How will latest street protests change party structures in Ireland and beyond?

Why has it taken so long for Irish people to protest in public against austerity? How do the latest street protests here against water charges and other taxes compare to similar movements in Europe? And what potential do they have to change existing party structures?

Such questions have become increasingly common in commentary and analysis on the economic crisis and its effects on Ireland.

Explanations for the delayed or reluctant protests in Ireland are many and varied. Culturalists stress Ireland’s Catholicism and its cute hoor, clientelist and personalised politics. Historians trace these characteristics to its post-colonial condition and addiction to property ownership before and after independence, creating a powerful conservative consensus. Sociologists concentrate on social and family structures and individualist ideologies naively glorifying market solutions during the Celtic Tiger years, along with the real improvement in mass living standards they brought.

Political explanations emphasise the governing elite’s skill in managing or defusing social conflict by corporatist social partnership; the lack of independent trade union leadership; the fragmented left; and the search for localised solutions from Independent TDs. There was a real effort to channel anger by defeating the Fianna Fáil-led government in 2011 so decisively in what was the third most volatile electoral outcome since the war in Europe.

The overall notion of a relatively passive Irish public is misleading. Since the crisis broke out in 2008 pensioners, students, teachers, public sector workers, and trade unionists have been involved in demonstrations and protests, often effectively against specific legislative plans and articulating sectional or particular interests. But media coverage has been patchy or minimal, so there was little opportunity to generalise these movements or pose credible alternatives. And compared to the scale and intensity of protest elsewhere the Irish ones have undoubtedly been weaker until this year.

Less hard hit

This was partly because the hit to living standards was not as severe initially or since then as in most of these countries. Cuts to welfare payments, pensioners and pay were not as large, and nor was youth unemployment – although if emigration figures are added that picture changes. And having bought, borrowed and believed so deeply in the boom many lower and middle income earners accepted the externally imposed disciplines, feared rejecting them and trusted the Government’s plans to regain its limited economic sovereignty.

Disenchantment

It was the loss of that trust and the incompetence with which the escape from the IMF/EU programme was managed – especially on the water issue – that triggered the much larger protest movement this autumn. Water becomes a symbol of more general disenchantment with the political system.

The Government’s efforts to escape from that problem bring to mind Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation on the French revolution: “The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.” Radical as well as revolutionary changes often emerge when conditions are improving, but not sufficiently to meet popular expectations.

The evidence is there in the growth of electoral and mobilising support for Independents and the radical left; in Sinn Féin’s steady consolidation of its working class base; and in the emerging debate about alternative coalitions.

That debate makes Ireland comparable to the similar debates on the role of challenger parties from the radical left like Syriza in Greece and Podemas in Spain or from the populist right in France, Sweden or the UK. Will they reproduce or replace the existing political cleavages based on parties of the centre left and centre right?

In Ireland’s case a coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would substitute a right-left cleavage for the Civil War one. Alternatively, a Fianna Fáil-Sinn Féin coalition would reproduce the Civil War one. There is a growing fearfulness in business and political circles about a change which would polarise Ireland in a new right-left fashion. Sinn Féin’s own debate about its preferred strategy should receive more media attention than it gets.

A similar fear can be seen in Greece if an election is called next year with Syriza ahead in the polls; in Spain where Podemas bids to displace conservatives and socialists; in Sweden and the UK where anti-immigration parties are disrupting party divisions; and in France where the National Front is strengthening.

Ireland is becoming part of this European social and political mainstream.

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