After many years of inactivity, I’ve decided to revive this blog that I’ve kept on the backburner should I ever feel the itch to put pen to paper again. As the latest Local and European Elections drew to a close, I posted on Twitter that it was time for the socialist movement to engage in a period of reflection on the campaign – talk about what went wrong, what went right, what the issues are, what tactics need adjusting and what perspectives are for the coming election. I argued that this needed to be a fulsome process that included not just the likes of People Before Profit, but independent lefts and even those who decided to absent themselves from the election, for whatever reason (lack of resources or political anti-electoralism come to mind). This post is the first in what is (hopefully) a series of posts providing a small contribution to that process that I hope to see the broader socialist movement engage in.
Starting Point
Place yourself a number of months ago when the decision to run Bríd Smith was taken. Let’s review the international context;
- There is an ongoing genocide in Palestine
- There is an ongoing war in Ukraine
- There is a high level of political instability in the West
And then place that in a national context;
- There is a rising far right
- That there is no major organised socialist force prepared to contest for power
- That Sinn Féin is on a rapid trajectory to the right
The most pressing task for socialists in Ireland right now is responding to these developing situations. As Sinn Féin moves to the right, it will give space to the fascist movement to win over disillusioned Sinn Féin supporters. It will also give space to the socialist movement to do the same. It’s also a possibility that, in the face of its disappointing electoral performance, Sinn Féin will move back to the left. They could also double down on their trajectory and take hard right on a few key issues that they’ve identified – namely immigration. In any case, I believe the damage to their credibility has already been done. The establishment (and likely British intelligence through both its British and Irish assets in the fascist movement, and also assets in the Gardaí) has crudely cultivated the Free State fascist movement in the South as a way of hamstringing Sinn Féin and demoralising its support base, and has done that very successfully. This is going to be a continuing factor in Irish politics.
Justifications and Sectarian Errors
In order to contest the volatile political situation, the Irish socialist movement needs more of everything. It needs more money, it needs more activists, it needs more passive supporters, it needs more political representation. And it needs people who are engaging with a political project. Clare Daly was an excellent MEP on a variety of issues – Palestine being one of them, but she has been a voice in general opposition to NATO and EU militarism, and for the rights of immigrants and refugees. I don’t want this post to perceived as a blunt critique of Clare Daly. But it will be blunt and it will be critical. But it’s with a purpose. I also want to make it clear that whilst my background is with the Socialist Party, then RISE, then People Before Profit, that I’m not exactly ‘around’ them anymore. My outlook is partial, but not partisan. I have no intention of concealing my biases.
So, with that said, would re-electing her for another term have done anything for the Irish socialist movement? The answer to that question lies in a study of her activity in the 2019 – 2024 period, which is to say her contribution was imperceptible. I’m not saying it didn’t exist (more like I didn’t see it), I’m just saying that if it did, it needs to be pointed out and explained, not just assumed. Daly has made many connections with political forces across the world – whether it’s different governments or different progressive forces. It’s been a (broadly) good thing, but ultimately they are her connections.
This is the central point. Clare Daly is not engaged in the building of a political project, and this is a hard limiting factor on any left independent figure. No matter how serious, well intentioned or politically astute, the most they can do is cultivate their own personal brand – in the grand scheme. Of course, there are many other things that they can do, such as campaign on issues and speak out. But that is not a road to power. This is useful for elections, it’s not useful for ongoing persistent mass politics, or for patient organisation of a political party which in a decade could have the power and weight of Sinn Féin. If that sounds unrealistic, I remind you that between 2007 and 2016 (nine years) Sinn Féin went from four to 23 seats, to now 37. The political situation in Ireland is extremely volatile and has been since the Great Recession. Literally anything can happen.
This is a fundamental political difference between independent left activists, elected representatives etc. and those who are in organised political formations such as People Before Profit or the Socialist Party. Independent lefts can provide good propaganda, be good activists, and can be personally popular. Whilst these are good things and socialists should always seek to collaborate on issues where common ground arises, they ultimately cannot build a socialist alternative to fascism, capitalism and imperialism. Even if they want to, it is completely beyond their scope. Engaging in a project to do so sacrifices the independence that they prioritise. That’s what’s actually important here.
