Category Archives: Irish constitution

People before Profit and the Referendum – Ask not for whom the bell tolls

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To paraphrase John Donne, “all supporters of the referendum are diminished, because they all were involved in saying that yes was the answer; and therefore, never send to know for whom was the failure; the failure was yours”.

This could be the epitaph for all the political forces that supported the Family and Care referendum, but especially for the opposition parties, which, faced with the text put forward by those they claim to oppose, could only find ways to support it.

In their obituary for the referendum People before Profit (PbP) invite their supporters to feel sorry for their leaders because “left-wing people” were put “in an impossible situation”, which translates as People before Profit were put “in an impossible situation’.  This is because, as the obituary noted, “working-class people voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality and a woman’s right to choose”; they voted to give “specific and positive rights”.  Yet they voted against this referendum berceuse it consisted of “vacuous words that gave no guarantee of social care, especially outside the family”, and thought that it involved a “little bit of verbal tokenism.”

Why did most working people take this view? Because, when it comes to the government “most people do not trust them, and many despise them.”  When it came to the referendum “many saw through it – especially when Varadkar appeared on television to deny the state had responsibility for social care.” So self-absorbed was he by his own privileged class background that he uttered a sort of ‘let them eat cake’ remark that revealed his arrogance, his disconnection from the reality of their lives, and in doing so inadvertently told the truth!

Did People before Profit not hear him?  Why did they not see through it as well?  Why did they not recognise the “vacuous words” and “verbal tokenism” and lead “the anti-establishment mood in the country”? Why ,instead, did they trail behind the referendum’s “stale top-down exercise”?

Now, after the event, it gives the excuse of being faced “with two bad options. Remove the sexist language but confirm that care must be the responsibility of the family or keep the sexist language in and embolden conservative forces in the church and on the right.”  Exactly what the Government hoped would compel a majority to vote yes, except a huge majority didn’t fall for this blackmail and People before Profit did.

The majority didn’t fall for it for all the reasons above, and because Yes supporters were not telling the truth when they claimed it was a ‘first step’–it was, in fact, a last step to cover for not taking any more. They already knew that this was not “a government that guaranteed social care for the elderly . . . not providing any appropriate public care for younger disabled people – or one that provided free creches or built enough social homes.”

How could anyone believe that this Government, cynical enough to hand back €13 billion of tax to one of the richest corporations in the world, was going to put the care of its people first by putting it into its constitution?  Only ‘the opposition’ it would seem, including those who think there is a problem of profit being put before people and who, in their private moments, promise to be good Marxists.  Except Marxists are the last people who think a capitalist state will ever care about its working people, never mind care for them, and who would use a referendum as an opportunity to demonstrate the truth of this through exposure of “vacuous words” and “verbal tokenism”.

PbP should have been at the forefront of challenging the Government ploy that tried to make the people responsible for keeping the existing sexist wording in the constitution and thereby compel them to support their pretence of change.  They could have made all the arguments put forward in these two posts that pointed to the question of women’s rights being conquered in the real world and not by a piece of paper promoted as a sort of branding document for the state.

Their shameless failure is demonstrated by the fact that they justified support for the referendum in order not to “keep the sexist language in and embolden conservative forces in the church and on the right”, although they now state that the referendum has resulted in exactly this outcome, while also denying it! (through their claim that the No vote was progressive on the basis of the reasons set out above).

At the same time their claim to justification relies on their supposed prior need to support the referendum so that they could not be blamed for any potential defeat of this ‘progressive’ step; yet they now see no reason not to blame the Government when the defeat has actually happened.  What was stopping them blaming any failure to get rid of the sexist wording on the Government beforehand?  Truthfully, their supporters could claim that it was not they who would be responsible, but the cynical proposals forced upon them that they had every right to reject.  Why did People before Profit not take this approach?

Their statement berates (or is it hails?) the referendum because it “also represents the close of an era when the two conservative parties tried to re-furbish their image to look ‘progressive’”, which is yet another pointer to why it should have been opposed from the start. Yet this ‘progressive’ agenda is a liberal one that People before Profit has swallowed whole.  The referendum amendments were vacuous because the liberal agenda is vacuous, and if it was basing itself on Marxist politics People before Profit would have known this.  This whopper of a mistake leading to a whopper of a defeat (in the words of Leo Varadkar) indicates how far the organisation has departed from such politics.

