Ireland on the Turn

8/4/2019 Ireland on the Turn

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new let review 67jan eb 20115

daniel finn

IRELAND ON THE TURN?

Ireland has often lagged behind political and cultural develop-ments elsewhere in the West. It was thus hardly surprising isuggestions that the end o Irish history was at hand only began tosurace on the cusp o the new century. A peace agreement which

called time on Europes most prolonged confict since 1945 encouragedhopes that Northern Ireland would soon come to resemble Yorkshire andthe Rhineland more closely than Lebanon or Bosnia. South o the border,decades o under-development appeared to have been overcome in the

space o a ew euphoric years. And i the two Irish states still lacked oneo the dening eatures o modern European politicsa letright dividewith electoral preerences tightly linked to class positionmight not thatsuggest that Ireland was ahead o the curve or once, anticipating thecoming Americanization o Europes political lie?

Since September 2008, the global crisis has doused such visions inthe coldest o water. The southern state is in reeall, shedding jobs at

a dizzying rate and orced to accept a humiliating bail-out rom theeu and the International Monetary Fund the terms o which are likelyto exacerbate the slump. Recession has cruelly exposed the faws o theCeltic Tiger model and punctured the sel-assurance o its politicalsponsors. The prospect o ToryLib Dem austerity, meanwhile, threat-ens a Northern Irish economy which is unusually dependent on stateinvestment to maintain its standard o living. This in turn will placeintense strain on the regions power-sharing administration, testing the

will o its reluctant coalition partners to remain locked in harness as theyimplement Londons cutbacks. This essay will explore the economic andpolitical consequences o the crisis, North and South. I it is too early to

Political and Economic Consequences o the Crash


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6nlr 67


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fnn:Ireland7assess the longer-term impact, it is already clear that Irelands eccentrichistorical path has a long way to travel beore reaching its terminus.

i. a model in meltdown

For much o the past two decades, the Republic o Ireland ound itselhailed as a crowning glory o neo-liberalism. Between 1993 and 2000,Irish gnp grew by an average o 9 per cent a year; unemploymentwhich had reached a peak o 17 per cent in the 1980shad almostdisappeared by the close o the century. A nation that had stood igno-miniously on the economic sidelines during the trente glorieuses o its

larger and richer neighbours suddenly vaulted past them all, even reach-ing the psychologically vital milestone o a per capita income higherthan Great Britains. Foreign journalists rushed to praise the Irish eco-nomic miracle, which could handily be attributed to its willingness todon the golden straitjacket and embrace the logic o global capitalism.Neo-liberal pundits rom Thomas Friedman to George Osborne urgedthe rest o Europe to ollow the leapin leprechaun down the road o lowtaxes, light regulation and fexible labour markets.1 Ater witnessing the

transormation o Ireland rom basket-case to economic paragon, whocould possibly deny the validity o the ormula?

The euimf package o December 2010 has hammered the nal nail inthat particular con. With unemployment standing at 13 per cent andgdp having registered the largest dips ever recorded7 per cent in 2009alonethe Republic has now been saddled with a punitive interest rateo 5.8 per cent on a multi-billion euro loan that will be immediately used

to repay German, French and British banks. This burden stems rom theIrish governments decision in September 2008 to oer an unlimited guar-antee o the liabilities accumulated by its putrid banking systemand thereusal o the major European states to consider imposing a loss on seniorbondholders, i.e. the said banks. It will most likely prove impossible orthe Irish state to meet its interest repayments, creating urther instabilityor the Eurozone and negating the prospects o an Irish recovery.

The terms o the deal cast an ironic light on one o the major themes oIrish political debate throughout the Celtic Tiger years. It was articulated

1 Friedman, Follow the leapin leprechaun, New York Times, 1 July 2005; Osborne,Look and learn rom across the Irish Sea, The Times, 23 February 2006.


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8nlr 67most amously by Mary Harneyleader o the Thatcherite ProgressiveDemocrats and veterano the Fianna Fil-led coalition which has heldoce since 1997when she asserted that Ireland was closer to Bostonthan Berlin: more in tune with the Anglo-American economic model

than with the welarist leanings o continental Europe. Harneys trite slo-gan was adopted by the Irish commentariat, with the value sign reversedby those on the liberal let who assumed that the eu would representa more humane and progressive orm o capitalism. Now Boston andBerlin have come to town, marching in step, and there is little to choosebetween them. Indeed, the imf has shown itsel to be somewhat moreenlightened than the eu, i only because it does not consider it impera-tive to deend the interests o European banking giants. It is a measure

o the trauma that even the Irish Times elt compelled to distance itsel insub-Yeatsian style rom the countrys new nancial masters:

It may seem strange to some that the Irish Times would ask whether thisis what the men o 1916 died or: a bailout rom the German chancellorwith a ew shillings o sympathy rom the British chancellor on the side . . .Having obtained our political independence rom Britain to be the mas-ters o our own aairs, we have now surrendered our sovereignty to theEuropean Commission, the European Central Bank and the International

Monetary Fund.2

Two phases o the Tiger

Explanations o this debacle must take as their starting-point the dis-tinction between two phases o the Celtic Tiger. The rst was drivenby an unprecedented fow o investment rom us multinationals intokey manuacturing sectors, with exports as the main spur to economic

2 Leader: Was it or this?, Irish Times, 18 November 2010. Some Europhile intel-lectuals have been unable to absorb the evidence o their own eyes, so reluctant arethey to discard a benign view o the European Union. A striking example was ColmTibns response to the Irish Times editorial: There are two things which have hap-pened in my lietime which I still eel a sort o reverence or. One is the Good FridayAgreement, and the other is the European UnionThus when the Irish Times onThursday mentioned the German chancellor I did not automatically eel that thisperson was in some way a malignant orce in the world. Instead, I saw someonerational and prudent, sensible and deeply intelligent. So, too, when the Irish Timesmentioned a ew shillings o sympathy rom the British chancellor on the side, Ididnt eel any shame at all. I noticed in the past week that the tone o the Britishchancellor has seemed both sympathetic and reasonable. Colm Tibn, Looking atIreland, I dont know whether to laugh or cry, Guardian, 20 November 2010.


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fnn:Ireland9growth. The second phase began ater the us recession o 2001, with anew emphasis on construction and nance generating a property bubblewith ew parallels in modern economic history. The early decades o theRepublicas o the Free State which preceded ithad been character-

ized by import-substitution policies, which had reached the limit o theirpotential by the 1950s. With Sen Lemass as Taoiseach (195966), thedominant Fianna Fil party threw the economy open and oered entic-ing tax breaks to oreign capital. But it was accession to the EuropeanEconomic Community in 1973 that laid the oundations or the subse-quent boom. Ireland became the recipient o growing waves o structuralunding in the 1980s, while its big armers reaped the benets o theCommon Agricultural Policy.

For American companies seeking protable sites or investment in theearly 1990s, the Republic could thereore oer two key advantages:membership o the ec, which gave companies on its territory access tothe new Single Market, and a special 10 per cent rate o tax on manuac-turing prots (eventually replaced by a fat corporation tax rate o 12.5 percent). The impact o this generous tax regime on the public nances waspartially oset by 10 billion oeu structural unding received between

1989 and 1999, which added almost 2 per cent to Irish gdp duringthe take-o decade.3 The us share o industrial investment in the localeconomy rose rom 32 per cent in 1990 to 68 per cent in 1997. fdi wasconcentrated in a handul o sectors, particularly computers, pharma-ceuticals and electronic engineering. Dell built its largest Europeanactory on Irish soil, and was joined by a gaggle o it giants. Between1995 and 1999, multinational corporations were directly responsible or85 per cent o total economic growth.4 One result o this dependence

on oreign-owned companies to power the Irish economy was a grow-ing divergence between the gures or gdp and gnp: by the end o thedecade, gnp was almost twenty per cent lower. The role o multination-als in the 90s boom naturally let Irelands economic health perilouslyexposed to a shit in the conditions that had made it such an attractive

3 David Hegarty, Framework or the evaluation o the Structural Funds in Ireland,National Development Plan/Community Support Framework Evaluation Unit,Dublin 2003.4 Denis OHearn, Macroeconomic policy in the Celtic Tiger: a critical reassess-ment, in Colin Coulter and Steve Coleman, eds, The End o Irish History? CriticalRefections on the Celtic Tiger,Manchester 2003, p. 38.


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10nlr 67location or investment. There was little hope o indigenous industrypicking up the slack, as one writer noted in 2003:

The great dierence between the oreign and indigenously owned sec-

tors is that the level o gross value added per employee is more than vetimes greater in the ormer than the latter. In 2001 gross value added peremployee in Irish-owned rms stood at 44,700, an increase in nominalterms o 10 per cent. Despite this strong growth, the gap widened, as valueadded per employee in oreign rms increased by 12 per cent to 226,000per employee.5

While multinationals exported almost 90 per cent o their output in2001, Irish-owned rms sold less than 40 per cent o what they pro-

duced abroad. Unlike the original Asian Tigers, the Celtic model did notproduce its own industrial champions to drive the economy orward.

