EAMONN GILMORE MUZZLES TDs
Jan 31st, 2011 by Conor McCabe
This is from The Phoenix, and it relates to this conference, which is on next Saturday in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore was at sixes and sevens on RTE’s News at One recently when Sean O’Rourke put it to him that Sinn Féin and other left politicians were more natural coalition partners than Fine Gael.
Now Gilmore has banned three TDs from even sharing a platform with the same Left wing parties.
A conference entitled New Political Possibilities in Ireland for all Left-Wing Parties in Partnership with Civil Society is due to convene in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin on February 5.Speakers include Sinn Féin’s Aengus O Snodaigh TD and Eoin O’Broin; United Left Dáil candidates Joe Higgins MEP and Richard Boyd Barrett; workers’ Party president Mick Finnegan and leading trade unionists, including SIPTU head Jack O’Connor, as well as community and equality activists.
The conference was also to have included three Labour TDs – Michael D. Higgins, Tommy Broughan and Ciaran Lynch – all three of whom had last month agreed to attend and deliver a speech.
However, conference organisers received notices of withdrawal during the Christmas period from Lynch and Michael [D. Higgins], citing various constituency and scheduling problems.
The Labour leadership, Gilmore and Ruairi Quinn, in particular, were aghast to learn that three of their TDs were to attend a gathering of socialists and republicans and it was made clear to the TDs that they were not to attend.
Broughan resisted this pressure until the middle of January but then he too sent an excuse to the organisers to say he could not attend.
Fine Gael’s offensive in the last few months has seen intense competition for the middle class vote result in a steep decline in Labour’s poll ratings, and an equally sharp rise in that of FG.
There is deep paranoia about this at party leadership level, as they know that the largest base of Labour support is amongst the middle class section of the political market.
According to the small print of recent poll analysis, they also know that the slightest whiff of socialism or parlaying with Left forces - never mind the dreaded Shinners - is the kiss of death amongst the liberal middle classes that have been looking to Labour.
I was wondering the other day whether Labour’s current bout of red-baiting nastiness has something to do with the fact that the party grandees (Gilmore, Burton, Rabbitte and Quinn) are all elected to Dublin constituencies and have cultivated their voting base over the years by appealing to the ‘liberal middle classes’ in their constituencies. Is it the case that they are totally unreceptive to any idea that Labour should adopt a left-wing stance because that, in their eyes, would mean them losing votes personally? Or are they just resolutely right-wing? Whatever the answer, I got a letter from Fr Stack today where he basically steals all of Labour’s ‘jobs, reform, fairness’ clothes and says he’s going to renegotiate the IMF/EU deal ‘on behalf of and for the benefit of the Irish People, not the international banks’. So I reckon the net outcome of the Labour leadership’s anti-left position, and its failure to distinguish itself from the other right wing parties, will be votes lost to Fine Gael. That takes special brains.
I think it’s a mixture of both. They are definitely living in a bubble, and of course Gilmore and Rabbitte have form when it comes to being careerists.
I love this photo from the meeting where Rabbitte and Gilmore left the WP, the faces on Goulding and Garland. They knew what absolute cocks Rabbitte and Gilmore were - absolute diamond pricks.
Those expressions say it all Conor.
I was renting in Dalkey during the 2007 election and Eamon Gilmore himself called to our door. I was out, unfortunately, but my wife said that although he only stayed talking to her for a couple of minutes she found him to be arrogant and aloof. Perhaps he was just tired, or had more pressing matters of interest on his mind. Either way he barely paid any attention when she listed the minor local issues that he asked about. Our rented house contrasted rather sharply with the other houses on the road as the landlord did very little with it since they inherited the house about 30 years before. So perhaps Gilmore judged that we weren’t in the right social category that Labour considers its base to be and so wasn’t bothered to get our vote.
Haha, the more you look at Goulding’s expression the more it seems to morph into even deeper disgust while Garland looks like he’s going to projectile vomit.
It’s an amusing turn of events really,
Firstly, you had three TDs, one retiring, who were willing to mouth some vague leftish platitudes. In and of itself that’s a little unusual from Labour TDs. But they scurried away to hide as soon as the party leadership found out. Soft Leftish platitudes are only to be wheeled out when it’s advantageous to do so, not when it might risk giving credibility to forces to Labour’s left!
