politics has been its concentration on the failure of the Irish bourgeoisie, support for multi-nationals alongside state sponsored economic growth, and job creation and a more equitable system of taxa tion. Hardly the stuff of revolutionary rhetoric or action! SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
FEATURES
At the centre of the current Workers Party debate is disagreement over a perspective for the future. Recently, the party's leading theoretician, Eoghan Harris produced a document; "The Necessity of Social Democracy". which was published prior to its being discussed in the party. It was this fact, not the content of the document which provoked a furore and led to his resignation.
The text argues that the party has to put socialism behind it and dump socialist economics' which have become a break on progress. Instead, he proposes a retum to social democracy, defined as 'the struggle for socialist values in a democratic society with a market economy*. What this means in practice is abandoning any notion of 'left unity' -namely any alliance with the Labour Party:
We have nothing in common with the Labour Party's nationalistic policies and green politics, with the collection of clapped out cliches carried around by the 'left'.... We should move up to midfield as a mass party of social democracy and take as much left, liberal left of centre space as possible, recognising that the Labour vote will come to us eventually, and faster if it looks like we can take office. We should remind ourselves that coalition depends and is not a principle'.
So, the prospect of coalition again rears its head. In terms of its political outlook, it is difficult to envisage any form of coalition between elements of the Workers Party and Fianna Fail. Rather, it is more a perspective directed at Fianna Gael and the Progressive Democrats. The Workers Party's virulent propartitionist policies have more in common with those of the main bourgeois parties. As Harris expressed it:
'Our party was not bom in a conflict about
socialism. Our party was bom in a conflict about democracy. About the right of Protestants to their Northem State. ... When we defend the separate Protestant identity we show respect for all identities. When we defend Unionist rights - so difficult to defend down here - we defend all other minority rights from women to the poor in society'.
Where do the rights of the oppressed and discriminated-against nationalist population of the Six Counties enter into the picture? They do not feature in Harris's schema. Perhaps this is part of their strategy to marginalise terrorism, as one of the leading members of the party, Proinsias de Rossa said in the Dail in November 1989:
*No one political party will marginalise terrorism by itself. It is up to each of us, in this House, to develop and promote means of strengthening the democratic culture. The demands for peace and democracy are are the primary demands of people in these islands...*
How such a perspective could have an ap peal among the working class is difficult to imagine.
The question remains. How to reforge the different radical and socialist nationalism in a way that challenges the conservatism and catholicism of the 26-county state, toward a united Ireland which in the words of the 1916 proclamation "will treat all its people equally. The breach within the Fianna Fail consensus opening up, provide a challenge and an opportunity for those who would offer an alternative vision. Neither the Labour Party or the Workers Party as they stand can offer such a vision.
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