SHIFTS TO THE LEFT
By Gery Lawless
The next conference of the Irish Labour party, due to take place in Dublin in mid-October, will be the most important assembly of Irish Labour in fiftyfive years.
With the execution of James Connolly after the 1916 Rising and the imprisonment of Larkin in America, the Labour party, never theoretically well developed, has been led by men who were vague in their aims and bereft of perspective. Its theory was never more than reformism cohabiting with syndicalisn.
It has been a "bookless" party, with a contempt for theory. It is based on humanitarian instinct. It pushes ahead blindly, attempting to take a "decent line" on each issue as it comes up. It has only a hazy idea of the type of society it is trying to create and, not surprisingly then, no idea at all of how it is going to construct it.
Labour missed the boat in the War of Independence, accepting De Valera's dictum that “Labor must wait" (until the first bourgeois stage of the revolution was finished).
The party waited while factory workers seized factories and landless men and small farmers divided estates among themselves. Labour waited throughout the forty-five wasted years of the abortion of the Irish revolution. It has acted through all these years as a workers' lobby in a bosses' parliament.
In 1948 it entered a coalition with the semifascist Fine Gael party and other parties at a time of general left swing in Ireland. A determined party with socialist policies could have won power or at least become the main opposition party opposing a bourgeois coalition. In the event, the coalition infused new life into the Fine Gael party.
In 1956, having learned nothing, Labour partnered Fine Gael in applying the British credit squeeze. In the gen~ eral election the following year Labour was massacred at the polls. This fiasco, proving the bankruptcy of Labour's leadership, gave the impetus for the development of an alternative programme for Labour.
The people who were to develop this programme grouped themselves in the 1913 Club in Dublin -- named after the year of the Irish General Strike. The first lesson which was learned, and which was hammered home and accepted by Labour, was no more coalitions. The previous co~ alition policy has been responsible more than any other factor for the refusal of Dublin workers to vote Labour.
After the 1957 election, Labour promised no more coalitions. This coupled with the open emergence of Fianna Fail under Lemass' leadership as the businessmen's party, set the background for the return of working-class support to Labour.
The process continued to grow as Fianna Fail gave lesson after lesson of its antiworking-class aims -~ particularly the proposed laws attacking the right of workers to strike.
The nonpolitical attitude of rankand-file trade unionists changed and more and more workers began to vote. They voted Labour.
This was reflected again in the decision of the ITGWU [Irish Transport and General Workers Union] to affiliate to the LP and in the sharp increase in the poll in Dublin City from 29 percent to more than 50 percent.
Labour's overall share of the votes rose from 10 percent to 16 percent. In Dublin, Labour's vote went up from 14 percent to 29 percent, making them three seats short of becoming the largest party on the Dublin Corporation. Labour is thus the most rapidly growing party in Ireland.
It has 400 branches and about 15,000 individual members. Twenty-two Labour members sit in the D&il [lower house of parliament] and six Labour representatives in the Seanad [senate].
In the 1965 general election Labour put forward forty-three candidates contesting thirty-four constituencies. It received 192,750 first preference votes, an increase of 80,992 on its 1957 first preference figures. The party today is predominantly a working-class party but with a small and influential bourgeois element.
Fourteen trade unions are at present affiliated with a total membership of 63,000. The decision taken in May of this year by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union to affiliate, will double this number.
At last year's conference, the vast majority of the delegates were what would be called in England “Tribunites." However, nobody realized this, least of all the delegates themselves, with the result that the conference returned a
right-wing policy and leadership.
This year the left have learned some, if not all, of their lessons. Already deputy Jim Tully, the party rightwing chairman for about eleven years, has decided not to go forward for reelection. At the same time Dr. Noel Browne, who was hounded out of the office of Minister of Health by the church, will be returned unopposed as the party's vice-chairman. Two centrists will contest for the chairmanship, while for the party treasurership there is a contest between a "Tribunite" and an avowed Marxist.
The preliminary agenda for this month's conference reflects the new leftward swing: several motions demand the rewriting of the party's constitution to show clearly that the party aims for a socialist Ireland.
There are several resolutions condemning any kind of coalition. Four resolutions are tabled on the party's constitution and they reflect the new mood. One reaffirms the party's dedication to the achievement of a united Ireland "but believe that such a goal can be achieved only by the united action of the working people against the Tories, North and South. This unity can only be forged under demands which stress that the united Ireland aimed at is one in the interests of the working people of all parts of the country."
The resolution concludes with the words: "Accordingly, conference calls for the reintroduction of the demand for a Workers' Republic in the statement of the basic principles and objects of the Lapour Party."
There are five resolutions on Viet-— nam; all condemn America's aggression and one calls for complete solidarity with the National Liberation Front. This parallels the position of the North Ireland Labour party whose conference policy is victory for the National Liberation Front.
A report to conference will deal with progress toward the formation of the All-Ireland Council of Labour. Agreement has been achieved by the parties concerned, but one branch proposed to conference that a United Socialist party now should be formed for the whole of Ireland.
A big danger for Irish Labour is that all these resolutions will be taken as policy and then treated, as Wilson treated Clause Four, as a nice decoration never to be implemented.
But there are checks and balances against this development. The 1913 Club has passed on. Two of its former members are candidates for chairmanship of the party; others have found other places in the establishment, but some have remained to carry through the realignment which was first visualized.
Dublin, for the first time ina generation, has a Marxist discussion movement. The left wing, North and South -without waiting on the official parties -have themselves merged. Left-wing students have formed the Irish Association of Labour Student Organizations.
Irish Labour, like a lion rampant from 1913 to 1917, then dormant for fifty years, is now on the march and shows great promise of completing Ireland's unfinished revolution. In the process it will send tremors through British capitalism.