The Labour Party contains many good members. There are plenty of genuine left-wingers in the Labour Party in Ireland today; however, those people are not leading the party. The Labour Party has not been committed to a genuine socialist republic since Connolly was shot and Larkin went off to America, and this has become very clear.
Another issue with the Labour Party is its disastrous history, which it constantly repeats by calling for a coalition with Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or both. The Labour Party does not support socialism in any way. It is an entirely revisionist party that will never challenge the status quo.
The Labour Party has the famous historical issue that because it never contested the 1918 general election, it would never gain a foothold in the struggle to establish the Free State. Thus, the future of Irish politics ended up being the struggle of one centre-right party, Cumann na nGaedheal (later Fine Gael), against the other centre-right party, Fianna Fáil. However, the Labour Party did itself no favours after this as it has been one of, if not the most, conservative social democratic parties in all of Europe for decades.
This was more clearly seen under the leadership of Brendan Corish from 1960 until 1977 when the differences between the Conservative rural TDs, like TD for Limerick East (1961-1977) Stephan Coughlan, would clash with more left-wing members, like TD for Dublin North West (1969-1977) David Thornley. The Labour Party constantly missed out on opportunities to gain support from the agitated youth because the party would mainly tiptoe around the word “socialist”, instead claiming the party was “Christian socialist”.
In the run-up to the 1969 general election Labour tried to take a more left-wing turn with Brendan Corish claiming Ireland would be “socialist in the seventies”. However, due to the large rural vote this was always watered down and was still fairly conservative. This did not stop the McCarthyite crusade against the party, as a priest in Kerry once claimed that socialism was worse than communism because it was a protestant version of communism, while Fianna Fáil TD Seán MacEntee claimed that Labour stood for Lenin and Stalin.
The biggest mistake Labour made recently was the merger with the Democratic Left. As one older comrade in the Communist Party told me, those who went from Democratic Left to the Labour Party were more right-wing than the Labour Party was at the time. The likes of Eamon Gilmore, Pat Rabbitte and others only cared about getting a nice pension when they retired.
It was an entirely careerist move from these men that nearly destroyed the Labour Party as not only did it lead the party into another coalition with Fine Gael, but the Labour Party still has not come anywhere near the levels of support it had in 2011.
This trend of tiptoeing around socialism is still present in Labour. The biggest issue Labour has at the moment is the fact its leadership seems to be completely divorced from reality. Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik was publicly pushing for the party to join a coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, a move members of her own party, like MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and the youth wing, have come out against.
The other issue is that Bacik fails to understand the fundamental flaw of the Labour Party in coalition and that is, except for the 1951 election, every time Labour has gone into government, it loses support in the following election either by losing TDs or losing both votes and TDs. The party then spends a few years in the wilderness of opposition only to repeat the same mistake when the opportunity presents itself.
If the Labour Party was genuinely intent on the creation of a socialist republic then it would never have gone into coalition with right-wing parties, it would never have allowed careerist elements to take over the party and it certainly would never have started conversations with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael about going into government in 2024.
For anyone genuinely interested in creating a 32-county socialist republic they should join the Communist Party of Ireland. While Labour will bend over backwards to betray its principles just so its TDs can get a nice pension, the Communist Party will never abandon the ideas of genuine socialism.
