Mick Clifford: Eoin Hayes and the Social Democrats' self-induced trauma

A photograph of Social Democrats TD Eoin Hayes in blackface from 16 years ago has surfaced, and his party has reacted as if a deep, dark secret from his past had been uncovered

Eoin Hayes' gesture was silly, if not stupid, but there is absolutely no suggestion that he was attempting to mock Barack Obama, or the man’s ethnicity. Picture: Leon Farrell/RollingNews.ie

On one level, there is a great giggle to be had in observing the Social Democrats being traumatised as they cling for dear life to the high moral ground to be found in the upper echelons of identity politics. 

On another, the silliness reflects one of the central problems infecting social democracy in various countries where once it thrived.

Poor old Eoin Hayes is in the thick of it again. A photograph surfaced from 16 years ago showing him with brown make-up at a fancy dress party in Cork when he was president of the students' union. He was attempting to portray Barack Obama, a politician he obviously admired and went on to work for. But the make-up has racist connotations going back to the days when such portrayals were used to caricature and demean black people.

Eoin Hayes has apologised for dressing up as Barack Obama in 2009.

In that context, Hayes’ gesture was silly, if not stupid. Some of us — well, me at least — were often silly and sometimes stupid in our teens and early 20s. It’s called growing up. In the highlands of identity politics, the pure never had to grow up. They arrived fully endowed with the highest of morals wrapped in a sheen of smugness. 

Ask … well, take your pick from a few politicians that might come to mind.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

This is not a case of Hayes being found out for being racist in a previous life. There is absolutely no suggestion that he was attempting to mock Obama, or the man’s ethnicity — far from it. He was just being silly, unaware, as many would have been, that such gestures could be interpreted as racist.

Now, 16 years later, his faux pas has traumatised his colleagues, some of whom give the impression that anybody who was once young and stupid must be considered uncouth, unreconstructed, unworthy, as if — God forbid — they might even once have been a member of Fianna Fáil.

Poor Holly Cairns arrived back to this hoopla after her maternity leave. 

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns speaks to the media alongside party colleagues on her first day back from maternity leave, addressing the controversy over TD Eoin Hayes’ Halloween costume. Picture: Liam McBurney/PA

“There is no way to sugarcoat it,” Ms Cairns told Morning Ireland. “Blackface is a form of racism. In the Social Democrats, we abhor all kinds of racism.”

She might as well have added: “Unlike other parties who are not as pure as us, or at least don’t advertise their own virtues with the same commitment as we do.” 

She even felt the need to reveal that if Hayes had erred in the same manner in recent years, he would be out of the party, as if that had anything to do with what had occurred.

Hayes has form in being impure. Earlier this year, it emerged he didn’t dispose of shares from a company that he had worked for, and which supplies the Israeli military, as quickly as he should have.

He left what looks like a lucrative career to go into politics with a party that claims to espouse social democracy, but he landed in People Before Profit lite, where the priority is to shout loudly one’s virtues, rather than effect change where it is most needed.

Yesterday, his leader mulled over the sins he had committed, mournfully addressing the black sheep who had strayed far from the flock.

“I think he deserves an opportunity to work hard now to try and regain people’s trust,” she said, as if a deep, dark secret from her TD’s past had been uncovered and brought out into the light.

Identity politics

Whatever about Hayes, it is alleged social democratic parties, like the Social Democrats, who need to work hard to regain the trust of the kind of constituents they have abandoned in recent years.

In places like the USA, and to a lesser but still considerable extent Britain, the left drifted from those who were being excluded by the prevailing politics. The Democrats stateside and the Labour Party in the UK were too busy asserting how virtuous they were, how in tune they were with the minutiae of identity politics. So those looking for change instead sought it in the bankrupt yet seductive politics of far-right elements.

We haven’t reached that point here yet. But if the Social Democrats' self-induced trauma this week is anything to go by, they’re on the same track as their once kindred spirits abroad.