While the Government has two years to run, most people expect an election to be called some time in the next nine months. Already, the electoral foreplay has begun, with John Bruton making amorous soundings to everybody from Labour to the Greens, and anonymous Labour and Sinn Fein sources are quoted as saying they will not enter a coalition government with Fianna Fail.

Earlier this summer The Irish Times gave extensive coverage to reports that a number of people were going to establish a new anti-corruption party. Some may disregard all

this as the normal stuff of the silly season, except that this year we are too close to the next election and formation of a new government to dismiss such activities as froth.

My union, the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union, is affiliated to the Labour Party. We contribute to and believe in building up a strong Labour Party that represents the interests of working people. This brings me to the nub of the current debate, or rather the lack of it, within the labour movement, over the likelihood of Labour re-entering government.

There is a fear among many trade unionists and Labour supporters that Labour will enter some government with either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael without thinking of the medium- to long-term goals of the labour movement. Short-term opportunism by a few individuals who regard being in government as the pinnacle of their politics should not be allowed to dominate Labour thinking.

For years, Labour has acted as a prop for one or other of the two main conservative parties. The debate after every election seems to centre on how many ministers and junior ministries Labour will get. Labour can appoint its own people to boards and quangos just as Fianna Fail and Fine Gael do and then at subsequent elections Labour is hammered by the electorate. This historical fact seems to be forgotten once government negotiations begin, and could lead one to believe that the lure of the ministerial Merc is just too much for the Labour leadership.

The recent call by John Bruton for a pre-election pact between Labour and Fine Gael is symptomatic of the paralysis that grips Labour in the run-up to elections. Instead of rebuffing Mr Bruton and sending him and the electorate the clear message that Labour is not prepared to do for John Bruton and Fine Gael what the electorate has consistently refused to do, there is hardly a murmur from Labour.

Is it any wonder, then, that the electorate is becoming increasingly disenchanted and cynical about opportunistic and cronyist politics?

As a contribution to ending this cynicism and to help restore confidence in the supremacy of politics, the Labour leadership should take a principled lead and give a clear, unambiguous pre-election commitment to the electorate that Labour will not enter any conservative-dominated government and, more importantly, will stick to this promise prior to the formation of the next government.

Instead of being a mere prop Labour, and indeed the whole trade union movement, should look to other parties and progressive independents rather than the two main parties as potential allies. For too long Labour has regarded smaller parties and independents on the left as bitter enemies and rivals rather than allies.

We should examine the possibilities of election pacts and vote-transfer arrangements with parties other than the traditional big two. The trade union movement should support other progressive parties and independents apart from official Labour candidates.

It is in the interests of the trade union movement that a strong alternative bloc be developed. With a peace of sorts beginning to take root in the North, the need to have two essentially conservative parties with their roots in the divisions of 80 years ago will no longer matter.

It is Labour's job to speed up this process by not supporting either but by seeking actively to supplant and replace them in new alliances. But we cannot create this vital new democratic force by jumping into bed with spent and discredited parties. It is time to put our two political dinosaurs with their fossilised attitudes and self-serving manners into our museum of political history.

A debate needs to take place now regarding the kind of Irish society modern politics should help create and facilitate. The Labour movement should be at the heart of that debate which I hope will lead to a realignment of Irish politics.

There is an urgent need to have a root-and-branch cleansing of the entire political, business and legal establishment in Ireland. It is clear that tinkering around with minor reforms of the system will not suffice.

In a modern democratic Republic, power should not be vested in the hands of a privileged few. Questions have to be asked regarding how such a group came to possess, hold on to and abuse so much power.

The complex matrix of relationships which mesh our various establishments together in complementarity and mutual satisfaction must be the first step in a thorough examination whose aim will be to ensure the primacy of people power, as opposed to that of wealthy vested interests.

The trade union movement helped found the Labour Party to bring about real economic and social change. If Labour is to bring about that change in a modern context we need to do so building on new alliances and rejecting the Tammany Hall politics of a discredited past.

Labour and the trade union movement are the alternative to Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. They are our rivals, not our allies. To grow, develop and be in a position to offer a real alternative government to the electorate, Labour must be committed to totally opposing them and be capable of offering different policies and priorities for the new era we have embarked upon.

The aim of the ATGWU is to ensure that at long last we can elect an effective government which has social justice, equity, the protection of our environment, the promotion of our national talents and quality services in health, education, and community at the core of public bodies.

Mick O'Reilly is general secretary of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union