Crisis for Irish

Socialist Press no. 77, 30 November 1977 · scan p. 3 · about 387 words

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Since its rout in the elections of June 16 last, the Irish Labour Party has been in disarray.

Its policy of sharing power and governmental office with the right wing conservative Fine Gael party resulted then in a loss for Labour of three seats (from 20 to 17).

Fine Gael's representation fell at the time from 55 seats to 43, while Jack Lynch's Fianna Fail increased its seats from 66 to 84, giving it the biggest majority in its history.

At the time of the elections, Socialist Press refused to call for a vote for Labour because of its open declaration that it would form a coalition government with the bourgeois Fine Gael.

Critical support

We did give critical support, though, to those candidates who made opposition to the coalition part of their election programme-for example, Noel Browne and Matt Merrigan, who stood as Independent labour candidates.

Browne in fact was elected to the Dail (parliament) in the Dublin Artane constituency, having secured 5,601 first preference votes. Merrigan failed to be elected for Dublin Finglas, but won 1,512 first preference votes.

Some time after the election, Browne, Merrigan and their supporters in the Dublin based Liaison Committee of the Left were expelled from the Irish Labour Party for having stood against official Labour Party candidates. (Ironically, Browne had originally been adopted as official candidate in Artane, but his nomination was overturned by Labour's top brass).

Formation

At the. beginning of October this group-numbering. at most 300-held a public meeting in Dublin to discuss the formation of a new political party. A short time ago the party-named the Socialist Labour Partywas formed on what seems to be a vaguely left social-democratic platform.

Many of the policies are taken over wholesale from the electoral positions of Browne and Merrigan: opposition to coalitions- with Fine Gael or Fianna Fail; opposition to the National Wage Agreement (Ireland's Social Contract); opposition to the more overt examples of state repression in the North and South; opposition to the dominance of the Catholic Church and to the lack of basic rights for women, eg contraceptive facilities, divorce, etc.

All of these points are of course supportable for socialPHOTO: Mark Rusher.

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