Labour's purpose is surely to deal with inequality, and changing the outlook that sees it as 'unavoidable', writes Vincent Browne.
THE LABOUR Party, well the Labour Youth bit of it, deliberated over last weekend in Galway on how Labour might achieve a breakthrough politically. Several speakers spoke of communicating the Labour "message" better; canvassing more intensively to hold off Sinn Féin; arming canvassers with arguments to reply to voter complaints and objections; getting out the vote; having more distinctive policies; rehearsing Labour's achievements in government, and dispelling the impression that Labour was a hike hacks party.
A few of us (I was an "outside" speaker) thought the focus was mistaken, and that the Labour Party should go in quite a different direction, if necessary, forsaking office for a long time.
Several objections were voiced to this suggestion: that Labour could achieve real benefits in the here and now for some of the most vulnerable people in society if it were in office; that one has to be realistic and accept that things had "moved on", that the electorate had "moved on" from the tired socialist rhetoric of yesterday; that there was no point in Labour being a voice in the wilderness, it had to be a party of power and would have no credibility if it didn't; that the electorate simply doesn't want more taxes and doesn't want the State being involved all over the place in the economy.
The argument advanced for the alternative theory went somewhat like this (this is a rough approximation of what was said and I did not mention some of the arguments advanced here in Galway, but they fit the line I was pursuing).
Labour has been in power 14 of the last 34 years. It has been in office for longer than any other party, aside from Fianna Fáil. During the time of Labour's participation in the government led by Liam Cosgrave from 1973-1977, the now famous Kenny Report on Building Land was presented to cabinet. This was a report that advocated that just slightly more than the agricultural value of land would be awarded in compensation to landholders whose land was deemed appropriate for the building of houses.
The Kenny report was submitted to cabinet, I assume by the minister for local government at the time, Jim Tully, who was a member of the Labour Party. The then minister for finance, Richie Ryan, said he was opposed to the implementation of the Kenny proposals. The taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, said he too was opposed. And that was that. No objection was raised by the tánaiste and leader of the Labour Party, Brendan Corish, nor by a minister who was later a tánaiste, Michael O'Leary, nor by the socialist, Justin Keating, nor by Conor Cruise O'Brien, nor by Jimmy Tully himself. All remained silent, as did the other Fine Gael ministers. The Kenny report was shelved (this account of what happened at the cabinet was given to me by one of the Fine Gael ministers who was present).
Labour was again in government from 1982 to 1987 and once more from 1992 to 1997. In the 15 years from 1982 to 1997, Labour was in government for 10 years. And one of the legacies left by Labour in government is demonstrated in a report by the Institute of Public Health entitled Inequalities in Mortality(and I apologise for going on and on about this yet again).
This report reveals that in the period 1989 to 1998, during most of which time Labour was in office and appeared to have succeeded its period in office from 1982 to 1987, for all causes of death, the death rate of those in the lower occupational classes was three times higher than the death rate for those in the higher occupational classes.
The death rate for all cancers among the lowest occupational class was over twice as high as for the highest occupational class and nearly three times higher for strokes, four times higher for lung cancer and six times higher for accidents. Ruth Barrington, a former director of the Health Research Bureau, has extrapolated the data from the Institute of Public Health report and concluded that 5,400 people died prematurely every year because of inequality. This is part of Labour's legacy from its time in office in the 1980s and the 1990s.
That might be regarded as "history" and one has to "look forward". But wouldn't you think that Labour would reflect on how it was that it allowed such gross and obscene inequalities to persist while it was in office? Would you think they would wonder how it was that removing or at least radically reducing such inequalities would have been a priority for them in office, and wouldn't you think they would now analyse why this did not turn out to be the case?
Might it not now reflect that its purpose, as a Labour Party, is to remove or radically lessen such obscene inequalities and that it would appreciate that this cannot be done without changing the political culture that regards such inequalities as "unavoidable"? And that such a change in the political culture would take time and persistence and also, inevitably, would require Labour forsaking office for the foreseeable future?