Polish emigrants have their say, but Irish could only vote with their feet

Had Irish emigrants been entitled to vote, and if even a small fraction of them had exercised that right, undoubtedly they could have been the deciding factor in general elections here given the size of the country and the closeness of election results.

IN FEBRUARY 1995, President Mary Robinson addressed the Oireachtas on the theme ‘Cherishing the Irish Diaspora’. It was a well-crafted speech, though overly long.

Most of her audience did not like it or else were indifferent. In an uncharacteristically frank assessment, Bertie Ahern, then leader of the opposition, called it “a terribly boring speech and everyone in the Dáil nearly fell asleep”.

Robinson was conscious that it was not going down well. “I felt it as I was speaking”, she later told her official biographers, Helen Burke and Olivia O’Leary: “I felt there was a resistance … I have rarely spoken to a less responsive audience”.

Not for the first or last time, Robinson spoke of the need for a broader, more inclusive Irish identity, an Irishness that should “reach out to everyone”.

Her presidency thus far had reached out not just to women’s and community groups at home, but also well beyond that. In this single address, she mentioned visiting Calcutta, Toronto, Britain, the United States, Tanzania, Hungary, Australia, Poland, Zimbabwe, Mayo, Antrim, Kildare, New Zealand, Somalia, Zaire, Melbourne and Manchester.

But her address was not just about the exertions to date of a globetrotting presidency. It had a political edge because of its relevance to something that was causing contemporary debate — the treatment of Irish emigrants, whether there was an onus on Irish governments to contribute to their welfare and whether they should be allowed to vote in Seanad elections.

She quoted playwright Tom Murphy (whose work is often a savage indictment of the creation of a dispossessed class of Irish people), and Eavan Boland’s poem The Emigrant Irish: “Like oil lamps, we put them out the back, of our houses, of our minds.”

Despite Robinson’s contribution in 1995, the debate about votes for emigrants never really ignited. In March 1996, the Government issued its white paper on foreign policy in which the section dealing with the Irish abroad contained suggestions as to how stronger links could be forged with the diaspora.

It proposed a referendum to grant emigrants the right to vote for three Seanad seats, the three senators representing Britain, the US and Australia. This ignored the fact that, at that time, there were six times as many Irish in Britain as there were in the US and that the Irish in Europe outnumbered those in Australia. The proposal was to give votes to a potential 900,000 emigrants who had been away for up to 20 years and who had previously lived in Ireland for a minimum of 10 years, with emigrants voting in a single constituency. The hosting of a referendum to allow for the election of the three senators had been promised in the programme for government agreed in 1994, but it became clear in 1996 that agreement would not be reached on it and the proposal was dropped.

‘No taxation, no representation’ was one of the slogans of those who opposed the idea of Irish emigrants getting a voice in Irish elections, ignoring the fact that, collectively, thousands of Irish emigrants had sent back huge sums of money to the country. The notion that allowing the Irish abroad to vote in Irish elections was not feasible was at odds with the situation in other European countries where emigrant voting rights are ensured using a variety of different means.

I was reminded of Robinson’s speech and the doomed Irish emigrant vote proposals when I saw the large queues outside the Polish embassy in Dublin last Sunday morning — most of them young men and women. Upwards of 14,000 Poles were registered to vote in Dublin with another 6,000 in Cork and Limerick.

It was fascinating to watch how important Ireland became as a battleground in Poland’s general election, with opposition and government politicians making visits and a pitch for the emigrant vote in the run-up to the election.

Many of the Poles in Ireland were angry about what they regard as the failure of their domestic government to modernise the country, which forced them to emigrate in the first place. They were particularly sensitive to the accusation of the outgoing prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who leads the Law and Justice Party, that they had abandoned their country and were unpatriotic. One of them pointed out that it was akin to an Irish politician in the 1980s going to somewhere like Boston and accusing Irish emigrants of letting their country down.

It is no surprise, in this context, that more emigrant Poles were determined to vote for the main opposition party and eventual winners, the Civic Platform led by Donald Tusk, who also visited Ireland during the election campaign. His party is more pro-enterprise, more liberal on social issues and more open to increased European integration.

Kazik Anhalt, who arranged the visit of Donald Tusk, made the point that Ireland’s story has a lot of attraction for Polish politicians because of the similarity in their history. But there is one big difference. Irish emigrants have never been allowed to vote in Irish elections, which raises the intriguing question: if they had had the vote at a time when emigration was so pervasive, could they have transformed the politics of Ireland? Would the leaders of the Irish political parties have found themselves addressing election meetings in Kilburn, Coventry, Birmingham, Boston and New York, promising that a vote for them was a vote to end the emigrants’ exile?

HAD Irish emigrants been entitled to vote, and if even a small fraction of them had exercised that right, undoubtedly they could have been the deciding factor in general elections in Ireland given the size of the country and the closeness of election results.

For example, 14,000 emigrant votes would have made a hell of a difference, which is precisely why they were not allowed to vote with, instead, the patronising suggestion being eventually made in the 1990s that perhaps — and only perhaps — they would be allowed vote in elections to the Senate where they could not inflict any damage.

In 1987, the late Brian Lenihan famously asserted that emigration from Ireland was inevitable: “After all, we can’t all live on a small island.” One cynic described his intervention as “his celebration of emigration as a smart option for the flower of our youth”. Lenihan might not have been so effusive if Irish emigrants had the right to vote in Irish general elections.

Given the anger that many Irish emigrants felt over the years that they were forced to emigrate due to the failed economic policies of the ruling parties — as is the case in Poland — the political domination of Fianna Fáil might not have been as pronounced, and politicians might have been forced to change their approach to the economy and social issues at an earlier stage than they did in Ireland.

It will be interesting to see if the change in government in Poland — partly fuelled by emigrants’ dissatisfaction — will result in a feeling among the Poles here and elsewhere that their own country holds out the possibility of a bright future for them and their children.