Then you have SIPTU and UNITE, who are sponsoring the conference, presumably in large part as a way to bolster Labour’s allegedly “left” credentials, but have ended up essentially providing a platform for a bunch of Pinkos and Provos and nobody more important from Labour than a couple of slightly bewildered councillors. The UNITE leadership probably won’t be all that put out, but the SIPTU bureaucrats must be getting sick in their mouths.
And of course you have the other people involved in organising the conference, who seem like decent sincere sorts, but who unfortunately were disconnected from reality enough to imagine a “left unity” involving the Labour Party. Well, they’ve got their answer.
“And of course you have the other people involved in organising the conference, who seem like decent sincere sorts, but who unfortunately were disconnected from reality enough to imagine a “left unity” involving the Labour Party. Well, they’ve got their answer.”
Really? It’s quite obvious to anyone who would bother to actually look into it that the disconnectedness is coming from the Labour leadership, not the membership.
But, then again, that’s really only for those who would bother to actually look into it.
The other thing, Mark P, is that when it comes to arrogance, smugness and aloofness, you really are proof that the Labour leadership does not have a monopoly on these qualities.
I have to admit that I’m a little amused by that personal attack, Conor. You aren’t exactly legendary for your consistently charming, polite, and respectful method of argument yourself, you know. It seems that we can add self-awareness to the list of character traits you apparently aren’t big on.
Not that I object for a moment to a bit of vigorous rudeness or condescencion in argument. It’s hypocrisy that leaves a bit of a nasty taste in the mouth.
Now getting back to your actual political point, I’m not quite sure that I follow you. Who and what exactly are you referring to when you say that: “It’s quite obvious to anyone who would bother to actually look into it that the disconnectedness is coming from the leadership, not the membership.” The leadership and membership of those putting on the conference? The leadership and membership of the Labour Party?
Yep, I’m a hypocrite. I know that. I’m full of contradictions. I know that as well. And I’m not a very nice person, ditto. I’ve hurt a lot of people around me, lost some good friends through no fault of their own and all of mine.
Regardless of all of that Mark P, you’re still a smug cunt.
And proud of it Conor.
None of which effects for a moment whether what I’m saying is correct. I realise that you find my tone aggravating, but as someone who specialises in using an inflammatory tone yourself it really is remarkable how quickly you lose the rag. The expression “can dish it out, but can’t take it” might spring to the minds of the uncharitable.
Now, getting back to the poing, this mythical left wing Labour membership you’ve discovered. Have you informed the parazoologists of the Bigfoot Society of your exciting find? It sounds like the sort of thing they’d be interested in. Where has this shy species been hiding for the last fifteen years? There certainly aren’t to be found in the lush habitat of the Labour Parliamentary Party.
Yeah. Smug cunt.
And there you go again. Reduced to spitting bile because you are unable or unwilling to defend your view of the Labour Party.
It seems to be an issue that triggers these convulsions on a reasonably regular basis. You’ll criticise the leadership but you have a semi-religious view of the left inclinations of the membership, quite unrelated to the actual views of the mass of Labour Party members. In so far as we can even speak of a “mass” of Labour members, of course.
I’d much rather discuss that subject than our respective character failings. It seems you’d prefer to stick to calling me names however.
Yep.
Smug cunt.
And proud of it, as I’ve already told you.
I’d rather be a smug cunt, than an equally smug fool who’s dimly aware that he’s deluding himself and as a result is incapable of arguing his corner without ending up a twitching ball of bile and incoherent rage.
You think that the Labour Party leadership are sell outs who are misrepresenting the views of a fundamentally left wing membership. I think that the Labour Party leadership in fact represents the views of the actually existing Labour Party membership pretty well.
Which is why there isn’t one single Labour Party TD who has eked out a profile to the left of the leadership yet not one single Labour Party TD has been deselected in 15 years. And its why not one single delegate argued coalition the last time Labour Party conference discussed the issue. And it’s why there’s no organisation of the Labour left, or left led branches, or alternative left programmes. There’s nothing there, except your imagination.
smug cunt.
Er, personal attacks aside, I’m not really convinced that there is a progressive core of Labour members opposed to the policies of the leadership. If there is, then surely there would be some sign of this in terms of internal tensions etc. During the 80s when there was an actual left-right battle within the LP, these tensions became quite explosive and there was a great deal of coverage of them. If the LP membership is genuinely annoyed by Gilmore et al’s leadership then why are there so few signs of this being the case?