That difference in of itself is a justification to stand a candidate “against” Clare Daly. No other difference needs to exist – though there are other differences. It is also what separates this election from 2014 when PBP stood a candidate against Paul Murphy, or in 2020 when the Socialist Party stood a candidate against (again!) Paul Murphy. In both instances the political differences did not justify the act – as in both cases both the Socialist Party and then RISE respectively were committed to the building of a serious socialist political project. That made these decisions in 2014 and 2020 sectarian errors, but makes standing in 2024 a completely reasonable decision. In the 2019 elections, the organised left made a general mistake of running three candidates – for the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and the Workers’ Party (all “against” Clare Daly, who was departing from her career in the Dáil. She got elected then, incidentally). There should have been an attempt to run a single agreed upon candidate on a general socialist and anti-imperialist platform. Failure to attempt to reach that agreement is a sectarian error. All three performed poorly, despite best efforts.
The political basis for running Bríd Smith was and is justified, and I would support that approach again even given a time machine with foreknowledge of the outcome.
Execution
Sectarianism is a disease. It’s a disease not just because it is harmful to those who are ‘victims’ of sectarian approaches to politics, it’s a disease because it is contagious. Establishing a reputation for yourself as a sectarian actor in turn forces others to approach you in a sectarian manner, as a defensive mechanism. They need to anticipate and cut across your sectarian behaviour, and in the process they are forced to act in a sectarian way. To be mistrustful, guarded, even hostile. And so the sectarian political approach propagates outwards and ultimately causes mutual harm.
Every political force on this island is guilty of sectarian errors. Anybody who says otherwise is likely themselves a sectarian, pushing an untruth in order to provide cover for ongoing sectarian errors or attitudes, or attempting to rewrite the history of their own political force or party – a symptom of an unhealthy political culture. Sectarianism exists within the trade union movement and between unions, it exists amongst political parties, it even exists outside political parties between activists groups, informal networks and individuals. Diseases spread.
In that context, it’s hard to break out of the cycle of sectarian attitudes. This informed, in part, approaches in the current election – from Clare Daly’s team, who in reality adopted a sectarian approach to People Before Profit, and one that may have cost Daly her seat. PBP made overtures to Daly to establish a transfer pact which Bernadette McAliskey, on behalf of Clare Daly’s team, refused, citing;
The power of an independent left candidate is their independence … we, as independent leftists, must be mindful of the expectations of the people in regard to us. They expect us to be independent.
…
There is no history in this country of left transfer pacts succeeding … When you ran against then-MEP Paul Murphy in the European elections in 2014, a transfer pact was agreed.
To be clear, the above is an extract of what I feel are the points central to the statement, not a full quotation, and not a complete recitation of all the points made. In addition to the statement published by the team, McAliskey accompanied it with her own separate comment;
Transfer pacts are internal mechanisms to control & maximise party votes. There is no history of them working successfully externally. They tend to work they [sic] other way and dilute votes to the detriment of both parties as in 2014.
The logic is clear – Clare Daly is an independent. As such, she wants no association with People Before Profit, even on a short term pragmatic basis. Furthermore, transfer pacts don’t work.
This is a sectarian approach writ large. It forgoes the best interests of the working class (election of either Bríd Smith or Clare Daly) by focusing on the idea that the perception of Daly’s personal brand might be muddied by engaging in collaboration with another socialist force in Ireland, even if privately they hope that people will give second preferences both directions. If transfer pacts didn’t work externally, then it stands to reason that Bríd Smith standing wouldn’t influence the outcome of Clare Daly’s votes if they were ‘her’ voters to begin with. It’s effectively throwing your hands up in the air and saying people cannot be influenced on how to vote through proper campaigning, and that they will simply vote how they will vote.
Considering that Daly was a mere 1,059 votes off passing Ciarán Cuffe, it’s also possible that it’s a decision that cost her the election (though frankly it was unlikely that she would have won in either case). It’s hard to blame Daly’s campaign team – they, like everyone else, have in the past been victims of sectarian politics. More than believing that transfer pacts don’t work, I’d put money that Daly’s team believed PBP was not fundamentally serious about one and were protecting themselves from a perceived one-sided commitment. This returns me to the point of about the dynamics of sectarianism – it is a disease that spreads.
I am not of the mind of many People Before Profit members who are justifying Bríd Smith’s candidacy on an apolitical basis – that as Ireland has a PR-STV electoral system, PBP would not have ‘split the vote’ and therefore it’s fine. It is likely that she split the vote, and also likely that more votes would have went to Clare Daly had Bríd Smith not run. If Sinn Féin can run too many or too few candidates, so can the socialist left. I don’t think it is a direct split (i.e. all of Smith’s votes absolutely would not have went to Clare Daly), but it’s very difficult to believe that there was no detrimental impact. Mitigating that impact is why that transfer pact should have been agreed, and why campaign teams for both candidates should have seriously committed to it.
