As The Dust Settles

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0228/breaking2.html

It seems implausible with so few seats needed to from a majority that FG would look to a party who strongly oppose many of their main election promises to from a coalition. Equally it would be a mistake for the Labour party to give up on the chance to lead a strong socialist opposition and become a minority partner in a government that is destined for troubling times. Perhaps it's a case for Enda Kenny of having Labour in the tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in.

Election 2011: Dispelling the Myths



Martin: Still Fighting



      1. Fianna Fail are now destroyed as a party.

Rubbish. So they suffered the worst defeat in their history, so they were so utterly beaten out of Dublin, so their leadership reshuffle failed to have the presumed ‘bounce’ effect many thought it would, they are still the party to beat. Fine Gael have not been catapulted into power on the back of having a charismatic leader, they haven’t been ushered in with a popular mandate, or even a realistic manifesto. Their return to power is a negative vote for Fianna Fail; it is a concerted turn away from FF and a swing towards the ‘other’ big party, Fine Gael. FG will reap the benefits for the next few months, maybe even a year but when it turns out that their policies aren’t actually that popular, or perhaps, effective, there will be momentum towards finding a credible alternative. FF’s big loses have been to the Labour Party and to Sinn Fein, grassroots organisations that offer an ideology and candidates with a track record of results at a grassroots level, and this is where they may be permanently damaged. The votes which have swung to FG will trickle back and forth, but the votes lost to the socialist parties may stay lost, and this is the big result of this election.

2.       A Sinn Fein Victory is a Victory for Nationalism

The Sinn Fein Party in Northern Ireland and the Sinn Fein Party in the Republic are practically two different political organisations with two manifestos and two different candidate lists. The organisation in the Republic sticks mainly to socialist rhetoric and works a lot with community groups, football teams, schools, looking after people grievances on the ground, working on promoting the party as an organisation that still lives among the people and works for the people. In the north they have been able to get by on nationalistic policies but here they have to know a lot more about the basic economics of the country, as Gerry Adams learned, and have a clear vision for economic recovery. Sinn Fein’s main problem has been their ties to physical force republicanism, Gerry Adams leadership, which in the republic has angered many who view him as a murderer, and the fact that their manifesto is populist, not that well researched and ultimately, unrealistic. They are not a far right party, they are a community based party attached to some unsavoury characters but a vote for them is not the Irish alternative as a vote for the BNP or Front National.

3.        Enda Kenny will be an embarrassment as Taoiseach

This I can’t really call a myth yet but I’ll try dispelling it nonetheless. Granted Enda is not the most popular leader in the country, he is not the wittiest, nor the most handsome, nor even the smartest; however he has some redeeming features. He is currently the longest serving TD still in office having succeeded his father as TD for Mayo in 1975 and has a wealth of backbench experience working his way up the party ladder, serving as Chief Whip for a while and even serving as Minister for Tourism and Trade from 1994-1997, before his election as leader of Fine Gael in 2002. He is as articulate as Brian Cowan, and certainly more so that Bertie Ahern, and he is far more presentable and telegenic than Cowan. He will be surrounded by a good group of advisors, including former Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan, so his tendency to seek the ‘Hollywood’ speech should be dampened down and a concentration on the humdrum of governance should endear him to the population. Maybe.

The Election of 1918 and the First Dail

The TDs of the First Dail

As we await the final result of the elections to the 31^st Dail, it seems fitting to look back at the election, the make-up and workings of the first Dail, set up in defiance of the British Government, which claimed legitimate rule over the island of Ireland at the time. Following the much documented events of Easter 1916, the Irish Volunteers and sundry hangers-on, especially taken from among those interned for seditious activities at such prison camps as Frongoch in Wales, galvanised by both the realisation that Home Rule was now in the deep freeze and the rapidly growing fear that the British would introduce conscription among the crown subjects in Ireland, decided upon a course of action which would forever alter the course of British and Irish politics.