However, I do think there is a progressive periphery in the LP, a small part of which broke away in Laois / Offaly, and would suggest that there are others like that within the Labour Party. However, the evidence that they are the norm rather than the exception, seems to me to be non-existent. However, the fact that there are a minority of genuinely progressive people in the LP means that a careful approach has to be taken in exposing the bankrupcy of the LP leadership. Incidentally, with regard to Michael D. Higgins, the fact that he obeyed the command from Gilmore is disgraceful though he is quite genuine in terms of what might once have been described as ‘Labour Left’, something he proved when he defended the militant at a time when others (like Emmet Stagg) were collaborating with the right-wing leadership to remove them. Once again though, I don’t know what’s worse, Gilmore ordering them not to attend or the fact that they obeyed him.
The left unity conference was dismissed by Mark P as one organised by people “disconnected from reality”, one expressed in his smug cuntish way, as has been his want on this site for the last couple of years.
I shouldn’t gave been surprised, though, as Mark P is not only a smug cunt, he is proud of being a smug cunt.
Fine, that certainly wasn’t a fair assesment of the organisers, but I don’t think anyone wants to get bogged down in a slagging match.
What has actually emerged from the discussion is an important political question of whether the Labour membership is in fact largely progressive and are unhappy with the policies of the leadership OR whether the leadership and majority of the membership are in fact largely in sync politically, with a small peripheral progressive minority opposed to Labour’s desire to be as right-wing as humanly possible. It would be good if someone could argue in favour of the former as I’ve seen little to convince me of it.
Well what about labour voters? Are they largely progressive people? Forget about this election, ‘cos this one is new ground in so many ways, but what about people who have voted Labour in the past?
I know what that smug cunt Mark P thinks about people who have voted Labour in the past, but what can you do? He’s a smug cunt, ‘and proud of it’.
As for labour party members, well, again I’ve had this conversation with Mark P in the past, and I know what he is going to say, and I know that he’s going to be an insulting smug little cunt.
So why bother?
I mean, to take your last line there budapestkick, it would be good if Mark P could argue in favour of his point without being a smug cunt, but I’ve seen little to convince me of that.
It isn’t a fair assessment of the organisers. It also isn’t a fair representation of what I actually said about them which was:
“the other people involved in organising the conference, who seem like decent sincere sorts, but who unfortunately were disconnected from reality enough to imagine a “left unity” involving the Labour Party”.
It is in fact disconnected from reality to talk of a “left unity” involving the Labour Party. I stand by that assessment even if causes Conor to pout and stamp his foot.
Conor would rather sulk than discuss whether there is any reality to talking of “left unity” involving Labour. Or then discuss seriously whether the mass of Labour Party members are notably to the left of their leadership. And I think you’ll find that he’s no more willing to discuss these issues seriously with you than he was with me.
By the way, I’d be interested to hear what it is I allegedly think about “people who have voted Labour in the past”. For the record I have no objection at all to people having voted Labour in the past. If you go back far enough, I’d even think it was the right thing to do.
I think there’s an important difference between Labour Party membership and Labour Party voters. Interestingly, if you look at where their core vote come from, it’s actually a quite similar base to that of the SP (’traditional’ middle-income working-class with generally high rates of union membership etc.) However, it’s also important to keep in mind that many of Labour’s new voters (though the same could be said for every other political party) would have previously voted FF and in terms of their political outlook it would be difficult to describe them as anything other than anti-FF and looking for some kind of alternative, which means a big spectrum of different political views and class interests. It’s quite hard to nail down and analyse given that there is a political flux at the moment. I would say that the traditional labour voter (who voted for them in 2002, 2007 etc.) could be broadly described as progressive.
However, the current labour voter is a complicated beast and could just as easily vote FG, SF, ULA, Independent etc. in the current climate. What’s more important is the actual LP membership and if you are of the opinion that the majority of the LP membership is out of sync with the leadership (I honestly don’t know your opinions on this) then I would like to hear your argument for this rather than getting bogged down in personal insults.
The easiest way to win the undecided over to your side of an argument, is to very subtly wind up your opponent, until they go off uncontrollably in the wrong direction for no apparent reason.
Whether someone is a smug cunt or not doesn’t affect their ability to make a point, repeating the same insult every second sentence does however.
I call my nearest and dearest friends cunts all the time - maybe it’s just friendly banter?
@ Mark P
Smug cunt.
@ Budapestick
As far as Labour Party leadership v Labour Party membership goes, the membership is a lot more progressive, and a lot more open to alliances with ULA.
Less so with Sinn Fein but I think if there was a real push made for a Labour-led government with Sinn Fein as coalition, the membership would go along with it.
