Ireland

THE LEFT IN THE Republic of Ireland is consistently eclipsed by its conservative and centrist counterparts, at least when the measure used is electoral success. While Fianna Fáil (Soldiers of Destiny, a conservative populist party) and Fine Gael (Family of the Irish, a Christian democratic party) have captured first and second places in the country's last four parliamentary elections (as of 2004), an assortment of leftist forces—led principally by the Labour Party—scramble to constitute a coherent and effective opposition.

Laying claim to only a distant third place in Ireland's most recent (2002) parliamentary election, the Labour Party can nonetheless boast of being the oldest political party in Ireland and the only party that predates the country's independence in 1922. Established in 1912 by William O'Brien, James Larkin, and James Connolly as the political arm of the Irish Trade Union Congress, the Labour Party has sought throughout its history to advance a social policy agenda that targets unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, and emigration. At the heart of Labour's programmatic message are four central principles: freedom, equality, community, and democracy. Yet because the “national question” (that is, the Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland division) garners the lion's share of attention in Irish politics, the Labour Party's more conventional left-wing interests have at times languished.

Pushed aside by Fianna Fáil as the country's primary parliamentary opposition party in 1927, Labour fell prey to internal divisiveness through the 1940s. Five on-again, off-again coalitions with Fine Gael over the next four decades gave Labour important experience as a party of government. In 1990, Irish voters elected Labour's Mary Robinson as the country's first female president, a striking precedent for both Ireland and the party. Over the next two years, the Labour Party fused with the Democratic Socialist Party and the Independent Socialist Party, mergers that facilitated the party's best electoral performance (19.3 percent in the 1992 general election) and its sixth entry into a coalition government. In 1998, Labour expanded once again, this time combining with the much smaller Democratic Left. This latest merger failed to bear electoral fruit (winning only 10.4 percent of the vote in 2002) and prompted new leader Pat Rabbitte to consider strategically reorienting the party toward the ideological center.

Part of Labour's electoral troubles stem from the Irish left's division into multiple parties. While attempting to catch up with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the right, Labour has simultaneously had to fend off challenges from its own left flank. Chief among these challengers are Sinn Féin (We Ourselves) and the Green Party. Sinn Féin advertises itself as a nationalist and labor-oriented party committed above all else to achieving a reunited 32-county democratic socialist republic free of British rule. With origins in the 1916 Easter Rising and subsequent civil war, Sinn Féin in the 1960s and 1970s staked out radical positions in demanding civil rights in Ireland and British expulsion from the six counties in Northern Ireland. Led by Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin later gained increasing consideration as a legitimate political force (and no longer just the political wing of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army) and earned its first parliamentary seat in 1997.

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