Sae as houses

The dreaded climatic shit began with the collapse o the American itbubble. Irish manuacturing employment had grown every year rom1995 to 2001 but then started to decline, alling rom 251,000 to 223,400

by 2007.6 Annual growth in exports, which had averaged over 17 percent between 1995 and 2000, struggled to reach 5 per cent over the nextve years.7 The expansion o the European Union eroded Irelands taxadvantage, with new member-states in the East oering more lucrativedeals and much lower wages: Dell decided to close its fagship plant inLimerick and shit production to dz in 2008. There was no suddenend to the boom, however, despite the attrition o Irelands manuactur-ing base. The banking sector now overtook industry as a provider o jobs,

with 14 per cent o the workorce in nance by 2008.

Much o this expansion was centred around the International FinancialServices Centre, a satellite o the City o London in Dublins docklandswith a arcically inadequate regulatory regime, prompting British poli-ticians to speak o Liechtenstein on the Liey. A shine was also puton the economic gures by the increasing use o Ireland as a respect-able clearing-house or transer pricing by multinationals. The banks

5 Fintan OToole, Ater the Ball,Dublin 2003, p. 162.6 Kieran Allen, Irelands Economic Crash,Dublin 2009, p. 36.7 Peadar Kirby, Celtic Tiger in Collapse: Explaining the Weaknesses o the Irish Model ,Basingstoke 2010. p. 35.


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fnn:Ireland11unnelled as much capital as they could into the other pillar o the Tigerssecond phase: a wildly overheated construction sector which accountedor almost 23 per cent ognp by 2007. The average price o a new houserose rom 67,000 in 1991 to 334,000 in 2007, by which time there

were 21 new units o housing being built per thousand citizens (evenSpain only managed 15). Construction also became the main source onew private-sector jobs, with employment in the industry rising by 59per cent between 2000 and 2008.8

The whole set-up might have been calibrated to produce a meltdown inthe event o a global crisis: Irish banks had borrowed vast sums on theinternational markets so they could keep on lending to property develop-

ers and allowed their capital ratios to reach unprecedented troughs. WhenLehman Brothers hit the wall in September 2008, the storm broke. BrianCowens panickedand deeply compromisedgovernment oered toguarantee the ull liabilities o Irish-owned nancial institutions, expos-ing its citizens to a potential wallop several times larger than the nationsannual gdp. Soon aterwards, the Fianna Fil-led administration movedto nationalize Anglo Irish, the third-largest bank in the state, and shore upits two main competitors with huge cash injections. Anglo Irish special-

ized in massive loans to a small body o customers: teen accumulateddebts to the bank o at least 500m each. Its losses o over 12 billion or2009 were the largest in Irish corporate history.

Once the bank guarantee was put in place, the overriding goal o Cowensgovernment was to shore up the private nancial system at any cost.Finance Minister Brian Lenihan initially bragged that Ireland had insti-tuted the cheapest bailout in the world. As the rotten oundations o

Irish banking gradually came into public view, the anticipated cost o theguarantee rose exponentially: realistic estimates at present lie somewherebetween 50 and 70 billion (Irish gdp in 2008 was a little over 200 bil-lion). Cowen and Lenihan spurned opportunities to terminate the 2008guarantee, despite the act that they had the legal option to do so on thegrounds that three o the banks had withheld material inormation abouttheir solvency, in direct breach o the 1971 Central Bank Act. But, as theeconomist Morgan Kelly noted, that would have entailed an unpleas-

ant showdown with the European Central Bank. Instead, the German

8 See Allen, Irelands Economic Crash, p. 44; Kirby, Celtic Tiger in Collapse, p. 41.Employment in nancial services rose by 43 per cent over the same period, whileindustrial employment contracted by 9 per cent.


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12nlr 67and French banks whose solvency is the overriding concern o the ecbget their money back, while the senior management o the banks thatcaused this crisis continue to enjoy their richly earned rewards. The onlydiculty is that the Governments open-ended commitment to cover the

bank losses ar exceeds the scal capacity o the Irish State.9

This unlimited subsidy to Irish banks and European bondholders hascome at the expense o any government schemes to create or sustainemployment. While economists in other countries wonder what will hap-pen when the various nancial stimuli expire, their Irish counterparts haveno such worries: there never was a stimulus package to begin with. In therst two years o the crisis, 15 billion was extracted rom the economy by

the Fianna Fil-led government in a series o regressive austerity budgets.The assault on the social wage has been accompanied by a shrill group-think which maintains that such cuts need not bring dire consequencesor those who rely on public services: there is plenty o room or trimmingas Ireland was unduly lavish in its outlay during the boom years.

This consensus shows little regard or the tiresome business o gather-ing evidence. Even at the peak o the boom, the Republic o Ireland had

little reason to boast about its social perormance. It ranked second-to-bottom in the oecd league tables or poverty and inequality; onlythe us ared worse. Inequality increased during the period o highesteconomic growth, with the number o households earning below 50per cent o the average income rising rom 18 per cent in 1994 to 24per cent in 2001. Other benchmarks shited in the opposite direction:government expenditure on social protection as a proportion o gdpstood at 20 per cent in 1993, but had allen to 14 per cent by 2000

barely hal the eus average.10

Even the reliably orthodox oecd could not nd much at on this particu-lar bone when it was delegated to scrutinize the Irish public service in2008: Irelands real average annual growth rate in public expenditurebetween 1995 and 2005 was 5 per cent, signicantly slower than realgdp growth o 7.5 per cent. Fianna Fil policies had already decreasedthe total number o public-sector employees as a percentage o the

9 Morgan Kelly, I you thought the bank bailout was bad, wait until the mortgagedeaults hit home, Irish Times, 8November 2010.10 Peadar Kirby, Globalization, the Celtic Tiger and Social Outcomes: Is Ireland aModel or a Mirage?, Globalizations,December 2004, p. 216.


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fnn:Ireland13labour orce and the overall public-sector wage bill as a percentage ogdp.11 This is the bloated public sector now earmarked or an indeniteperiod o austerity, as media outlets contrive a synthetic backlash againstthose employed in the public service (displaying a monomania worthy

o a better cause, one columnist could think o no more wounding barbor Catholic bishops who protected child abusers than to compare theiractions to the worst sort o public-service union thinking12). The vilica-tion has been so egregious that the governments own economic advisor,Alan Ahearne, elt impelled to protest:

Much o the rhetoric in the media about public-sector pay and reorm isan attempt by some o the least well-inormed commentators to distract

attention rom the main source o our economic woes. The mess in whichthe Irish economy nds itsel largely stems rom the house-price bubble,not rom problems in the public sector. It is probably not a coincidence thatsome o the most vocal critics o the public sector today were among themost conspicuous cheerleaders or the housing boom.13

This onslaught has been renewed in the wake o the euimf deal. Itwould be wrong to think that the new managers o the Irish economyhave pushed the Dublin government down a path it would rather not

tread: their suggestions have been accepted with something that closelyresembles glee. Another 15 billion is to be taken out o the economy overthe next three years, with 6 billion o cuts concentrated in LenihansDecember 2010 budget. The latter package, which will be the last deliv-ered by Lenihan while in oce, comortably exceeded the mean-spiritedbenchmark set by his previous oerings. A boom disgured by grossinequality has given way to a slump marked by Victorian standards osocial reaction. I David Cameron and Nick Clegg want a model to emu-

late, they will not have to look very ar.

The end o the party?

Fianna Fils unfinching commitment to protect a thoroughly corruptbanking system and its ruthless determination to load the burden othe crisis onto the lower end o the social scale will naturally prompt

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oecd Public Management Reviews, Ireland: Towards an Integrated Public Service,Paris 2008, pp. 1516.12 Eilis OHanlon, Man o cloth recast as just a jobsworth, Sunday Independent, 21March 2010.13 In Fintan OToole, Popular thinking on crisis swept aside, Irish Times, 13April 2010.


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14nlr 67questions about the character o Irelands electoral hegemona partythat has been aptly described as the most important secular institutionin the modern Irish state. Writing in the 1980s, one historian struggledto nd European analogies or its extraordinary political dominance:

only Swedish Social Democrats, Ulster Unionists and Italian ChristianDemocracy could be placed in the same category.14 Two decades later, thedc is a ading memory, the Ulster Unionists have been eclipsed, and thesap nds itsel on the opposition benches, while Fianna Fil has man-aged to perpetuate itsel or another generation. The party has been ingovernment or 60 o the 79 years since it rst won oce in 1932. Itsvote has only dipped below 40 per cent twice, and then ractionally so.

