Category Archives: Irish politics

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (3 of 3)

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A final argument in support of the New Popular Front approach is to argue that the key task of the day in the class struggle is to stop the far right, and this the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) has done.  How else was it to be done in the circumstances?

One way this has been put is to say that:

‘If the left had not voted for Macron candidates in the second round, it would have meant an overall majority for Le Pen. Just listen to the relief expressed by ethnic minority people on TV in the Republic Square last night. They were terrified at a Le Pen government moving aggressively against so-called bi-nationals. Stopping a Le Pen government makes a real difference. Counter-posing mass struggles or street mobilisations as an immediate solution to defend black or Arab people is just demagogy.’

Let’s get some things out of the way first – ‘Just listen to the relief expressed by ethnic minority people on TV in the Republic Square last night’ is not enough, not nearly enough, to join that fear and then surrender political principle and independence.  If this is a guide to the rationale then it is woefully weak; the fight against the far right will be advanced by militant action based on socialist politics, not fear driving the working class into the arms of the main bourgeois parties and through them the French state. Were the far-right an immediate fascist danger it would be because this state, and its political class, had decided that fascism was required, in which case allying with this class in order to preserve the current state would be an obvious disaster. 

Let’s note the admission in this article of the price paid for this ‘success.’  First, that the NFP propped up the Macron bloc to the extent it could, and ‘we should not forget her (Marine le Pen) group topped the vote share, and the increase in her party’s seat tally is still historic.’  In other words the far right still gained and the main bourgeois parties that paved their way received protection by the intervention of a ‘united left’.  These are the circumstances that facilitated the rise of the far right previously, that precipitated the crisis, and which – despite the NFP ‘success’ – still. persist.  A ‘success’ which reproduces the threat at a potentially higher level is not a success.

So, what about the claim that the need for ‘mass struggles or street mobilisations as an immediate solution to defend black or Arab people is just demagogy’?  Well, since right now mobilisation and struggle will continue to be necessary, seeking these is clearly not demagogy and do not cease to be of primary importance because there is an election.  What about the NFP not being counterposed to these steps?

Well, since the NFP has failed to achieve a majority there will be no governmental programme that will offer an alternative to either the main bourgeois parties or far right and there will be no governmental endorsement of the physical or legal protection of black or Arab people.  The NFP is not going to mobilise workers to protect them as it isn’t going to organise workers defence groups to defend itself.

The failure to win governmental office may cause some demoralisation – or at least demobilisation – of NFP supporters, especially if the whole cobbled together alliance breaks up and erstwhile allies denounce each other for the failure. Even if this proves not to be the case the need for a robust alternative to be built will be no clearer or nearer to creation by it being asserted that forces like the SP, Communist Party and Greens will lead it.  They will not. An alternative to them will remain to be created but cannot if the priority becomes an alliance with them against the far right. Acceptance of the NFP argument would mean that the far right would have achieved the removal of an independent socialist left, one not wedded to defence of the French state and bourgeois democracy.

What about the claim: ‘Key point: Without the formation of the NFP, no defeat of Le Pen.’  The argument is that had the left decided not to unite it may have been unable to weaken the far right as much as it did, but the argument also entails the strengthening of the Macron bloc as just as necessary to this outcome.  It could therefore equally be argued that supporting this bloc from the start through an alliance in the first round of voting might have achieved the same result.

That this would obviously be rejected then as now can only be because this mainstream right was not and is not an alternative to the far right that could be supported – except that it then was supported.  Why not in the first round if was acceptable in the second?

Some appreciation that there would be a day after the election should have prevented support for the Macron bloc in the second round, a bloc that they now claim they do not support in power today; except this is precisely the argument against the whole NFP project.  The fancy that it is about stopping the far right, and that this is what matters, dissolves when the election is over and you’re back to square one. Short cuts do not take you to your destination.

In so far as the creation of left unity did evoke enthusiasm and activity it is an exercise in misleading and miseducating those who became active: that their activity on behalf of a cobbled together programme and alliance of forces without any real socialist alternative is a step forward.  Support for this alliance will not withstand its fracturing, and at worst lead to yet another round of claims that what is needed is left unity of those who are ultimately united only in acceptance of the French capitalist state and not to any working class alternative.  It is not enough to be ‘active’ – the political programme that you struggle for is decisive in whether it advances the working class cause.

The article referenced states that ‘this week the big issue is what next’; surely a question that should have occurred to the supporters of the NFP beforehand, but which then elicits the observations that the NFP is set for splits, and its left under Melenchon is not a democratic alternative.  One starts to wonder why it is necessary to argue against a ‘united left’/NFP when even those who support it admit it isn’t actually united and isn’t very left?  Why would socialists want to continually repeat this failure?

