1984 and 2014: many political parallels and one major difference

There is a “back to the future” feel to the events of 1984. Budget discipline, stalemate in the Northern talks, and the Labour Party suffering a wipeout in the European elections.

So has anything changed in 30 years? The answer is yes, despite superficial similarities.

Back in February 1984 a memorandum from Alan Dukes, who was then minister for finance, laid out in stark terms for his Fine Gael and Labour colleagues the dangers that the economy faced at that time.

He raised the nightmare scenario that the government might have to approach the European Commission or the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance and warned about the far harsher conditions that might be imposed by those institutions if his cabinet colleagues did not accept the cuts he was proposing.

Recession

That scenario did not come to pass in the 1980s and instead the coalition government led by Garret FitzGerald raised taxes in order to limit the necessity for spending cuts. The result was the recession dragged on for most of the decade.

There are obvious similarities with the current situation in which the electorate is becoming weary with tight budget discipline year after year. However, there are also some very significant differences between now and then.

The first is that, unlike the 1980s, the nightmare scenario did come to pass in 2010 when the EU and IMF took control of the Irish public finances with a programme of cuts that left the politicians in the Dáil with no choice but to implement them in the allotted time frame.

That programme involved far deeper cuts than happened in the 1980s but it also resulted in the recovery happening more quickly this time around. In 2014, unlike 1984, economic growth has resumed, unemployment is falling and the public finances are almost back in balance.

Campaign of violence

When it comes to Northern Ireland there are also uncanny echoes of 1984 in today’s politics. Yet, whatever the current difficulties, there is no real comparison with the position back in 1984 when the Provisional IRA campaign of violence was at its height and loyalist terror gangs roamed the streets.

As for the political scene in the Republic, there are also some similarities. The European elections of 1984 delivered a shock to the Labour Party, which lost all four of its seats. This year the party lost its three seats and, as in 1984, there is talk of it being wiped out at the next election. That didn’t happen in 1987 – an outcome that may give the party some grounds for hope it won’t occur in 2016 either.

One big difference in the two election outcomes is that Sinn Féin got three seats out of 11 this year, as against none out of 15 in 1984, while Independents got one in 1984 and three this time around.

Sinn Féin did have a presence in 1984 with 5 per cent of the vote, but their share was nearly 20 per cent this time. Independents received far more votes this year than 30 years ago.

The biggest political change of all is that Fianna Fáil was top of the heap in 1984 when it won eight seats compared to just one this year. Fine Gael got six back then, compared with four in 2014.

All in all, though, while politics has changed over the past 30 years those changes may not be quite as dramatic as sometimes thought, with the same forces still dominating the scene, if in different strengths.