Labour Party (Ireland)

The Labour Party (Irish: Páirtí an Lucht Oibre) is a social democratic political party in the Republic of Ireland. Founded by James Connolly in 1912 as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress, it claims to be the country's oldest political party. It holds 21 of the 166 seats in Dáil Éireann, and is the third largest political party in the State. In the 2002 Dáil elections it gained 10.8% of the popular vote. The Labour Party has served in government for a total of almost 20 years, six times in coalition either with Fine Gael alone or with Fine Gael and other smaller parties, and once with Fianna Fáil. It is currently in opposition. The current leader of the party is Pat Rabbitte.

Foundation

In 1912 James Connolly, James Larkin and William X. O'Brien established the Irish Labour party as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress. This party would represent the workers in the expected Dublin Parliament under the Third Home Rule Act 1914. However, after the defeat of the trade unions in the Dublin Lockout of 1913 the labour movement was weakened, and the emigration of James Larkin in 1914 and the execution of James Connolly in 1916 further damaged it.

Early history

In Larkin's absence, William X. O'Brien became the dominant figure in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and wielded considerable influence in the Labour Party. O'Brien also dominated the Irish Trade Union Congress. The Labour party, now led by Thomas Johnson, as successor to such organisations as D.D. Sheehan's, (independent labour MP.'s) Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), declined to contest the 1918 general election, in order to allow the election to take the form of a plebiscite on Ireland's constitutional status. It also refrained from contesting the 1921 general election. As a result the party was left out of the Dáil during the vital years of the independence struggle.

Labour in the Irish Free State

The Anglo-Irish Treaty divided the Labour party. Some members sided with the Irregulars in the Irish Civil War that quickly followed. O'Brien and Johnson encouraged its members to support the Treaty. In the 1922 general election the party won 17 seats. However there were a number of strikes during the first year and a loss in support got the party. In the 1923 election Labour only won 14 seats. From 1922 until Fianna Fáil TDs took their seats in 1927, Labour was the major opposition party in the Dáil. It attacked the lack of social reform by the Cumann na nGaedhael government.

In 1923 Larkin returned to Ireland. He hoped to take over the leadership role he had left, but O'Brien resisted him. Larkin sided with the more radical elements of the party and in September that year he established the Irish Worker League.

In 1932 the Labour Party supported Eamon de Valera's first Fianna Fáil government, which had proposed a programme of social reform with which the party was in sympathy. In the 1940's it looked for a while as if Labour would replace Fine Gael as the main opposition party. In the 1943 general election the party won 17 seats, its best result since 1927.

The split with National Labour and the first coalition governments

The Larkin-O'Brien feud still continued, and worsened over time. In the 1940s the hatred caused a split in the Labour party and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. In 1944 O'Brien left and founded the National Labour Party. O'Brien also withdrew the ITGWU from the Irish Trade Unions Congress and set up his own congress. The split damaged the Labour movement in the 1944 general election. It was only after Larkin's death in 1947 that an attempt at unity could be made.

During this period the party also occasionally stood for election in Northern Ireland, on occasion winning the odd seat at both the Westminster Parliament and Stormont Parliament in the Belfast area. However the party is not known to have contested an election in the region since Gerry Fitt, then the party's sole Stormont MP, left the party to form the Republican Labour Party in 1964.

From 1948-1951 and from 1954-1957 the Labour Party was the second-largest partner in the two inter-party governments. William Norton, the Labour leader, became Tánaiste and Minister for Social Welfare on both occasions.

Labour under Brendan Corish, 1960 - 1977

In 1960 Brendan Corish became the new Labour leader. As leader he advocated and introduced more socialist policies to the party. Between 1973 and 1977 the Labour Party formed a coalition government with Fine Gael. The coalition partners lost the subsequent election in 1977. Corish resigned immediately after the defeat.

The 1980s: coalition, internal feuding, electoral decline and regrowth

From 1981 to 1982 and from 1982 to 1987, Labour participated in coalition governments with Fine Gael. In the later part of the second of these coalition terms, the country's poor economic and fiscal situation required strict curtailing of government spending, and Labour bore much of the blame for unpopular cutbacks in health and other social services. In the 1987 general election it received only 6.4% of the vote, and its vote was increasingly threatened by the growth of the stalinist 'Workers Party'. Fianna Fáil formed a minority government from 1987 to 1989 and then a coalition with the Progressive Democrats.

