Class action

SUBMISSIONS to a state body charged with redrawing constituency boundaries hardly make for interesting reading.

But buried among the 533 submissions received by the Constituency Commission, lay one which contained something of a social depth-charge.

The Association of Residents of Terenure (ART) sought what many have accepted is a valid political goal — the electoral reunification of an area. The constituency boundary runs right through the middle of the village, they pointed out. Wouldn’t it make sense for Terenure to be politically reunited?

But in suggesting that they belonged with the denizens of Dublin South East rather than those of Dublin South Central, the association committed a grave faux pas. They used the C-word.

“The current constituency boundary has left us at a great disadvantage because the make up of the public representatives who have been elected to our constituency do not, in general, seem to feel they represent the ‘middle class’ suburb of Terenure, and instead draw their support from, and give their attention to, the western part of the constituency.”

Class. It’s not a word you hear very often in Ireland, or at least not in this context. The message from the Terenure secessionists is very clear. We just don’t belong in the same constituency as Teresa’s Gardens and Ballyfermot, we don’t feel represented by Joan Collins of People Before Profit, or Aengus Ó Snodaigh of Sinn Féin.

The submission describes their middle class enclave as “cut off from its natural association with Dublin South East and in an electoral district with which it has no logical affinity”. Dublin South East, the constituency to which the association aspires, has neither the hard left nor the hard cases on the other side of the border. Instead of Ballyfermot and Cherry Orchard, it has Ballsbridge and Donnybrook. Instead of Joan Collins and Aengus Ó Snodaigh, it has Ruairí Quinn and Lucinda Creighton.

The submission drew ire and ridicule from all sides. Twitter went into hyperdrive. Columnists, the blogosphere and bulletin boards resounded with laughter and accusations of snobbery. Who do these people think they are?

The Irish, says Professor Chris Whelan of the UCD School of Sociology, don’t take public claims of superiority too well. But it isn’t just the Irish, is it? Isn’t it true of all societies? Not really, he says.

“Societies differ in the extent to which claims to authority are taken as valid. In the UK, because of the aristocracy, because of the monarchy, because of the House of Lords, there is more acceptance that people are seen to be superior or important.”

He laughs about the fact that when students in UCD email him, he’s addressed as ‘Hey’. “It’s not even ‘Hey Chris’, and certainly they don’t refer to me as Professor Whelan. In other societies, you don’t get that. In Germany you would not approach a professor saying ‘Hey’. You’d get into severe strife.”

But just because we’re squeamish about the C-word doesn’t mean we’re a classless society:

“If your parents are unskilled manual,” says Prof Whelan, “your chances of dying early are much higher than someone whose parents are managerial. The objective reality is that your chances of going to university are much higher if your parents were professional.”

There’s no shortage of evidence that we live in a very unequal society. EU statistics from 2008 show that the annual disposable income of the top 10% of the population was 12.9 times that of the bottom 10%.

A year later, progressive economic think-tank Tasc reported that 19.9% of children were at risk of poverty. The recession may have sunk all boats, but some are going under faster than others.

Last month, further Tasc research found that low-income groups in general, and lone parents in particular, were disproportionately affected by Budget 2011, the one that was supposed to have hit the middle classes hardest. It’s not necessarily that we’re all trying to sweep these issues under the carpet, but no one is talking about them in class terms.

So do the Association of Residents of Terenure deserve some credit for calling a spade a spade? The Irish Independent was in such a rush to point and laugh that it misquoted the submission, accusing the association of saying that it had no “cultural” affinity with the western side of the constituency, a misquotation that was repeated a couple of days later in the inside pages by a columnist. The phrase they actually used was “logical affinity”, which isn’t half so loaded. Is it really so bad to seek a return to your own kind? Dublin South Central TDs are quick to assert that they represent all areas of the constituency equally. “Anybody who contacts me,” says Joan Collins of People Before Profit, “is assisted as much as they can be. I think it wouldn’t make any difference if they went to the South East. I think they’re fooling themselves there. In respect of the representatives in South Central not representing a certain class of people, I think they’re wrong and I disagree with them.”

But don’t all TDs have a power base within their constituency? Isn’t it true that representatives won’t tend to venture too far outside it for fear of spreading themselves too thin? Collins concedes that this is true, and says she doesn’t poll so well in more affluent areas. “People know my politics; socialist, but that doesn’t mean that if I’m contacted by a residents’ association that I wouldn’t respond. I certainly wouldn’t ignore them.”

Eric Byrne of the Labour Party actually lives in the estate from which the contentious submission emanated, and is also a member of ART. He is adamant that he represents his constituents in Terenure just as vigorously as those in any other part of the constituency, and characterises ART’s letter as insensitive.

“My residents’ association made an absolute hames of what should be a very simple issue.” You can’t, he says, use a class argument to secure political advantage.

“An electoral commission would be wrong to consider the class composition of an area in drawing democratic boundaries … boundaries should be based on numbers of citizens, not on class.”

The other question that arises here is whether or not there is a thick seam of hypocrisy woven into the fabric of Irish society?

Prof Whelan points out that private schools are doing great business, recession or no.

“I don’t think objectively it’s because they do a better job of teaching kids. It’s partly because of the fact that people say to themselves, any advantage I can buy, I’ll buy. But it’s also because of this notion that your children will mix with the right kind of children, that they will make the right kinds of connections.”

How many of those who condemned the snobbery of ART send their kids to private schools, or keep their pension well topped up, or pay health insurance?

“You can protect your interests and operate very much in class terms on a rational basis without using the language of class, without being seen to be claiming to be superior,” says Chris Whelan.

“So if you want to say, ‘OK, I want a different kind of representative in Ireland’, it’s best to find the vocabulary which isn’t built around class, because it will meet just that kind of resistance you’ve seen.”