The origins o the party lie, o course, in the compromised conditionso the countrys independence. The radicalizations o 191418, notleast that created by the brutal repression o the 1916 Easter Rising,resulted in a landslide victory or the republican-nationalist Sinn Fin(Our Selves) in the Westminster elections o 1918; the party sweptaside the more conservative home-rule nationalists and marginalizedthe London-backed unionists, winning 75 out o 105 Irish House oCommons seats. Sinn Fin leader amon De Valera duly proclaimed the

Irish Republic in 1919, opening negotiations with London while repub-lican guerrillas harried British security orces. The compromise o the1921 Treatydominion status, with Dublin parliamentarians to swearan oath o allegiance to the British Kingaccepted the partition o theisland sanctioned by Lloyd Georges 1920 Government o Ireland Act:under the Crown, the six north-eastern counties would be administeredrom Belast, the remaining twenty-six rom Dublin. The Treaty was rati-ed by the Dil, Dublins parliament, in 1922, establishing the Irish Free

State; but it split Sinn Fin. The pro-Treaty section o the party imposedthe settlement on its opponents in a bitter though relatively brie civilwar; pro-Treaty politicians would go on to establish the conservative FineGael (Irish Race) party, steeled by an infux o ascist Blue Shirts inthe 1930s. The remainder o Sinn Fin split again in 1926 when DeValera and his supporters made their peace with the new regime. Theyregrouped under the banner o Fianna Fil (Soldiers o Ireland), whichemerged as the largest party in the Dil in 1932 and has dominated the

political landscape ever since. From 1938 through to 1989, Fianna Filtypically took over 44 per cent o rst-preerence votes, with Fine Gael

14 Dick Walsh, The Party: Inside Fianna Fil,Dublin 1986, p. 3.


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fnn:Ireland15usually languishing below 35 per cent and the anaemic Irish LabourParty generally struggling to reach 15 per cent.15

Fianna Fils hegemony has rested in part on the populist image care-

ully nurtured by the party since its ormation. The leadership hasoten claimed that its natural inclination is towards the centre-let,even dubbing it Irelands Labour Party, though a glance at its recordin government would conrm it as a body o the centre-right. In the1930s, Fianna Fil rhetoric had an unmistakably radical tinge, securingthe party a rm base among small armers and the urban working class.That base was consolidated by social reorms the limitations o whichwould have been more obvious had they not contrasted so avourably

with the loty indierence o the previous regime to social squalor. It wasalso shored up by astutely developed clientelist networks which deliv-ered just enough goods to ensure personal loyalty and gratitude.

Absent let

Fianna Fils task was also made easier by the shortcomings o the Irishlet. A number o structural actors weighed heavily upon the prospects

o any let-wing orce. The southern state was almost entirely lacking ina manuacturing base at the time o independence, and only acquiredan urban majority in the second hal o the century. Vertiginous emi-gration drained away potential malcontents to Britain, Australia or theUnited States: in the 1920s, a staggering 43 per cent o the Irish-bornpopulation lived outside the country.16 A conservative religious culturewas given unusual orce by its long association with national identityand resistance to oppression (Poland is perhaps the only direct analogy

in this regard). Yet though these actors certainly imposed a heavy bur-den, they need not, perhaps, have been insurmountable. Ater all, much

15 Fianna Fil candidates have usually received more working-class votes than thewhole o the Irish let. In the 1977 electionadmittedly a good year or Fianna Filits shares o the skilled and unskilled working-class vote were 54 and 47 per centrespectively, while the Irish Labour Party managed 11 and 16 per cent.Paul Bew, EllenHazelkorn and Henry Patterson, The Dynamics o Irish Politics,London 1989, p. 167.16 This compares to 1920s gures o just under 15 per cent or Norway, 14 per cent

or Scotland and 11 per cent or Sweden. See Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social andCultural History, 19222002, London 2004, p. 10. Brown notes: The continuousIrish diaspora, under way since the Famine, kept the population o the country as awhole almost stable throughout most o the modern period.


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16nlr 67more successul let-wing movements have emerged in countries withpowerul reactionary churches, large peasant populations, or nationalquestions which dominated political lie. The Irish let may have beendealt a tough hand, but it has usually made a ham-sted job o playing

what cards it had in its possession.

An explanation or this needs to start, once again, rom the problems othe independence movement. In 1919, as calls or national sovereigntyrang rom Moscow to Versailles, Sinn Fin, with an overwhelming pop-ular mandate, aced an opponent gravely weakened by war-weariness,labour upheaval and economic crisis; unionism was nished as a national-hegemonic orce. Why did the Irish movement old so quickly, accepting

partition and dominion status, rather than continue the struggle untila more avourable outcome had been achieved? One crucial subjectiveactor surely lies in the divide between political and military leader-ship, which has remained a actor in Irish republican politics to moderntimesa schism that Cuban or Vietnamese revolutionaries would haveound bafing. The reason or this lies in part in the very early emergenceo the Irish movement, closer to the ideals o 1848 than to the socialist-inspired anti-colonial revolts that shook the twentieth century.

The Fenian leader James Stephens (18251901) was one o the mostcapable revolutionary organizers o his time; but, having been mouldedin the Parisian republican underground, he inherited its predilection ora conspiratorial, Blanquist approach to revolution. This ensured that theailed rising o 1867 would be quite unworthy o the remarkable move-ment that Stephens had built. In the subsequent decades, Michael Davittled a partial break with this political model, bringing a section o the

Fenian movement into open political activity through the Land League.Yet Davitt was anathematized by the Irish Republican Brotherhoodmajority, who persisted with a secret, oath-bound organization; and hewas unable to stop Charles Parnell rom reaping the political ruits o theLand League agitation or the Home Rule Party and using it to cementhis Westminster alliance with Gladstone. The potential or mass politi-cal agitation that would show no respect or the proprieties o the Britishconstitutional order was aborted.

On the eve o the Great War, the Irish Republican Brotherhood was aminiscule, irrelevant sect; the British authorities would certainly haveconsidered the syndicalist Irish Transport & General Workers Union


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fnn:Ireland17(itgwu) o Jim Larkin and James Connolly to be a much greater threatto the established order. The Home Rule crisis which immediatelypreceded the First World War presented the republicans with the oppor-tunity to assume the leadership o a genuine mass movementthe

Irish Volunteers, established to deend Irish sel-government againstviolent unionist resistancethrough cloak-and-dagger machinationsbehind the back o its membership. It was typical o the irbs approachto politics that many Volunteers were unaware an insurrection againstBritish rule was planned until they reached their posts on the day o theEaster Rising. Ater it had been crushed, Michael Collins absorbed themilitary lessons o 1867 and 1916 and broke with the static approachto revolutionary warare that had guaranteed deeat on both occasions.

His pioneering experiment in guerrilla warare oered a model that wasto be studied eagerly by anti-colonial movements in Asia and Arica.Yet the new ira commanders who ollowed Collins in applying guer-rilla tactics when the struggle was resumed mostly ignored the politicaleld, leaving it to men like De Valera and Arthur Grith, who wouldhave preerred to see the ira stand, ght and be slaughtered so that itwould be recognized as a gentlemanly bourgeois army and not a bando ruans and corner boys.

Giving such men sole responsibility or conducting negotiations withBritain was a sure way to nd the independence movement short-changed. The republicans had even less understanding o industrialresistance to Britain, which proved to be so important: the general strikeagainst conscription, the Limerick Soviet, and the blacking o the BritishArmy by railwaymen were all organized by the working-class movement.Orthodox republicans merely concluded that the workers had done their

duty as patriotic Irishmen and drew no conclusions about the classdimension o the anti-imperialist struggle.

It was always predictable that the notables o Irish society, who hadtranserred their loyalty rom the Home Rule party to Sinn Fin whenthey realized the tide o nationalist opinion was unstoppable, wouldaccept a settlement that ell short o republican goals: their main con-cern in 192021 was to establish a new political authority that could

hold the line against land and labour unrest and deend their place inthe social hierarchy. Such elements had no intention o risking urtherupheaval or the sake o Partition or the Oath. This is not to be wonderedat or deplored; what is striking, however, is the ailure o anti-Treaty


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18nlr 67republicans to understand what was going on. A small number o social-ists in the anti-Treaty camp saw the class nature o the split, and iracommander Liam Mellows was grasping towards the same view whenhe identied the stake in the country people as the bedrock o support

or the Treaty, beore his execution by the Free State in 1922. More typi-cal was the attitude o Liam Lynch, ira Chie o Sta: when the fedglingCommunist Party o Ireland urged him to adopt a programme o politi-cal and economic demands that would certainly have polarized opinionalong class lines, Lynch simply retorted that he was a soldier, not a politi-cian, and carried on with a purely military, moralistic resistance to theTreaty that was certain to ail.

The republicans were not the only ones to blame or this doomed approach.Ater Connollys execution or his role in the Easter Rising, his supposedheirs in the leadership o the itgwu and the Labour Party completely abdi-cated their responsibility to provide an independent working-class voice.Their ailure to contest the 1918 election was the rst o many deerralsto bourgeois nationalism, climaxing in the support given to the pro-Treatygovernment by Labour (Larkin was serving a jail sentence in New York oranti-war agitation at the time and unable to infuence the course o events

until his return to Ireland). It strains credibility to suggest, as some radi-cal historians have done, that there could have been a socialist revolutionin Ireland during this period i the leadership o organized labour hadacquitted itsel better. But it is certainly not a fight o ancy to imaginethat a stronger let-wing movement could have emerged, playing a signi-cant role in the opposition to the Treaty. This would have tilted the politicso the new state onto a very dierent course.

