Labour’s biggest challenge is to reassert its values once more

Labour has been a party of democratic values, where debate and dissent has been valued, writes Fergus Finlay  

HEN I was in my 20s, a Labour Minister, Frank Cluskey, introduced the first payment for what were called then “unmarried mothers”. The introduction of the payment, along with other major reforms, had profound effects. As well as lifting an entire generation of women out of dependence, it began to end a stigma that had lasted in Ireland for generations.

In that same decade, Cluskey’s party fought for, and ultimately achieved, the principle of equal pay for women. It wasn’t achieved without battle or compromise — the entire apparatus of government and virtually every employer in Ireland lobbied against the measure, and it was delayed for several years because Ireland was then in the grip of a disastrous economic collapse, caused in the main by oil prices and shortages.