Rather than admit that it screwed up People before Profit wriggle with excuses–“marginally we chose to remove the sexist language and continue to fight for more care and equality but this was a difficult call and we recognised the severe limitations of the choices on offer. Many of our own supporters adopted a Yes-No position and this was reflected in an exit poll.”

If we translate – it was all very difficult, we had good intentions, we only got it a bit wrong, and some of our supporters were smarter than we were and didn’t listen to everything we said anyway.

PbP go on to claim that they will go on to campaign for the Government and State to do a better job next time, so it is all in the past already and time to move on. And we know what this moving on will entail: it will involve them campaigning passionately to save their seats, desperately hoping that their constituents will forget their role and get on board with their moving on (as we see already in their graphic above this article). A bit of honesty would do them no harm but on this score they are less inclined than the bourgeois parties, are even less given too looking in the mirror while pointing the finger, and less disposed to some form of accountability.

The organisation claims that “there is also a dark side to the referendum which the left should not ignore. It brought to the fore right-wing elements who want to import Trump-style politics to Ireland.”

It goes on: “The far right and those clamouring for a return of Catholic Church power will try to use government ineptitude and anti-establishment mood in the country to rehabilitate their conservative vision for Ireland. They won a victory of sorts yesterday.” It concludes that it “will be offering a different alternative. One that takes the anger in Irish society and throws it back on the rich and their political elite. . . .  We want to see a return to mass movements that challenge this government, particularly on housing. And we want a left government that makes a real break with FF and FG.”

People before Profit doesn’t recognise that to lead any anti-establishment mood it is not enough to base itself on anger, their whole international tendency has been spouting this primitive conception for decades.  To form this mood into something coherent and organised requires a political programme and yes, building a mass movement and a working class political party to lead it, something People before Profit, despite its claims, is not doing.

To do so requires some very basic steps, including having a political alternative to the far right and not simply sticking labels on it–such as ‘far-right’ or ‘fascist’–that more or less rapidly lose their force, even when they are true.  While claiming to want to build a mass movement they put forward–to cap the alternative–a ‘left government’, which is not the same as a perspective based on the independent organisation of the working class, although they appear not to know this.  Their current approach arises from the political conceptions that led to their failure in the referendum, and their positing of a ‘left government’ – far from being realistic– is currently completely improbable. Their electoralism has now exhibited the same weaknesses as their competitors for votes, who do however have deeper roots among the classes they represent.

Most basically, to be ‘anti-establishment’ you actually have to oppose the establishment, not follow on its coattails mouthing grudging support for its empty politics.

The People before Profit statement declares at its beginning that for the Government parties “the referendum is a massive blow to their prestige and legitimacy”; but to quote John Donne again (in the more popular Ernest Hemingway version): “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Record Defeat for the Government in Family and Care Referendum

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“Woke is Dead”, read the banner. “It was all wokism demeaning window-dressing”, said the main voice of the ‘NO’ campaign, Michael McDowell, former Tánaiste and leader of the late and unlamented Progressive Democrats.

The Family and Care referendums, analysed previously here and here were massively defeated, the latter by the biggest ever No vote in a referendum. The amendment to the constitution on the family was defeated by 67.7 per cent of the votes and the care amendment by 73.9 per cent.

Both had been supported by the three government parties and by all but one of the opposition parties in the Dáil, including Labour, Social Democrats, Sinn Fein and People before Profit (PbP).  An ‘out-of-touch’ establishment turned out to include Sinn Fein and PbP, as well as several Non-Governmental Organisations, which supported a Yes vote.  The opposition parties all blamed the ineptness of the Government, a case not so much of rats leaving a sinking ship as jumping overboard when the ship was already at the bottom.  Sinn Fein ran so far away from the scene that it promised not to re-run the referendum, as it had previously promised if it was defeated.  It remains to be seen whether People before Profit will do the same and slink away from its similar promise in relation to ‘Care’.

The Irish Times sketch writer noted that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s acceptance of defeat was ‘a strangely nonchalant act of concession’, perfectly befitting the whole exercise, which was indeed “wokism demeaning window-dressing” but not only this.  The proposals also contained reactionary principles, as we set out in the two articles linked above.

On the family, it couldn’t tell anyone what the ‘durable relationships’ were that would receive constitutional ‘recognition’ or what this recognition would consist of, while it still claimed that ‘The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage’.  The Catholic right took this to be undermining the institution while others might have wondered how it was consistent with recognition of ‘durable relationships.’