As for the far right itself, the article notes that: ‘although the RN has been pushed back, their position has still been strengthened compared to the previous parliament. An unstable period with no majority and various stitch-ups means they can frame it as the caste ganging up on the true defenders of French identity. So, it could still provide them with plenty of space to build their forces.’  In other words, the far right may continue to advance while the left fails to hold together because it substitutes opportunist electoral alliances for working class struggle – for the building of a stronger working class movement.

Building a stronger working class movement out of what exists and arming it with socialist politics – that recognises the independent interests of the working class – is the alternative.  This does not rule out agreements or temporary limited alliances with others opposed to the far right, but it rules out subordination of socialist politics to a cobbled together alliance that supports the main bourgeois parties and the state.  Agreement must be based on a refusal to do so, and if such agreement is not achievable then any other more limited agreement must be based on concrete actions.  Where no agreement can be reached this does not exclude participation in specific joint activity and mobilisations while retaining an independent policy.

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If we return back to Ireland, we also return to the working class movement as it is, one that has been wedded to social partnership with the main bourgeois parties and Irish state for over a generation, for so long it is no longer discussed.  The trade unions are politically dead, and its bureaucracy is in bed with the state because it provides them with a comfortable home.  The massive growth of the working class has been driven by multinationals, but the leadership of the unions has a policy of not building the movement within them.  The Irish left has given up challenging this situation and while it will support individual strikes etc. it has no campaign against the bureaucracy.

Without a revitalisation of the working class movement the (genuine socialist) left in Ireland will remain weak, and while much of what exists of it is unusual in that it claims to be Marxist, the actual politics it argues is not very different from left social democracy.  What is broadly called the left hasn’t grown in twenty years as the table below, taken from this site, illustrates:

It could reasonably be argued that the Irish Labour party isn’t left because it has always allied with Fine Gael to get into office, but one could say something similar about the Greens and we know that Sinn Fein’s whole strategy is the same today.  Excluding them would not change the picture of a failure to grow, although what it would show is that the label ‘left’ is pretty meaningless.

Creating a working class alternative will not start by cobbling together any arrangement of these in an Irish New Popular Front that will be neither left nor very popular either.  As an electoralist initiative it fails on even electoralist grounds.  For the pragmatists these last three posts could have been ignored and only the table above provided to make the argument, but that’s the problem with the Irish left: it’s primary weakness today is political not electoral.

Back to part 2

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (1 of 3)

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It’s not often that in politics you get to carry out an experiment that will tell you what will happen if you propose to take a certain course of action, but that is what we have with the proposal for the Irish Left to copy the creation of the New Popular Front in France.

People before Profit have proposed that a left pact that includes Sinn Fein should stand as an alternative alliance to the current Fianna Fail and Fine Gael government that will seek a new government mandate later in the year.  Its TD Paul Murphy has explained that a new mandate ‘would be a ‘disaster’, further ‘ratchet up’ the ‘scapegoating of asylum seekers’ and ‘embolden the far right even more.’   In this, the left should ‘take inspiration from the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) in France.’

There are so many issues with this it is difficult to know where to start; but let’s start with the most obvious.  In France the NFP was put forward as a way to stop the election of a far-right government of the Rassemblement National (RN).  This has involved an electoral alliance of the NFP with the main French bourgeois parties in which left voters were asked to vote for these parties where they were placed second in the second round of voting. Just like in Ireland, this alliance claims that it has been the policies of these parties that has helped incite and support the far right in the first place.

So, in Ireland, an alliance with the main bourgeois parties in France is held up as the example to follow in order to defeat the same main bourgeois parties in Ireland.  It might be claimed that this is not what is meant by copying the NFP example but that is only true if you ignore the politics involved, and politics is what it’s all about.

At a very basic level the proposal is all about what you are against and not what you are for, a common charge against the left by the right that the left continually confirms.  The far-right offer an alternative, even if it is reactionary and built on lies, while the main bourgeois parties offer the status quo, which includes all the powerful and hegemonic political, economic and ideological forces in Ireland and the world.

When faced with the slender possibility of presenting its own alternative government following the elections the hastily constructed joint platform of the NFP in France has been no help; the main point was purely negative – to allow the creation of a pact that would stymie the far right.  The NFP includes the very parties who led to the collapse and discrediting of previous left governments composed of the Communist Party and Socialist Party.  The former is now a shadow of its former self while the latter has been allowed to climb back up from its utterly discredited rule between 2012 to 2017 under President François Hollande, also back from the dead and part of the NFP.