One of the problems at the moment is that there is a real disconnectedness between the Labour Party Leadership’s analysis of its voters and the actual economic demographics of Labour party support - both traditional and new.
Last night I was fairly taken back to hear that Labour party strategists are using the ABC1 newspaper marketing template for their class analysis of Irish society. They’re actually using newspaper readership trends as class dynamics. No wonder they’re losing support. When they’re talking about middle class and working class, they’re talking about people who read the Irish Times and people who read the Daily Star..
In class terms, this is like using the Irish Times to gauge the housing market pre-2007, instead of looking at the actual social, economic and cultural forces underpinning the housing market.
It’s like Brian Lucey saying in 2006 that the housing market in Ireland is fine. The evidence he looked at told him so. But it was the wrong evidence. The Labour Party, by using the ABC1 as its template for class dynamics in Ireland today, is looking at the wrong evidence. They are chasing a middle class which does not exist.
‘As far as Labour Party leadership v Labour Party membership goes, the membership is a lot more progressive, and a lot more open to alliances with ULA.’
I really haven’t seen any evidence of this myself. Are you basing that on talking to LP members?
Yep.
There are a few different issues here:
The Labour membership is distinct from the labour party vote, and it’s important to differentiate between the two. The Labour membership is “the Labour Party”, not anyone who has given them a vote or a preference. And it’s worth looking at them in detail.
The Labour Party has made paper membership claims over the last few years which vary between 4,000 or so and 6,000 or so, averaging at about 5,000. But most of that is a paper membership, bung them twenty quid and your in, regardless of your level of involvement. The active membership, the people who go to branch meetings, who knock on doors, who elect delegates and choose candidates, is a very much smaller subset of an already surprisingly small group of people. That’s important to remember in and of itself. We are not talking about a mass party or even a small mass party with far less social weight than almost any other labour or social democratic party.
Up until the early 1990s, there was a vigorous and at times splenetic internal debate in the Labour Party between a left and a right wing. The right wing was normally predominant, but the left of the party was a serious challenger. Conferences were dominated by rows between the left and the right, with the issue of coalition being emblematic of the divide. The left had nationally known leaders, TDs, potential candidates for leader. It controlled branches, it had its own publications and its own organisations (ranging from the Marxist left to left social democracy and hitting many points in between).
It is absolutely key to understanding today’s Labour Party that absolutely none of that exists now. None of it. There is no longer debate within Labour on pretty much any of the old left/right divide issues - there is no left force. No branches, TDs, publications, organisations, motions to conference. Nothing. Treating Labour Party history as a continuum, rather than realising the significance of this break, these changes, is completely misleading.
Take Conor’s defence of the idea that ‘As far as Labour Party leadership v Labour Party membership goes, the membership is a lot more progressive, and a lot more open to alliances with ULA.’. This, now that we’re apparently in agreement about my profound personal failings, is the central disagreement between us. But the only evidence Conor has ever put forward to defend this proposition is that he’s talked to some Labour members and got that impression.
Now balance that against the complete disappearance of left figures and institutions from the Labour Party. And the complete disappearance of left views from its policies, and more crucially from its internal debates. If the Labour Party membership really are, in the mass, significantly to the left of the leadership, why has there been complete silence from them for fifteen years? Why, before the last general election, where there was a big debate about whether or not to go into Fine Gael was there not one single delegate who opposed coalition with the traditional right wing parties?
Why has no attempt been made to deselect right wing TDs who are allegedly out of step with the views of the membership? Why are there no left oppositional motions to Labour conference? Why have these allegedly left members, to borrow a phrase from Joan Burton, been observing a vow of silence for a decade and a half?
Isn’t it more likely in fact that there isn’t some mass of left wing Labour Party members? That the victory of the right within that party has been every bit as complete as it seems? And that there is no appetite for a swing left amongst its members? That we hear nothing from a riled up Labour left, because there isn’t one? That’s not to say that there are no left wing people in Labour, just that they do not constitute the bulk of the membership, nor even a substantial (and therefore threatening) minority.
The issue of the Labour vote is a somewhat separate issue. I think that Budapestkick is being too sweeping when he calls it a broadly progressive vote. It’s more complex than that, and there are subjectively progressive strands, but also a strong urban middle class socially liberal element, and a clientelist element. Labour transfers are interesting to watch - some do go to SF or to the left, but by far the most common destination is Fine Gael, even taking into account the relative lack of left alternatives in rural areas.