Pre-War Irish politics, and pre-1918 Irish politics, was dominated by the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Home Rule Party of Butt and Parnell, who, led by John Redmond, had enjoyed the support of most moderate Nationalists on the island and had, seemingly, brought the country to the brink of some degree of Home Rule before the onslaught of the great War. Faced with growing opposition to his nationalist agenda from the rising Unionist resistance, Redmond urged support for the British war effort in order to show the character of Irish citizens and gain favour from the British administration. As the war dragged on, this course of action proved to be Redmond’s undoing as the shelving of the Home Rule bill feed into the more extreme nationalist’s paranoia that once again they would be denied at the last and support began to grow for insurrection, which duly came and went in 1916. The story of the resistance to the Crown could have ended at this point had it not been for British heavy handedness in dealing with the rebel leaders and anyone with even vague nationalist tendencies (over 3,500 arrested, 90 sentenced to death and 15 finally executed), and the aforementioned Conscription Crisis. This crisis led to the formation of an Anti-Conscription Committee with members including Eamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith, among others, men who would rise to further prominence in the following year. Griffith had founded a party called nationalist republican party called Sinn Fein in 1905, which gained moderate electoral success before financial constraints curtailed its activities and, by 1915, almost caused the implosion of the party. That the 1916 Rising somehow came to be blamed on the Sinn Fein movement proved to be a blessing in disguise for Griffith for, with the Irish Parliamentary Party disgraced by its lack of action with regards to conscription, the only recognisable nationalist political movement firmly opposed to conscription was Sinn Fein. The party was thus used as a vehicle for nationalists of all stamps to unite during this period and devise a strategy for independence. It was decided that Sinn Fein would contest the 1918 elections but, rather than take their seats in Westminster, they would take their election as a popular mandate to form an independent parliament, in defiance of the British Government.

In an election uncontested by the Irish Labour Party, Sinn Fein won 73 of the 105 available seats, the Unionist Party won 29, and the IPP just 6. Due to the nature of the ‘first past the post’ system used in British elections, this victory was seen as a landslide and gave Sinn Fein the impetus to carry out their stated manifesto to establish an independent parliament. So it came to pass in the Mansion House in Dublin on the 21^st January 1919 that the representatives of the First Dail sat to conduct the mundane business of parliament, electing Cathal Brugha as Ceann Comhairle (Speaker), adopting a number of documents including a Declaration of Independence, a brief Constitution, a Democratic Programme and a message to the Free Nations of the World. Members of that first Dail included both Griffith and de Valera, along with the head of the IRB, Michael Collins, the future Taoiseach, W.T. Cosgrave and the first woman elected to Westminster, Constance Markiewicz.

Auspicious times they were and the legacy of the First Dail is found today in the workings of our modern Parliament and the principle of representative democracy we still hold as utterly essential, along with our understanding of our relationship between our Parliament and Westminster in the sense that we created the First Dail, it wasn’t given to us. The physical force republicanism that shadowed the Dail’s workings should not denigrate its memory, some of the most able politicians in the history of the state participated in this experiment and we should hope for their like again this time around.         

CIA in Pakistan: Fighting the Frontless War

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby (Former Director of the CIA)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27558.htm

Straight out of Hollywood: CIA Agent Raymond Davis caught on active service in Lahore, Pakistan, after brutal double murder, proof, if ever the wider public needed it, that the American intelligence agencies will carry out extra judicial killings in clear breach of any and all international rules of play. How will the American Secretary of State plan her next move? With the help of an apathetic national media, she should hope.

Shining a Light on History’s Forgotten People: 1. Thomas Clarke

Tom Clarke

Ask anyone who the only US citizen to sign the Irish of Proclamation of Independence was, ask anyone who the head of the IRB was at the time of the rising, ask anyone who was the man most responsible for bringing Padraig Pearse to the fore, for uniting the Irish Volunteers and James Connolly’s Citizens Army in the run up to that faithful week in Easter 1916 and most Irish people, indeed most ‘Republicans’ will simply shrug. The answer to all the above questions is of course Tom Clarke, the first signatory of the aforementioned Proclamation, the glue that held the Rising together and a man whose hand and influence are found in the actions of his successor as IRB head during the Irish War of Independence, Michael Collins. How then has history forgotten this man, especially when you consider how much we speak of the actions of Pearse, Connolly, and Collins, and the impact they had on their own era and ours? 