Labour pains

Labours conduct in this period set the pattern or the next eighty yearsor so o its existence. To say that Irish Labour has had as poor a recordas its British counterpart would actually be too kind. It is telling thatin the 1940s, when Attlees government held power across the water,the Irish Labour leadership was deeply concerned that people mightthink the two Labour parties had something in common, and associate

their own party with the dangerous radicalism o Attlee and Bevin. TheIrish Labour Party has opted to cringe beore the conservatism o thepolitical scene even when its own prospects were damaged by this sub-servience. It has typically served as a silent coalition partner propping


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fnn:Ireland19up conservative Fine Gael governments during Fianna Fils occasionalspells in opposition.17

There have been two occasions in Labours history when it stood as an

independent let-wing orce and challenged the two conservative par-ties with a distinctive programme: once in the 1940s and again in the1960s. On both occasions it made signicant electoral gains, overtakingFianna Fil as the biggest party in Dublin; and on both occasions, theexperiment ended in a pathetic collapse. In the 40s, Labour surrenderedto blackmail rom a right-wing splinter group engineered by reaction-ary elements in the trade-union movement, purged itsel o its mostdynamic members and returned tamely to the old. In the 60s, the party

leadership indulged in shameless conerence vote-rigging to overturna let-wing stance which had brought the party its highest ever share othe vote, orging an alliance with Fine Gael that led to a drastic slump insupport or Labour.18 These experiences suggest that Labours prolongeddeerence to conservative ideology was not an unortunate but inevitableadaptation to circumstances that were beyond its power to infuence, asits leaders usually contend. The partys timidity has damaged its ownprospects and reinorced the conservatism o Irish politics. It has also

been invaluable to Fianna Fil, whose leaders are rarely happier thanwhen they can taunt Labour or its moderation and respectability. SenLemass had a particular relish or this line o argument:

I gather rom [Labour] Deputy Tully that someone accused the Labour Partyo going Red, which hurt his eelings very much. May I straightaway dis-sociate mysel rom any such suggestion? The Labour Party are, and alwayshave been, the most conservative element in our community. Far rom theLabour Party going Red, they are not going anywhere . . . the Labour Party

are a nice, respectable, docile, harmless body o menas harmless a bodyas ever graced any parliament.19

In act, whenever Fianna Fil has aced a serious let-wing challenge,whether rom Labour or other orces, it has been quick to abandon the

17 These have averaged three years per decade in the post-war period: 194851;195457; 197377; 198287; 199497.18 An excellent account can be ound in Niamh Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party 192273,Dublin 2007. Ater abandoning its anti-coalition stance and serving in two FineGael-led governments, Labours share o the national vote ell rom 17 in 1969 to 6per cent in 1987with a plunge rom 28 to 7 per cent in the nations capital.19 Bew, Hazelkorn and Patterson, The Dynamics o Irish Politics,p. 142.


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20nlr 67centre-let posture and bare its teeth as an essentially conservativeormation. While it made the usual claim o nationalist movements tostand above sordid class divisions, Fianna Fil in its rst two decades inpower was quite straightorward about its aim o cultivating a domestic

bourgeoisie behind a wall o taris and mitigating Irish subservienceto British capital. Ater the break with protectionism in the 1950s, thisobjective was scaled down: now the priority was to raise gdp while secur-ing a broader spread o oreign investment and export markets.

The style o the party leadership changed enormously over the sameperiod, rom the austere traditionalism o De Valera to the opulenceo Charles Haughey, who took the Fianna Fil reins at the end o the

70s. I it was now the patriotic duty o Irelands captains o industryto make themselves richer, Haughey could hardly be aulted or draw-ing the conclusion that he, too, should acquire a liestyle worthy o thenations leader. But the corruption scandals which attended Haugheycame to threaten Fianna Fils populist image, which could not bear toomany revelations about brown envelopes stued with cash. To repair thedamage incurred by Haughey, his successors repackaged the party, withBertie Ahern selected as its new ront man in 1994. A shrewd political

operator with a git or speaking at length without supplying his audi-ence with any inormation, Ahern adopted a down-to-earth persona todistance himsel rom Haugheys disgrace, and even claimed to be oneo the ew remaining socialists in Irish political lie. But this clean-upoperation did not alter the power o money to shape decision-making atthe highest levels o state: the crude transactions o the Haughey yearswere simply replaced by a more ecient relationship between politicaland economic elites, ollowing the best practice o Western capitalist

democracy. In the plain language that Ahern worked so hard to avoid,Fianna Fil replaced the murky, personalized grat o the Haughey erawith organized, systematic corruption, displaying a subservience tobusiness that was rare even by the standards o the age.

This undamental class orientation determined Fianna Fils approachduring the Tiger years. It has now been exposed to unprecedented scru-tiny by the slump, and the party hierarchy must bitterly regret their

insouciance when times were good. It is one thing to read that 40 per cento disclosed donations to the party between 1997 and 2007 came rombuilders and property developers. It is another to be presented with a the-atrical demonstration o the link between politics and business that would


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fnn:Ireland21be considered unorgivably didactic i perormed by a Brechtian agitpropensemble: namely, the Fianna Fil tent at Galways annual horse-racingestival, which was stocked with an agreeably vulgar cast o characters romthe Irish construction sector, eager to sign another cheque or their politi-

cal beneactors. With the sordid relationship between Fianna Fil and thebankingconstruction nexus so well documented, ew are inclined to takeits handling o the crisis at ace value. Brian Cowen would doubtless giveanything to remove one piece o inormation rom the public domain: theact that he addressed Sen Fitzpatrick, the disgraced ormer chairmano Anglo Irish whose personal corruption and duplicity has made him anational hate gure, as Senie.

The continued political hegemony o Fianna Fil over the past twentyyears has obscured a shit in the basis o its support, as the inheritedtribal loyalties o an earlier generation gave way to a much more prag-matic adherence.20 Having stumbled upon a reputation or competenceby landing back in oce as the Irish economy was getting into itsstride, Fianna Fil was returned to power in 2007 by an electorate anx-ious about the uture and earul o rocking the boat. Now that both thesaety and cleanliness o its hands have been discredited, the party is

in deep trouble. It has oten drawn strength rom the ingrained clien-telism o the Irish political system,21 displaying a consummate knack

20 In 1981, under 40 per cent o the electorate had no xed party attachment; by2002 this had risen to 75 per cent. See Allen, Irelands Economic Crash,p. 31.21 It has been suggested that the electoral system itsel is responsible or the currentpredicament: I the boombust cycle o the last 30 years has taught us anything, it isthat nothing will ultimately change until we move away rom the multi-seat constitu-encies that oster parish-pump politics, sacricing the wider public good or narrow,

vested interests. Dumping our electoral system . . . would bring about a real revolu-tion in how politics in this country operates. Shane Coleman, Politicians are a parto the solution, Sunday Tribune, 12December 2010. It is quite true that Irish politi-cians are oten assigned the role o making representations on behal o individualconstituents to state agencies, and possibly the electoral system reinorces thatnarrowing o horizons, its proportional character being more competitive than rst-past-the-post systems. The prstv modelmulti-seat constituencies, with surplusvotes o successul or eliminated candidates transerred according to specied pre-erenceswas introduced by the British in 1920 (as in South Aricas transition romapartheid, the protection o minorities was then considered imperative). There maybe a case or electoral reorm on its own merits; but linking that case to the economicmeltdown is a brazen con intended to divert attention rom the relationship betweenpolitical and economic notables: there were no bankers or property developers wait-ing in local constituency oces asking or avours rom Fianna Fil tds.


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22nlr 67or parish-pump endeavour. Yet this resource is likely to prove inad-equate at a time when all local concerns must be seen in the light o thenational crisis.

2. britains workhouse

At rst glance, the economic horizon may appear brighter on the otherside o the border: Northern Ireland has not suered a all as hard as thato its southern neighbour. But this apparently enviable position is itsela consequence o long-term economic decline. The industrial heartlando Belast and the Lagan Valleyonce home to the largest shipyards

in the worldhas gone the same way as the rustbelts o Sheeld andDetroit. This atrophy o its traditional economic strength has had theperverse eect o sheltering Northern Ireland rom the worst ravageso the global crisis. The region has beneted rom the stabilizing pres-ence o a uniquely large public sector: no oecd member has more than25 per cent o its workorce employed by the state, yet the public sectoraccounts or more than 30 per cent o all Northern Irish jobs. This ismade possible by the injection o unds which Northern Ireland receives

rom Westminster. I this nancial support were withdrawn, the regionaleconomy would collapse in a matter o weeks.