The care amendment was bitterly opposed by some disability groups, who saw it as assigning responsibility for their care to their family and justifying the state’s abdication of any responsibility.  Varadkar let the cat out of the bag when he more or less accepted this interpretation in a media interview.

The referendum was rushed after having been delayed and without prior explanation or justification of the wording, which was deliberately withheld The debate in the Dáil was cut short with the vote pencilled in for International Women’s Day, which was taken by the electorate as a cynical ploy.

Varadkar stated that “the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan”, but one person’s defeat is another one’s victory and the reasons for the victory of the No side were several, not limited to the arrogance of the Government.  The No vote included the opposition of right-wing Catholic opinion that is still a significant, if minority, force, while generally progressive voices could see through the lip service given to change, the reactionary implications of some of the wording, and the noted absence of other words (the word woman for example).

The care referendum was more obviously retrogressive, which prompted a slightly higher no vote and coloured many people’s appreciation of what the whole exercise was about.  The impulse to purge the existing constitution of sexism, encapsulated by a woman’s ‘life within the home’, was not enough to prompt a Yes vote, and at bottom reflects the point we made before: that no matter how reactionary it is it is not the cause of women’s disadvantage but rather reflects it.

Blame for failure of the Yes side has consisted of the unclear wording of the amendments; their change from that recommended by the Citizen’s Assembly; the government’s ‘hubris over strategy and superficiality over substance’ (Una Mullally, The Irish Times); the ‘immediate plunge into legalistic arguments’ (Una Mullally again), and the supposed ‘narrow’ campaign on the Yes side.

Since the Yes campaign included all the political parties except the smallest, the base of the Yes campaign wasn’t small. However, what was demonstrated were the limitations of the state’s political representation, including of the so-called anti-establishment parties, especially Sinn Fein.  As for the wording, its superficiality and legalistic ‘entanglement that never unravelled’, these were not accidental but intrinsic to the intention of the amendments that the Government simultaneously claimed were symbolic (but important) and meaningful (but unthreatening to the status quo).  No wonder it lost. 

Determining the nature of the vote can sometimes be established by looking at the consequences, which one journalist has called ‘a vacuum’ and another that while “it might not be the end of gesture politics . . . it will certainly give would-be gesturers pause for thought in future.’ (Pat Leahy in The Irish Times) He provides the example of some NGOs proposals for economic and social rights to be included in the constitution.  This is something we have opposed before and consider to be a complete diversion, misdirection, miseducation, and waste of time.

The threat of new Hate legislation is also offered as something that has government TDs worried about their popularity, if the public have the opportunity to understand it. The Irish government has previously passed the Gender Recognition Act with minimum publicity so that no opposition was likely to raise the issue of women’s rights.  Getting away with this now is more problematic as the profession of ‘progressive’ intentions loses its capacity to silence critical thought.  The referendum vote has certainly achieved this and for this alone it is to be welcomed.

The Family and Care referendum on 8th March – Yes or No? (2 of 2)

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The second set of changes to the Constitution proposes deleting the current Articles 41.2.1 and 41.2.2 and inserting a new Article 42B.

Article 41.2.1 states “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”

Article 41.2.2 states that “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

These are to be replaced by inserting a new Article 42B:

“The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to Society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”

The two existing Articles are said to be sexist and based on Catholic teaching, such as the encyclical from 1891 in which Pope Leo XIII stated that ‘a woman is by nature fitted for homework . . .”, while it is believed that the Article was written by the Catholic archbishop, John McQuaid.

A socialist might note that it is not the role of working class women, or men, to support the State and that the State is not about “the common good” but about what is good for bourgeois private property, something the Irish State’s constitution is well known to be very good at protecting.

The commitment to “ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” not only assumes that it is women who must carry out domestic labour but also pretends that the state will help them avoid the economic necessity to go out to work.  The necessity to go out to work is a requirement of capitalism, otherwise there would be no working class to exploit, and it would not make much sense to effect equality by limiting this to only one sex, if it were possible, which it is not.

The Article had not much success in keeping many women “in the home” because economic necessity compelled them to seek paid employment.  In fact, it did not have much success in keeping them in the country, as hundreds of thousands emigrated in search of a better life.  This led to agonised concern that there were “moral dangers for young girls in Great Britain”, including that they might get pregnant.