Born in 1857 on the Isle of Wight to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, the young Tom spent his formative years in South Africa where his father was stationed as a soldier in the British Army, and in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, an area rife with seditious activity and still stained by the memory of the famine well into Toms childhood. The area was also a centre of activity for the IRB, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an oath bound society of nationalists dedicated to the creation of an independent Irish Republic. The IRB’s counterpart in the USA was the Fenian Brotherhood and both organisations became known as the Fenians, especially after the failed rising of 1867.  Clarke became an IRB man after meeting the IRB’s national organiser, John Daly, whose niece he would later marry, and found himself involved in several skirmishes with the local constabulary, eventually fleeing for his life in 1880 to America. It was in the States, and under the tutelage of senior Fenians, that Tom reached the next stage of his commitment to Irish Independence as he was involved in the planning, and, eventually, attempted execution of a bombing campaign in mainland Britain. The operation was a sham from the start with informers privy to every step Clarke was took and he was arrested and, under the pseudonym Henry Wilson, sentenced to penal servitude for life in 1883.

It was from this experience of being caught on active service, betrayed if you will, and the following 15 and a half years of physical and mental torture that the new Tom Clarke arises, broken as a man perhaps but full of the vigour of revolution, aware of the terrible consequences of failure and still prepared to sacrifice his personal liberty for the better of the country. Released in 1898 as an amnesty to mark the centenary of the United Irish rebellion, he moved to America with his new bride Kathleen and set up home in Brooklyn, New York. The penal regime that Clarke survived is documented in his book “Glimpses of an Irish Felons Prison Life”, and some truly barbaric practices like complete silence for the duration of your sentence and an hourly wakeup call during the night must surely have damaged him psychologically. He claimed that “Had anyone told me before those prison doors closed upon me that it was possible for any human being to endure what the Irish prisoners have endured in Chatham Prison, and come out of it alive and sane, I would not have believed him” (Pg. 2).

In 1907 he returned to Dublin and set up a tobacconist shop on Amiens Street, under the close eye of the crown authorities. He had reached legendary status in Republican circles after his survival of the torments of prison, and he was quickly reintroduced to the activities of the IRB, in particular two of its up and coming stars, Bulmer Hobson and Sean MacDermott. Eager to keep a low profile, aware of the reach of the British into every aspect of Irish nationalism he moved behind the scenes to acquaint himself with everybody who could be useful to him, cultivating people and encouraging activism. When the Irish Volunteers came into being in 1913, Clarke was already seen as the leading ‘behind the scenes’ nationalist in the city, yet he stayed away from the Volunteers publically, seeking instead to influence their prominent members, with Pearse becoming an IRB man the same year. Hobson and MacDermott became members of the new organisation and no doubt kept Clarke informed of events and pushed the agenda of the IRB as frequently as possible. As the elder statesman in the organisation, and with his record of previous nationalist activities, Clarke was the last realistic link with the old Fenian movement for a lot of the younger men who had been fed stories of the bravery of ’67 and the need for a new generation of martyrs, and Clarke undoubtedly played on that, especially in his encouraging Pearse to give the graveside oration at the funeral of the Fenian O’Donovan Rossa, an event seen as the coming of age of the generation of ’16. Around this time Clarke was also in contact with James Connolly and his socialist Citizens Army, ensuring him that the Ireland his IRB wanted was both nationalist and socialist, for the people and by the people, encouraging him to support any action taken to rid the country of the landlord class, the British Government.

When it came to nuts and bolts organisation of 1916, most, if not all of the major planning must have been done by the IRB leadership, including Tom Clarke and McDermott, and Clarke was the first signatory of the Proclamation, a fact apparently insisted upon by the other signatories. It is in this action we have the link between The Fenians, the Volunteers, and with the involvement of the IRB, the IRA of the war of Independence. The IRB is the common theme through all of this and Clarke was at the heart of it, pulling strings, pushing agendas, organising behind the scenes, letting people like Pearse be the national face of the movement, letting Pearse declare himself President.