Such reliance on exogenous support is not only a by-product o industrialmalaise. The impact o global economic trends that devastated the manu-acturing centres o classical Fordism was compounded by a low-intensitywar: according to one estimate, the confict itsel was responsible or asmuch as 25 per cent o manuacturing job losses.22 In the same period,

successive British governments ratcheted up levels o nancial supportin the hope that economics might compensate or the ailure o politi-cal endeavours. Although the statelet had long been reliant on externalsupport to balance its books, the slide into abject dependence on Britishsubsidies began ater the outbreak o the Troubles. The annual subven-tion in 1970 was below 100m; by 1985 it had reached 1.7 billion, or

1,100 or every inhabitant. As a result, the population o NorthernIreland came to enjoy a standard o living well above what the productiv-

ity o its economic sphere would lead one to expect.22 Bob Rowthorn and Naomi Wayne, Northern Ireland: The Political Economy oConfict,Cambridge 1988, p. 94.


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fnn:Ireland23While the war may have aggravated the problems o the manuactur-ing sector, its conclusion has not delivered any straightorward peacedividend. Unemployment had allen substantially by the early part othe millennium, but the unorthodox structure o the economy remained

largely the same. Eorts to imitate the southern state by attracting oreigninvestment have proved ruitless or the most part: one study concludedthat the Republic received twenty times more fdi than Northern Irelandin proportion to its size, a gap attributed largely to its much lower rateo corporation tax.23 This mono-causal explanation or the superior per-ormance o the southern economy has been accepted by unionist andnationalist politicians alike and lies behind their call or a harmonizationo tax rates on both sides o the border. Thus ar, the British Treasury

has resisted what would be an unprecedented departure in regional eco-nomic policy or the uk.24 The 1980s description o Northern Ireland asa workhouse economy still commands respect:

A large part o its population is unemployed. Those who are not are chiefyengaged in servicing or controlling each other, through the provision o health,education, retail distribution, construction, security and social services . . .Like a typical workhouse, it is supported by taxes levied on the external com-munity, while providing very little in return. I orced to live within its means,

Northern Ireland would experience a catastrophic all in living standards.25

The words o the British proconsul Peter Hain thus carry an ominouscharge. Hain warned in 2006 that there is no prospect o the statusquo prevailing, insisting that the economy is not sustainable in its pre-sent orm in the long term. We have got to become more competitive,less dependent upon a bloated public sector with huge state subsidies.26There can be little doubt that his views expressed a bipartisan consensus

among the British political class, which expects a post-confict NorthernIreland to prove much less o a burden: Cameron tactlessly gave voice tosuch thoughts during the British election campaign, and Osborne has

23 Jim Smyth and Andreas Cebulla, The glacier moves? Economic change and classstructure, in Colin Coulter and Michael Murray, eds, Northern Ireland ater TheTroubles: A Society in Transition,Manchester 2008, p. 180.24 Like its southern neighbour, the Northern Irish economy has beneted rom eusupport, receiving 1.7 billion between 1989 and 1999: proo enough that unding

rom Brussels is insucient to remedy long-term structural weaknesses withoutthe aid o other stimuli.25 Rowthorn and Wayne, Northern Ireland,pp. 989.26 Smyth and Cebulla, The glacier moves, p. 188.


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24nlr 67targeted the region or cuts o 4 billion over the next our years.27 Thedirect impact o the crisis on the Northern Irish economy may have beenless calamitous than elsewhere, but as it sharpens this determination toclaw back the support on which the region depends, its long-term conse-

quences could prove devastating.

As always in Northern Ireland, one cannot discuss economic develop-ments without noting their likely communal mediation. Poverty hastraditionally allen with particular severity upon the Catholic minor-ity: in 1971, the unemployment rate among male Catholics stood at 17per cent, against 6 per cent or Protestants; a decade later, the respec-tive gures were 30 per cent and 12 per cent. The trend in recent

years has been towards a modest levelling o such inter-communalimbalances. Yet Catholics remain notably worse o than Protestants:although the Catholic share o those on low incomes declined rom58 per cent at the beginning o the 1990s to 55 per cent by the end othe decade, the latter gure is still disproportionately large.28 A relativetilt o employment patterns in avour o Catholics refects the declineo manuacturingshipbuilding and engineering were traditionallyProtestant bastionsand the growth o services, along with the impact

o anti-discrimination laws on hiring practices.

It is less permissible than ever to discuss the comparative position oProtestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland without taking account ointra-communal divisions. It was always misleading, o course, to speako Protestants as an undierentiated bloc accruing collective privileges:working-class unionists may have received a bigger slice o a woeullyinadequate cake, but their social advantages were hardly comparable to

those enjoyed by the Orange bourgeoisie. The salience o class positionin determining social outcomes has increased substantially since thebeginning o the Troubles. Middle-class Catholics have taken advantageo the space opened up by the civil rights movement o the 1960s andcornered a growing share o proessional and managerial employment,

27 It has been calculated that the poorest 40 per cent o the population will losemore than 5 per cent o their net income as a result o tax and benet changes tobe introduced between 2010 and 2015. See Institute or Fiscal Studies, The Impact

o Tax and Benet Reorms to be Introduced between 201011 and 201415 inNorthern Ireland,London 2010, p. 9.28 Smyth and Cebulla, The glacier moves, p. 185. The same authors recall a surveywhich identies 36 per cent o Catholic households as poor, while placing 25 percent o Protestant households in the same category.


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fnn:Ireland25especially in the public sector. Working-class Protestants, on the otherhand, have regressed as the opportunities or skilled blue-collar employ-ment dry up. O the teen local government wards with the lowest rateso educational attainment in Northern Ireland, thirteen are to be ound

in working-class Protestant areas.

A naive brand o economic determinism might suggest that theserecalibrations o class and ethnicity oer a avourable terrain or the trans-communal unity o the Northern Irish working class behind a radicalorat least progressiveeconomic agenda. As long as economic issues arediscussed and understood rom a communal rather than a class perspec-tive, however, this inviting prospect will remain chimerical. A quarter o

a century ago, Georey Bell cautioned that it would be socialism o thecrudest brew to imagine that being reduced to the economic straits o theCatholics would orce the Protestant workers to give their ingrained ideasa complete overhaul.29 That warning has lost none o its value now thatequality o misery appears to be within shouting distance.

Misplaced loyalty

These socio-economic trends conront a political system that remainsstubbornly polarized along sectarian lines. The Good Friday Agreement(gfa) o 1998 established a Northern Ireland Assembly which would unc-tion on consociational lines, with cross-community majorities requiredor all major decisions.30 Ater ty years o exclusionary Unionist domi-nance ollowing partition, which gave way to a quarter-century o directrule rom London ater the collapse o the Stormont system in 1972, itwas intended that the Catholic/Nationalist community would nally be

given a structured and proportional voice in Northern Irelands admin-istration (the balance between Protestants and Catholics in the regionspopulation is approximately 55:45, with the Catholic share having grownsteadily over time). But hopes that a stable power-sharing governmentwould soon be ormed gave way to a lengthy stand-o between Sinn Finand the leading pro-Agreement Unionist David Trimble over decommis-sioning oira weapons. The Assembly was suspended in 2002; directrule rom London resumed. When subsequent elections returned the

29 Bell, The British in Ireland: A Suitable Case or Withdrawal,London 1984, p. 72.30 Members o the Assembly are elected on the prstv system used in the Republic,although Northern Ireland continues to elect eighteen mps to the House oCommons on a rst-past-the-post basis.


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26nlr 67anti-gfa Democratic Unionists (dup) alongside Sinn Fin as the larg-est parties, it seemed suspension was likely to be permanent: the dupsoctogenarian chie Ian Paisley had spent his entire career denouncingpower-sharing with any nationalist party, never mind the political wing

o the ira.

His dramatic conversion to a power-sharing agreement at the 2006St. Andrews talks has been ascribed to a too-generous-to-reuse BritishTreasury settlement, as well as Sinn Fins concessions on polic-ing. Ultimately, Paisley was a victim o his own success: ater he hadcrowned a lietime o destructive opposition by nally reaching the topo the unionist pecking order, the demagogic preacher was orced to

recognize that no London government would accept a return to theold system o mono-communal, sectarian rule and risk uelling a newrepublican insurgency just as the previous one had been contained. Ihe wanted to enjoy the ruits o his political triumph, Paisley was goingto have to say yes or the rst time. In May 2007 a new executive nallytook oce in Stormont, with Paisley as First Minister and Sinn FinsMartin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister. The dup leader wasreplaced the ollowing year by his understudy Peter Robinson: Paisleys

relationship with McGuinness was considered excessively cordial bydup stalwarts, while his son Ian Jr. brought urther diculty with ascandal involving shady property developers, compromising his ownposition in the dup hierarchy and weakening the grip o the Paisleyclan. Robinson himsel has since been visited by turmoil involving hiswiealso a dup politicianthat combined nancial impropriety withacute personal embarrassment, yet has managed to contain the chal-lenge rom unreconstructed opponents o power-sharing thus ar. With

Unionism splintered and demoralized, Sinn Fin has emerged as thelargest single party, topping the polls in the 2009 European Parliamentelections and winning most votes, though not seats, in the British gen-eral election o 2010.

