THEIRISHREPUBLIC.WORDPRESS.COM
Killing hegemony with a ballot box
in both hands
And so, May 23rd 2014 may indeed
turn out to have been a red-letter day in the politics of the 26-county
spurious-republic of Ireland.
Local and EU elections have seen very
significant shifts in voting patterns with serious repercussions for the three
parties which have exchanged power over the past 92 years, and this result may
indicate the imminent demise of hegemonic counter-revolutionary misrule that
has lasted since 1922.
The quaintly-named Irish Labour
Party – a misnomer, since that party substantially represents the interests of
middle-class voters, has experienced a virtual wipe-out at the polls. Its first
preference vote (19.5%) in the General Election of 2011 plummeted to just 5.3%
in the EU elections, with a loss of its two European Parliament seats. In the
local elections its share of first preferences was a slightly better 7.2%. The
immediate outcome of this was the resignation of party leader Eamon Gilmore,
Tánaiste (deputy prime-minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
It is quite likely that in the
shake-up to elect a new party leader, and its aftermath, that the old guard in
Labour will be shown the door in a feverish effort to ‘renew’ Labour, although
it is hard to imagine that anything will save the seats of many of the party’s
TDs in the General Election, likely to be called well before its Spring 2016
deadline. While Labour might pull back a percentage point or two, it looks like
a party that will need to spend some years finding itself – if it can. Its
future may be out of its own hands by now.
Its senior partner in coalition,
Fine Gael, now stands on the same EU election percentage as Fianna Fáil –
22.3%, down from 36.1% in 2011. Fianna
Fáil, the other cheek of that ideological arse formed out of the Civil War, saw its share go up from its disastrous 2011 percentage of
17.5%, but it can draw cold comfort from that 4.7% rise, being now reduced to
just one MEP.
On the EU figures, cumulative
support for Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour stands at 49.9%. In other words
more than 50% of those who voted have turned their backs on the three misruling
parties. That, to anyone accustomed to the monolithic control of those parties,
constitutes profound change.
But more!
In the EU election, in which it
stood just one candidate in each of the three EU constituencies, Sinn Féin saw
its support go up from 9.9% in 2011 to almost double that in 2014 – 19.5%. Not
only that, each of the Sinn Féin EU candidates either headed the poll or was
elected in early counts.
In the local elections Sinn Féin
trebled its tally of representatives on the County Councils to 157. This pool
of public representatives will provide new candidates in many Dáil
constituencies in the General Election. They will, in the meantime, learn their
trade, create local networks through highly-organised offices and the strong
team-work that Sinn Féin is renowned for. The likely outcome of that is a
further rise in the percentage of the poll that Sinn Féin will receive next
time out, and a greater number of TDs in the Dáil.
Alongside that, various
independents and smaller socialist parties and anti-austerity campaigning offshoots,
together with other independents including some conservatives, received massive
support in terms of percentages of the EU vote – 30.6%! Working against the big
party machines, the independents still managed to win three European Parliament
seats. The Socialist Party lost a winnable seat due to the intervention of a
Socialist Workers Party candidate in the Dublin constituency, which victory
might have been at the expense of Fine Gael’s high profile candidate, Brian
Hayes, who barely scraped in.
In the local elections the various
independents and the socialist/anti-austerity candidates combined won 237 seats
out of 949, another remarkable result.
These results do not guarantee
that we will not end up with yet another combination of the three parties of
permanent misrule after the next General Election, but they do open up the
possibility that we may, for the first time since quasi-independence in 1922,
see the possibility of real choice for voters between the right and the left. For that to advance there needs to be an attempt at establishing a
rapprochement between Sinn Féin and socialist parties, groups and individuals.
It is possible that the Labour
Party, forced by the shock of its decimation at the polls, might sufficiently
re-evaluate its stance and policies to reflect, in part at least, the core
values for which that party was created. If so, it might be that Labour would
also be available to achieve the numbers to form an alternative government,
although the current candidates for leadership – one an accountant and the
other a senior barrister – do not inspire confidence in any attempt to return
to those values, but would appear opportunistic and cynical given those
candidates’ track records in the current government.
It might be in Sinn Féin’s interest
instead to look to the smaller socialist parties which have done well in these
elections and show signs of further growth if properly organised for the next
campaign and if election pacts can be put in place to avoid losing winnable
seats.
In a post-election article on the
Socialist Workers Party website, J O’Toole wrote “Socialists want to relate to
Sinn Fein supporters and work alongside them in the South to battle the water
charges. We want to emphasise people power as the path to change and that
struggle is the stage upon which different approaches to change will be
tested.”
At a pre-election ‘Arms around
Moore Street’ event, held to protect the historic GPO 1916 Battlefield Site,
Socialist Party EU candidate Paul Murphy made a stirring contribution,
reminding those present of James Connolly’s last days of freedom in those
buildings, and of Connolly’s relevance to the peoples’ cause today.
These are promising signs which
should be built on through dialogue between Sinn Féin and socialists. It would
be interesting to know if, for example, there was to be contact between the
three new Sinn Féin MEPs and Paul Murphy, outgoing MEP and likely to be a
candidate in the upcoming General Election, on advice on relevant issues and
potential alliances in the EU Parliament. Not only would that contact be
valuable in itself, but it would also send a positive signal to socialists and
their supporters, and to voters interested in new possibilities. No doubt the
new MEPs will also receive advice from Nessa Childers, independent leftist MEP
and granddaughter of Erskine Childers who played a decisive part in the lead-up
to the 1916 Revolution and the proclaiming of the Irish Republic, and in the
defence of that Republic in the Civil War.
It is certain that Fine Gael,
Fianna Fáil and Labour will attempt to claw back support to prevent the Sinn
Féin and socialist surge from gathering further momentum. But there are lessons
in historical experience, one such being the Berlin Wall. In just one year,
1989, what seemed like an impregnable fortress, part of the Iron Curtain that
separated the Soviet Union and its satellite states from the West, was
virtually destroyed. Once the first crack appeared in it, its destruction
seemed as if it might become inevitable but happened faster than most might
have thought possible. That crack in the Berlin Wall first occurred in the
imagination of a few determined dissidents, then spread until the imagining was
unstoppable and became reality.
It is possible that a similar
phenomenon is at play in this State, where hegemonic power has seemed
impregnable during all of the years of this State’s existence. It may be that a sufficient number of voters have been so sickened
by abuses of power, by institutional failure and corruption, by a system that
ignores the fundamental needs of the many but panders to the excessive wants
and desires of the few, and by the signs of a failed
State, that they are prepared to take a chance on something different and not
yet capable of being fully understood or predicted, overriding fears and
prejudices in the process. It may be that this first crack in the fortress of
hegemonic power cannot be covered over with political class PR Polyfilla, but
that the crack will deepen until the wall falls and profound change comes
about.
That might happen sooner than most
people think possible. Too early to tell. But we live in interesting times!
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