would be shamed to become a nation that honoured car bombers.
If SF cannot put these horrors behind them, then the one way to commemorate is to mark the sites as places where Irish war crimes were committed. Where the sites are outside the jurisdiction of the state, it is likely that other governments would facilitate Ireland’s installation of discrete commemorative war-crimes plaques in their streets.
Labour can prompt enormous change by adopting a precondition for talks on government such as would make it impossible that honouring attacks on civilians could ever become a part of Irish civic life.
Here’s a first draft of a possible conference resolution:
That Labour now adopt a second precondition for opening talks on the formation of government: the founding of an independent Irish War Crimes Commission (Coimisiún um Choireanna Cogaidh na hÉireann) charged with the commemoration of atrocities committed by Irish combatants in Ireland or abroad. The Commission would report progress quarterly to the Dáil. The first report would present the wording (to include the explicit term “war crime”) to appear on commemorative plaques which will be installed at the sites of atrocities.
The objective is to make it difficult or well nigh impossible for a member of an Irish government to attend an event honouring anyone in any way associated with a state-recognised atrocity. Moreover, members of government would from time to time be called upon to unveil a plaque on the site of an atrocity.
Tiocfaidh ár réamhchoinníoll.
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