JOHN REDMOND in 1909 assured trade unionists thinking of creating their own party that “we will in future, as in the past, endeavour to fulfil for Ireland in the fullest sense the functions of a labour party, believing that we are the Labour Party as far as Ireland is concerned.” And there was a bit of Redmond in Bertie Ahern’s insistence in 2004 that he was “one of the few socialists left in Irish politics”.
The refrain that others will better do Labour’s job of representing the poor and working people, that it should stand aside, that “Labour should wait”, as Sinn Féin told it, persuading the party not to run in 1918, has been a recurrent theme in the history of the State’s oldest party.
And it’s still the basis of the uncomfortable logic tugging at its leaders today as they prop up conservative governments: socialist aspirations – they prefer “social democratic” these days – must wait until the economy is put right, Labour must sacrifice its ambitions for the national good. It’s a logic that eventually, its left complains, tends to dilute the party’s reformist urges into German socialist Eduard Bernstein’s dictum that “the final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything.” And, as the party keeps finding, it gets little credit from its voters for that ‘‘sacrifice”.
Frustrated by Redmond and his Irish Party’s refusal in the Commons to support Irish workers’ insurance rights, the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC) in Clonmel in May 1912 decided to launch a party to provide for “the independent representation of labour”. Proposing the motion James Connolly (seconded by James Larkin) asked if, when newly promised Home Rule was achieved, “when the representatives of Ireland came to meet in the old historic building in Dublin which they have heard so much about [the Bank of Ireland, College Green], were the workers to be the only class that was not to be represented?” John Flanagan (Belfast) warned that “Redmond and his party might be more reactionary than the present Ulster Tory Party”.
The congress, which also warmly supported women’s suffrage, would two years later agree the party’s constitution and rename itself the “ITUC and Labour Party”. It resolved then “that labour unrest can only be ended by the abolition of the capitalist system of wealth production with its inherent injustice and poverty”.
In 100 years Labour has moved some way from that revolutionary rhetoric. It no longer sees itself as a distinctively workers’ party. And the national struggle and the Civil War divide ensured that the party never became the force in Ireland that its sister parties in Europe did. “Conventional” politics never took root.
But Labour played its part in shaping the welfare society we are, and redefining the health and education agendas today. In particular, in recent decades, in driving forward a progressive social agenda on issues like women’s rights, divorce and contraception. We are a more caring, open society for Labour’s contribution. On its birthday, whether or not we share the socialist vision, diluted or otherwise, we have to acknowledge this party has done the State some service.