Let us not, however, forget that Clarke, and his ilk, were prepared to use terror tactics to make the British give in to their demands and all of their actions must be seen in the historical context in which they happened. These were no angels, merely men of action who are sometimes necessary for the liberation of a country. Clarke’s second in command in the IRB was Sean McDermott whose aide-de-camp in the GPO was Michael Collins who went on to become head of the organisation after the failure of the Rising, directly taking Clarkes agenda into the fight for independence. Clarke is forgotten because he made himself so invisible; his greatest trick was convincing the Volunteers that it was all their idea, convincing Pearse that he was indeed the President of the new Republic. Clarke insisted that the Volunteers fight until the last man in the GPO, in this he was finally ignored, weeping openly as Pearse surrendered. He was executed, at age 59, along with MacDermott, in Kilmainham Jail following the surrender, this time viewed as too big a fish to put in prison.

His legacy is one of a commitment to physical force Republicanism and if people like MacDermott and Pearse are well regarded as patriots from this period of Irish history then Clarke deserves further study.

22/2/11

Gun Nuts Go Nuts

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/texan-law-to-allow-firearms-in-universities-2550148.html

News that Texan University students are to be allowed carry concealed handguns on campus, a victory for the Firearms lobby, a loss for common sense.

Emigration: The Choice of A New Generation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/ireland-recession-students-emigrate

It seems that regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, the tap has been opened once more, hundreds, if not thousands just sick of the cyclical disillusionment that is the Irish economy and the Irish Political system.

The Shoe Throwers Index

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/daily_chart_arab_unrest_index

Where the revolution rollercoaster will arrive next; A chart in The Economist discussing the current factors for dissent in the Middle East, trying to put some statistics on the mayhem.

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Live Under

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12520586

The Gaddafi family point an accusatory fingure at everyone but themselves, insisting that Civil War is a more realistic option than political concessions.

Libya: This Colonel is Not for Turning

Recent anti-government protests in the Libyan city of Benghazi, and the subsequent reaction by the armed forces, have caught the attention of the world’s media in the last few days, quick on the heels as they were of the ‘victory’ of the Tahir Square ‘revolution’ and the fall of Ben Ali’s government in Tunisia. The wave of popular demonstration has been over simplified by painting the whole region as geopolitically the same; essentially undemocratic, ruled by a despotic elite and tethered together like a string of dominos. From this logic follows the obvious conclusion that Gaddafi will eventually be forced to listen to the grievances of the masses and cede reform, reconstruction or even leave office himself. What has been lost in the tidy summaries and opinion pieces surrounding the recent events in Libyans second city is the nature of the beast these protest are up against, the actual and perceived injustices these people seek to address, and the role Libya has to play in the region, especially vis-à-vis Egypt.

Ruled since 1969 by the sometime erratic sometime psychotic Muammar al-Gaddafi, Colonel Gaddafi, or ‘Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution’ as he likes to be called, who came to power in an army coup against the monarchy and quickly established himself as leader of the new Libyan Arab Republic, a Che Guevara for the region. His rule from here reads like a play list of the things to do when one has a large oil-based revenue, a messiah complex, and a general and unfocused hatred of ‘western interference’ in Muslim lands. He has demonstrated, consistently, in his leadership of this country and the misuse of its resources that no scheme is too madcap, no agenda too fantastical, no opportunity too cynical for him, from Lockerbie to IRA arms sales, from the disappearance and possible murder of Lebanese politician Musa al-Sadar in Libya to the banning of dissenting websites and the imprisonment of dissenters, Gaddafi is a cold, calculated leader, not afraid of upsetting anyone. The recent protests against him are not to be viewed in isolation but merely as part of a wider momentum which has been bubbling under for the past decade or so, especially since the failed assassination attempt on him in 1993. Unlike the aging bumbling Mubarak and the unsure military that the protesters in Egypt met a few weeks previously, these Libyan protesters have consistently come up against a man for whom his own divine right to lead his country, Africa and the Muslim world, is not even in question, a man who sees it as his destiny to die on Libyan soil, rather that escape and allow a transition of power.