Fragmentation o the two sectarian blocs along class lines was antici-pated by many in the wake o the 1990s paramilitary ceaseres.Let-wing supporters o the gfa hoped that working-class unionists and

nationalists, having agreed to dier on the constitutional question andaccepted the ramework o the Agreement, would nd their own voiceon social and economic aairs and challenge the established communalelites. The parties established by the loyalist paramilitariesthe Ulster


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fnn:Ireland27Volunteer Force and Ulster Deence Associationwere identied asthe likely agents o this process within the unionist bloc. The uvfspolitical wing, the Progressive Unionist Party, seemed an especiallypromising candidate or the role: led by David Ervine, a highly articu-

late ormer paramilitary, it described itsel as socialist, acknowledgeddiscrimination against Catholics under the old Stormont regime andspoke o the need or class politics. Admittedly, the pups understand-ing o socialism owed more to Ernest Bevin than John Maclean, buteven the traditional politics o British Labourism would represent amajor departure within unionism.

When loyalist representatives heckled the veteran bigot Paisley as he

denounced the sell-out o the gfa in 1998, it seemed possible to imag-ine a wave o social insubordination spreading through the Protestantworking class or the rst time since the brie fowering o the NorthernIreland Labour Party in the 1960s. A decade on, those hopes have provedgroundless. The main shit within unionism has seen the collapse othe once-hegemonic Ulster Unionist Party in the ace o the challengerom Paisleys dupdriven in the rst instance by the latters chargeso betrayal, backsliding and compromise with the nationalist agenda.

There has also been a class element to the rivalry between the UlsterUnionists and the dup: the ormer party was deservedly seen as a vehi-cle or the bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie and the very big bourgeoisie,while the dup drew much o its leadership group rom the lower-middleclass and directed some o its re at Big House unionism as practisedby the lords and ladies o the uup.31 Yet the dup has been able to strikethis note o class resentment while remaining ully committed to neo-liberal economics. Since the volte ace o 2007, Paisleys successors in

the dup hierarchy have spent a good deal more time worrying aboutthe unashamedly retrograde Traditional Unionist Voice party than aboutworking-class loyalism.

In act the loyalist paramilitaries were never likely to oer a promis-ing departure point or any progressive current. The predominant ocuso their campaign had been the random murder o Catholic civilians,and they recruited the appropriate cadre or such activities. Since the

gfa was signed, much o that cadre has degenerated into a lumpen31 This moti was entirely subordinate to the sectarian triumphalism and ear-mongering which was Paisleys stock-in-trade or most o his political lie, andshould not be mistaken or any sort o progressive class analysis.


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28nlr 67narco-bourgeoisie with a parasitic relationship to the communitiesin which they operate. This slide into a tasteless world o suvs, goldchains and leather soas was symbolized by the udas Shankill Roadcommander Johnny Adair, whose drug-uelled egomania provoked

a series o violent euds. Elements o Belast loyalism have recentlyadded a new ingredient to their usual blend o gangsterism and fag-waving, organizing attacks on immigrants rom Eastern Europe thatorced dozens o Roma to leave the city earing or their lives in 2009.Although the presence o such destructive, anti-social elements mayprevent the loyalist paramilitaries rom oering a positive politicalagenda or the Protestant working class, they are in a strong positionto block the emergence o any alternative orce which threatens their

dominance. Mark Langhammer, an independent Labour councillorwhose ward includes the loyalist stronghold o Rathcoole, had his carblown up on orders rom the local uda boss John Gregg, about whomhe was surprisingly generous:

Gregg wasnt in act the worst o them, in the sense that he didnt live lav-ishly or push his money in your ace, but he believed everything he saidabout the udas need to keep control. The bomb was a message, a warningshot rom them to me. 32

Gregg was later assassinated by supporters o Johnny Adair. The play-wright Gary Mitchell was also orced to leave his home in Rathcoole atera petrol-bomb attack by paramilitariesan ironic reward or his eortsto articulate the experience o a community not over-burdened with sym-pathetic cultural representations. Largely powerless to infuence thesedestructive tendencies, the representatives o political loyalism havenonetheless been tainted by association. Ervines successor as leader o

the pup, Dawn Purvis, recently resigned rom the party, citing her beliethat the uvf is unwilling to relinquish criminality and become a politi-cal actor. She wearily refected that most uvf members had continued tovote or the dup, ignoring the work o Ervine and his associates.

Account must also be taken o the broader political environment.The suspension or the best part o a decade o the Northern IrelandAssembly meant that there was no opportunity to challenge the bour-

geois unionist parties on their social and economic record. The majordecisions on the austerity programme will be made in London, although

32 Ian Wood, Crimes o Loyalty: A History o the Ulster Deence Association,Edinburgh2006, p. 269.


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fnn:Ireland29responsibility or implementing them is devolved. Yet a basic questionremains: can the ideology o unionism itsel be reconciled with let-wingpolitics? Unionism has always tended to gloriy the most archaic andreactionary eatures o the British political order. By assuring working-

class Protestants that the state is theirs already, it has long acted asa barrier to mobilizations that could press demands upon that state.Loyalist opponents o the gfa are wont to complain that unionist cul-ture is being repressed in the new Northern Ireland. It would be moreaccurate to say that unionists are repressed by that very culture.

Mr Adams goes to Washington

Across the communal divide, the outcome would seem to have been verydierent. Sinn Fin, the iras political wing, is now rmly establishedas the dominant voice o Catholic nationalism in Northern Ireland. Butthis organizational triumph does not refect the hegemony o traditionalrepublican ideals. In almost every respect, Sinn Fin has turned its backon what the ira said it was ghting or throughout the long war: itsleaders have accepted partition and continued British rule in NorthernIreland, dismantled their military apparatus, recognized the police and

courts, and denounced violence against British orces. Cries o sell-outrom republican opponents o the gfa are little more use in accountingor this ideological mutation than back-handed tributes to the growingmaturity and realism o the Provo leadership oered by mainstreamcommentators. The starting-point o any serious analysis must be thepolitical weakness o the republican movement as it began to contem-plate an unarmed strategy in the 1980s.

The Provos always had a much narrower base o support than revolu-tionary nationalist movements in South Arica or Palestine. They weresupported by a minority o the Catholic population in Northern Irelandand remained a completely marginal orce in the South. In turn, theiras military campaign was hamstrung by these political limitations.Arms shipments rom Libya could not compensate or the restrictedpool o active supporters available to the Provos. As a new decade rolledinto view, with no evidence o the iras capacity to orce the British

state out o Northern Ireland and a generation o cadres languishingin prison, republican strategists had to consider their options. As SinnFins press ocer Richard McAuley put it in 1992: Were not goingto realize our ull potential as long as the war is going on in the North


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30nlr 67and as long as Sinn Fin is presented the way it is with regard to armedstruggle and violence.33

These considerations pointed towards an ira ceasere, which duly ol-

lowed in 1994. By that time, Gerry Adams had already moved a longway towards his objective o consolidating a pan-nationalist ront,embracing the strictly constitutionalist sdlp, Fianna Fil and the Irish-American lobby in Washington. As one radical critic pointed out, theormation o such an alliance would inevitably carry a heavy price: Thisis an impressive line-up in terms o general political clout but as a coa-lition, it can only hold together within the connes o a conservativeagenda. It may be able to deliver some advance to the Catholic commu-

nity in the North vis--vis the Protestants, but it will not deliver radicalsocial change to anyone.34

A partial observer

Adams and his allies had relinquished hope o imposing a British with-drawal in the lietime o a single parliament; yet they still aimed tosecure a dilution o British control over Northern Ireland, through some

combination o joint sovereignty between London and Dublin, dynamiccross-border political structures, and a declaration rom the British gov-ernment that it avoured a united Ireland and would attempt to persuadeunionists o its desirability. Such ambitions, however, would run upagainst the settled position o the British establishment, and the reluc-tance o Sinn Fins allies in the pan-nationalist ront to push too hardagainst that consensus. The question o British state policy has beenlargely neglected in discussion o Northern Irelands recent history. I

republican and socialist writers were oten guilty in the past o depict-ing Ulster unionism as a mere sock-puppet o the British ruling class,the pendulum has swung very much in the opposite direction and themainstream view now presents the London elite as a bemused spectatorobserving the quarrel o two Irish tribes. Much emphasis has been laid ona speech delivered in 1990 by Peter Brooke, Thatchers Northern IrelandMinister, in which he armed that London had no selsh strategic orother interest in the regiona claim reiterated by British ministers and

civil servants on many occasions since. These protestations need not33 Henry Patterson, The Politics o Illusion: A Political History o the ira, London1997, p. 239.34 Eamonn McCann, War and Peace in Northern Ireland,Dublin 1998, p. 155.


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fnn:Ireland31be dismissed, as long as they are parsed careully. The economic valueo Northern Ireland to the British state is negligible, and the strategicimperatives which were so compelling during the rst hal o the twen-tieth century have eectively disappeared in the post-Cold War era. Yet

Brooke did notclaim that Britain waspolitically neutral, and with goodreason, as John Major and Tony Blair went on to declare their positivesupport or the Union as loudly as anyone could wish.

