The left should reappraise the strategy of coalition with the two big parties, writes Richard Boyd Barrett
The results of the election should prompt a major rethink by the political left in this country. By any standards, the vote for the left was very disappointing.
The Labour Party and Sinn Féin lost ground, while the Greens only managed to stay still. A number of left Independents and socialists lost out or failed to make the breakthrough they expected.
The consolidation of Fianna Fáil and the gains made by Fine Gael have prompted many to deduce a conservative swing by the Irish people to the centre-right of politics. According to this view, a majority of people have benefited from the economic prosperity of the last 10 years and opted for continuity rather than change - making the squeeze on the left and Independents inevitable.
However, the collapse of the PDs - the trumpeters of the hardline neo-liberal and pro-privatisation policies pursued by the last government - suggests if anything a strong rejection of such policies. It is also surely obvious that there is widespread anger among the Irish public about the crisis in the health service, inadequate public transport, purely profit-driven planning and development, the lack of affordable housing, underfunded and overcrowded schools, and run-down local services.
That this anger did not translate into a severe drubbing for the Government and a growth in support for the left says far more about the left's weaknesses and mistakes than it does about a conservative swing in Irish society.
The fact that Labour, the Greens and Sinn Féin all made clear that their ambition was only to act as a prop for one or other of the two major parties was the real reason the election was reduced down to a choice between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny. Why vote for the left if in fact it is a vote for Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael?
The mainstream parties of the left also watered down their policies to make coalition with either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael possible. Labour has long since abandoned real opposition to the privatisation of public services and at council level in coalition with Fine Gael has gone along with the continued reduction and privatisation of local council services.
Labour's refusal to commit to any sort of redistributive tax reform and then its attempt to mimic the PDs in calling for income tax cuts was a clear indication that a vote for Labour was a vote for the status quo.
The refusal by Labour and the Greens to give a commitment that they would not support a government that continued to allow the use of Shannon by the US military also suggested political principle would be traded for power. Sinn Féin, who had previously taken positions to the left of Labour and the Greens, also quietly dropped proposals to increase corporate taxation in what was clearly an effort to make its economic polices palatable to Fianna Fáil.
Of course, it is not a matter of simply presenting more left-wing-sounding policies - the real issue is what do you do? Here there is a wider problem with the conventional left because they narrow down politics solely to the electoral arena.
The history of the European left shows that voting patterns only change to the left as a result of the experience of large-scale social struggles. A left that aligns itself to social partnership and left-right coalitions rather than developing a politics of "people power" will marginalise itself.
Labour, the Greens and Sinn Féin had no real record of leading campaigns or protests on the issues that concerned the public. For the most part their opposition to the Government was limited to parliamentary rhetoric and point-scoring rather than active political campaigning on issues.
With little evidence of major policy difference or a campaigning track record, the failure of the three mainstream left parties to inspire the electorate was hardly surprising. Further to the left, while some Independents and Joe Higgins's Socialist Party had a considerably more consistent and active record of challenging the Government on real issues, the problem was fragmentation and division.
Despite a number of attempts to group together socialists and left Independents into an independent left alliance with a national profile, petty sectarianism prevented this from materialising. The socialist lefts' failure to ditch bad habits of ideological and organisational dogmatism also remain a major block to its advance.
Against the background of a very poor overall performance for the left, the shock caused by the People Before Profit Alliance in Dún Laoghaire in coming so close to taking a seat may be a small but significant pointer towards a possible way forward.
The result bucked the national trend and suggests the left's poor showing in the election was not inevitable. A number of factors contributed to this relative success in Dún Laoghaire: crucially, the campaign was based on the development of social movements on a variety of issues. The People Before Profit Alliance in Dún Laoghaire emerged from a coming together of activists from the Save Our Seafront campaign, the anti-bin tax campaign, agitations around housing, planning and local services, the anti-war movement and a number of other campaigns.
Even during the election campaign, the People before Profit Alliance launched a petition and street agitation when it emerged that St Michael's hospital might be under threat from private developers.
Crucial also to this social movement activism was a demonstration that it was possible to succeed through a politics of people power. The success of the Save Our Seafront protests in halting plans for privatisation and high-rise development at Dún Laoghaire baths widely exposed the reality of privatisation but also showed that developers and a council that seems to facilitate them at every turn could actually be beaten.
What became the People Before Profit Alliance gained a reputation in Dún Laoghaire as the people active on every issue that got results. Importantly, though many of these campaigns had socialist involvement, they were open to anybody regardless of political affiliation or lack of it. This new organisation, whose members had a proven track record of campaigning and had a more open alliance structure, was able to involve both existing left-wing activists from a variety of backgrounds and many people that had never before been involved in formal politics.
With such disappointing results nationally, the left should surely now reappraise the failed strategy of coalition with the two big parties of the centre-right and overcome the differences and divisions that have prevented it from developing as a viable and independent force in Irish politics. Without overstating its significance, the vote for the People Before Profit Alliance in Dún Laoghaire suggests such a rethink might produce surprising results.
Richard Boyd Barrett was the People Before Profit Alliance candidate in Dún Laoghaire. He is a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He gained prominence as a leading figure in the Save Our Seafront campaign and the Irish Anti-War Movement
Tomorrow: Cormac Lucey