Smug cunt
“I was wondering the other day whether Labour’s current bout of red-baiting nastiness has something to do with the fact that the party grandees (Gilmore, Burton, Rabbitte and Quinn) are all elected to Dublin constituencies and have cultivated their voting base over the years by appealing to the ‘liberal middle classes’ in their constituencies.”
I was saying something similar the other day. Labour’s leadership is beholden to these groups. An interesting comparison is with ‘New Labour’ in the UK: Blair brought in figures like Blunkett and Prescott to be his ‘bit of rough’; Irish Labour’s leadership are both geographically and politically concentrated. Take Joan Burton, for example, even if Joan wanted to be more conciliatory to the left (doubtful), she couldn’t do it. The middle class liberals would bleed to Leo Varadkar and his ‘low tax’ rhetoric. She might pick up some votes from people who are deserting Lenihan but that may be too risky. Labour know that this is a big election for them, and they cannot risk losing a high profile candidate. The problem is that, should Labour be prove to be wildly successful in this election, the leadership will cite their centrist policies as being the reason for this and will block any future attempts to move leftward.
I was actually hoping that you’d have reined in your temper by now, Conor.
I’m a little curious about your thinking in just swearing at me over and over. Is it that you think you’re annoying me? Or is that you think that anyone else reading will be so impressed by your display of wit that they won’t notice your apparent inability to argue your corner?
Trying to take the high moral ground?
What a smug little cunt.
Interesting and important discussion marred by the language. No moderation on this site?
[…] to go by. A Fine Gael/Labour coalition seems likely, and the Labour leadership is criticised here for not countenencing a coalition with Sinn Fein and the […]
Hi Jenny, yes there is. He’s the one using the language.
I wonder why rank and file members of the Workers Party, formerly SFWP, formerly SF (Gardiner Place) and formerly Sinn Fein, bothered to sacrifice so many days, months and years of their bodies and brains to trying to bring about fundamental economic and social change? It wasn’t all so that Eoghan Harris could gallivant around the op-ed pages of the right-leaning Sunday Independent surely? Or so that the remnant of Democratic Left could embed themselves deeply in the Labour Party and become more respectable than the existing South Dublin respectables themselves? Whatever did the bespoke-tailored Dail deputies now vetoing platform sharing dialogue with Irish Left Alliance (an alliance not a party) think they were aiming at in those intensive days thirty or forty years ago, when they considered themselves to be on the radical left of Irish politics?
I had the same thought when Gordon Brown’s political obituaries were written: he was a solid Labour activist, biographer of James Maxton, author of a red paper for Scotland, firebrand speaker. Did he look back over his political career and ask himself where it all went wrong?
Just saw a Tweet from Labour councillor Cian O’Callaghan saying he’s speaking at the Left conference on Saturday.
That’s right. Cian O’Callaghan and councillor Dermot Looney are both speaking.
Connor Mc Cabe, Why are you letting yourself down by getting vexed with Mark P. Anyone who uses the following description of organisers of a Left Unity or more correctly in this case Some Left Unity conference, “the other people involved in organising the conference, who seem like decent sincere sorts”, is a dickhead, divisive and a windbag. So don’t get annoyed, ignore him.
If there are still progressive people within the Labour Party (and I believe there are) they are certainly not going to be interested in linking up with a broad Left campaign that contains idiots like Mark P, so the less attention he gets the better.
In the meantime the critically important issue facing the Irish working class is the economically, politically and socially destructive EU/IMF ‘bailout’. How the Left deal with this issue will define the prospect of an elected future Left government.
The interest alone on the borrowings associated with the bailout will be so prohibitive that our country will be in hock to the EU/IMF for decades to come. Therefore the options for our people is to (1) Renegotiate the deal (a political acceptance that ‘we’ the people caused the problem), (2) Default on the deal (basically the same as (1) “We would if we could but right now, we can’t”) or (3) Repudiate the Debt “We didn’t cause the problem therefore we have no moral obligation to repay and will not pay anything other than the genuine Sovereign debt. So, comrades and friends, forget the nonsense chatter about the Labour Party because if they sell out on their traditional core voters they sign their own death warrant, metaphorically speaking.
Just trying to get some figures on this goddamn debt servicing. According to the Communist Party of Ireland, the cost per working person of debt servicing in 2010 was €2,700 and now given the rise in redundancies, will be in the region of €3,000. So that would be €4.8 billion divided by aproximately 1.2 million workers and that will be each and every year and will grow with inflation. Not great prospects are they??