Farewell, comrades, ’til I see you again in the colours of a Rainbow

NEXT week I’ll be 55. So I hope you’ll indulge me in a personal statement. When I was younger, I used to think that ages ending in seven were always the turning points in life.

Fourteen is puberty, 21 is adulthood, 35 is the age of being established in whatever you’re trying to do, and you shouldn’t still be demonstrating unrealised potential at 49.

As I’ve got older, however, I’ve come to think that every five years is an important milestone. That may, of course, just be a function of getting older. But as it happens, the day I’m 55 is also the same day I start working for Barnardos. I’m a bit in awe of that because I’ve met a lot of the people who work in Barnardos, and they’re really good.

They’re committed, they’re knowledgeable, and they’re totally dedicated to the cause of children and families. What’s more, they’ve been really well led up to now. The cause they’re working for, the mission to make Ireland the best possible place to be a child, couldn’t be more worthwhile and challenging, and I hope with the permission of our gracious editor to write a bit more about that mission in the future.

But for now, I want to say something about the organisation I’m leaving, the Labour party.

The Labour party is mine. A little bit of it belongs to me, just as it belongs to every other member. We take a lot of pride in that, we members of the party. We reckon the leader belongs to us, too, because we elected him. We see him (or her, but it happens to be him at the moment) as the servant of the greater things we believe in. That makes us a bit different from the members of other parties. We see our party leader as working for us. Members of other parties tend to see themselves as working for the party leader. That means, of course, that it’s a bit more difficult to be the leader of Labour than of another party.

We expect our leader to make a difference, to make us feel good about being members. We demand a lot. No harm in that, we’re democrats in a democratic party. But it can be tough being on the receiving end.

There are those in the Labour party (and quite a few who write about the party) who say that it is at its best when it’s standing up for principle. Even when it’s in a tiny minority. I’ve always thought that’s rubbish. Labour is at its best, in my humble opinion, when it goes out to campaign for its values and sets about winning. When we’re content with a moral victory, the party is losing. And so are the values.

We’ve never won often enough, of course. We rocked the system in the presidential election in 1990 because we set about offering a really serious democratic choice to the people. We frightened the life out of the other parties in 1992 because we campaigned to end a system of politics that was making people sick. But we’ve got it wrong as well as getting it right. More often than not, we haven’t been serious enough about what we believe in. Serious enough about winning, about making a difference.

That’s how I see this argument about coalition. And we’re in the throes of a debate about coalition again.

How should we face into the next election? As a stand-alone party, trying to win as many seats as possible in the election but uncommitted about what we will do with them after the election? Or as the strongest part we can be in an alternative government? Under our party constitution, if the party wants to enter a coalition government after an election, that can only happen with the approval of a special party conference.

But that, in turn, can only be triggered by a recommendation from our party leader. If he does not wish to recommend that the party should enter a coalition, he cannot be forced to make such a recommendation. So he’s the key man in the aftermath of an election. Nobody else can convene a conference and secure a decision to go into government.

How can you make a difference in Ireland today? There’s only one way. Replace the present Government with a better one. That’s what Pat Rabbitte has decided he wants to do, and he’s 100% right. Those who argue that it’s possible to change the complexion of the present Government, to shift it to the left by removing the PDs and putting Labour in with Fianna Fáil instead, just don’t get it.

We’ve got to start afresh. We’ve got to try to elect a government that isn’t jaded by power, that hasn’t been bloated and corrupted by too many years in office, that isn’t contemptuous of all of the systems that are supposed to call governments to account.

We’ve got to try to inject new ideas and enthusiasm into the system, a new sense of urgency about what needs to be done. We’ve got to shake things up.

Only a new and different style of government can do that. No matter how good a government is (and you know my views about this one, I hope), twenty years is too much. Fresh faces, accompanied by fresh ideas and priorities, can really revitalise our politics.

I could fill several pages of this newspaper by listing off the things that need to be done. So, I imagine, could most of you. There isn’t the space, so let me just say this. In their heart of hearts, most Government deputies really didn’t see anything wrong with Conor Lenihan’s kebab joke. They weren’t shocked or angry at the insensitivity of it. On Thursday this Government is going to guillotine the Disability Bill, while people in wheelchairs picket the Dáil. And most Government deputies think the bill is about as imaginative and creative as it can be. They’re only two of the reasons we desperately need change. As I said, I could fill the newspaper.

If we’re to get change, my party has to put itself on the line. We have to fight to elect as many TDs as we can, to be as influential as we can in the formation and development of an alternative government. We have to frighten the life out of the present Government, let them really see there’s a contest on. Fine Gael and others have to do the same thing.

Ireland has so much to offer, so much potential, so much creativity. We desperately need to unleash some of that potential and appeal to our own better instincts. The only way to do that is to be absolutely determined to win, in the interests of real change. So, when I go to Tralee next weekend for the Labour party conference I’ll be saying au revoir to a lot of friends. But before I go, I hope I can persuade as many as possible to give Pat Rabbitte the only job that counts, the job of replacing this Government with a much better one.