Funferal

MDH’s vision for the Labour party

Michael D Higgins, who is President of the Irish Labour Party, gave the opening address at the Tom Johnson Summer School last Friday. In it he laid out a future vision for the party, building on the history and current challenges to create a coherent roadmap. I attach it below:

The Labour Party is the oldest political party in Ireland. It was founded, we should never forget, in the year before one of the greatest confrontations between labour and capital. What was then a poverty-stricken and vulnerable movement of labour that was seeking to organise against a version of capitalism that refused the most basic rights, including that of organisation, to workers. That confrontation required courage, tenacity, solidarity and above all a commitment to class and history beyond the short-term challenges. We are the beneficiaries of their struggle and in our generation we must lay the foundations for future achievement.
Out of the most extreme conditions of 1912-13 there emerged a vision that dealt, not only with the immediate problems of working people but also a vision for the changes that were necessary in the structures of the economy, society and the political system.
What is required of the labour movement into the future is no less than those values of courage, tenacity, solidarity and commitment. Much of the energies of the labour movement in the intervening period between 1912 and the present moment have concentrated on the protection of workers in a hostile environment. These protections have had to be won through negotiation and more often in the past through courageous confrontation. Into the period in which we are now entering it is clear that this task remains.
There will be an attempt in the next few years to erode many of the gains made by the Trade Union movement in Europe as the tyranny of the neo-liberal model of the economy is sought to be imposed in Europe by parties of the Right. There is no doubt that in the name of alleged labour market flexibility hard won securities for workers will be challenged. Many of us who favoured the protection of workers in the applicant countries to the European union under a Social Model are aware of the potential abuse of such countries. The existing social protections are being challenged as a condition for Foreign Direct Investment. They are being forced to accept a US model of very limited worker protection.
However, the challenges facing the Labour Party and parties of the Left in Europe go far beyond such a protective role. Our party and other parties have to push on and make the case for a Rights-based approach to the economy, the society and the political system – within a comprehensive theory of citizenship. The recent war has opened up a huge gap between the citizens of countries and their administrations on the issue of militarism. The citizens who rejected their Governments support for militarism are also against unfair trade, crippling debt, tied aid and economic exploitation, cultural domination and political oppression.
There is a great gap between the public support for fair trade, untied aid, and debt relief and their political representatives and governments who refuse to question the devastating consequences of a single paradigm of economics – the neo-liberal agenda – with its devastating consequences at home and abroad as there was between militarism and its alternative – peace.
It is beyond time too, for the Left to question the popular assertion of the Right that after 1989 the moment of socialism has passed. Neither the legacy of Stalinism nor the collapse of the Berlin Wall, nor the horrific events of September 11 discredit the powerful liberating humanism of the socialist vision and this should be stated loudly, clearly and everywhere labour members gather.
While labour members must have the courage to acknowledge past distortions of socialism, and even the failures to criticise it is even more important now to restate the values of socialism for a generation that is carrying the marks of the legacy of Thatcher-Reaganism with its extreme individualism and greed so well represented by the Progressive Democrats and the Fianna Fail party that capitulated to their message of selfishness.
A rights-based approach to the economy and to society is not a burden too great for the manifestos of parties of the Left. It does not demand that you do that for which you have not resources. It does declare that to which you are committing yourself in housing, health, education and special needs. The parties of the right, with their version of the limited state are willing to abandon the most basic of human needs to the logic of the market. Parties of the Left have to oppose this at every level.
The labour Party and like-minded parties of the Left while they have to respect the complexity of the real circumstances of the economy and the society in which we find ourselves are not required to capitulate to the version of the economy or the society which the right re suggesting is inevitable. The Left will be judged, much more by its adherence to principle than its competence. Both are important but the principles and vision are the most important.
The recent referendum vote in Sweden too has a lesson for us. It shows that a country’s citizens with a developed system of social protection were not willing to risk its achievements. Far from being an anti-European vote, it is an equality vote. The response of Social Democrats in Europe should be to secure the Social Model and oppose any attempt to unpick its protections in the proposed Constitution.
When Raymond Williams suggested that it was only when the inevitabilities were questioned that we had taken our first steps in a journey of hope it is required of us that we not only question the inevitabilities but that we develop the alternative based on our values which we must have the courage to advance at every level.
Far from socialising being out of date, it is never more necessary. What is old-fashioned is the 18th century version of greed and selfishness being imposed upon us within a neo-liberal mode of the economy that wreaks death and destruction in the developing world and that deprives citizens at home of their most basic rights in such areas as health, education, housing and special needs.
Our tasks, then, in the next few are years are only minimally ones of a managerial kind. Rather they are a radical kind. We have to accept the responsibility of producing a wide range of policies derived from a vision for which we are willing to campaign and on which we will be opposed by the riches of capitalism and a monopolised media.
This will require courage, commitment and responsibility. We should be proud of what makes us different, committed to speaking publicly about it, and in our relations with each other put into practice the values we are advocating for the larger society.
There is a great need for Labour’s vision. There is a great future for the Labour Party. The future however does not only have to be crafted, it has to become a matter of belief and based on a vision, delivered into action.
That is our challenge.