As the Irish economy expanded in later decades more and more women entered the labour force although there is now concern that their presence is still relatively low.  Women’s participation in the labour force grew only slowly, from 28 per cent in the early 1970s to 32 per cent in 1990, rising rapidly during the economic boom to over 63 per cent in 2007.  In the third quarter of 2023 the participation rate for females was 60.8% compared to 71.1% for males.  Nothing of this had anything to do with the words in the constitution and everything to do with the workings of the capitalist economy.

Socialists should welcome the higher participation of women in the workforce both for the position of women in society and for the potential unity of women and men in the struggle to emancipate themselves from the domination of capitalist accumulation.  Domestic labour should be shared equally, and as far as possible should be socialised so that individuals of both sexes are able to exercise greater choice over whether, and how much, to work.  This, however, recognises that those able to work should work and under capitalism have mostly no choice.

There are some things that cannot be shared equally, but the concern to be ‘progressive’ in the sense of what has been called ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘performative activism’ means that this has been deliberately ignored.  The wording of the replacement Article is instructive not only because of what it says but because of what it doesn’t say.

If almost everyone is a member of a family and part of some sort of ‘durable relationship’ then the support given to Society by the care shown to each other by members of a family is simply the support given to all members of a family by Society.  It’s a truism that it is people in society who care and support each other.  The question is, what is the Irish State, through its Constitution, going to do to help?  How will it address the large additional labour carried out by women in paid employment through domestic labour?

The answer, if we look at the Article, is nothing much.  It “shall strive to support such provision” of care but commits to nothing, which means its ‘striving’ is meaningless, but rather points to the concept of caring being an individual concern of “members of a family” but of no fundamental responsibility of the state.

The state, however, is supposed to represent the general interest, “the common good”, as it is called here.  I suppose socialists should welcome the clear message for anyone that cares to discern it, that the provision of care is a private matter, or perhaps a privatised matter that the state will rely on becoming a wholly commodified service to be produced like all commodities in capitalism–for a profit.

It has been pointed out, and is also referenced above, that the Article drops any refence to women, while the two existing Articles reference them, albeit in reactionary terms.  The current Governing parties are not keen on talking about women and their rights because they have decided that women are some sort of thing that men can become if they put their mind to it.  I will be posting soon on Gender Identity Ideology but suffice to say here that the Irish State recognises that men can legally change sex by declaration.

The state cannot therefore recognise the role of women in society, and their specific contribution has to be ignored and covered under the general rubric of “care”.  Except “care” doesn’t cover it; it doesn’t cover what many women do, and only women can do.  Within whatever definition of family that the Governing parties want accepted, if it includes women, the contribution they make not only may include a major share of the care of others, but also the carrying of new humans to birth through pregnancy and breastfeeding thereafter.

This, however, would be to recognise the essentially biological nature of women and the Governing parties have decided to reject this.  They are therefore unable to recognise the real role of women in society and so substitute a new form of sexism for the old.

Given all these considerations in this and the previous post it is clear that the changes to the constitution should be rejected.  The false promises of extra funding to social services as a result of a yes vote from some, and the ‘unenthusiastic’ support of People before Profit because of its vacuousness are pointers.  This, and the previous, post have argued that these are the least of the reasons to vote No.

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The Family and Care referendum on 8th March – Yes or No? (1 of 2)

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Liberal regimes usually involve claims about the rule of law, human rights and constitutional government. Marxists believe that it is not the law that rules but people, a ruling class; that human rights are ignored when it suits the state, as British complicity in the genocide in Gaza amply illustrates, and that constitutions don’t determine the nature of society, the state or regime but reflect them.  The work of socialists involves disabusing people of their illusions in all of  these.

This should be the starting point for consideration of the proposed amendments to the Irish State’s constitution.  In a previous post I noted the illusion of expecting changes in the constitution to be any sort of a solution to the housing crisis.  Now the government parties are proposing changes relating to the family, and to the care provided within it, while removing some archaic and sexist text based on reactionary Catholic teaching.

It’s all supposed to reflect the new progressive and enlightened Ireland that is no longer bound by such views: “It’s important that our constitution reflects the Ireland of today” says Minister Heather Humphreys. In fact, the wording shows how shallow this is and actually contrasts with the world outside the document.  The Church still controls almost all primary schools and will be given ownership of the new national maternity hospital. The state continues to subsidise the Church by paying for the claims arising from its abuse of children, while the Holy Orders drag survivors of abuse through the courts hoping they will get lost.  It drags its feet on paying up its much reduced liability, just as it also does with its promised divesting of patronage of schools.

