Madam, - In recent days your paper carried two strikingly different analyses of the post-election state of the Labour Party - Fintan O'Toole's "What's left for Labour?" (Weekend Review, September 1st) and John Waters's "Labour has become too lazy" (Opinion, September 3rd). Both writers are right in asserting that this is a time for strategic thinking by Labour, a message also implicit in your Editorial of September 3rd.
Fintan O'Toole's analysis is the more considered and compelling, particularly his contentions that the economy is key and that Labour needs to reclaim the left and the working-class urban vote, as well as its traditional seats in the provinces.
Stripped of its polemics, John Waters's article amounts to an assertion that Labour's values have no place in modern Ireland, since "there is no possibility whatever of any kind of remotely left-wing analysis taking hold of the electoral imagination in the foreseeable future". A moment's reflection will show that to be an extraordinary view. Admittedly, a large majority of voters have a perception that the ethos of Labour is not in tune with theirs. But the paradox at the heart of this debate is that the dominant self-professed ethos of the majority in Ireland is Christian, more specifically Catholic ; yet this is seen by so many as consistent with materialistic policies based on self-interest, greed and conservatism.
Few would dispute that Christianity should cherish the rights of the weak and dispossessed, the dignity of human labour, the need for the rich to share their wealth with the less fortunate. Surely those values, not a defence of the status quo or of conservative attitudes to sexual morality, are at the heart of most of the religions which are supported in this country. They are also central to Labour's raison d'être.
In a country which professes adherence to creeds which share the Labour ethos, somehow the electorate has not been encouraged to draw the logical conclusion: that their natural choice should be Labour. It is vital that the Labour Party bridges this gap in perception if it is not to become a niche party. - Yours, etc,
DESMOND J. KELLY,
Bailey View,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - John Waters accuses the Labour Party of having "become too lazy to think through its own position". The same could be said of Mr Waters, as he displays some very lazy thinking in his criticisms of the Labour Party.
He begins by referring to "the implosion of actually-existing socialism in 1989". Communism, not socialism, imploded after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Socialism, in the form of a highly regulated and highly taxed economy and a generous welfare state, continues to thrive in Scandinavia. The fact that other North European nations with small populations can combine socialism with dynamic, competitive economies provides an example for the Irish left to follow.
Mr Waters then contrasts the failure of the Irish Labour Party to adapt to change with the successful transformation of the British Labour Party. He observes that "conditions there [ in Britain] were not significantly dissimilar to Ireland". Britain is a very different country to Ireland. Does Mr Waters recall smoke-stacks that cluttered the horizons of his youth? No, because Castlerea is no Coventry. Ireland never experienced industrialisation on the scale that Britain did and, because of this, the Irish Labour Party cannot rely on the support of a large urban working class, as the British Labour Party can.
Additionally, Labour in Ireland has to compete with Fianna Fáil, a catch-all party that manages to attract a large share of what working-class votes there are.
Later he refers to "post-ideological politics". What country has Mr Waters been living in? When were politics in Ireland divided along left-right or any other ideological grounds? The policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have remained almost identical, apart from marginal differences on issues such as Northern Ireland and the liberal agenda.
I found myself, and not for the first time, consulting my dictionary to explain some of Mr Waters's phrases but am still at a loss as to what "Labour's incurable pathology of principled obscurantism" means. It is high time that he realised that the use of big words does not change a weak argument into a strong one. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL DURKAN,
Hollyville Court,
Francis Street,
Wexford.