Few states are keen to relinquish part o their national territory, or toshare control over it with a neighbour. This preerence lurks behindthe insistence that constitutional change cannot take place without thesupport o a majority within Northern Ireland. Now almost universally

viewed as a sel-evident democratic tenet, the consent principle in actglosses over the problematic nature o sel-determination when there is adispute about the political unit within which it should be exercised. TheBritish state has long propounded the partition settlement o the 1920sas the unquestionable oundation-stone o any peace agreement, anunambiguously partisan intervention in itsel. That settlement was any-thing but a air attempt to recognize the competing national allegianceso the islands inhabitants: over a third o Northern Irelands initial popu-

lation rejected its legitimacy, and there were nationalist majorities in twoo its six counties, its second-largest city and approximately hal o its geo-graphical area. There have not been many polities that rested on such aslender base o popular consent, now urther eroded by the growth o thenationalist population. Partitioncertainly in the orm that it assumedrefected not an eort to apply Wilsonian principles, but a victory or theConservativeUnionist bloc in its determination to keep the Union Jackfying over as much territory as could be saely pacied.

This is more than simply a matter o recalling historic wrongs: it raisesquestions about the consent principle that no British governmenthas deigned to address. Republicansincluding those who opposedthe Provo campaignhave always contended that the unit o sel-determination should be the whole island, not the statelet carved outo its north-eastern corner. This view can be challenged on the prac-tical grounds that unionist opposition to an all-Ireland state would

be so pronounced as to make it ungovernable. However, London hasnever advanced this plausiblethough not impregnableargumentas a rationale or its position: British politicians and diplomats simplyignore the republican perspective on sel-determination, aecting to


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32nlr 67believe that common sense permits no conclusion apart rom their own.They have also ruled out any move towards joint sovereignty betweenthe two states, with Thatchers out, out, out reply to nationalist aspira-tions expressed in more soothing tones.35 The cross-border elements o

the gfa have been aptly described as woeully thin in the most use-ul analysis o the new political dispensation.36 Bi-nationalism remainsan aspiration, and the consultative role assigned to Dublin under theterms o the gfa is precisely that: British governments are ree to ignoreany advice proered by Irish politicians, and have done so repeatedly.

This unequal power relationship has been most evident in Londons han-dling o security. A commission headed by Chris Patten was assigned the

task o drawing up a blueprint or policing reorm, which was excludedrom the gfa negotiations. Blairs government set about diluting itsproposals beore introducing legislation at Westminster, meanwhileallowing the security establishment to take charge o the reorm pro-cess and keep it within sae boundaries. It would be inaccurate to claimthat the reconstituted Police Service o Northern Ireland (psni) is indis-tinguishable rom the old ruc: there have been signicant changes,but those modications refect the shiting requirements o the British

state, which no longer has to conront a ull-scale republican insurrec-tion. The name and symbols o the orce have been altered so that it isno longer so closely identied with unionism, and considerable eortshave been made to increase Catholic representation among its ocers:new recruitment is supposed to be on a ty-ty basis. There is now acivilian Policing Board that includes nationalist politicians, and the psnihierarchy will doubtless try to keep them happy i at all possible. Yet mat-ters which all under the capacious heading o national security need

not be reerred to the Board.

The practical import o this loophole was made clear in March 2009,when then-Chie Constable Hugh Orde requested the deployment o theSpecial Reconnaissance Regiment in Northern Ireland. Given the murky

35 Thatcher was responding to the report o the New Ireland Forum, an assem-bly o non-violent Irish nationalists convened by the Dublin government in the1980s with the explicit purpose o isolating the Provos. Its proposals or constitu-tional changea unitary Irish state, a ederal state, or joint sovereignty betweenLondon and Dublinwere dismissed out o hand by the British government, withThatchers customary talent or sugaring the pill very much in evidence.36 Jonathan Tonge, The New Northern Irish Politics?, Basingstoke 2005, p. 264.


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fnn:Ireland33history o British special orces in the region, Martin McGuinness washardly exaggerating when he warned that many o these orces have beenas much a danger to the community as any other group and describedOrdes decision as stupid and dangerous.37 Yet the nationalist parties

were unable to do anything about it. The controversy was overshadowedby the lethal attacks on British soldiers carried out by dissident republi-cans shortly aterwards, demonstrating the utility o dead-end republicanmilitarism or those seeking to preserve the status quo.

The legislative innovations o the uk war on terror have given the psnitools that its predecessor would have envied: above all, 28-day deten-tion without charge and random stop-and-search powers, which have

been used with increasing regularity. Sinn Fin held out or the ullimplementation o the Patten Report and reused to join the PolicingBoard or several years, but capitulated in 2006 to pressure rom alldirections to endorse the psni beore it could share power with the dup.The decision came at a moment o extreme political weakness or theProvisional movement, and has let republicans loyal to Gerry Adamsin a position where they are expected to deend the actions o the policewithout complaint or ace unionist charges o undermining the struggle

against terrorism.

The outer limits o security reorm came sharply into view whenCanadian judge Peter Cory delivered his report into the 1989 murder onationalist solicitor Pat Finucane. Charges o state complicity in the kill-ing had been raised almost immediately ater Finucanes death: the udahit team which carried out the murder was composed entirely o govern-ment agents. During talks held to secure the implementation o the gfa,

the British government pledged to hold an inquiry into Finucanes deathi an international judge deemed it necessary. Having unearthed strik-ing evidence o collusion, Cory warned that it would be considered acynical breach o aith i Blairs administration did not hold a publicinquiry.38 This proved to be a risk that Blair was willing to take, as hisgovernment rushed to implement legislation that would make the hold-ing o an eective probe impossible. The Police Ombudswoman NualaOLoan might be permitted to shed some light on the symbiotic relation-

ship between ruc Special Branch and the loyalist paramilitaries, but

37 Forces are a threat: McGuinness, bbc News, 6March 2009.38Cory Collusion Inquiry Report: Patrick Finucane,London, 2004, p. 109.


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34nlr 67there was no question o allowing an inquiry to damage the reputationo the mainland army and intelligence services, which were needed orimportant work on resh battleelds.

The Sinn Findup coalition appears to have stabilized ater acing anapparently terminal crisis last year. The leadership teams o both par-ties have invested much political capital in making the arrangement lastand have thus ar managed to contain opposition to their chosen course.While it would be wise to anticipate renewed turbulence in the nearuture, the probability is that unionist and nationalist political elites willcontinue to share whatever power London chooses to assign them. Thescal leash will be tightened at every opportunity, and politics will remain

rozen in a sectarian mould that leaves both sections o the working classshort-changed: the gfa certainly did not create the communal divide inNorthern Ireland, but it oers no plausible route towards its superses-sion or even diminution over time. Previous moments in history when itappeared possible to break through the sectarian logjamrom the 1790sto the 1960scame at a time when the international scene had taken aturn to the let. Without such a turn in the coming period, grounds oroptimism are tenuous. The end o the war is certainly to be welcomed, but

the peace which has ollowed oers little reason or cheer.

3. europes weak link?

Will the South make its own contribution to a wider letwards shit? Atthe beginning o 2009, three months into the nancial crisis, BrianLenihan elt assured enough to boast: The steps taken have impressed

our partners in Europe, who are amazed at our capacity to take pain.In France, you would have riots i you tried to do this.39 The sameassessment o the Irish character was madewith a rather dierentvalue judgementby the Greek demonstrators who chanted We arenot Ireland, we will resist.40 The actions o Lenihans government in

39 Anne Lucey, Europe amazed at steps taken in budget: Lenihan, Irish Times, 27April 2009.40 Helena Smith, Athens protest: We are at war with them, as they are with us,Guardian, 10February 2010. I have heard a variation o the same point rom a tradeunionist who told a meeting: Im sure youve all heard the joke: whats the dier-ence between Iceland and Ireland? One letter and six months. Well, heres the realdierence: they brought down the government and we didnt.


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fnn:Ireland35the meantime might airly be seen as an attempt to test his claim todestruction. Yet civil unrest has thus ar been minimal, and certainlyinsucient to compel a shit in government policy.

The inherited railties o the Irish let have already been noted. Althoughmany o the actors that induced this weakness have now passed intohistory, it remains a debilitating legacy: there are no traditions o strug-gle comparable to those o Greece and Portugal to be drawn upon.The combativity o the trade-union movement has been sapped by twodecades o corporatism known as social partnership. Business lead-ers saw the partnership system as a convenient way o limiting wageincreases at a time when unemployment was too low to supply the nec-

essary blackmail. More valuable still was the anaesthetizing eect it hadon organized labour, as the unions discarded any sense o themselvesas a social movement with a distinctive and radical vision that clashedwith the dominant orces in Irish society. The price paid in return wasremarkably small: the Republic lacks even a weak union-recognition actand the years o partnership saw a steady erosion o union density inthe private sector.

