Goodbye to all that
The dream of a left government in Ireland dies in the 2024 general election
6 December 2024
The 2024 Irish general election saw a fall in the number of leftists elected to the Dail. Despite achieving the same vote share (3%) as in the previous general election People Before Profit saw its parliamentary team reduced from five TDs to just three. Richard Boyd-Barrett was easily returned in Dún Laoghaire; Paul Murphy was returned in the last count in Dublin South-West; while Ruth Coppinger was elected in Dublin West.
This result is worse than it seems in the sense that PbP is an electoral alliance made up of different groups. Boyd-Barrett is the only survivor of the Socialist Workers Network. Coppinger represents Solidarity, a split from the old Socialist Party and Murphy a different split from that party with the acronym RISE, now closely associated with the Fourth International current.
This is not just a fall in numbers. For decades the policy of the leftists around PbP has been to build a left government headed by Sinn Féin. This made perfect sense in terms of electoral politics. This line allowed the leftists to borrow votes in terms of Sinn Féin’s 3rd and 4th preferences and to focus on electoral rather than class politics. The seats they obtained gave them access to large amounts of public funds in the form of expenses and salaries and these were used to fund their organisations.
It became much more difficult as Sinn Féin drifted right, firstly embracing British Royalty, then withdrawing opposition to the Irish Special Criminal Court, moving right on housing, on Palestine and then adapting to anti-immigrant sentiment, leaving aside its reactionary role in the management of the Northern state.
However, the final straw was not the political drift rightwards of Sinn Féin, but the fall in their vote and the more efficient use of that vote, squeezing out the leftists. Paul Murphy struggled at the bottom of the poll to be elected and then was swept in following the elimination of a Sinn Féin candidate.
The dream of a left government is dead, Richard Boyd-Barrett now talks of a centre-left government. It’s not clear how this would be different from any other capitalist government. The leftists are reduced to a small current, totally committed to and embedded in parliamentary politics. An example of their cynicism and opportunism was shown in this election when they invited voters to support them as the “Palestinian Party” in the event exit polls showed that only a tiny fraction of their supporters identified this as an issue
To understand this outcome, we should wind the clock back to before the election.
On the 23rd November ICTU, alongside the NGO amalgamation Le Chéile, held a rally of “Unity and Hope” supported by the leftists. The rally celebrated diversity rather than advancing class unity as a response to racism and was the first demonstration by ICTU in the year from the Dublin race riots. ICTU had held one lunchtime rally and then handed the whole issue over to the state. This is just one example of the tight partnership between trade union leaders and the government and is matched by a deal supporting the government housing programme. The leftists now identify the union leadership as the working class and no longer search for independent class action. They will not break from this general consensus.
There was another alternative of independent left candidates, but this fared even worse than PbP. This involved Joan Collins, sanding as a vague “Right to Change” candidate in Dublin South-Central and Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, on the advice of Bernadette McAliskey, standing as Independents for Change and concentrating on local issues. This involved a major retreat from presenting a socialist programme and the result was failure.
The thing is, the only alternative to finance capital and imperialist war is socialism. At the moment few are willing to raise that banner, but there really is no other direction of travel.