The 1980s saw fierce disagreements between left and right wings of the party. The more radical elements, led by figures including Emmet Stagg, opposed the idea of going into coalition government with either of the major centre-right parties. At the 1989 Labour conference in Tralee a number of socialist and Marxist activists, organised around the Militant newspaper, were expelled. These expulsions continued during the early 1990s and those expelled, including Joe Higgins went on to found the Socialist Party.

These rows ended with the defeat of the anti-coalition left. In the period since, there have been further discussions about coalitions in the Party but these disagreements have primarily been over the merits of different coalition partners rather than over the principle of coalition. Related arguments have taken place from time to time over the wisdom of entering into pre-election voting pacts with other parties. Indeed former radicals like Stagg now themselves support coalition.

Mary Robinson and coalitions of different hues

In 1990 Mary Robinson became the first President of Ireland to have been proposed by the Labour Party, although she contested the election as an independent candidate. Not only was it the first time a woman held the office but it was the first time, apart from Douglas Hyde, that a non-Fianna Fáil candidate was elected. Mary Robinson became one of the most outspoken and active Presidents in the history of the state. In 1990 the Party merged with the Limerick East TD Jim Kemmy's Democratic Socialist Party and in 1992 it merged with Sligo-Leitrim TD Declan Bree's Independent Socialist Party.

At the 1992 general election on 25th November Labour won a record 19.3% of the first-preference votes, more than twice its share in the 1989 election. The party's representation in the Dáil doubled to 33 seats and, after a period of negotiations, Labour formed a coalition with Fianna Fáil, taking office in January 1993 as the 23rd government of Ireland. Fianna Fáil leader Albert Reynolds remained as Taoiseach, and Labour leader Dick Spring became Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

After less than two years the government fell in a controversy over the appointment of Attorney-General, Harry Whelehan, as president of the High Court. The parliamentary arithmetic had changed as a result of Fianna Fáil's loss of two seats in by-elctions in June and Labour negotiated a new coalition, the first time in Irish political history that one coalition replaced another without a general election. Between 1994 and 1997 Fine Gael, the Labour Party, and Democratic Left governed in the so-called 'Rainbow Coalition'. Dick Spring of Labour became Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs again.

Merger with Democratic Left and recent electoral performance

Labour presented the 1997 election, held just weeks after spectacular victories for the French Parti Socialiste and Tony Blair's New Labour, as the first ever choice between a government of the left and one of the right, but the party, as had often been the case following its participation in coalitions, lost support and failed to retain half of its Dáil seats. A poor performance by Labour candidate Adi Roche in the subsequent election for President of Ireland led to Spring's resignation as party leader.

In 1997 Ruairi Quinn became the new Labour leader. Negotiations started almost immediately and in 1999 the Labour Party merged with Democratic Left, keeping the name of the larger partner.

Quinn resigned as leader in 2002 following the poor results for the Labour Party in the general election. Former Democratic Left TD Pat Rabbitte became the new leader, the first to be elected directly by the members of the party.

In the June 2004 elections to the European Parliament, Proinsias De Rossa retained his seat for Labour in the Dublin constituency. This was Labour's only success in the election.

Pre-election Pact

Since the 2005 endorsement by the Labour Party conference in Tralee, of a pre-election voting transfer pact with the Fine Gael party in 2005, the party has seen increased cooperation between the party leaders, Pat Rabbitte and the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, as well as the party's front benchs.

Following on from the Mullingar Accord, an election pact preceding the 2004 Local and European elections, where Fine Gael benifited largely, they have worked party rank and file into support of a second Rainbow Coalition. With the Irish General Election in under a year away, they have began to draw up mutually acceptable and compatible policy documents. It is suspected that if the parties form a government after the next election, the Labour Party leader, will become Taniste, and Minister of Finance, with the Fine Gael leader becoming the Taoiseach.

Though some doubt their potential for forming a stable government, with some opponents and journalists commenting on their incompatibility, the parties seem set to effect their plans and assist each other electorally in the 2007 pole. The leaders have set aside the Summer season for the bulk of policy formation.

Leaders of the Labour Party since 1922

Labour Party Front Bench

See: Irish Labour Party Frontbench Team

External links

Republic of Ireland political parties | Social democratic parties | Socialist International | Irish Labour Party | 1912 establishments

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