The argument to approve the proposed changes on March 8th thus confirms that constitutions reflect and do not propel society.  The wording in the changes is so anaemic even supporters are calling it symbolic, but the symbolism is revealing – symbolic of the emptiness behind the claims.

They are welcomed as a step forward for those in non-marital relationships and for those who provide care within the family.  The main argument for voting yes is that the existing provisions are so bad that they discredit the constitution and thus reflect badly on the state and country.  In terms of their impact on state welfare payments the Minister responsible, Roderic O’Gorman, has stated that the constitutional changes will have no effect:

“It must be noted that the proposed amendment does not create an express constitutional entitlement to specific measures of support such as grants or allowances. The Government and the Oireachtas retain the power to define both the types and levels of supports, and the criteria in respect of eligibility for those supports.”

Changes to grants or allowances will continue to depend on political decisions partly reliant on economic realities so that changing these are what matter, not words on a page reliant on the good intentions of a state that has no good claim to have them.  This makes the argument by People before Profit that it is a “shame that there is no firm commitment to the women, children and men who are the carers” something of a complete delusion about what the capitalist state is willing and able to do. 

As to what the existing articles reflect, hypocrisy remains rife, and they remain as a standing reminder of the role of the Irish state that socialists have no reason to see either forgotten or provided with a facelift.

The first involves the insertion of additional text to Article 41.1.1 and the deletion of text in Article 41.3.1. The proposed changes are:

to change Article 41.1.1 to include the text in bold:

Article 41.1.1 “The State recognises the Family, whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”

and to change Article 41.3.1 by deleting text shown with line through it:

“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”

In the first change to article 41.1.1 the state promises to recognise ‘durable relationships’ it hasn’t been able to define: a politically correct, right-on gesture that is immediately shoved aside by the wording of the second, Article 41.3.1.

Much criticism arises from what ‘durable’ is supposed to mean: ‘capable of lasting’ is held to not necessarily meaning ‘enduring’ or permanent, while of course nothing is permanent, and enduring is an observation at a point in time. ‘Capable of lasting’ invites interpretation of two other words, as does the word ‘relationships’.  In attempting to impose the state on human relationships it is found that its mechanism of the law cannot define and thus delimit the expansive nature of these relationships.

The growth of capitalism means that family production as the basis of society (by peasant holdings or small family farms) has been destroyed or marginalised and the attempt to encompass all the fragments of familial forms that have arisen ignore the worst effects of capitalist wage labour in its freeing workers from their means of production and consumption.  Free wage labour is the basis of capitalist society and the myriad forms in which workers attempt to provide love and security to each other in their relationships are subordinated within it.

This is reflected in the care or neglect of children, in their education and protection.  It is reflected in the services provided or not provided to workers such as health and social services, housing, child minding, and transport and the jobs and income they can obtain.  These all have decisive impacts on how people, including within families, are able to live.  Most workers know that what they can do for themselves and those they love depends on their own efforts.  It is just a pity many have so little comprehension that this has a class and political dimension and not just an individual one.

The family, in all its forms, thus really is ‘a moral institution’, demonstrating that what is moral is only as virtuous and good as the reality it is based on.  Families are often the grounds of domestic abuse, primarily against women and children, and not havens from the big, bad world outside.  Their rights are not ‘inalienable and imprescriptible’; they are often subject to state or other social interference, for good or ill, with their presumed prerogatives sometimes taken away, again for good or ill.  They are subject to social circumstances and the institutions of the state and its laws.

The hypocrisy of the Irish state’s claims to ‘recognise’ ‘durable relationships’ in their different forms is illustrated by the treatment of those seeking refuge in the State.  Demonstrations against the accommodation of international protection claimants have targeted single males, while the government has accepted this by withdrawing the accommodation from them and accommodating women and children instead.  But do these men cease of to be members of families because they are separated from them, potentially because of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’?

The promise to protect the institution of marriage is not provided to the other ‘durable relationships’.  Perhaps this doesn’t matter, in which case the absence of such words calls into question the importance of their inclusion and the point of the changes.  At the very least it calls into question the claim of the National Women’s Council that a “Yes vote will value all families equally,” whatever valuing means.

Forward to part 2