Now that the dole queues are doing a better job o disciplining the labourorce than any national agreement could, Irish capitalism has decidedto launch a rontal assault on the trade-union movement in its remain-ing bastions. The union hierarchy has largely resisted acknowledgingthis and its stopstart mobilizations, intended to secure a return to thebargaining table, have been ignored by the government. Every time amarch has been calledmost recently in the immediate wake o the euimf dealthere has been a very healthy turn-out, ollowed by months

o inactivity. Europhile elements in the trade union movements will alsohave to shed their illusions about the progressive role o the EuropeanUnion i there is to be any serious opposition to an austerity programmedictated rom Brussels. The radical let, which would dearly like toorganize a more sustained campaign o protest, enjoys a very limitedsocial ootprint and has proved incapable o mobilizing large numberswithout the support o the ocial trade-union leadership.

At present, all eyes are xed on the imminent general election. Cowensleadership has dissolved in arcical circumstances and his successorunknown at the time o writingwill have no time to repair thedamage. It is a measure o Fianna Fils decline that a 20 per cent score


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36nlr 67would now be considered a welcome revival: at any other time since theparty rst gained power, such a perormance would have been greetedwith the horror Christians reserve or the Apocalypse. The rst opinionpoll ollowing the euimf agreement placed the party ourth, at 13 per

cent, behind Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fin. Given the social breadtho support or Fianna Fil throughout its history, the impending crashwill see votes distributed all over the political spectrum. A party sys-tem that has remained remarkably stable since the 1930s looks set orunprecedented shocks and realignments; whether this recongurationavours the let will depend very much on the strategies adopted byits component parts. At the time o writing, Labour appears set to winits biggest share o the vote since the state was ounded, overtaking

Fianna Fil. Indeed, as the political correspondent o the Irish Timeshas noted: Combined support or Labour, Sinn Fin and independents/others is now at 51 per cent, opening up the prospect o a Labour-ledlet bloc as an alternative to a Fine GaelLabour coalition.41 The shittowards Labour is likely to prove more a symptom than an agent ochange: the partys track record and current orientation suggest that itwill preer the traditional path towards a coalition with Fine Gael ratherthan attempt the ormation o Irelands rst let-o-centre government.

Labour has positioned itsel as the main opponent o Fianna Fil aus-terity and earned a ew scoldings rom political commentators or itspopulism and unreality. The party leadership has already begun totack its sails in response to such criticism, and can be expected to gomuch urther once in power.

Fourth bloc

The most probable outcome o the poll is a Fine GaelLabour coalitionwith a solid majority, challenged on the one hand by a demoralized anddiscredited Fianna Fil, and on the other by a ourth bloc standing to thelet o Labour, whose prospects appear brighter ater recent polls.42 Thesituation may hold some promise or the let, but much will depend on

41 Stephen Collins, Fianna Fil acing meltdown, Irish Times, 16December 2010.42 As one Fianna Fil sympathizer has noted: It appears that the anti-establishmentanger or mood or change in some sectors o the electorate, particularly the young,

is looking increasingly beyond the Labour Party or other alternatives . . . Candidatesrom the ourth bloc polled more than hal a quota in over a third o the 43 con-stituencies in 2007, which means the swing required or a real breakthrough is notmassive. Noel Whelan, sf and let-wing independents set to burst out o blocs,Irish Times, 11December 2010.


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fnn:Ireland37the size o the ourth bloc and the relative strength o its heterogeneouscomponents, which range in ideological terms rom social democracy toTrotskyism. However large this bloc proves to be, its main componentwill be Sinn Fin: the party is set to achieve its best result in the South

since the split with De Valera in the 1920s.

Sinn Fin was the only party in the Dil to oppose the euimf deal outrightand has put orward a robust let-wing agenda in the wake o the latest cri-sis. Although the party is oten denounced as a Marxist organization byconservative pundits, its ideological character is ar more ambiguous andcontradictory than such labels would suggest. There have been repeatedattempts to blend socialist politics with republicanism since the deeat o

the anti-Treaty orces in the Civil War. The most signicant organizationsto the let o social democracy, rom the Republican Congress in the 1930sto the Workers Party in the 1980s, have all emerged rom this putativesynthesis. The conspiratorial and militaristic style o the republican tradi-tion has oten scuppered such eorts, while its overriding commitmentto nishing the national revolution has tempted let-wing republicans topostpone any struggle or socialism until the Republic has been won.

Under the leadership o Gerry Adams, Sinn Fin has generally ollowedthe latter course: its close relationship with the anc has been used tohelp legitimize a strategy that relieves the movement o any obligationto pursue socialist objectives north o the border.43 Yet its southern activ-ists have tended to retain a serious let-wing outlook and the party hasound its niche to the let o Labour in the crowded political terrain othe South, picking up support in working-class Dublin estates that havebeen abandoned by the Labour Party in its pursuit o Blairite respectabil-

ity. Senior gures in the Dublin party have put orward careully wordedbut trenchant criticisms o the northern leadership since the disappoint-ing 2007 general election.44 Sinn Fin enjoys a unique status as the only

43 A number o prominent anc leaders have visited Belast to give their supportto the Sinn Fin leadership at crucial stages o the peace process; this continues arelationship that dates back to the 1980s and has been a constant source o irrita-tion to conservative politicians who believe that the statesmen o the anc shouldbe meeting them instead.

44 One o those guresthe chair o Dublin Sinn Finhas recently published aascinating commentary on republican and let-wing politics in modern Ireland,notable both or its coded criticisms o his party and stimulating refections on thetravails o the Irish Let: Eoin Broin, Sinn Fin and the Politics o Let Republicanism,London 2009.


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38nlr 67all-Ireland party with signicant backing in both states. The strain oreconciling its interventions in radically dierent political landscapesis now very much in evidence as the party denounces cutbacks in theSouth while implementing them in the North: ormulas about the

national democratic revolution borrowed rom its international allieshave reached the limit o their elasticity. It is hard to predict whatuse Sinn Fin will make o its increased mandate ater the election: astrong perormance by the more radical orces grouped in the UnitedLet Alliancepredominantly Trotskyist in ideology, notably the Irishsections o the ormer Militant Tendency and Socialist Workers Party,which possess a certain weight in parts o the countrywill increasethe pressure to maintain a let-wing course. Above all, an end to the

passivity which evoked Lenihans smug benediction will be requiredi the crisis o Fianna Fil is to become a crisis o conservative politicsin general.

Outlook

While Labour and Fine Gael have attacked the terms o the agreementconcluded by Fianna Fil with Irelands oreign creditors, the saest bet

is that the new government will plead its impotence to change thoseterms once in oce. I so, another crisis is inevitable within the nextyear or so. The euimf agreement cannot work, even on its own terms.Quite apart rom the social suering it will impose on a broad swathe othe population, its probable outcome will be to break the Irish economyaltogether. Adding the burden o punitive interest repayments to a statealready struggling to keep its head above water will guarantee collapse.The growth projections underpinning the latest government plan lack

even a semblance o plausibility. As the think-tank tasc argued in itsanalysis o Lenihans December budget:

The Department o Finance is orecasting that gdp will increase by 1.7 percent in 2011 and by an average o 3 per cent per annum over the period20122014. These growth numbers are predicated on exports increasing byan average o 4.6 per cent per annum, at a time when our major trade part-ners are orecast to experience growth rates o less than hal that amount.Given the massive debt overhang, the uncertainty in the banking sector andabsence o credit that will continue to constrain the domestic economy, it isunclear on what grounds Ireland is expected to outperorm other advancedeconomies . . . I lower growth than that projected by the Department oFinance occurs, the general government decit will still be greater than the


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fnn:Ireland39nominal growth level in 2014, and the debt ratio will still be moving in anunsustainable direction.45

Ireland is heading towards a sovereign deault, as independent analysts

at home and abroad have already noted.46 The only way out o the cur-rent mess, or both the Irish and the European economies, is to impose aloss on the bondholders who engaged in speculative commercial activityyet expect unlimited compensation or their gambling losses rom pub-lic unds. I the losses incurred by private banks were excluded rom thenational debt, Ireland would have a reasonable chance o stabilizing itsnances over the next ew years. Until this step is taken, the prospectso recovery are negligible. Had they been ortunate enough to possess a

modicum o courage and insight, the current power-holders in Dublinwould have beaten a path to Lisbon, Athens and Madrid, urging theirellow pigs to orm a bloc within the eu that could challenge the ruin-ous appeasement o bondholders. Instead, they have spent the last yearassuring their citizens that Ireland is not Greeceuntil the point wasreached when the Greek prime minister elt obliged to state that Greeceis not Ireland. It is getting very late in the day or such alliances to beormed. But in their absence, the list o those hanging separately will

surely extend ar beyond the periphery o the Eurozone.

20 January 2011

45

tasc, Response to Budget 2011, Dublin 2010, pp. 34.46 David McWilliams, Bailout will sink Ireland beore we can even swim, IrishIndependent, 1December 2010; Wolgang Munchau, Will it work? No. What canIreland do? Remove the bank guarantee and deault, Irish Times, 2December 2010.

Ireland on the Turn

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