Sir, – I wish to expand upon Marie Coleman's points (May 30th) about the Labour Party's decision not to contest the 1918 general election. Dr Coleman's points about the party's performances in the 1920 local and 1922 general elections illustrate that the 1918 decision had little effect on its resilience.
The 1918 abstention has for too long been used as a ready explanation for Labour’s inability to move beyond its position as the “half” party in a “2½” party system. The party’s failure to provide credible opposition in the Free State parliament during the 1920s might go further in explaining its traditional weaknesses.
The party, under Tom Johnson, failed to capitalise on the Boundary Commission debacle in 1925, it refused to tarnish its image of respectability by supporting the non-payment of land annuities, and it actively sought the accession of Fianna Fáil into the political mainstream.
When de Valera’s party eventually entered the Dáil, it did so with a programme that borrowed heavily from Labour, but which had no hang-ups about presenting a respectable image. When a Fianna Fáil minority government was established in 1932, it was with Labour’s support under William Norton. Report from the party’s annual conferences in the early 1930s read like Pat Rabbitte’s “81 per cent of the blame” rhetoric of late.
Johnson’s fear of the effects of default, and Labour’s failures in the 1920s and early 1930s, are much more illuminating in the study of the party’s development than a decision made in 1918, which most agree was a pragmatic move in the context of the times. – Yours, etc,
Dr ADRIAN GRANT,
University of Ulster,
Derry.