With stopping the far-right as its prime and overriding purpose, there can be no objection to further capitulation to the main ‘centrist’ parties, which suffered the biggest defeat in the elections and to which the majority of the French public is bitterly opposed.  Now, along comes the united left to form an alliance to prop it up.  While the left in Ireland portrays the French elections as a victory for the left it ignores that this was a victory (of sorts) of an alliance with these discredited bourgeois parties, which have an effective veto over the formation of any new government.

What now remains to be determined is the exact configuration of the caretaker government cobbled together from the fragments of the NFP and bourgeois centrists before the next presidential election in which the far-right will then again claim to be the only real alternative to the rotten establishment.  Such are the fruits of short term surrender of principles, or opportunism as it has long been known as.

The relevance to Ireland is clear enough.   The left alliance proposed by People before Profit only has the remotest credibility because it must contain Sinn Fein, so this party must be called ‘left’ because it can’t be called socialist, which shows how this is a purely relative term, loaded with ambiguity and therefore dangerous in application.

The political experiment I alluded to at the start of the article also relates to the fact that Sinn Fein is already involved in a coalition government in Ireland, and with one of the most backward and reactionary parties in Europe.  What’s more, the DUP and Sinn Fein seem to get along famously, with differences not over fundamental policy but just how the sectarian pie is carved up between them.

The Stormont regime is a now a byword for disfunction and incompetency, but these are just expressions of its sectarianism.  This sectarianism has made it easy for Sinn Fein to join with the DUP in imposing austerity while trumpeting the fact that it is now the leading party in the whole rotten edifice.  Widespread acceptance of this arrangement has been possible mainly by portraying the North as a place apart with different rules that don’t apply in the rest of the country.

People before Profit thinks it can form an alliance with Sinn Fein in the South, telling it that its project of a coalition with Fianna Fail (FF) or Fine Gael (FG) would face a veto on any radical change.  It has sought to persuade SF that its attempts to make this work have failed, including its overtures to convince FF & FG that ‘you were not advocating a radical left programme’, and its ‘reluctance to clearly oppose the government’s scapegoating of asylum seekers.’  Yet this is the party that PbP portrays as ‘left’ and a vehicle for radical change!

It’s not even that PbP is promoting this with its eyes closed – blinkers maybe – but even the most blinkered can’t ignore the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein and its talking out of both sides of its mouth; one of the reasons its vote fell so far from expectations in the recent local and European elections.

Everyone knows that Sinn Fein was expecting to be in government after the next general election, with the prime candidate for partner being Fianna Fail, one of the evil twins that are the target of PbP and which it regards as the over-riding priority to defeat. If this strategy, its record in Stormont, its promise of good behaviour, and its failure to challenge the scapegoating of asylum seekers; if all this is not enough to expose the real character of Sinn Fein then we must ask the question – what compromises are PbP prepared to make for an alliance with it?

If there are none, is this because the joint platform will be so anaemic, the politics of SF and PbP are so similar, or because the priority is to get FF and FG out so it doesn’t matter?  If there are compromises to be made, what are they?

Forward to part 2

Irish Elections (1) – Sinn Fein was the future once?

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For years Sinn Fein in the North was accused of acting as both government and opposition, enacting right wing policies in government while presenting itself as anti-establishment, pretending to oppose the sort of politics it was itself carrying out.  It talked out of both sides of its mouth and had more sides than the Albert Clock, as we say in Belfast.

It got, and still does to a lesser degree, get away with it because its dumping of traditional republicanism has been continually praised while its clinging to symbolic remembrance of its dead armed struggle is repeatedly damned.  More fundamentally, it succeeded because it is the most vigorous defender of Catholic rights in the ‘new’ political settlement that has been anointed saintly status by the powers that be, stretching from Washington and London to Dublin and Belfast, not to mention Brussels.

It has had lots of powerful friends on its journey from rebels to politicians, happy to indulge its self-ID as progressive radicals while it became the centrepiece of a regime of dysfunctional failure.  It could forever bask in the naked contempt of its unionist coalition partners, the best of enemies, while telling its supporters that a united Ireland was ‘within reach’. What made it repellant to some made it attractive to others.

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During a walk-about with a Sinn Fein candidate in last weeks local elections an Irish Times journalist noted that some potential voters appeared to treat the party as if it was already in Government – part of the establishment – and part of the problem it was presenting itself as the solution to.  Waving Tricolours and singing rebel songs doesn’t exactly distinguish you in the South, which now routinely names itself Ireland, leaving the North to get along with Northern Ireland, the nomenclature that unionists goad Sinn Fein with its unwillingness to allow pass its lips.  Now Sinn Fein has found in ‘Ireland’ a new rival that claims to be even more nationalist than it and waves the flag even more vigorously.  The structural conditions applying in the North don’t exist south of the border so are no help to it.