But the existence of that ‘vote splitting’ effect is not really PBP’s problem. We’ve already established that there is a clear political justification for running Bríd Smith, and Clare Daly refused to adapt her campaign strategy or her political approach to secure PBP’s support in advance of, or during, the election campaign. That’s her political error that rested on the belief that she didn’t need to do anything to court the support of the organised radical left and their voter base. There is an alternate history where Clare Daly and PBP run a joint campaign to get Clare Daly elected – had Daly approached things differently. People may scoff at the idea, but here’s the thing – it wasn’t even tried. I would wager that an agreement whereby PBP decided not to run Smith and to campaign for Daly’s re-election if she in turn committed to campaigning for PBP candidates in the Local, and later General, elections would have been a pretty feasible starting point for a discussion on the matter. Maybe I’m wrong!
Results and Conclusion
All of the above can be viewed as an interesting (or not) bit of analysis and perspective, but at the end of the day we are left in a situation where there are no socialist MEPs elected. That’s a loss. So how can running Bríd Smith be politically justified in hindsight?
Simply put, because she had a good chance of winning. She is a relatively high profile national figure, she has good politics, PBP has a reasonably decent network of activists and campaigners both in their party and in their periphery, and the polling data supported the idea that she was in the running for the last seat, same as Clare Daly was. There was every chance that she could get in and then use that position to contribute to the building of the socialist movement on this island, whilst continuing the opposition to war, NATO, Israel, EU militarism and so on that people (myself included) actually wanted to re-elect Clare Daly for. As far as the interests of the entire working class and of the organised socialist movement goes, this was a preferable outcome to simply re-electing Clare Daly and maintaining the status quo, and it had a reasonable chance of success.
Regardless, I don’t think it had a decisive impact on the outcome of the election, just the degree of the loss – in both cases, Daly would be relying on transfers from Ciarán Cuffe. Making the unjustifiable assumption that all of Smith’s first preferences went to Daly and that the transfers continued as normal thereafter (i.e. Daly got the transfers that she got from every other candidate, and none of the additional transfers that Smith would have gotten, as that would be, double counting) – she would end on 60,911 votes – 2,615 behind Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, meaning she needed to be placed in higher preference ahead of other candidates that Cuffe’s votes transferred to – at least 2,000 of them, assuming a few hundred taken from Ó Ríordáin. This doesn’t seem like much until you remember that this assumes that all of Smith’s initial 21,577 votes went straight to Daly – again, it’s a wildly unrealistic and unjustifiable assumption. There was no real path to victory here, based on existing arithmetic. The only thing that could have changed this outcome are the dynamics of the campaign – which leads back to the last paragraph of the previous section of this post.
That the campaigns failed, however, are nonetheless the facts we are faced with. Breaking down the precise mechanics of the local voting patterns, transfers etc. is beyond my skillset, and in any case I think would be a fairly pointless exercise. Both candidates were rejected by the public, and the chief driver of that is a critical level of disengagement with European institutions and elections – quelle surprise. If the turnout was higher, it likely would have favoured both far left and far right candidates, but ultimately would have placed Smith or Daly in the 4th seat.
So what are our lessons? Certainly, this is not a call to have a sectarian approach towards independent lefts. I believe that form of organising has its limitations, as do all things (a political party cannot start an industrial dispute, for example!). There are still many good independent left activists and organisers and collaboration should be sought. It also is not a call to try and unseat independent left candidates in the upcoming General Election. There is absolutely no purpose to that – there are 39 constituencies to contest and very few of them have a seat occupied by people who are seriously on the left. But there are two take away points for me:
- We need to figure out ways to actually collaborate in a qualitatively and quantitatively enhanced way on the electoral front. This is critical in the face of the upcoming general elections. As far as I’m concerned, Solidarity-People Before Profit is already a confederal ‘organisation’ with a low level of political cohesion and the brand recognition of PBP is high enough that running as a candidate under S-PBP is only beneficial. There’s no reason why socialists across the island shouldn’t enter into discussions on how to broaden this arrangement, up to and including renaming it. Rejecting this idea on principle is simply sectarianism.
- We need to find out ways to boost voter turnout amongst our core voting blocs. The socialist left is small, and there’s very little objective impact we can bring on this – the pace of politics is ultimately set by the establishment, when it is allowed to operate as normal. It’s a topic that warrants some thought, even if the conclusion is that there’s very little we can do.
Mad Marx 