Recently, and only to an extent, he has been welcomed into the fold of the civil world community, mostly due to the wealth in natural resources Libya possesses, and the actions of his security forces in the past few nights will embarrass his new friends’ immensely. He has no intention of listening; the protesters in Benghazi have been met with unrestrained military aggression, victim numbers ranging from 300 to 500 at time of writing, most shot in the head or chest, kill shots, live ammunition, machine gunned down. These are the actions of a man at war with his country, these are the actions of a man who will not be moved by mere popular disapproval, he will not be advised by his people, and he will not be swayed by populism.

What will the international community do if the protesters continue, as they have promised to, and Gaddafi continues to body bag them, as his from book suggests he will? Short answer is a whole lot of nothing, meek statements, condemnation and tut-tuts, some watered-down remarks about the Colonel being up to his old tricks but the truth is that the people of the world are not with the people of Benghazi. Libya has oil, it has been a basket case economy for years now but it has a significant amount of foreign investment in it and it won’t benefit anyone in Europe or the US to back the wrong side in this conflict, and as it seems like there will only be one winner, it doesn’t pay to upset Gaddafi, who protects the investment and keeps the oil flowing. Gaddafi will continue to send his army in to cut down protesters, armed or not, he will round them up, bag them, torture them and get to the bottom of it, imprison or kill the current leaders of the main opposition group The National Front for the Salvation of Libya and generally recreate an aura of fear of speaking out, an reassertion of who is the top dog. The cavalry will not come, there will be no dancing in the streets, just outpourings of outrage and a footnote in history when the ‘Day of Rage’ begun a month of massacres.         

20/2/11

Mubarak Nudged Aside but Normal Service to Resume in Egypt

Following the long drawn out death rattle of the now departed former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak the country finds itself united in jubilation at the victory of the will of the masses, but slowly sobering to the realities recently awoken. Mubarak ruled in totality for over thirty years, with the tentacles of his power stretching across and into all aspects of Egyptian social, political and economic life. His regime also controlled, and involved high ranking members of, the Egyptian state security forces, the same security forces he has now handed over power to. Mubarak has managed to stay in power by including those who may be most threatening to his regime, and rewarding them handsomely for their loyalty, he played a Machiavellian game with the world community, serving as the shining light in the eyes of Western diplomats with his upholding of the Egypt-Israel peace accords and his active aversion to radical Islamist factions, particularly the extreme, yet electorally popular, Muslim Brotherhood. The question moderate Egyptians must ask themselves is “Did Mubarak go of his own accord or was he nudged aside by a beast upon which he sat, a beast he fed and accommodated, a beast which now sees him as a liability and so discards him, ready to reimpose itself on the Egyptian people under a different guise, or is this a genuinely historic moment in Arabian politics, where people power can create secular democracy?”

Former vice president, under Anwar El Sadat, Hosni Mubarak came to power after the assassination of the Egyptian President in 1981 by a group of Islamist soldiers in the army of the state, an attack in which the vice president was himself wounded. Mubarak learned a lot from his former boss, from not engaging militarily with Israel, for risk of worldwide exposure and internal instability, to mimicking Sadat’s paranoia with regards both to highly ranking religious figures and to liberal academics. As a former commander in the Egyptian Air force, Mubarak could expect, and received, some support from the armed forces and was allowed to use the full force of the state to ensure that he would not meet the same fate of Sadat, reintroducing the Emergency Laws which had been suspended for 18 months before Sadat’s death. His intelligent playing of the Egyptian reaction to Gulf War helped solidify his military relationship with the USA, leading, indirectly to almost $14 billion worth of Egyptian debt being forgiven by the world community, emboldened him further, confident in the realisation that as long as he was friendly to the worlds superpower, he could act as he pleased with his own population. He even went as far as to promote himself as the voice of Arab moderation with regards to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, a role the Americans rewarded him handsomely for, with annually financial support for his military. This led to several decades of suspended democracy, a period in which Mubarak was said to have earned up to $70 billion in kickbacks and legitimate business profits, and a period in which economic growth in Egypt stagnated and unemployment remained high until belated reform in at the beginning of the century.

