In the New Year Labour and Democratic Left will merge to become one big party of the left. But will it stop there? There is talk, not least from the chairman of the SDLP, Jonathan Stephenson, of a future 32-county Labour movement. Will Ruairi Quinn now show greater interest in Northern Ireland? The realignment in the Republic will be sealed this day week when Labour and DL hold separate conferences in Dublin for the rank and file to approve the leaders' deal, and it will be signed in the New Year.
The divvy-up of the constituencies has already been agreed on the basis that if there is a candidate conflict and the constituency has more than three seats, the left can take two. The frontbench portfolios will come later but DL won't suffer.
DL workers - a mere three - will be taken into new Labour with conditions as good as those they now enjoy. Policies were never a problem; it was always about seats and jobs. In all these arrangements one group, however, does find itself out on a limb - that of DL members in the North. They may number only about 150, but their existence all but ceases under the new deal. Both our Labour and the British Labour party are excluded from the North as they are aligned to the SDLP. Any campaigning or organising by either of the sister parties would be seen as a very hostile move and resisted fiercely by the SDLP: consequently, neither Labour exists there. DL does, but numbers are small.
When the island-wide Workers Party split in 1992, 80 per cent of the membership in the Republic went to DL and 20 per cent stayed behind; the figures were reversed in the North. The DL in the North has been active in many elections over past years and currently has one councillor, but no assembly member. Under the terms of the merger, members may if they wish become "head office members", a facility open to people outside Ireland. If they want to organise and campaign in the North they will have to do so under another label. Already some are considering an alliance with the Greens and/or other non-sectarian, leftish grouping. But there is another scenario. At the SDLP conference in Newry, Stephenson called for closer links between his party and Labour - "Ruairi's Labour, not Tony's" - in the interests of closer cross-border co-operation and policy implementations. They should talk about pooling resources and experience and about a common approach to social and economic issues on the island, he said. They were the same party in Europe. In two or five years time, he said, there could be calls for talks between the SDLP and the Labour Party aimed at forming one party on the island. He might help write the motion.