The rise of the far-right and its opposition to immigration, especially in some working class areas of Dublin, is widely held to be a major reason for the apparently sudden and stunning setback to Sinn Fein in the local and European elections held last week.  In an opinion poll in June 2022 it was recording support at 36 per cent, by far the biggest party.  Last week it gained only 12 per cent of the first preference vote and would be the fourth largest if we count the bag of independents as a party.  In 2020 it suffered from standing too few candidates to maximise seats from 25 per cent of the vote while in 2024 it stood too many.

It isn’t Fine Gael or Fianna Fail who are labelled the traitors now, although Sinn Fein long ago found that approach would get them nowhere.  It is now Sinn Fein who are the traitors to the Irish nation, who support a ‘new plantation’ and who refuse to prevent immigration when ‘Ireland is full’.   It is Sinn Fein that is now accused by the assorted racists, far right and fascists as betrayers of the ordinary working class Irish.

All the anti-immigrant tropes that have been seen across Europe are now a ready currency in Ireland and Sinn Fein is the primary political target.  Within less than a couple of years a self-satisfied liberal view that Ireland was more or less immune from the rising tide of racism and xenophobia so prevalent elsewhere has been evaporated.

The growth of the population has largely been due to immigration while the keenness of the Irish bourgeoisie to show its support for Ukraine (in the absence of an ability to provide weapons or troops) has meant that over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed.  This has been followed by an increase in refugees from other countries, less welcome, not least because they aren’t white and no political capital is accrued by having them.

The Irish State was already undergoing a housing shortage when it decided to open its doors to these refugees; stumbling from one emergency measure to another in order to cope while offering welfare rates on a par with the natives.  As the number of those seeking international protection also grew local protests against the housing of these refugees developed in small towns and mainly working class areas of Dublin.

Numerous arson attacks prevented accommodation from being created for refugees while local people claiming not to be racist protested, claiming only to be concerned with the lack of local GP or other health services; an existing shortage of accommodation, or the turning of a local hotel that might have brought in tourists into a refuge for asylum seekers.  The localism of political activity in much of Ireland found it easier to mobilise against asylum seekers than against the failure of the state to keep health, education and housing in line with a growing population.  No doubt many of the local protesters are voters for the bourgeois parties responsible for the policies that led to the failure.

The governing parties decided to clamp down and the toughened rhetoric on immigration became one of control – ‘firm and fair’ – the same reactionary rhetoric employed elsewhere that everyone knows means an attack on the rights of refugees.  The governing parties had found a scapegoat for their failures and a handy weapon against its political rival in Sinn Fein: opinion polling claimed to show that part of its support was more opposed to immigration than that of other parties.

The party first tried to dampen this by arguing that the Government had failed to talk to or consult properly with local people about the accommodation of refugees in their areas but one of their TDs had to admit that “we were a bit all over the place.”  This has settled down to more or less aping the rhetoric of the Government and policies that are more or less the same.

None of this could appease those looking for a quick racist solution and who aren’t going to be convinced by the benefits of immigration, not least because they haven’t seen any.  The benefits of opposing anti-immigrant and racist solutions from a socialist point of view don’t exist for those who don’t have a socialist project and don’t see any utility in working class politics.  Sinn Fein can’t argue this way and even the left mainly presents liberal and human rights arguments that are no part of this politics.

Sinn Fein thus doesn’t escape blame from more backward and reactionary workers while its more liberal and vaguely progressive supporters won’t support it bowing too far in their direction.  Both have reason to doubt the party, with the recorded decline in its support preceding the more recent prominence of migration.

There is only so much complaining you can do before you’re asked to explain what you’re going to do about it, arising from doubts about exactly what you stand for.  U-turns have been public and obvious over a range of issues, including the price of housing, proposed hate legislation, support for the failed referendum proposals that were roundly defeated and then reversal of a promise to re-run the vote if they failed.  All these are small relative to the fundamental U-turns in the North, but this just illustrates the different environment it has to work in.

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Sinn Fein is not yet the past, but it doesn’t look like the future now either.  That famous Irishman Oscar Wilde said that “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”  Sinn Fein has been much talked about leading up to the elections and especially about the results, including by the leader of the current Government coalition.  You’re not supposed to talk ill about the dead in Ireland so Sinn Fein isn’t dead, but it isn’t the main story and we’ll talk about that next.

Forward to part 2