His rise to and hold on power seem to mirror a lot of developing world dictatorial regimes; crush opposition, appease the world’s policeman and consolidate your power consistently. The major difference was the geography and cultural role of his country in the region, and indeed in world politics. As the most populous Arab nation in the world, the only Arab nation to have survived more than a week at war with Israel, the cradle of Middle Eastern civility, the holder of the keys to one of the busiest shipping channels in the world, and home to the largest indigenous Islamist organisation in the world, Egypt is more than a little bit special. It is central to American attempts to pacify the region, legitimise its own involvement with the internal politics of the area and keep the Muslim Brotherhood tightly under heel, without getting their hands dirty. To the end of pacification and dominance in the region they pumped funds and weapons into an already swollen military, making sure that they were hooked on the drug of armaments and keeping the tap open as long as the policy flowed in their favour. The military is well aware of its role in Egyptian society, as it is aware of where its loyalty lies, and one questions how many top brass were actually in Tahir square, or welcomed developments in the country, in the past few weeks. More likely they were in a secret locale meeting with old masters and advisors, keeping to the script. There would be a revolution, Mubarak lived by his cutthroat agenda and he would be required to fall on his sword, allowing the less public face of his regime into the saddle to usher in ‘change’. On the streets it looked like a miracle, power finally falling into the laps of the people after so many years of suppression. Unfortunately in the doctrine of realpolitik they were just too important to be free, the institutions of their state needed to be managed by strong, capable people, loyal to the aims of the Western diplomats. Unlike Tunisia, which was strategically unimportant, Egypt could not be allowed turn to anarchy, full democracy, or worse, religious rule. This is why this transition has taken place, it’s no victory, it’s just a changing of the whips.

Mubarak will most likely retire to be with his money, in Switzerland or among friends cultivated during his long rule, allowed enjoy the fruits of his labour by a world aware that he ‘did his duty’, aware that he was only as powerful as he was let be, only as tyrannical as it suited others. The real task is how to deal with the next few weeks, the next few months. What form will the new regime take? It will have to modernise itself, the image of a military strongman at troop parades has been done to death, and they will have to be more cunning. I expect it will be an educated man pushed to the fore, an intelligent, non-aligned civilian with just the right degree of malleability and uncertainty over his position that he will ‘need’ the help of the military and Mubarak’s former advisors, thus perpetuating the goals of the regime. Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, is the keystone to American Middle Eastern policy, its key to how the US deals with its own perceptions of radical Islam and it is just far too important to be left to chance.  So in answer to the question posed in the opening paragraph with regards to Mubarak’s decline, we must distort our perceptions of a strong man atop a pile of advisors and military men and realise that they were all part of one unstratified ruling elite, with him as figurehead, under the patronage of the USA, and removing him does not cut the head off the snake, it merely trims the fingernail of military control, allowing regeneration and a renewal of the same policy focus. This time, at least, the people should expect some of their grievances to be addressed, not only as a token gesture but also because protests cost money and stability and the regime will be eager to avoid one again, so at least some solace and economic advance can be taken from the efforts of the masses in Cairo and elsewhere.

11/02/11

The Pretenders to the Cup of Hemlock

What choice then? We have before us, and partially behind us, the biggest single economic crisis this state has faced, threatening, as it does, the very fabric of our independence and indeed the financial viability of the state. The choice we are presented with is vast and narrow, all at the same time; we are being given the opportunity to put in power the party and the policies that will have to operate within such constraints as the current fiscal crisis allows it to. We are tasked with sifting through the electioneering, the humdrum and the tedious, the downright brassballed (in the case of former Fianna Fail ministers with very selective memories on their own ‘war’ records) and deciding upon a government doomed to be stillborn, fated to oversee at least four years of ‘living within our means’, four years of austerity, emigration, unemployment, debt repayment, mortgage default, problems arising from inevitable public service cuts, and downright anger as daily emerges the incompetency’s of our ruling class. Why would anyone want these jobs, who are the people who once more leap the trench wall and traverse no man’s land for this bounty, and what are their objectives? This final question is quite telling indeed because, aside from the obvious answer of nationalist pride and civic duty, the question bears deeper analysis. The role of the elected official in Ireland seems quite undesirable yet the fight for seats is fierce once more, just as it was in the boom times, we must ask, in this case then, what do these people hope to achieve, do they have a vision for realistic and sustainable change or they seek power for its own sake, blindly herding themselves into the abyss.

