The Labour Party is not a “niche party” but is a party of government, leader Eamon Gilmore has said.
Delivering the Jim Kemmy memorial lecture at the Tom Johnson Summer School in Galway tonight, Mr Gilmore acknowledged that Labour’s traditional values – a desire for fairness, for freedom, and for community – had translated “less and less into electoral success”.
He said the party needed to reach beyond its traditional support base of the manual worker, to encompass all members of the community.
“We are not a niche party. We are a party of government - a party which represents all of the people of Ireland, and a party which should be the natural home of anyone who shares our belief in a fairer country, and a fairer world,” he said.
Mr Gilmore said his party represented “the progressive solution to modern challenges - from the need to balance a functioning market with social protections, to environmental sustainability, to upholding human rights, whether they be the right to be free from torture, or free from hunger”.
He told the audience that the “revival” of social democracy would not be achieved through downplaying its values.
“The revival of progressive politics will be built on the people we can bring with us, the progressive majority who believe that, in life, there are some things worth standing up for.”
It was, he said a challenge to be the party people turn to to represent a “better, fairer, more progressive future” for Ireland.
Mr Gilmore said that at international level, the list of dilemmas which can only be tackled collectively grows “ever longer” and he questioned why social democracy was not therefore attracting new supporters in sufficient numbers.
“We could do worse than to ask ourselves the same question. Labour is an extremely diverse party. We have all come into it for different reasons."
Mr Gilmore said he believed there were “a lot more people out there who believe in the kind of progressive values Labour stands for, but who, for one reason or another, are not Labour supporters”.
And he said it was time the party attempted to appeal to a new support base.
“It is time to reach out beyond the silos we sometimes find ourselves in, beyond the outdated image of Labour as an interest group which only represents a particular type of paid manual worker,” he said.
“Yes, those are our origins, and we are proud of them. But the key to understanding where we are going as a party is to understand the world we live in today.
“Traditional social democracy worked well when people largely defined themselves according to their work. However, while work is still important to people’s identity, the understanding of work has changed, and with it the understanding of what Labour stands for.”
“The key for us as a successful political movement is to understand and respond to the more diverse, more complex, identities and needs of modern Ireland and its citizens.”
Mr Gilmore noted the “meteoric rise” of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
“He is evidence that there is a hunger for politics that listens, but also which leads,” he said.
Mr Gilmore said the “dilemma” faced by Mr Obama on how to build a broad coalition of support was a problem facing the left in many countries.
“How can you convince people that you are, at once, economically responsible, while also exciting the enthusiasm of younger voters, whose concerns are often quite different, and so are suspicious that economic reassurance is simply a code for shifting to the centre?
“In short, how do you create a progressive consensus as robust and popular as neo-liberalism has been for the past thirty years?”
“There is no silver bullet. It is not a question of nostalgia for a simpler past, and an all-powerful nation state. After all, any bargain struck between the market, the state and its citizens will always be a product of its time.”
Mr Gilmore said Labour’s 21st Century Commission, appointed in March to develop a blueprint for the future of the party has been meeting with members around the country to chart the direction the party needs to take “if it is to be the dynamic alternative party that our citizens deserve”.
“When I was elected leader of the Labour Party last September, I pledged to lead a renewal of Labour in Ireland. Nine months into that journey, I am more committed than ever to our common task: a dynamic party; a successful party; a party of government,” he added.
Earlier, Labour Party president Michael D Higgins said the State had seen “unthinkable amounts of money” wasted on “vanity projects” and poor management at the expense of better infrastructure and public services.
In his address to the summer school, Mr Higgins said an ongoing failure to tackle infrastructure deficits in a “timely and efficient manner” had undermined Ireland’s capacity for “sustainable, non-inflationary growth in the longer term”.
He said that was a confrontation and a challenge of the times to those on the political left.
Mr Higgins also said the challenge now facing the Labour Party was “to renew and deepen its relationship with all those progressive forces who are seeking to build a social Europe”.
The Tom Johnson Summer School hosted each summer by the Labour Party honours the former Labour leader and TD.