The major power players in the coming election are a list of three, with cameos and walk on players impacting to a considerable degree. The current governmental incumbents, Fianna Fail have presided over the past thirteen years of economic hand gliding, through currency change, a peep show policy of financial regulation and a pair of leaden boots provided, rather eagerly, by the IMF and the EU. The main contenders to their throne, locked in a constant finger pointing bonanza upon the plain of higher moral ground are Fine Gael, the perennial ‘other’ in this estranged marriage, which also produced another, more notorious than popular, political party, Sinn Fein. Added to the mix we have the third major player, the oldest political party in the state, one who never recovered from not contesting the election of 1919, one who never found itself able to rise above either the Civil War political divide or the bully boy tactics of the Catholic Church, the Labour party. Cameos will included the once and never in the future kings, the aforementioned Sinn Fein, two parties in fact, a hydra with claws in Northern Ireland and a forced smile in the Republic, the lighter shade of green Greens, still reeling from the sight of actual dealings on the shop floor, and various spattering’s of workers parties and ‘people against profit’ alliances. Honourable mention must go to Independents, king makers in waiting, their time will come before the battle is over.

But now to FF, the politburo of Irish politics, a party who since its formation in 1932, have been in power for sixty one of the previous seventy nine years, surely it can do no wrong? Their most recent stint in power came into being in 1997 with the election of Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach, and the formation of a cabinet which included Brian Cowen and Micheal Martin, as well as another party, the Progressive Democrats, lapsed Fianna Failers themselves, and continued through successful title fights in 2002 and 2007 where they added the Green Party to their coalition of the willing. It’s a far too well beaten drum to explain what happened in between that heady summer of 1997 and the current impasse we find ourselves at, however suffice to say, jobs were not done, stations were not manned, and financial regulation was not a priority for anybody, or so it seemed. So now we find ourselves with FF the only members of a minority government, headed by a former minister while the country is effectively being led by a member of that minister’s party who is his former boss and current underling. Ridiculous? Exactly. And Mr Martin, the current darling of the FF pack, a former minister for education and science, health and children, enterprise, trade and employment, and foreign affairs, is quite eager to distance himself from his former boss, portraying himself as a new voice, a new direction for the country, despite the key briefs he held during the years of recklessness. So why does he want the job? He has seen the damage it did to the credibility of both Ahern and Cowan; he must see it as an unwinnable war, considering he is party to the facts and figures of economic projection. One thinks it must be the career politician in him that sees service of the state as an ultimate goal, an achievement in itself, regardless of the practicalities of this service. Other ministers who served in the governments of the past decade have quietly slipped out the back door, albeit with reputations shattered, and one must grudgingly admire Martin for staying to fight for a party that maybe he believes in, if nobody else does.

Fine Gael can trace their lineage back to Michael Collins and the first Prime Minister of the Irish Free State, W.T. Cosgrave. But that’s where the romance ends, that’s where majesty stalls and after a resounding victory in the civil war, that is where civil war politics comes to consume FG and all of their efforts since. Like FF, FG is traditionally socially conservative and has a tendency to turn a blind eye cronyism and nepotism within the apparatus of the state. However, unlike FF, and crucially for this period in question, FG didn’t have a particularly cosy relationship with either the banking sector or the construction sector, the Chuckle Brothers of the Irish financial crisis. To what extent the economy would have been run better under a FG government is debatable, and ultimately pointless. Lead by Enda Kenny since 2002, FG have sat steaming on the opposition benches as FF strolled to 3 victories in a row without really have clear policies other than ‘a lot done, more to do’. Coasting on the popularity of Mr Ahern, FF swept all before them, in stark contrast with the public perception of Kenny as a bumbling school principle with a whine for a voice and a parliamentary demeanour of a perpetually wronged man, driven mad by the relentless waves of victories FF seemed to have, while he had to suffer lucklessly, challenged from within his party and without. Having consolidated his power within his own party he now looks to have a positive and far reaching manifesto on the table, limiting the options for voters who don’t want to vote for him just because, well, they don’t like him. Why does Kenny seek a seat of power which will surely cement his position as the man most people love to hate, a seat of governance so constrained by the baggage of bailout that the only manifesto plausible is one of cuts and public protest? Fine Gaels only reason for existence is the pursuit of their strain of policy, their thinking on the correct form of democracy we should have, and rightly so, for a party which contests election without a clear strategy for victory is merely timewasting, in most circumstances. Elected to Dail Eireann at the age of 24, the Son of a former incumbent TD in his Mayo constituency, Kenny, as the chosen leader, has risen up the ranks of the party serving as both Minister for Tourism and Trade and Minister of State for Youth Affairs, as well as being the parties Chief Whip. He floated between front and back benches for over two decades before, almost by default, he won a leadership contest which nobody seemed eager to win, such was the doldrums FG were in at the time. His grabbing of the nettle of power and subsequent fearlessness when facing a seemingly untouchable Ahern in parliament won him plaudits from the anti-FF brigade, eager to see a rival of some strength. Politics is all he has known, his father infected him with the FG bug, the mantra that government is the rightful domain of FG, regardless of how or when it is obtained, you go into politics to get into government, bend policy to your wants, the needs of your party. It is with this wasp buzzing in his ear that Kenny has plodded towards the places of power, having fallen into his father’s seat as a young man, taken the FG reins as an underdog, he could now lead the country at a time when it neither really wants him, nor really needs him.

The Labour Party is a mixed bag of unusual delights and occasional horror stories. They have found themselves in their recent history constant saddled with the role of FG’s partners in opposition, and government, a role that ideologically has never and will never suit them. They always display well with regards, to public perception to their manifestos, they always pick the populist side with regards major issues, they always seem on the cusp of breaking the two party monopoly, the Scottish League syndrome, of the Dail, and yet people still vote the way their family voted last time, and the time before that. So entrenched are traditions among the voting habits of even the most educated of people that one really must look back at 1919 and see it as an opportunity for an alternative lost. Lead this time by the old Trade Unionist Eamon Gilmore, they are expected to chip considerable away at the monopoly, but they’ve been tipped before and fallen short so it’s difficult to know. With regards to their radical election manifesto, this type of populist politicking is classic Labour Party and unfortunately their mettle has never been tested with regards a majority Labour government, but one must hope that if an alternative is sought, with policies such as Labour have, people don’t look too far beyond them. The chance to rip it up and start again must appeal to dyed in the wool reds, finally without the anti-communist, anti-socialist dread of the Catholic Church hanging over them, with the power of FF broken amongst the working class, a class utterly failed by successive governments, the ground is fertile for Labour. They are the party for this election, the policies they can implement are not out of sync with their ethos, the social cuts will be balanced without a pandering to the upper class and the absentee landlord class who so often puppeteered FF policy. Gilmore wants power because it’s finally time to cut through the swath of mealy mouthed promises and same old-ness of the big two and actually have a go at implementing real and lasting change. The likelihood of a majority Labour government is quite slim, as the iron grip of generations of habit is still quite tight but of all the major players in this election they are certainly the ones with the most to win.

Of the three major leaders, Martin talks like a Taoiseach, Kenny looks like one and Gilmore wishes he could be one. Of the three major parties, FF should hang their head a sit on the bold step for the foreseeable future, casting envious glances and snide remarks from opposition benches, FG deserve another chance to come in and try implement their own brand of progressive centrist politics and Labour should be hoping to show people that the sky will not fall if they deviate from the FF-FG fulcrum, the crutch of the ballot box. All in all a race of peculiarities for a prize of little tangible worth, with three unproven leaders and a raft of radical proposals, all set against the backdrop of a massive and ongoing fiscal crisis. Here’s hoping for the rise of the ‘Independent’. 

09/02/11